first day at EMG

outside the rain is pouring down while aire and i are sitting, having cold feet, in our OWN office in the EMG-building. we have the first (which is also the top floor) all for ourselves. currently, we are busy reading an article about the certification error the FLO (fair trade labelling organisation) made concerning rooibos tea which leads to actually UNfair pricing and what EMG proposes to ameliorate (nice new word we just learned) this situation. it seems there are a lot more interesting facts to rooibos tea than expected...!

but let's start from the start: after another nice soul from stellenbosch (where we spent our first week acclimatising, wine tasting, feasting and freezing) brought us to cape town, we first cleaned up our apartment, sublet to us for two weeks by an aquaintance from - again - stellenbosch. then we made our way from rondebosch, where we are staying currently, up to observatory, approximately 3 km on main road. it's a nice daily excercise, and if all goes wrong we can try and use the minibustaxi. 'if all goes wrong': i.e. the abovementioned rain. of course we got into another of these extreme showers this morning, and consequently arrived all wet in the office, though we had a big family umbrella we found in the apartment. doesn't help against wet feet though.

so, what are we at? lazarus, our coordinator, is particularly new to the subject of fair trade himself, for he has taken over stephen's tasks only two months ago. so we learn together. pressing issues are a business model as well as the already mentioned pricing issue. apart from that, our first trip to niewoudtville will most likely be already next week. lazarus needs to go there anyway and offered to take us on the back of his pick-up. like that, we can save massively on transportation costs. chances might be he will go further up north and return after one week, so we could stay in nieuwoudtville and he might pick us up on the way back. like that, we could start collecting data for the niewoudtville-documentary and see what else we could possibly do there - and then decide whether and for how long we want to return. on the other side, a more thorough impact study will be needed, in order to make the pricing issue study more comprehensive. that would however need a lot more preparation than the time we're having now.

apart from that, we'll need to stock up on rain boots, hot water bottles (office and home ones) and maybe some warm hats. the weather forecast is not promising at all..