Grace and Peace
I am spending this weekend at Bulungula Lodge which is on the Wild Coast overlooking the (hopefully warm) Indian Ocean. It is situated around 300 km north of East London. If you hit Coffee Bay you have gone too far by about 56 km. If you hit Durban phone a therapist.
I first heard of Bulungula Lodge when I was exploring building an “off-the-grid-house” a couple of years ago. As you know, the Eastern Cape is beset with traumatising poverty and unemployment. This environmentally sustainable lodge, which is embedded within the Nqileni community, hopes to overcome poverty with minimal impact on the environment.
The founders and co-owners, David Martin and Rejane Woodroffe “realised that the biggest problem in the world is the unsustainable economic system we were chasing”. When they first began in the area there was nearly 100% unemployment. Once the Bulungula Lodge opened in 2004 and began to grow in popularity, cash into the area increased slowly.
Social entrepreneurial community interventions, through the Bulungula Incubator (www.bulungulaincubator.org) includes numerous micro-enterprises as well as health and education services covering the full cycle of life – womb to tomb.
While access to quality formal education has always been challenging in the region, cattle farming and farming for staple foods and vegetables is a way of life. It is this traditional knowledge and lifestyle that is leveraged and built upon to improve livelihoods, nutrition and provide opportunities for income-generation and wealth-creation.
The first 18 people directly employed by the lodge were carefully selected by the community as those who needed it most. Many are disabled ex-mine workers or their widows. I would call this Gospel Governance.
Both Martin and Woodroffe believe that despite its poverty, Nqileni is miles ahead of the First World in terms of achieving a form of sustainable living. Nobody owns a car in the village. The village is powered by solar energy and wind power. A solar pump draws water from a spring for the showers while rain water is the drinking source. The famous rocket showers are powered by paraffin that only heats the water that is used, so nothing is wasted. Grey water is recycled through the banana plantation. Compost toilets with a urine diversion system take care of sanitation.
Martin says: “For our community to become a model sustainable and happy society is considerably easier than for, say, Newlands or Sandton, which seem doomed for the next few decades to live fearfully behind high walls, unsustainably addicted to energy that’s running out.”
In gratitude for those who help us to live life in life-giving ways,
Alan
