Local is Lekker

There’s magic in a garden, healing in the soil

By Elaine Davie

Born in Queenstown, but relocating with his parents to Hermanus as a child, Trevor was unable to continue his schooling beyond Grade 7, but, as a teenager, he remembers hanging around the Saturday market, intrigued by the beautiful fresh vegetables and fruit he saw for sale there. With this in mind, he started searching for piecework in local gardens and this led to an encounter with someone who would change his life forever, as he, indeed, would powerfully impact hers.

Sally Raats was newly arrived in Onrus. A young American mother of two small twin girls, married to South African winemaker, Jasper Raats, she knew no one and was struggling to adjust to a completely new environment while her husband commuted to Stellenbosch where he was working. Then, one day in 2009, Trevor knocked on her gate looking for a gardening job. A winemaker herself, with a passion for gardening, she had heard of an initiative to start a vegetable garden at the RDP centre in Zwelihle, so she asked Trevor if he would like to join her in getting it going.

“He had to remove huge rocks from the ground and it was back-breaking work for him,” she remembers. Side-byside, several days a week they struggled to turn this unproductive piece of ground into something useful, and soon a close friendship developed between them. “I always tell people”, smiles Sally, “that Trevor was my first real friend in South Africa and now, 10 years later, we are still friends. He is a very special person.”

Biodynamic veggie gardener, Trevor Nkoyi takes a break beside the flourishing lettuces he planted, which will soon be ready for market.

PHOTO: Hedda Mittner

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