ZIMBABWE | FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Food for Thought
[ Victoria Falls Safari Lodge Executive Chef, Simba Musiyiwa in the commercial vegetable garden owned by Maria Huntley-Walker who employs and works with local youths on this project. Vegetables have been donated to the Children Feeding Scheme and seedlings donated to the community for the ‘Feed Yourself, Feed your Neighbour’ program.
a Victoria Falls City
COVID-19
]
[ WRITER: Tessa Buhrmann ] [ PHOTOS: Victoria Falls Safari Lodge
/ Shelley Cox
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Success Story
During the Second World War, Winston Churchill is credited with saying “never let a good crisis go to waste”. There is nothing ‘good’ about the COVID-19 crisis, but it did bring together key public and private stakeholders to establish the Victoria Falls COVID19 Taskforce. This was on 21 March 2020; just 10 days after the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak as a pandemic and nine days before Zimbabwe went into its first lockdown. The initiatives rolled out would be key for both short-, and long-term success.
Being a region that relies heavily on tourism the role-players realised that they needed to get things under control… and fast if they were to be ready to welcome guests back into their city once the dust of the pandemic had settled. Little did they know that almost 18 months later the virus would still be disrupting local lives and livelihoods to a certain degree - which would have been much worse if the Taskforce hadn’t reacted quickly. “This COVID-19 pandemic has become a catalyst of strategic partnerships between the private and public sector to come up with robust responses as mitigatory measures to save our community and businesses. Tourism is about people, communities and sustainability is key; hence the need for holistic solutions
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TRAVEL & LEISURE | Sept - Dec 2021
to common challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic being cardinal for a quick come back to some degree of normalcy“ says Anald Musonza, Victoria Falls Safari Lodge GM and vice chairman of the Victoria Falls COVID19 Taskforce. An Emergency Response Plan was developed, and swift action was taken. Quarantine facilities were created, isolation centres opened, and communications and rural outreach were established. Masks were made and distributed, PPE equipment and medical supplies were sourced and the city was scrubbed clean. What the city of Victoria Falls had achieved in less than a month was astounding – its level of readiness way ahead of any other city in the world.
The Taskforce team also realised that food security was going to be a challenge, so funds were raised and food hampers distributed to vulnerable families. This was however just a temporary band-aid, and long-term food security needed to be ensured. So, two community vegetable sites were identified and by 24 April three-hectare worth of vegetable seeds were ready to be planted. The ‘feed yourself, feed your community’ campaign was launched, and seedlings, black soil and manure were distributed to three local schools, and nutritional community vegetable gardens were rolled out in several of the villages that surround Victoria Falls to get the communities growing their own vegetables, and to assist in supplying the operators and individuals in Victoria Falls. A children’s feeding programme was started, and more than 100,000 meals were provided in under a month, and to date, an estimated 6,000 children have been fed every day. Additionally, a ‘food for work’ programme was established whereby volunteers were able to assist with various tasks around the
