Green fingers in the eastern Karoo

SOME TIME ago, Toverview published a story about Charles Gavaza, a teacher of Zimbabwean origin at the Hantam Community Education Trust school east of Colesberg, with a talent for farming. At that stage, he was growing vegetables part time on Hanglip Farm. Since then, however, he and his family have developed a remarkable vegetable garden at the HCET campus, a few kilometres down the road from Hanglip Farm.

Charles teaches full time at the Trust’s school, the Umthombo Wolwazi Intermediate Farm School, and his wife, Petronella, teaches in the preschool. They and their two children – Prince and Tiara — live in a house on the HCET campus.

The project has been promoted and funded by the Mamas Alliance, a major funder of the Trust, in the belief that it would have educational value, while providing the school with cheap and nutritious vegetables. A suitable piece of land was fenced off,  irrigation was laid on, and a storage shed built. After that, Charles proceeded to lay out and plant the garden.

The Gavazas work in the garden in the afternoons and over weekends. Charles pays the Trust a monthly sum. In return, he sells the vegetables for his own account to the Trust (for school meals), staff members, as well as farmers in the area. Occasionally, surplus vegetables are also sold in Colesberg. The garden is entirely organic – no pesticides or commercial fertilisers are used, and Charles uses some surprising farming techniques learnt in his native Zimbabwe. Among others, Maeder Osler reports with some bemusement, he also prunes his mealies.

Growing numbers of learners are also working in the garden, learning precious skills that will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives – and bearing out the funders’ belief that the project would have educational value.

According to Lesley Osler, founder and former executive director of the HCET (whose grandson, Luke, ‘discovered’ Charles at a nursery outside Paarl in the Western Cape some years ago), Charles has ‘green fingers’, and it’s easy to see why. The garden is a special place – a lush, bounteous oasis in the monochrome grasslands of the north eastern Karoo.

Photographs courtesy of the Hantam Community Education Trust.