Kalimba Home restaurant, Rundu (Namibia)

On May 21, 2010, in Posts in English, by Javier Leandro Sobradillo
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Kalimba Home restaurant and catering service was started by Marta Uuntunpi in Rundu. She is a small business woman providing employment to 12 workers, most of them women. Definitely the perfect example of what can an entrepreneur do with a good and simple idea.

Marta smiles

The restaurant serves both traditional food from the Kavango Region and also Western food. They are open all day, serving breakfast, lunch and dinner. Most of the customers are locals, so there is an emphasis on traditional food of the Kavango region. The atmosphere is relaxed and the staff is very welcoming. They are more than happy to receive tourists.

We recommend you to try the fish, taken directly from the Okavango river, a real delicacy. The way of eating the fish is using your own hands, not with fork and knife, so if you want to follow the local way you’ll need to wash your hands first in the washbasin, assisted by a member of the staff.

Marta also has a parallel business of catering services. The serve mainly in events such as Government meetings, weddings, parties … There is a boom in Rundu in the number of companies offering catering services. This is due to the strategic importance of the city, which receives many travellers of all kinds, from tourists to Angolan business travellers.


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Contact: Marta Uuntunpi

Tel: +264 81 247 3686
How to get there:Once in Rundu, follow map above.

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Sihetekera Bakery, near Rundu (Namibia)

On May 14, 2010, in Posts in English, by Javier Leandro Sobradillo
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Sihetekera Bakery is about 55 km West of Rundu, on the C45 road. It was founded in 1992 by 30 women of the Bunya Mission, nearby (see map below). The objective was to reduce poverty, create employment for the women and pay the school fees of their children. In 1997 they received further help from the Africa Development Foundation, through the Ministry of Gender and Equality to buy a new oven, fridge and equipment. The manager of the Bakery is Ms. Hedwig Namutenya Karupu.

There are more women than work to do, so they have a rotation system for sharing the work. The women are divided in groups, and different women work different days. We have seen this work-rotation system in other places, like in the Okanvango Poler’s trust in Botswana.

Sihetekera Bakery

We have talked about this bakery before in the blog, here: Businesses that don’t work (in Spanish). We visited it twice, and got the impression that the bakery didn’t work very well. The day we came to visit for example, it was closed just because the manager was ill, which seems strange because the other workers could work anyway. From our conversations with a local aid worker we learned that the Bakery could do much better under proper management. There and then we saw something clear: That what people tell you in a short visit can be very different from reality, sometimes they tell you what they think you want to hear. It is normal in this kind of superficial contact, it would take much more time to properly understand their reality. This is one of the main problems of Tourism, responsible or not: in such a short visiting time it is virtually impossible to create real relationships and understand each other in depth.

Anyway, it is well worth a visit to see how the women work and make bread, and better understand their challenges even if it is just a little bit. Talk to them and ask.

Also, if you come to visit the Bakery, make sure you also visit the Bunya Mission on the other side of the road just in front of the bakery, on the river banks. Another very good idea is to visit Rossy Bee Busy pre-school, 15 km West of Rundu also on the C45.


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Contact: Ms. Hedwig Namutenya Karupu

Post: Manager

Tel: +264813551366

How to get there:

Sihetekera Bakery is about 55 km West of Rundu, on the C45 road, in front of the Bunya Mission

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Rossy Bee Busy pre-primary School, near Rundu (Namibia)

On May 12, 2010, in Posts in English, by Baobabguides
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Note:

While preparing this information I have found this article from September 09 from the New Era newspaper, with very bad  news about the school. During the rainy season heavy storms have severely damaged the building and huts of the pre-school, and Rosalia was in need of all available help in order to rebuild it. She was pleading for help from the Ministry of Gender.

We learned that life conditions are hard here in the Kavango region, and the traditional huts made out of mud are extremely dangerous when heavy rains come, as the walls can melt and collapse trapping people inside.

Rossy Bee Busy pre-primary school is in the village of Matende, some 15km West from Rundu along the C45 road. It is a project originally supported by the Ministry of Gender and Equality of Namibia. This Ministry helps children in need and specially women to empower themselves through the startup of these kind of projects.

The pre-primary school is managed by Ms. Rosalia Namutenya Karupu (+264813166637) and everyday around 38 pre-primary children and 300 orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) are taken care of, receiving education and food.

Rosalia with the children

One of the biggest challenges for Namibian women on a day to day basis is the caring of their children. Many women do not have the chance of leaving the children with relatives when going off to work, and kindergartens are normally quite expensive. The only possibilities are to stay at home doing housework, or to go to work carrying the children. This problem is even worse in the poorest regions of Namibia, like Kavango. Many children in a pre-school age don’t attend any education centre, and spend the day in the street. Later on it is all the more difficult for them to integrate in the regular primary school, leading to failing and drop-out situations.

Another reason for this is the teaching of the English language, which starts in pre-school too. Nowadays, education in Namibia is mainly in English so it is important that children start to learn it as soon as possible.

Rosalia founded in 2001 Rossy Bee Busy Pre-Primary School. She takes care of the children coming to the kindergarten and feeds them. The pre-primary school is in a strategic place, where access for children living in the surrounding area is easy. However there is much room for improvement, for example to have a better fence, school equipment …



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Contact: Ms. Rosalia Namutenya Karupu
Post: Principal
Tel: +264813166637

How to get there:
Rossy Bee Busy pre-primary school is in the village of Matende, some 15km West from Rundu along the C45 road. While travelling West, you’ll find it on the left hand side of the road.

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N’Kwazi Lodge, Rundu (Namibia)

On May 10, 2010, in Posts in English, by Javier Leandro Sobradillo
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N’Kwazi Lodge is situated directly on the banks Okavango river, about 20 km from Rundu heading East towards Caprivi. This place is both Lodge, with comfortable rooms in hut-shaped buldings, and also camping site. It not only offers a nice and tranquil environment for you to rest before continuing your trip to Caprivi or Botswana, but also helps out the local community through several projects. In 2002 they founded the Mayana Mpora foundation to manage these projects. More information on the subject in their website www.nkwazi-communitytrails.com.

Click to play

Thanks to the tourists visiting these projects they’ve obtained financial resources to improve the equipment of several nearby schools and also to open a kindergarten. Currently Valerie and Wynand Peyper work in other initiatives in order to foster job creation for young men and women in the area. All the tourists arriving to N’Kwazi lodge have the chance to visit and actively collaborate with this work. N’Kwazi lodge is quite popular among tourists since they appeared in the Lonely Plante guide for Namibia and Botswana.


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Contact: Valerie Peyper
Post: Owner
Address:
P.O. Box 1623
Rundu
Tel: +26466255409
Mobile: +264812424897
Email: nkwazi@iway.na
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Green House, Rundu (Namibia)

On May 9, 2010, in Posts in English, by Javier Leandro Sobradillo
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This Bed & Breakfast is right in the centre of Rundu, and it is property of  Sirkka Kapango Muremi, a local entrepeneur woman. She offers spacious and clean rooms and a restaurant. Through her business she provides a job to eight people five women and three men.

Her habitual clients include mainly business travellers from Namibia and Angola, and also people attending conferences or seminars in Green House’s conference facilities, behind the main building. She would be more than happy to start attracting tourists too.

She talks here about her business:

Click to play


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Contact: Sirkka Kapango Muremi
Post: Propietaria
Address:
P.O. Box 67
M. Siwarongo Str
Rundu
Tel: +26466256356
Fax: +26466256095
Mobile: +264813152998
Web: -
Email: -

If you are travelling to Rundu, check also Dala Darling’s Cottage out for accommodation.

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