SOCIAL UPLIFTMENT: Community benefits from local business
The adoption of Habu Primary School in Habu village, around the Okavango Delta in the NorthWest district of Botswana by Xigera Camp Lodge has made a positive impact in the community.
Xigera Camp Lodge, located along Moremi Game Reserve was moved with compassion when they realised that children in the Habu area, including Nigeria Camp, as well as Abu Camp were not performing well in their Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE) because of lack of resources.
The Lodge is now pleased that their investment has not gone to waste as the past PSLE results show an improvement.
Lodge Manager at Xigera Camp Lodge, Quest Maundo said that living in a rural place happens to be one of the reasons that shadow students from performing well at school because of lack of resources. Therefore, they bought solar lamps for each student at the Primary School as a way to help them study effectively at night as there is no power supply in the village.
Maundo said that they were impressed that the lamps have been impactful just in less than a year’s period. He also told The Midweek Sun that they have further partnered with the Habu village trust to support their Agricultural projects. They send Trust members to school for field lessons and also provide them with free compost manure and also buy their produce.
“We make compost manure out of the food leftovers at our hotel and give the manure to the selected farmers who then produce the basic vegetable commodities that we use at the hotel. We buy from them to support their initiative of farming,” he said, noting that they usually provide them with carrots, beetroots and other basic vegetables.
Currently, they have 36 bags of 50kg manure ready for shipment. They also similarly support a Hydroponic garden in the outskirts of Maun, which produces micro herbs and vegetables for the hotel.
Maundo emphasised that to them, supporting small farmers is a way to ensure continuity in their passion so that they do not struggle to get market. As a prestigious hotel that believes in organic food, they also have suppliers of eggs from locals in Maun who own free range chickens.
“We support the Maun Informal Market and buy local vegetables and maize, dried worms, dried vegetables. We source some goods from small scale informal farmers and traders in the village. We support them by buying local and traditional vegetables, starches and dried worms which we use for our guests and staff,” Maundo said.
For the Shorobe area, they buy lambs as well as beef. They usually buy the whole carcass to produce their preferred meat cuts. For beef they buy across the country and already identify it as Ngamiland beef, Ghanzi beef, and Kalanga beef.
Xigera staff members also volunteer to care for the elderly at Phomolong Old Age Home in Maun where they clean, wash clothes and cook for them weekly.
Maundo acknowledges that the Safari Lodge was built with the intention to invest in people and improve their lives. One of his favourite experience was when they assisted a UB student researcher who was with them last year, to change his research topic to something more meaningful.
The student had come to the lodge to do a survey on guest satisfaction but later on with the hotel’s assistance changed it to ‘Animal identification and location survey.’ He explained that the researcher often went out for game drives to check out how satisfied the guests were, but further started taking pictures and GPS coordinates through which the photos always assisted many.
To date they utilise the GPS coordinates in identifying the location for their game drives.
For the school children in Habu village, the Lodge sends guides every year to educate them on how to live with wild animals. Maundo explained that this is intended to alleviate human-animal conflict as the students stay in the outskirts of a camp.
“We want them to be exposed to animal behaviour and know how to live with animals without them being a threat to the animals or vice-versa,” he said.