how to trade fair

long story. but thrilling.

since i refused to carry my laptop all the way from obs to rondebosch every day (a 3 km walk, roughly) and since it remains disconnected from the wonders of internet also in the office, i need to recap a bit what happened so far.


fair trade practises, certification, actors and strategies were the main topic of the first few days in the emg office - in the purely theoretical sense of reading brochures and manuals. before it got too theoretical, lazarus, our coordinator, took us for the first field trip on wednesday. we went out in his pick-up, which disappointingly is a covered pickup - and we thought we'd be sitting in the storm and rain at the back of it...apropos storm, the mountains along the road from cape town to the east are covered in SNOW.


i want to check how many possible places for snowfall there are in africa and whether i've already managed to be in all of them.
we were going to the fairhills coop in worcester (you can surely find them on the internet, they are very professional with marketing and pr), a cooperative consisting of 21 wine farms and a cellar, producing fair traded wine but also wine for the local market.


it's a very impressive prime example of how well everything is working, they set up a few kindergartens, a community centre and a crafts workshop for the women which is basically recycling old glass bottles, very very cool. the problem however is that the ownership still lies with the farm owners and the workers don't get the shares in the business they should be having under the fair trade agreement. so, nice on the surface, trouble lies beneath. good old corruption hanging out also there. nevertheless we bought thrilling good wine for 16 rand the one litre bottle - 50% cabernet, 50% shiraz, and very very good. i made gluhwein out of half of it yesterday, but never mind the price, it was too good for gluhwein actually. and before anybody asks - it was not fair trade. this is a concept that hardly exists in south africa, as it is still mainly targeted at europe and the us.

however, there are people trying to change this situation, such as boudewijn (another one on my list of 'extraordinary dutch names') and his ngo fair trade south africa. his office is just down the road from ours and he was so kind to invite us for dinner on friday. apart from showing us new parts of cape town (he's living in gardens) we and his intern ariana from italy will be performing a market research among conscious and not so conscious south african customers about their knowledge of fair trade and their willingness to support it.

on thursday the planned trip to another wine coop in paarl was replaced by a trip to stellenbosch - there was a conference at the university, the sasa (south african social studies association). actually we were just supposed to bring some video material there for noel, the rural coordinator of our organisation. after he told us that he needed different videos than we had brought, we just stayed right in time for lunch and listened to the last 3 keynote speakers of the conference - a guy on the energy crisis, noel on rooibos tea farmers and climate change and one apparently famous professor from kwazulu-natal university also on climate change. the trip to the wine coop is rescheduled for tomorrow...



for the rest: the rain finally stopped...geez, what a pain in the ass to walk three km in the morning fighting the rain and arriving in the office soaked.


on wednesday we used the taxi for the first time and it was basically just like in kenya, although i heavily missed the latest hiphop at a way too high volume.
we bought wellingtons (rain boots or gumboots as they are called here) just in time at the hardware shop around the corner. although they are size 40 they are our pride now and everybody is staring at our feet. many are asking where we got them from and praise us for our common sense. others don't say anything (but think: 'wow, i wish i wasn't such a fashion vicitim and had the guts to wear those, because my wet feet are fairly annoying me') and lazarus claims us to be the top fashion girls of obs (we rather consider ourselves the ultimate farm girls).

the 3 km walk is however obsolete since from now onwards aire and i are proud residents of a house with two golden lions at the entrance in obs.


as you can guess, it's a bit uberfancy, i mean, the lions wouldn't have been necessary, as well as the patio with the braai area. and the extremely spacious kitchen. aaaah well it's just such a COOL place!!! the housemates however are quite good at hiding. we'll see. and apart from that half of our south-africa-glen-team is already here, so we won't be lonely anyway. and if we do feel lonely, we just found the perfect place to mingle with very greasy but satisfying burgers and live rugby games, also around the corner.