What are we doing here?

Sometimes I am not even sure how to answer this question. But for the sake of our parents who are asked all the time as well as all the curious people, I will try to explain. The program we are in (Environment) is very unstructured compared to the other ones like Education or Health were you are expected to be at an office every day of the week. Some lucky environment volunteers get a placement with National parks, Forestry or NGOs (Non Governmental Organization) or other organizations so they sort of have offices and more structured program plans. Our in country training included a very wide variety of things mostly focusing on Income Generating Activities (IGAs) and many things can be turned into an IGA.

We were one of the lucky volunteers to start the partnership with NGOs. Africare an NGO based in America but who does work all over Africa. In Malawi the entire staff is Malawian! We are the only two who are not Malawian working with them here. We as white people in a place of 100% Malawians (in the village) become quite the attraction. If it is known we are going to a meeting the attendance increases exponentionally. So for our first few months here our presence was used to help increase the number of people at meetings.

We have helped with several food distributions… this is fun because the boxes and bags say from the American people! Once more of our skills and knowledge were found out by our partners they knew more ways to utilize us. So we have done some Africare field office trainings for the staff.

The most difficult thing in working with Africare in our area is that they use motor bikes to reach all of their very large catchment area, where as we are only allowed to use push bikes (bicycles). At the beginning we would go the distances they were going… then my surgery early last year followed by Bryan’s knee surgery prevented us from going anywhere on a bike, in fact we both had periods of 3 months where we could not ride bikes…

Knowing that we are some of the first volunteers to try this hand-in-hand with other organizations we knew there would be things to improve. Next time, we have all decided, they will put the volunteer in a bike riding distance from the field office to be better utilized. We are two mini buses or over the mountain through the disappearing woods to get to the office… because of this we almost always only work in our village.

You have to understand that timing and work here is different. Here you live your life doing daily tasks, and if you have a job you work, but sadly most just have their fields of maize. This makes many months of boredom after the harvest so much drinking happens. We live the village life and we are trying to find people or groups that are in need of help. We have been working with the family around us daily in everything we do. Other groups identified are the water users committees. People who live along the Nanyango river (the river goes under the sand after the rains end) dig shallow wells in the river bed so they can make smaller kitchen gardens. We saw that we could teach these people a lot because they were already doing it, the hard way! So we teach them to dig there shallow wells higher on the bank so they do not need cleaned out daily and they won’t wash away come rainy season. Next, treadle pumps which we have been so blessed with a lot of help from Stillwater Oklahoma, Zion Lutheran Church as well as the Stillwater Newspress and the Lutheran Churches in Lawton. More below with pictures! So, after water now comes the teaching of planting, using compost and intercropping to make the best of their space not to mention less work.

This is one example of one group we are working with. We are working with many groups though, my big one is a local women’s group interested in some IGAs. We like to meet with groups already established or people already doing things because they are going to do it! A very massive problem in Malawi is that people send so much aid and do not really do community assessments to find out if the aid is needed or wanted. Now there are many abandoned things. For example in our village there are actually taps, maybe three… but then someone decided to help with boreholes and then the taps were shut off, but still there… an oil press sitting unused, mud stoves unused… so we are trying to find what they need and want and not offering it to them for free but having them earn it in some way, so they have ownership of it!

We had visitors! Animal and Mr. Bahr visited from Stillwater, Oklahoma.



We took the Bahr’s straight to the village, where we had meetings upon meetings. They presented one of our clubs with the first of many treadle pumps for irrigation. We are not giving them for free, but going to have them put in something, seed, or money made from selling foods grown during the dry season. They presented it and then we put it all together and did a mini training to show how it works and Mr. Bahr watered the gardens!!!






We also set up for them to see the local Guli Wamkulu dances.



Mr. Bahr was only staying a few days so we wanted to get in some fun things like a safari in Liwonde National Park. We saw so many animals!

Elephants






Monitor


whitebreasted cormorants and a fisher eagle in the center of the photo


Crocodile


Kudu (male and female) and Impala


I am not sure about these two…




More Elephants


Me on safari! See the elephants and the guy with the protection? We were on foot in the park with a guide and ranger with a gun just in case.



Our last stop was Zomba Plateau with Mr. Bahr.






Animal had brought a lot of gear so that we could explore a place called Chingwe’s hole. We had all asked around and done as much research as you can do on a hole in the ground in Africa. We heard several legends about the place; the first and oldest is that the hole is a bottomless pit that chiefs would through people with leprosy down into. The lake that all the run off water flows to is called which means dead. This name came about because come the rainy season dead bodies would show up in the lake and they knew not where they came from. Logical sense says if you throw people in a bottomless pit come heavy rains they will come out somewhere. The name Chingwe (meaning rope) came from a man who walked to the place with his dog… the dog fell into the hole so the man went to et a rope and lowered himself into the hole. He never found his dog, but from then on the hole was called the rope’s hole.

The area is very odd. A flat area with a clump of trees… those trees the only ones on the whole area where we were happened to be growing out of the hole! It truly looked like a tiny rain forest with moss on those trees and everything. We geared up and descended into the hole… sadly there had been a recent cave in and so the cavern we found was not and the tunnels leading out all got way to narrow for human entrance. Every wall was wet and slimy, drops of water in the cavern looked like shining drops of gold. It was damp and cool, and yes the guys got really dirty. I did not look forward to scrubbing all those clothes. The crazy thing we did find was a dog skeleton… actually it found Animal in a small crevasse.






After some chaos we made it to the airport in time for Mr. Bahr to catch his flight. We Animal, Bryan and I returned to the village to rest up a bit before heading out on the next adventure. While back in the village we got to help celebrate the International Candle light Ceremony. We paraded down the highway and went to the ceremony, where we met our Traditional Authority, pretty much the King of our area. You can identify him by his crown which would have originally been made from animal fur.




We headed north on a night bus… that is its own story, for another time. We went to Rumphi for a night then to Dan’s site for a few nights followed by a change in plans and another bus ride more north to Karonga where Sabrina lives. We went up to Livingstonia.




We stayed the nights at a camp ground called the mushroom farm. But the second day we hiked out to the waterfalls. Two different sets of several water falls of at least 3 or 4 falls. The guys scouted the best place to set up a repel rope and possible climb. They chose the second set of falls and once we got there we set up and sent Bryan over the water fall… Thank God for cell phones in Africa… after he went over the second one down there was not communication by yelling… the falls are just too loud. Unfortunately we have to pre buy phone units and well we ran out, Bryan and I both. Next we sent down Jim, then me… only as I got to the first landing I got a yell from above that there is now way out, Jim and Bryan where going to have to climb out if they could, the way they came in. So I got off the rope and huddled down to avoid the spray, it didn’t help but at least I was retaining more of my body heat. I decided to look at the climb I would have to make and decided it probably impossible. Everything wet and slimy, with a very consistant spray, plus everything growing out of the side is thorny and if all that where not enough it was a very large over hang. I waited and Bryan made it followed by Jim both were completely worn out and both looked up and said they could not climb another one… luckily Bryan found a way around through the thick jungle. I now understand why people need panga knives in the jungle, plus everything has thorns!


at the first set of falls you could walk behind one of the water falls.


Jim repelling down to where Bryan was.


Bryan climbing out.


At the mushroom farm we camped on the side of the mountain over looking the valley and the lake, both mornings we watched the sun rise.



From Livingstonia to Jim’s site where the guys practiced there dug out canoe techniques. From here we took Animal to Karonga boma to catch a bus to the border.