My Story: Khelina Hluphekile Magagula, Organic marula kernel producer
My name is Khelina and I am 49 years old. I live in the Hlane area of Swaziland. I got divorced nine years ago and I have seven children. My two sons work in South Africa, two girls are married and I live with three of my children. I also stay with two grandchildren that I look after. I am also a traditional dancer and I always got with other women to dance at the King’s palace when there are special ceremonies such as the celebration of the King’s birthday. I started working with Swazi Indigenous Products (SIP) in 2005 as a supplier of marula kernels. Following the training that I received from SIP, I am now a supplier of organic marula kernels and I am very happy about this because organic kernels give me more income. I use the income from Marula kernels ‘iyasiwondla lokusisiza kakhulu’ (income takes care of us and helps us in many ways) to buy maize-meal, laundry soap, sugar, salt and pay school fees for my grandchildren. I also use the money to buy airtime for my mobile phone that I got from my son who works in South Africa. I also use the money I get from selling kernels to buy flour for use in baking cakes for sale during the Marula off-season.
Before selling Marula kernels, I used to make and sell mats for between E50-80 (US$8-11) per mat and I would make a maximum of six mats per month. I stopped making mats because of time constraints after I started cracking kernels. The mats were also time consuming as I had to go to collect reeds far from my village and I would spend a week in that area, leaving the children alone. Now I spend most of my time at home with my family as I crack the kernels from home. I also used to grow cotton but I stopped because of poor rains. I realised that I was wasting my energy and inputs and later on get poor yields. I also grew maize for subsistence but when rains are not good, I get poor yields. For instance, this growing season there has been drought and I am not going to get any maize from my field. This year I plan to use most of my income from Marula kernels to buy food because of the drought. Story continues...
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