31 Mar 2016

More and more people are now enrolling in the poverty eradication projects to better their lives. Ms Matshwenyego Thumba, a mother of three children is one of the people who have used poverty eradication projects to better her life.

She is running a successful backyard tree nursery in Makuta. She told BOPA in an interview that she visited the Social and Community Development Office in Nswazwi to register to be assisted under the poverty eradication programme looking for goats. She said she was lucky because she was chosen as one of the beneficiaries and went for an awareness workshop at Nswazwi village for a week in 2011.

Ms Thumba said they were provided with information on different projects to choose from by the Department of Forestry and Range Resources (DFRR0.
Equipped with information, she decided to choose the backyard tree nursery instead of the goats she had initially wanted. She started loving flowers from a tender age and knew a lot about taking good care of them.

She said she went for a second workshop at DFRR offices where they were taught how to plant trees and care for them. She also stated that they were taught business and management skills which included bookkeeping and stock recording.

In March 2014, she was chosen to showcase and teach others about tree nursery at Jamataka during poverty eradication Pitso. She said she used the opportunity to benchmark on others for the same project.

She said she managed to sell all her trees and also got different trees from others. Ms Thumba said the Jamataka pitso gave her a chance to market her business as she managed to get clients who continue to support her by buying some of her trees.

At Ms Thumba’s nursery is a symbol of love for trees as the nursery is full of colorful plants of different sizes. Some of these plants include moneymaker, elephant ear, Purple Heart, red heart, desert plants and a lot of climbing trees.

She said that she was given a shade net, 5000 litre water tank, gardening tools, wheel barrow, seeds and water connection by the DFRR to start her nursery. She said she was only given pepper tree and delonix regia seeds and the other plants she asked for seedlings from different people in the village and managed to make more seedlings which she then transfer to flower pots.

Furthermore, she explained that all her plants are sold for P20 per plant except the elephant ear which she sells for P200 each. She also hires her plant to people for events such as weddings, birthday parties and workshops.

She said that she charged them P20 for each plant looking at the fact that they assist her with marketing. She mentioned that she get jobs to plant trees for people at their homes and teaches them how to take care of them to get good results.

Ms Thumba talks a lot about the moneymaker plant saying that the plant symbolizes how one uses money in life. She stated that the plant blooms if one uses money wisely but shrinks when one misuses money.

She said a lot of people love the plant and she makes a lot of profit from it. The other plant that is common among her customers is the elephant ear which is believed to symbolize one’s love for plants.

Ms Thumba said she has learnt a lot since starting her tree nursery and now knows which plants are more profitable, good in Botswana weather and better ways to care for them. She said she also discovered that most plants die due to rocky soil available in her yard and now she collects fertile soil from the nearest hills.

She said that the DFRR continued to visit her and advise her accordingly. Just like any other business, she also experiences challenges in her business. The main challenge she faces is water shortage as sometimes the village goes for up to a week without water in the whole village.

She said that the hot weather is also a disadvantage as most of her plants die during hot seasons and only bloom in rainy seasons.  Ms Thumba has managed to save some of the money from her plants and used it to put bread on the table for her children and fence her farm. She said that her life has now improved as she no longer goes hungry. ENDS