Ward 2 Development Forum

Zara: Water Stewards Through History

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aliaseszara

9 min read

This is your own page for the Water for the Valley project. Your tasks for every week to the end of the project are on this page.

You may use an AI helper. Copy and paste this link into the chat: https://df.valleyofgrace.co.za/cultural/education/project/llms.txt. It can check a fact or explain a hard word. Your Field Book, your map layer and your plan card are yours to make.

To see what the whole class is making, see Water for the Valley: Your Term 4 Project.

What changed on 26 October

We won’t be writing letters or holding a panel. If you started a letter, keep it in your Field Book. The class now makes two things together: a Valley Map, as one combined poster we work on in class, and a short Valley Water Plan. You keep your theme. You add one layer to the map and write one part of the plan.

Your question

What did the valley’s people do to look after water, and what could we learn from it?

You are the class expert on the valley’s history of water. A steward is someone who looks after something that belongs to others as well. On the class poster you draw the old water places, each with its year. In the plan you write Part 3: What the valley did before.

Facts to stamp

Choose three of these for your Field Book. Tie the correct colour thread to each one.

  • [IC] - Blue

  • [MS] - Yellow

  • [TBV] - Red

  • Khoekhoe people’s claims to land rested on their use of springs and rivers.

  • Georg Schmidt settled at Baviaanskloof on 23 April 1738. The mission there was renamed Genadendal in 1806.

  • In 1854 plots in Greyton were sold with a right to use water from the leiwater, the furrows that carry water from the Gobos River. The furrows have carried water since 1854. Read more: Greyton’s Leiwater.

  • In 1858 the mission land at Genadendal was granted to the Moravian Church in trust for the people who lived there.

  • In 1899 the Moravian Church bought a mountain farm called Langgezocht, about 1,881 hectares, to protect Genadendal’s water sources.

Words to use:

  • steward (someone who looks after something that belongs to others as well),
  • water right (the legal permission to use a share of water),
  • furrow (a small channel that carries water from a river to land),
  • in trust (held by one group for the benefit of another).

Think of Europe

Towns often grew where two rivers met, or where a pass crossed a mountain. Where did people settle in our valley, and why there? Which kloofs were doorways through the mountains? Bring your answer from main lesson.

Your leaky dam

Everyone in the class does this in Week 3.

A gully is a deep channel that rushing rainwater has cut into a slope. A leaky dam is a low wall of stones, logs or packed branches built across a gully. When rain rushes down, the wall slows the water so it spreads out and soaks into the soil. Some water still leaks through, so the stream below keeps running. Gully stuffing means packing branches and brush into a gully so it catches soil and water. Branches cleared from pines and wattles can be used. Other small helpers are lines of stones laid across a slope, and plants along the banks to hold the soil.

You can also choose a flatter stretch of a river that a flood has damaged before. Floods tear up the banks and leave rocks scattered along the riverbed. Those rocks can be used to build the leaky dam wall, so the river slows down and spreads out there.

Find your site on Google Earth (25 minutes). With a grown-up, open the class map: https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1PejJJkRHA_WrwYwdKrSeea92u3q3vp9y?usp=sharing

  1. Look at the slopes and rivers around Genadendal and Greyton. Zoom in until you can see single trees.
  2. Find a gully, or a flood-damaged stretch of river. Gully clues: a dark or bare line running down a slope, a strip of green along it, or a fan of bare soil at the bottom where the water dropped what it carried. River clues: a flatter part of the river where the banks look torn or bare, and pale patches of rock and gravel spread along the riverbed.
  3. Choose the spot where you would build your leaky dam.
  4. Take a screenshot with your spot circled, or draw what you see. Hold your pointer on the spot and write down the numbers Google Earth shows at the bottom of the screen. Michael will use them to pin your site on the class map.

Plan around it (20 minutes). On one page, write or draw:

  • why you chose this spot,
  • what you would build around it, such as a path for visitors, a bench or lookout, a sign that explains how it works, a measuring post, or a nursery bed or vegetable garden below where the soil stays damp,
  • what activities you would offer, such as guided walks, building days where visitors help stuff a gully, school field trips, birdwatching, or workshops that teach people to build leaky dams,
  • your own theme question: Is there an old water place near your gully, such as a furrow, a spring or a mission building? What did people do there before?
  • one more way the valley could earn money, chosen from the list below.

Other ways the valley could earn. Each of these is an idea nobody has tested here, so give it a red thread.

  • Growing vegetables for restaurants and guesthouses in Greyton
  • A nursery selling young local plants for gardens and restoration work
  • Selling firewood, poles and wood chips from cleared pines and wattles
  • Making compost from cleared brush and garden waste
  • Honey from bees kept near the fynbos
  • Guided walks and hikes along restored streams
  • Teaching days for schools and visitors
  • A farm stall or Saturday market for valley produce
  • Collecting seed from local plants for restoration projects
  • Furniture and crafts made from cleared wood
  • Paid work measuring rain and streams

Look on Google Earth only. Don’t build anything there just yet. Rivers are dangerous after rain, so never go to one without a grown-up. Many slopes belong to someone, so don’t write who owns the land.

This week: before the next session

About an hour and a half. This replaces the letter.

Do

  1. Sketch your layer (40 minutes). Use your string timeline. On a rough drawing of the valley, mark where each knot happened: the mission at Baviaanskloof, now Genadendal (1738), the leiwater furrows at Greyton (1854), and the mountain catchment at Langgezocht (1899). Draw a small picture for each, with its year. Mark places only. Do not mark who owns land.
  2. Check with your older person (10 minutes). If you can, show your sketch to the person whose story you told. Ask if they would add one place.
  3. Field Book page 2 (30 minutes). Draw something from the Four Corners game. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 3: Lay Out the Valley

A little over two hours. The leaky dam takes the extra time.

Do

  1. Your leaky dam (45 minutes). Follow the steps in “Your leaky dam” above.
  2. Then and now (40 minutes). Choose one old water place, such as the leiwater furrows in Greyton. With a grown-up, go and look at it if you can, or look at a photo. Draw it twice: as it might have looked long ago, and as it looks now. Ask your grown-up who looks after it today. Write down what they say, with a yellow thread.
  3. Find the lessons (20 minutes). For each knot on your timeline, write one sentence: what did people back then do to look after water that we could do again?

Tell

  1. Tell it back (10 minutes). Tell a grown-up the story of your water place, then and now. Then show them your leaky dam site and the activities you would offer.

Think

  1. Your plan card in pencil (20 minutes). Fill in your plan card for your part. Start from your leaky dam: what you would build and the activities go under “What we would do” and “What it gives the valley”. For “What we would do”, choose the one lesson from the past you think matters most for the plan.

Your plan card has five lines, with a drawing at the top:

  1. What we would do (one sentence)

  2. Where (point to it on the map)

  3. Who could do it (organisations get a red thread)

  4. What it gives the valley (water, work, money, learning or care for the land)

  5. What must be true first (your open questions, each with a red thread)

  6. Field Book page 3 (10 minutes). Stick in your leaky dam screenshot or drawing. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 4: Hold the Water

About two hours.

Do

  1. Your final plan card (50 minutes). Copy your plan card out in your best writing. Change anything the class or Sam’s promise round showed you. Paint or draw the picture at the top.

Tell

  1. Tell it back (15 minutes). Read your card to a grown-up. Ask them which line is least clear, and fix it.

Think

  1. Field Book page 4 (40 minutes). Paint your then-and-now pictures side by side. Add three facts, each with a thread.
  2. Think of Europe (15 minutes). Read your Europe answer again. Add one sentence about what it tells you about your part of the plan.

Week 5: Make the Plan

About two hours.

Do

  1. Practise your part (60 minutes). You have about two minutes at the showing. Lay out your string timeline and walk along it as you tell. Practise it aloud at least four times, without notes on the last two.

Tell

  1. Tell it to your family (20 minutes). Show them your part as you will on the day. Ask them one thing they didn’t understand.

Think

  1. Field Book page 5 (40 minutes). Draw the whole Valley Map from memory, as best you can, and mark your own layer. Add three facts, each with a thread.

Week 6: The showing

Your last Field Book page (30 minutes), after the showing. Draw the thing from this project you will remember longest. Under it, write the open questions from your part that nobody has answered yet. These are what we still don’t know.

Remember

  • You don’t need to contact any organisation. Talk with your family and the adults at school.
  • Write “could”, never “will”, about an organisation. Nobody has agreed to anything.
  • This idea has not been discussed by the Forum yet. Keep what you find with your class and family.

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