{"id":6507,"date":"2022-09-05T14:21:11","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T12:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/disabilityconnect.co.za\/?p=6507"},"modified":"2022-09-05T14:21:11","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T12:21:11","slug":"meet-dunoons-gardeners-with-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/2022\/09\/05\/meet-dunoons-gardeners-with-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Dunoon\u2019s gardeners with disabilities get a boost from the local ward councillor\u2019s fund"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A group of people with disabilities are vegetable gardening in Dunoon and the food from the garden goes to a soup kitchen and for their own use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Peter Luhanga – Groundup<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a cold, overcast morning in Cape Town, sitting in his wheelchair, Joshua Matshidiso works with a shovel to prepare a vegetable bed to transplant seedlings. Sometimes he gets out of his wheelchair and works on the ground tending the crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matshidiso and fellow members of Dunoon\u2019s Five Stars Disability Support Group grow vegetables on a vacant patch of land behind Inkwenkwezi Secondary School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gardening refreshes the mind and takes away stress, says Matshidiso. \u201cI keep myself busy so that I do not sit and do nothing at home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both his legs were amputated in 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thembakazi Sotyantya, who survived a car crash in 1999 that left her with severe head and back injuries, says the group used to garden on land beneath the Eskom power lines near the N7 Malibongwe Drive turnoff. But the land was occupied<\/a> by shack dwellers in October 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe did not give up. We went to Inkwenkwezi Secondary School to ask for land to do gardening,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need vegetables so we can supply ourselves with ingredients for our soup kitchen\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The soup kitchen feeds members of the disability support group as well as Dunoon residents in need.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently spinach, cabbage and beetroot are the main crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Gardening refreshes the mind and takes away stress, says Joshua Matshidiso, working from his wheelchair in his vegetable patch. Alongside him, Thembakazi Sotyantya irrigates seedlings. Photo: Peter Luhanga<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWorking in the garden makes me feel free. My bones feel great. We have 30 members in the disabled support group. Some have hands, some have legs and some have ideas,\u201d says Sotyantya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week, the group received a donation of gardening tools and vegetable seedlings from Ward 104 Councillor Meisie Makuwa (ANC). The donation is part of a neighbourhood farming project made possible with ward allocation funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want residents to plant vegetables in their yards. We want people who are unemployed to grow crops to feed their families, as well as giving them the green food for their vitamins,\u201d said Makuwa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of people with disabilities are vegetable gardening in Dunoon and the food from the garden goes to a soup kitchen and for their own use. By Peter Luhanga – Groundup On a cold, overcast morning in Cape Town, sitting in his wheelchair, Joshua Matshidiso works with a shovel to prepare a vegetable bed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[37,35],"tags":[39,41,389],"class_list":["post-6507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-focus","category-in-the-news","tag-disability","tag-disability-connect","tag-dunoon-gardeners"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6507"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6507\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.disabilityconnectexpo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}