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5 flights, 6 hotels, 2 cars, 20 meetings and 5 training sessions

Posted by Andrea Wilkinson on August 21, 2008 4:39 PM | 

Here I am again in the whirlwind that is pre-planning for a long haul journey. This time it's a mammoth trip to the Swaziland and South Africa for three weeks, flying from the UK to Johannesburg to Swaziland to Mpumalanga to Cape Town.

From visiting the largest trade fair in the Southern Hemisphere to training people in fair trade awareness at Kruger National Park and Cape Town to watching King Mswati the Third of Swaziland pick his 14th wife; it's going to be a varied trip!

Swaziland is a key focus for the trip as it is set to be the location for our next long term capacity building project.

This is a country that has captured my heart. An incredibly beautiful kingdom in southern Africa, Swaziland is the 36th poorest country in the world, greatly affected by the HIV/AIDS virus, with almost every other person (42%) of the country suffering from the disease.

The practicalities of this include the effect it has on businesses as staff take time off due to ill health, or in worst case scenarios, valuable staff members skilled in a particular area, die.

We aim to start a training project in business skills and HIV/AIDS awareness so that fair trade businesses can put steps in place to ensure that these staff losses don't mean loss of skills.

Yes, I have a lot to prepare for but at least now that I have all trains, planes and automobiles booked (well actually 5 flights, 6 hotels, 2 cars, 20 meetings and 5 training sessions), I'm up to date with all my injections and have a new batch of malaria tablets, the logistics are all in place!

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Comments (1)

John Riches wrote...

I'm fascinated by your proposed trip. We import from Eswatini Swazi Kitchen in Manzini and would be very interested to know what forms of training you offer and to know how these relate to the particular needs of small groups like Eswatini as they attempt to meet rising (but often uncertain) demand for their products. What help can you offer them? How far do you seek feed-back from those who work with them to bring their products to markets in the EU and elsewhere?

John Riches.

Posted by: John Riches  | August 23, 2008 12:44 AM

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