Permaculture in the City with Ron Berezan

Keiskamma Canada Foundation
presents
“Permaculture in the City”
Emerging Visions for Urban Agriculture

Thursday, May 7th
7:00 PM – 9:30 PM
Bonnie Doon Hall
9240 – 93 st, Edmonton

From backyards, to rooftops, to community gardens, why is growing food in the city becoming increasingly common around the world?

Spend an evening with Ron Berezan, “The Urban Farmer”, and explore the many benefits and models of growing food in urban areas, drawing on international and local examples. Engage in hands-on activities and learn about permaculture techniques for producing an abundant and organic harvest in an urban setting - including the wide range of edible species that grow in the Edmonton area.

The cost is $40.

A portion of the workshop fees will go to Keiskamma Canada Foundation.

To register call Sarah at 780-988-2976, or Wendy at 780-453-8029.
You can also register by sending an email to sarahcashmore@yahoo.ca

Beautiful Bird Bag - Friday Blog Auction

Welcome back to the second Keiskamma Canada Blog Auction. This week the item up for bid is the beautiful embroidered bag pictured above. (Details follow below). Same rules apply as last time:


Here's how it works: You look at the bag and fall in love with it. You go to the comments section and place your bid. The minimum bid is $30.00 (CDN) for this piece. The bidding will close at 9pm Mountain Time, today, March 27, 2009. To log into the comments you need a gmail account, or you can log in as 'anonymous.' Be sure and leave your name and check back to see if you've 'won' the bidding. The successful bidder and I will make arrangements for shipping etc. The ENTIRE amount that is bid on the cushion cover will go to Keiskamma Canada. Not only will you be getting a beautiful embroidery and a useful and sturdy bag, but you can feel great about donating to an excellent cause.


Happy bidding!

Details of the bag:

Huberta - On the PaperTigers Blog

"This is a story of friendship, bravery and adventure. It is also a story about Hamburg."

Please read more about Huberta on today's post on the PaperTigers Blog.

Edmonton Seedy Sunday

Look for Keiskamma Canada this Sunday at Seedy Sunday!

EDMONTON SEEDY SUNDAY


March 22, 2009
11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Alberta Avenue Community Hall
9210 - 118 Avenue NW
Edmonton

seed exchange, seed vendors, books, gardening displays, kid's table, gardening book and magazine exchange, international garden fundraising, free presentations


Speakers:

Noon - 1:00 p.m. “Food, Farmers and Climate Chaos” by Sarah Mohan from USC

1:00 p. m. - 2:00 p.m. “Urban Permaculture Creating Abundance for People and the Planet” by the Urban Farmer, Ron Berezan

2:00 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. "How Green is My Garden?" with
Ivor Mckay, 100 Mile Diet
Neil Lang, Local Gardener
Suzanne Cook, Local Gardener
Yolande Stark, Community Shared Agriculture farmer, Tipi Creek Farm


ADMISSION IS FREE OR BY DONATION

HAVE A COFFEE AND A CHAT WITH GARDENERS AT OUR SEEDY CAFÉ!


FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Wendy 780-453-8029
Pam pcoco@telusplanet.net

Cushion Cover from the Keiskamma Art Project - Blog Auction

Welcome to the Keiskamma Blog's first on-line auction! of a piece made at the wonderful Keiskamma Art Project in South Africa. The idea for this came from a blog called the Darfur Project - (Bags4Darfur). Joyce has drawn attention to this blog on hers - thanks Joyce!



Here's how it works: You look at the cushion cover and fall in love with it. (The one you will be bidding on is above, with detailed images of the same cushion cover below). You go to the comments section and place your bid. The minimum bid is $30.00 (CDN) for this piece. The bidding will close at 9pm Mountain Time. To log into the comments you need a gmail account, or you should be able to log in as 'anonymous.' Be sure and leave your name and check back to see if you've 'won' the bidding. The successful bidder and I will make arrangements for shipping etc. The ENTIRE amount that is bid on the cushion cover will go to the Keiskamma Art Project. Not only will you be getting a beautiful embroidery, but you can feel great about donating to an excellent cause.


The cushion cover measures 15 and 1/2" x 15 and 1/2" and does not come with a cushion.


Please read the following tidbits about the embroideries, the cows, and the art project, sent to me by Annette and Florence Danais, the art project manager.

Let the bidding begin!

From Florence:

In the mid nineteenth century, with the arrival of white men hungry for land, the Xhosa were horrified to see their grazing absorbed. In a climate of confusion, fear and anger, as war raged and their territory shrank, the people gave credence to the prophesies of Nongqawusi, an adolescent girl who claimed to have seen strange visitors emerging from the mists of her coastal home. These visitors told her that the Xhosa people must purify themselves by the destruction of their crops and the slaughter of their cattle. If they did this, new cattle would rise out of the sea, new crops would fill their barns, and the white men would be driven from their lands and into the ocean.

Such was the desperation of the people that many listened. Great chiefs came to the river mouth where she lived, and looking down the cliffs into the river, saw the shadowy forms of cattle under the water, their horns breaking the surface. They were convinced, and returned home oversee the slaughter and destruction of everything they had. With every disappointment, the killing of the Xhosa cattle grew more desperate, but nothing happened. Finally, starving and defeated, the nation collapsed. Thus began years of subjugation, ending only with the democratic elections of 1994.

Since 2000, the Xhosa artists from the Keiskamma Art Project bring their cattle back to life. They are restoring their wealth and pride through their art.

From Annette:

Cows are absolutely central to Xhosa society. They are ancient symbols of wealth and health and the centre of traditional spirituality. One of the things I love about the Keiskamma art project is that the use of cows by women in embroidery is actually terribly subversive as cows are traditionally and still today are cared for only by men. Men are only allowed in the cattle kraal. Women may not enter—only once are they allowed in when they are being given in marriage—boys and men milk the cows and tend to them.

So the use of the strength of cows as the central image in all the Keiskamma embroideries also signals the strength of women and also an appropriate sign of health and well-being. The Keiskamma art project keeps nearly 130 women in this area regularly and fairly employed. We train them in marketing managing and development of skills. We offer regular workshops in various art and craft techniques from world-class artists who visit and teach. In an area of over 90 % unemployment these women are often the only wage earners in extended families and the vast majority have taken in aids orphans as well. Many are HIV positive themselves and have lost husbands and children to the disease.

The women who sew together at the project also have formed a strong social support group as well. They truly are the strength of this community.

The Story of Khanya

A letter from Hamburg, South Africa, from Annette.

Dear friends and family,

As many of you already know the project that Doug and I have been working for is in a serious financial crisis.

So here I am, writing the kind of plea letter I always hoped I’d never have to write. I’ve been writing them all week.


But I’d rather tell you a story or two as I still am at heart a writer....which is why I originally came here. This project takes to heart individual lives and pays attention—as a writer must—to the details of living, and often, in this place, to death and disease.

And if the project closes for a month then people will die, and most of them women who are about my age.

They will leave behind children and their mothers will end up taking care of them on small government old-age pensions. They don’t have cars— they have chickens— and maybe a pig or two. Which makes it difficult to get to hospitals for treatment. So they often wait until they get very ill and then they end up going to the hospital where they are often sent home again, untreated, untended, or they come to us. Over and over the story is the same—because the Keiskamma trust has been fast-tracking very ill people onto ARV treatment for their advanced HIV or TB infections for many years already. So all over the district we are well-known and often when we have to transfer patients to hospital they beg to stay.

On Wednesday a grandmother came to the treatment centre with an infant strapped to her back with a terrible thrush infection in her mouth. The mother was a patient of ours for one night only, and was so ill in the advanced stages of AIDS that we had to send her to the main hospital where she died the next day. She left behind this infant, a four-year old girl and a 9 year old boy—all being cared for by this grandmother now with no income in a remote village in the hills about 100 kms away from us.

The infant is HIV+, has a terrible infection, and was coughing and coughing all day because she probably has TB. No one knew the four-year old’s status and as the project’s cars were all busy I drove them up to the local clinic for medicines and a referral for a chest X-ray for the baby. Four women and two children crammed in the back seat of my VW golf. Babies coughing. The four year old nearly sat in my lap as I drove. She was going up for a rapid-test to see if she was HIV positive or not. I dropped them off, fetched them all in an hour, but the 4 year old hadn’t had her test done as her chart had been left behind at our centre. I begged the nurses to stay and wait for me to get the chart so they could do the test. I drove all the women and babies back down to eat lunch and went up alone with the 4 year old so we could find out if she had HIV or not. As I drove I prayed in my head no no no no no.

We sat together on a worn wood bench looking at the faded hand-written signs taped to the clinic walls that instruct patients how to wash hands and use condoms and report rape. We had to wait while the nurses finished their lunch. I made amusing popping noises and she—Khanya—giggled. She held my hand. I held hers when the other was getting pricked for the rapid test. She didn’t cry, my stomach hurt from trying not to, and we hummed and poked each other while waiting for the red line to register whether her blood was infected or not.

She was negative. I drove her down and bought her a celebratory bag of chips. Brought her back to her grandmother who didn’t know how to ask me the result so I just said she is fine she is fine it’s ok. The whole hospice quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

So.

That is a small part of my hectic day, which began at 6 in the morning and ended at 11 pm at night with a look at the budgets and bank accounts and I am an administrator and that little girl is only one person and Carol the doctor sees or hears or takes part in this kind of story sometimes 40 times a day—like that day which also ended for her at 11 pm at my house looking at bank accounts.

If we close these people who will have nowhere to go. We are currently the only ones effectively treating paediatric aids. We are also the only ones who drive up patients to clinics for tests and wait with them in hospitals and push for them to get care and we need help to stay open so we can keep doing this.

My lovely friends and colleagues have put in a lot of time and effort into the websites where there are details about how to donate—you can do so via PayPal and if you are in Canada with a cheque.

We need about 15 thousand Canadian dollars to run our health project per month—which includes village health workers in 35 surrounding villages.

We need individuals to donate to keep us running for about three months until we will again receive funds from our major donors and hear back from proposals we have written.

If you can help even a little please do and please email me if you would like any information on our project. annette@keiskamma.org

25 dollars pays for a food parcel for a patient.
120 dollars pays for a nursing assistant in our hospice for a month.
600 dollars pays for all the medicines for our patients for one month.

Focus On: The Creation Altarpiece

The Creation Altarpiece (along with the two other major works produced by the Keiskamma Art Project - The Keiskamma Altarpiece and the Keiskamma Tapestry), has been admired and exhibited internationally. The altarpiece is an historically and artistically significant work. Please read the following piece from the Keiskamma Trust website that describes it. This extraordinary work is currently being offered for sale by the Trust, for $37,000.00 Cdn. (Contact Annette Woudstra at the Trust for more information).

*

The Creation Altarpiece was created in an effort to engage people in an awareness and appreciation of the natural world. It was also meant to be a vehicle for the artists to express their joy in the beauty of their surroundings as well as the hope for the healing and restoration of the environment.

In the tradition of previous works by the Keiskamma Art Project, the Creation Altarpiece is inspired by another renaissance altar piece, Lam Gott by Jan Van Eyck, one of the largest and most complex altarpieces produced in the Netherlands during the 15th century.

The Van Eyck altarpiece but has been re-interpreted so that each panel and every depiction is meaningful and relevant to the Hamburg community and their experiences.

When the famous Van Eyck altarpiece is closed, across the outer panels one sees a depiction of 'the annunciation', with biblical prophets filling the top inset. In this same section of the Creation Altarpiece, the Keiskamma artists have chosen to portray their own Xhosa prophetess, Nonquawuse, and next to her, her cousin Nonkosi. The young Nonquawuse's prophesy was cause for the devastating cattle killings carried out by the Xhosa people in the belief that this would drive the white oppressors of the time into the sea, returning wealth to the Xhosa nation. The story reoccurs in several of the Keiskamma Art Project’s works.

Across the four main panels below the inset, through photographs one sees into the life of a rural Xhosa family in Hamburg. Inside a typical Xhosa hut, the twins Brightness and Sweetness pose as the angel Gabriel with Nonyameko on the right as the Virgin Mary. This scene is an interpretation on the Annunciation and speaks of hope for the next generation in Hamburg—that it would be free of disease and poverty—and instead be a place of abundance and joy.

The panel above ‘the angels’ show an eastern cape indigenous flower in place of the traditional and above Mary, Nonyameko there is a felt wing replacing the dove of the Holy Spirit.

The panel bottom left shows a group of embroiderers and sewers from the Keiskamma Art Project in Hamburg and beaders from the neighbouring village of Ntilini on the bottom right panel. These groups stand on either side of two very wise, elderly members of the community; Mr. Gqwaka, a leader and traditional healer (as John the Baptist) and the late Noshumi Rhubhushe, a Sangoma or spiritual leader (as John the Evangelist).

When the doors of the altarpiece open a glorious scene centred on a small, glowing, golden cow is revealed. The cow, most sacred to the Xhosa people, has replaced the symbolic lamb at the centre of the Van Eyck altarpiece, standing to bring restoration to all of creation.

Surrounding the cow and extending its branches to cover the central area of the open work is a beautiful fig tree. The tree is a symbol for new life and growth. Its branches are home to the many beautiful birds and creatures, native to the area of Hamburg. The scene is a vision of new hopefulness for the village and burgeoning life.

In the open Creation Altarpiece, two local Hamburg residents Shadrak and Mildred, represent Adam and Eve. Sustained by the ocean and the natural environment they have lived in lived in and known intimately all their lives, they stand for people who live in harmony with the natural world.

Between Adam and Eve and across the open panels of the Creation Altarpiece one can see many groups of people from Hamburg and the neighbouring village of Bodiam. They echo Van Eyck's groups shown moving towards the fountain of living water as many of the groups move towards their own symbol of strength and new hopefulness.

The photographs in the Creation Altarpiece were taken by Vanessa Ruiz, Robert Hofmeyr, Tanya Jordaan and Justus Hofmeyr. The frame of the altar piece was made by Richard Henry with help from Ayanda and Douglas Woudstra. It is made in the style of the frame of the Van Eyck altar but in indigenous south African yellow wood.

An Urgent Request - A Letter from the Directors of The Keiskamma Trust

Dear Canadian Friends,

I am writing on behalf of the Keiskamma Trust to appeal for your help.
We are currently experiencing an extreme lack of funds. This has happened for several reasons: one is the lack of fund-raising done earlier last year, another is the long waiting time that often occurs between submission of proposals and response from donors. We have a number of large proposals that were written to support the health project but we continue to wait for project visits and responses from funders and at present we have only enough funds to run for one month’s time.

Instead we have worked hard at producing a budget that will enable us to continue to respond, albeit on a smaller level, to the AIDS crisis in our area, and save enough funds to ensure that we can continue doing so for another three months. Today we have signed contracts with all of our health staff for one month only at reduced salaries. We are cutting down on food for patients and food parcels while the demand for these remains very high. We are also cutting our petrol costs and reducing our drivers to less hours which means we will leave some patients without transportation to hospital and clinic appointments.

For all of us at the Trust it is a very difficult time as we see patients begin to suffer and we contemplate a time in the near future when we will be left unable to respond at all.

We also have to make changes in our art project and yesterday we held a general meeting for the art project embroiderers and told them as well that we will have to cut down on the amount of piece-work we can give them and that some of them will have to be laid-off. Many of these women are the only wage-earners in their families and though they make small amounts of money each month it is sometimes the difference between eating or sending a child to school or not.

At the same time we have been confirmed in our project’s worth as the South African Health Department has just released new guidelines urging the care and immediate treatment of children who are HIV positive, severely ill people and everyone with low CD4 counts—a major victory for the fight against AIDS—and a vindication of what our project has fought for and done in this area for nearly a decade before the government came onboard. Please find attached the document released last week by the government. Thanks to a new minister of health—Barbara Hogan—and to the tireless efforts of NGOs like ours we are finally changing attitudes about the urgency of treating people with HIV/AIDS.

Attitudes are at last changing but treatment and access to treatment is still far behind. We need to continue our work at the frontlines of the AIDS crisis that will be with us for a generation to come and we need your help. We have proven our success in the face of tremendous odds for years, and we need to keep working to advocate on behalf of poor rural communities like ours. We have changed the face of the pandemic in our area: for example the Keiskamma Trust in conjunction with Dr Baker and Prof. Hofmeyr have brought the level of prevention of mother-to-child transmission up to be one of the highest in the country: over 90 percent of pregnant women in our district are getting treatment, which means their children are born without HIV. We have had several scholars and researchers who have visited us in the past few months and we have been confirmed that we are a model of care for rural under-resourced villages in South Africa.

It costs between 50 and 60 thousand Canadian dollars to run our programs each month. We have made large cuts and put on hold on any new initiatives and all of our managers have cut their own salaries in an effort to keep the project going until we hear back from major proposals that we have pending.

In the meantime we appeal for your urgent help. If you would consider making a donation to the Keiskamma Canada Foundation which supports the work of the Keiskamma Trust we would be grateful. Keiskamma Canada has been running for nearly a year and has a dedicated board of directors and is in the process of receiving registered charity status—which may still take several months to secure.

Donations can be made by using the PayPal DONATE button to the right, or cheques can be mailed to the following address and marked Emergency Funds.

Keiskamma Canada Foundation
14027-106 Avenue
Edmonton Alberta
T5N 1B3

On behalf of the Keiskamma Trust

Carol Hofmeyr and Annette Woudstra

directors, Keiskamma Trust

Keiskamma Altarpiece Grand Opening - Grahamstown, SA

This video shows the grand opening of the Keiskamma Altarpiece in Grahamstown, South Africa.

Made by the women of the Keiskamma Art Project, as a message of hope for people who are living in the midst of poverty, AIDS and other hardships The Keiskamma Altarpiece is now traveling through North America bringing the story of AIDS and poverty as experienced in the rural South African village Hamburg to a much wider audience in North America.

The Keiskamma Altarpiece uses the form and themes of The Issenheim Altarpiece to depict hope and redemption in the face of the HIV epidemic. It celebrates the strength of grandmothers who bear the responsibility for the children in these times. It stands 4.15 x 6.8 meters. (13.6 x 22.3 feet).

Welcome

Welcome to the Keiskamma Canada blog. Based in Edmonton, Alberta, Keiskamma Canada supports the work of the Keiskamma Trust, a South African not-for-profit organization dedicated to the holistic care of the communities that live in the area alongside the Keiskamma River in the Eastern Cape. The Trust combines health, art, music and education initiatives in an integrated fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS, working to restore hope and health to every member of the community.

This blog was created to provide up-to-date news and information about the Keiskamma projects in Hamburg. There will be upcoming posts by artisans working in the project, by the directors of the project, and various community workers. As well, the blog will showcase smaller textiles made by the project, such as bags and pillow covers, and offer them for sale. Funds are always needed, now perhaps more than ever, and I've installed a Keiskamma Canada paypal button on the sidebar for donations.