Just came back from the Southern Hemisphere Congress in Cape Town. A congress on fruits from the South. Archbishop Tutu opened the event and, as usual, made some good jokes before getting on with the official business. Want to hear some Tutu humor?
"A woman comes up to me and she says: ‘I so much wanted to meet you Bishop Mandela!’ Ah, that’s good, I said, you get two South Africans for the price of one!"
And...
"Preacher in church goes on a long time. Even asks the congregation what else he could say. ‘Well’, replies a man at the back, ‘what about Amen?’"
What I really like about Bishop Tutu is that he’s always totally frank with everyone. He speaks to black and white, yellow and purple and just says what he likes and doesn’t like. I hope he’ll live a long and happy life.
Before the congress started we had some time to visit the beautiful shores of Cape Town. We saw penguins, we saw whales. Sven-Ake was particularly interested in the penguins - as you can see in this picture. He’s a great believer in sustainability and almost took a penguin home with him: a furry toy one that is.
During our outing we talked at length about what sustainability could mean in terms of sourcing. Sven-Ake is responsible for European sourcing. Hans Vet was there too, he’s a buyer in Sven-Ake’s group. Mats Jakobson, buyer for ICA was there as well, as was Jelger de Vriend, who buys for Albert Heijn.
We agreed that we should try to fully integrate sustainability into our sourcing. I hope we can do it in cooperation with Fair Trade and Non Governmental Organization, ICCO, a Dutch foundation involved in developmental cooperation. ICCO has been very helpful so far in checking our ideas against the realities of the South!