Another meeting - more ideas!

On Jan 17^th we have a new meeting with plans and ideas. Have to run away from the house, too many kids and disturbances. So we go to Porticos in Lusaka for lunch, where we hide in a corner of the garden and use the whole space as we are busy discussing how much 10 metres and 50 metres and so on are. It is hard to grasp the real space on paper and how much we’re actually talking about.

Laura is trying to put the whole plot of the farm onto the paper, it’s not too easy to put 33 hectare on a A3 paper. It just makes everything look so small... But it does give us an idea, and we decide that we have plenty of land to build on, and plant on and what not.

The Eco lodge will only be a part of the farm. We have divided it into 3 more or less equal parts. The lodge will be our main focus part for the time being, but on the 2^nd part, the middle bit there will be a learning centre. This is Chris’ project. He is a teacher, who for the past 3 years worked for WWF in Monze, so he knows the area and the people really well. That means that a lot of the background work for our farm is already in place. And by the end of the year he’ll be finishing his master degree in environmental education from Rhodes University in South Africa. The learning centre will be interacting with local schools; it will also feature a public swimming pool, a gym, an internet cafe’, a botanical garden and be the base for community projects.

The 3^rd section, where the dam is, will have room for private housing and more.

Back to the Eco lodge which will have a bar and restaurant, and reception, with a sunset deck on the roof and an upstairs area looking over the restaurant. There will be a homestead quarter which will include the kitchen, laundry and staff facilities. There will be en suite chalets which can sleep 2 to 3 people, and there will also be a couple of family chalets. There will also be possible to camp with own tents or tents can be provided. The toilet facilities will all be eco/compositing toilets, with recycled water from the showers.

We are however still on the learning stage ourselves so we have a lot of research to do before we reach our target. This is going to take time. The journey has just started, but the journey is the destination, isn’t it? ;o)