The Cavern … and the Power of Possibility
If you ever doubted the positive impact that tourism can have on local communities and conservation, here’s a story I would love to share with you…
The Cavern is a family owned and run resort, named after the infamous Cannibal Cavern in the Northern Drakensberg mountains, bordering on the Amphitheatre World Heritage Site in KwaZulu-Natal.
The hotel’s roots go back four generations to 1941, when Ruth and Bill Carte bought what was then a small guest house on a farm with a few simple rondavels catering for up to 15 guests.
Since then, it has grown and evolved over the decades with each generation adding its mark, to become the award-winning resort and spa it is today. The Cavern is a much-loved hotel that prides itself on over 83 years of many happy guest returns!
Megan Bedingham, current co-owner, along with her husband Hilton and sister Lesley Carte, is one busy lady! Besides looking after the 120 guests the hotel now caters for, caring for her own family of three kids, she spends at least half her days juggling tasks completely unrelated to the actual hotel! These are her passion projects … packed with the power of possibility!
The New Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve
New Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve - by Grant Pitcher
In the last year a group of passionate Berg-ers joined forces with the Cavern family to get the new Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve officially ratified to protect the biodiversity in the area and support local Eland populations and other endemic wildlife to thrive in the area. Thanks to this official reserve status, nature lovers will be able to explore the regions many mountain peaks, valleys and lush indigenous forests where bird, animal, tree and flower species flourish for many years to come. The reserve is also now better able to protect, preserve and showcase the region’s cultural and historical story with its ancient Bushman paintings, age-old rock carvings and fascinating/unnerving cannibal history!
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela
The Royal Drakensberg Educational Trust
Education is so key in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal
Puzzles are crucial for early development
Megan and Hilton are also both heavily involved in The Royal Drakensberg Education Trust which is a non-profit set up to help support and transform the local rural communities living in the region through quality education initiatives. Each year the Trust aims to achieve these minimum outcomes:
Baby Boost – This project supports around 30 mothers and carers (often Gogos/grandmothers) at a time to ensure the first 1000 days of a child’s life support development, through coaching sessions, toy libraries, books and interactive play groups. 576 carers and babies attended the playgroups this year, with 72 home visits and 36 carers trained.
Royal Drakensberg Primary School – this facility was built and is financially supported by The Cavern family, corporates and friends to support 110 local children, including salaries for 7 teachers and 2 interns. They have a 99% progress and pass rate for grades RRR to Grade 4! Over 750 extra mural activities are provided annually. Watch their moving video
Khanyisela Project – 18 pre-schools serving 850 little ones in the AmaZizi community, under the care of 50 practitioners trained in early childhood development, health and nutrition. With friends and supporters they’ve helped build two classrooms, repaired 5 playgrounds, upgraded classrooms, installed toilets, painted and supplied learning resources.
Teacher Development – supported 55 practitioners across 21 schools, including 15 courses and 6 workshops. Six teachers were formally educated this year as well as 4 interns with 120 mentor visits clocked up over the year.
Wellness Programme – provided 191 400 meals (porridge) for 1000 children across 21 schools as well as run 2280 yoga sessions and 4 nature outings
Community reading- The Royal Drakensberg Trust has gifted over 1,200 books across 4 local communities, reaching over 600 children.
The Trust focuses its energy around the “Theory of Change”, believing that if the local children, especially those from birth up to the age of 8, get the support they need at the start of their lives, that they will be better prepared for their next phase of education. Part of this is ensuring that standards in rural education continually improve so that these incredible young minds can realise their own power of possibility! Thanks to the support of the greater Cavern family (which includes many guests and Rotary societies around the globe etc who support the projects) swirls and ripples of positive change are created - with the children as the cheerful beneficiaries!
Yoga sessions on the lawn
Daily porridge pap to fill tummies
Read the Trust’s recent blog about the 2024 Year in Review.
If you can dream it …
The Cavern’s impact is undoubtedly far-reaching - but sometimes it’s the individual stories that truly touch the heart (this one had me ugly crying at my desk!). One of their previous guests, Liam King, who grew up visiting the Cavern and is now considered part of their extended family, recently shared the Story of Nkabini Phola, one of the teachers at the Royal Drakensberg Primary School. He wrote it so eloquently that it had to be shared!
Nkabini Phola’s Story …
“It is easy, when pondering the power of possibility, to get caught up in clichés such as, ‘If you can dream it, you can do it.’ But the thing about clichés that is easy to forget is that most of them have an origin in some measure of truth. Nothing signifies this stronger than the life story of Nkabini Phola.
Phola grew up in amaZizi, a village in the deep rural foothills of the Drakensberg mountains. Raised primarily by his Gogo (grandmother), daily life was a struggle. If Phola wanted to avoid walking along the dangerous main road, his little legs had to carry him across a ravine and river just to get to primary school, which was five kilometres away.
However, neither the distance nor the obstacles would stop Phola. He wanted to learn, and, to borrow from another cliché, ‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’
As the years went by, he maintained his determination to get to school each day, and he racked up his collection of certificates for punctuality and neatness.
Teacher extraordinaire, Nkabini Phola
He made this daily odyssey because he had a dream, a dream of improving his life and the lives of others through education. Like the road through amaZizi, Phola’s dream soon encountered many bumps and potholes. His mother, who worked in housekeeping at a local hotel, broke her leg and was unable to continue working. The burden fell on his father to provide for his family, which included Phola’s four siblings. This burden he carried proudly, albeit briefly, for Phola’s father soon breathed his last.
Phola was in grade 9, a boy in age, but thrust suddenly into the providing role of a man. His dream of change through education, like the mountains towering above his home village, seemed increasingly out of reach.
After Phola’s father died, the family’s challenges deepened, and they soon lacked money for school, transportation, and some days even food. By fourteen, Phola was moulding and selling clay animals on the side of the road just to provide for his family. On good weekends, he earned enough money to pay for transport to high school, now fifteen kilometres from home. On bad weekends, the bounty was enough to buy just a tin of fish or some eggs.
Despite these incredible hardships, Phola persevered. He had to repeat a year of school, but, always viewing the glass half full, today he is grateful that this setback taught him a lesson in patience. In 2016, he completed matric, and the following year his soccer coach told him of a job opportunity as a waiter at The Cavern Berg Resort. Phola went to his first official job interview anxious and afraid, having to answer questions on the spot from owners Megan Bedingham and Lesley Carte. He knew nothing about the hospitality industry, and the only thing of value he had to offer was his ability to wash dishes. As Phola describes it today, ‘By God’s grace I made it to the dining room where I was trained by Justice Hlubi and Solomon as a waiter.’ By the following year, Phola was a trained waiter and bartender, where he says his school day fixation with neatness and being on time served him in good stead.
Phola’s work gave him something he lacked throughout his childhood: breathing room. But Phola didn’t allow stability to mutate into complacency. In 2018, he got accepted into UNISA. Faced with a difficult choice of sacrificing his work for his studies, fate dealt Phola a good hand and allowed him to do both. Lesley told him to focus on his studies and come back to work during his university holidays. This he did, elegantly juggling between student and employee. For good measure, he somehow managed to find spare time to volunteer at a primary school in amaZizi during this period.
It didn’t take long before Megan, seeing Phola’s passion for education and his drive to achieve, put two and two together. Aware that there was an internship opportunity at Royal Drakensberg Primary School (RDPS), established by her and situated just down the road from The Cavern, she pleaded with Phola to apply for the position. Phola was hesitant. Most private schools wanted experience he did not yet have, but he nevertheless agreed to chat with Thoba, RDPS’s principal. Needless to say, Thoba was as impressed as Megan, and Nkabini Phola, who grew up in poverty, crossing rivers and selling clay animals just to get to school, became Teacher Phola.
Now in his second year as an RDPS teacher, Phola is fulfilling his childhood dream of shaping the lives of others through the power of education. In his own words, ‘The space that I am in now goes far beyond being a teacher, but includes being eager to grow and change the society we live in through ensuring that learners thrive socially, academically, and emotionally.’ Leading by example, he sponsors his nephews so that they do not have to pay for transport and school uniform. Teacher Phola is paying it forward.
It's not only his students who have so much to learn from Teacher Phola. Each of us, young and old, face challenges in life. At times, it feels like those challenges are overwhelming, and it is tempting to throw up our hands in defeat. But Phola’s story shows we must never give in to that temptation. With a vision, a plan to accomplish that vision, and with enough determination to see that plan through, we really can reach for the stars. Teacher Phola’s story is proof: if you can dream it, you can do it!
The Cavern Drakensberg Resort & Spa
The Cavern is a unique home from home hotel with heart, where strangers become friends, couples reconnect and families truly bond. With every year, and every repeat visitor, the Cavern family grows.
Many guests sign up to become regular donors to the various projects supported, and it’s amazing how all the small donations (R100 is less than £5) a month collectively make a huge difference in rural KwaZulu-Natal.
Just as one example, Megan and Hilton recently visited the UK and headed home with their suitcases jam-packed with knitted dolls and robust toys donated by friends of Edinburgh, arranged through Dr Marysia Nash that founded BabyBoost..
Beautifully knitted dolls and toys
Gorgeous toys donated & sourced by Edinburgh friends!
The African spirit of Ubuntu continues to make an impact wherever communities work together to create the possible. Over the years there have been so many success stories … including a cook who has become a qualified teacher, a waiter who now helps head up Parent Power, a child-minder that now teaches - and a young boy who now conducts the Youth Philharmonic in Pretoria.
All thanks to a wonderful network of donors and supporters!
How can you help?
If you would like to add your support, knowing the money will go directly to where it is so needed, to feed a child, train a teacher, provide a creche for a toddler, improve general literacy and help build a community - please visit
https://www.royal-drakensberg.org.za/donate/
