Food for Thought: A Victoria Falls City COVID-19 Success Story

[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. ]

Food for Thought a Victoria Falls City

COVID-19

[WRITER: Tessa Buhrmann ] [ PHOTOS: Victoria Falls Safari Lodge / Shelley Cox ] 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 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

City to upkeep its aesthetics and ensure it was clean – this included painting of roads, road signs, clean-up campaigns, offloading food donations for the children’s feeding programme and food distribution, amongst others. A massive 3,200 bags of waste has so far been collected by this programme.

Food security wasn’t the only challenge: unemployment and hunger (and to a certain extent, greed), led to an increase in snaring and poaching incidents. Together with Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority and the police, the Victoria Falls Anti-Poaching Unit, working with Zambezi Horse Safaris, stepped up their anti-poaching patrols in and around Victoria Falls. Working with Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust, countless wildlife has been saved from snares in rescue and rehabilitation efforts.

Beyond the day-to-day challenges, there was also a need to keep this wonderful destination top of mind with international visitors so that they would be eager to visit once lockdown restrictions were lifted. Enter the establishment of ‘We Are Victoria Falls’, an independent, public-private partnership initiative representing the tourism community of Victoria Falls.

This campaign, run under the Zimbabwe Destination Development by the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Program, the Tourism and Hospitality Industry and supported by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), is mandated to ‘communicate reliable, up-to-date information on their destination’s management of COVID-19, provide verified updates on destination readiness, openness and progress to receiving visitors and to celebrate and build their tourism community as part of Zimbabwe and the wider conservation region beyond their borders’.

Almost a year after the COVID19 Taskforce was established, the government announced that vaccination rollout would take place in Victoria Falls City. This was widely welcomed by stakeholders in and around Victoria Falls who are eager to move forward with the recovery of tourism to the destination – and with 76% of their adult population vaccinated they are well on the way to achieving herd immunity. The trust built through the toughest months of this crisis has resulted in a phenomenal turnout at vaccination stations, something many other destinations have found difficult.

“With the COVID-19 vaccine quickly rolling out across the world’s populations, many have started to look at travel plans to get out and explore the natural world, and Victoria Falls remains a prime destination and tourism hub, to offer wide-open spaces with a diversity of adventure experiences in a natural environment,” says Shelley Cox, We Are Victoria Falls, Campaign Consultant.

International visitors are slowly returning, occupancy rates are increasing and the familiar ‘Vic Falls vibe’ can once more be felt. Locals and visitors alike mask up in public places and sanitising, social distancing and other COVID-19 protocols are observed. There are smiles behind the masks and music in the air... travel is resuming to this fabulous destination and financially things are finally looking up.