Live, Learn, Listen (LLL) program

The LLL program is an initiative of the university to get students to be more involved in developing themselves outside the professional environment of the university. There are 40 LLL houses throughout Stellenbosch, each with 8 students in them. Each house has a subject they're supposed to do something with during the year. They try to mix the houses up as much as possible with regards to race, gender, nationality, field of study, etc. I'm part of the Nature Conservation house, which I know absolutely nothing about, but is a hot topic in South Africa and I would like to know more about it. You are supposed to have a house-dinner atleast once a week and you are supposed (atleast once in a while) to invite a guest that is an expert on the subject. During dinner and the rest of the evening you, of course, talk about any subjects related to Nature Conservation. I was afraid I'd end up with some hippies and treehuggers, and I already spend enough time with those back in Nijmegen. After the first night here I knew I didn't have to worry though. My roommate pretty much chopped down a tree just to make room for the braai we were having that evening: 'it's not an indiginous species anyway'.
Besides that each house has to come up with a project during the year. There don't seem to be any guidelines for this really, basically you can just do whatever you want as long as it has some value to the community and is related to your theme. I wouldn't even know where to start but some of my roommates had some contacts with a local group of students called the 'Sustainability Brothers'. They have some kind of farm somewhere in the middle of town and we all decided to stop by to see what they were and if there were any possibilities to setup any project there. On the one hand it was sort of an anti-climax, on the other it was sort of inspiring. I was expecting a semi-professional garden with a lot of herb and vegetable gardens, animals and so on. Instead it was just a bunch of students living in a huge mansion, surrounded by an even bigger garden, trying to make the community more aware of sustainable farming. There were about 4 small digs with some vegetables in them, a pool they were trying to turn into an eco-pool but had no idea how to, a small bee hive and some self-sustaining vegetable crates with a water circuit that kept running through it. Most of the garden was just barren and there was so much more you could do with it. They didn't really have any knowledge on farming other than some things they read in books.
On the other hand, they were just a bunch of students who could've easily decided to go live in a residence. Instead they were trying to make a difference and were taking small steps into the right direction. They had a lot of good ideas but no funding, so they had to take it one step at the time. One of their ideas was to set up some education program for the townships to teach them how to grow their own food, prepare the soil, harvest the crops, etc. Of course they were just figuring out themselves how this should be done, so for now it's probably just an idea. What was nice about the place though, is that they very much welcomed anybody on their farm to just start doing their own stuff. They didn't feel like it was 'their garden'. They lived on the property but were only able to use a small part of it, so they were open to anybody coming in and start farming on their own. There was no hierarchy, no structure, just a bunch of students who were trying to do something more.
As far as our project, they were more than willing to work together with us and assist us in any way possible. Of course they had no funding and not a lot of know-how, but they were always interested in more people becoming part of the Sustainability Brotherhoods. We exchanged some idea's on possible working together on the township education using the church outreach programmes in the town. Another idea was to turn a big roundabout in Stellenbosc into a herb and vegetable garden, so everybody in the neighbourhood could come and take some herbs and vegetables if they needed any, but there was probably too much traffic around it to making it too dangerous for people to collect their herbs there. Either way, there are plenty of possibilities here and I'm sure we can work something out.