How Will They Live Their Lives?

We have been reading a lot of James Mitchener while in Malawi. Books such as Texas, Carribean, Recessional, all fairly lengthy and detailed. The stories seem to follow a pattern. Chapter 1, 2 and so on; however, the character development continues creating both a familiarity and an intrigue. How will they live their lives?

This is our second time in Malawi doing food relief. This time, however, we were more engaged in food for work. We are getting near the end of another chapter. Completing a project is easy but what next? How will they live their lives?

As in Mitchener”s books, we have become intertwined with the character of Malawi. Real people engaged with real struggles not living far away, but as our neighbours. Not in a physical sense as the areas we were engaged with, are both more than 110 km from our place of stay in Lilongwe. Real people because we have listened to their stories about suffering and loss along with joy and hope. So these people stay in your mind, as long as you don’t change books. How will they live their lives?

The people of Malawi are also your neighbours. You have met some of them through the blog. Beautiful people, dedicated to living for their daily bread, wanting something better for their children. It may be the same story as some of our families that still remember immigration to a new country experienced.

God knows the next part of the story. Somehow we are invite to participate in his-story through trust and obedience. We have been engaged in writing the next part. The story started with hungry people. It continued with planting crops for the next season. The harvest has been blessed through many prayers. The grain banks will be filled. How will they live their lives?

We dream that the story continue something like this…



Wow, it appears so fuzzy? That is the way it sometimes is in life. Not knowing what will actually happen to the food in the grain bank and the impact it may make. But this we know, we will LEAP, a trust in God that he directs toward DREAMS, that we can trust in His direction. How will their lives end up?

Celebrations!

Everyone came to celebrate and give thanks for the food for new beginnings, the harvest for future promise and the blessings of people everywhere!





When God blesses you, it is so you can be a blessing to others!




Such beautiful sounds...such intensity... such aliveness!




The new grainbank is almost completed! Fill it up with the harvest!




Zikomo, zikomo, zikomo!

With an End...A New Beginning

We have less than a month to go with so much excitement yet to come as we come to completion of this phase of the project. This week we’ll have the last distribution in Ulongwe and in early May we’ll be in Chipoka for the last distribution there. There will be celebration as this is the time when the harvest of the maize crops will also be happening. The good and plentiful rains have been there at the right times. It’s amazing how quickly things change. No more rains, cool nights (great for sleeping) and beautiful, warm, sunny, clear days. Winter is coming…  And then we must leave… the on-going work, the hope and the anticipation of other harvest, of food security, all in the care of the communities themselves and our partners who work in these communities.

This week at church we heard a pastor from an organization called Visionledd tell of the work that a few paid staff but many, many volunteers were doing in so many different countries working with widows and orphans. He so challenged us all to be redeemer kinsmen for the vulnerable and the marginalized. Remember the story of Boaz and Ruth? He was the redeemer kinsman. We just celebrated Easter. Jesus is our redeemer kinsman. Whose redeemer kinsman am I? Isn’t that the challenge of living in the Kingdom of God? I am so taken by the challenges that continue to be laid in front of me in what I see and what I hear. Maybe because the challenges are more evident here but they are surely there in North America! I do not always want to see the need, or possibly it is easier to blame the situation on those involved. Again I am always given lots of things to reflect on but more importantly, challenges to act on.

Easter for Living!

On this day between Good Friday and Easter, I find the words below from Jim Wallis "A Call to Conversion", an exclamation mark of why we do the things we do, because so often, I forget and then become discouraged and frustrated. So we are reminded, remember and live!



What is the good news? When all that sin had done, or could ever do, was laid on Jesus, it did not overcome him. Death could not swallow him. The grave was denied its victory. The witness of history and of his followers is that “he is risen.” He is alive. He has triumphed over all. He is the victor over every sin, hate, fear, violence, and death. Nothing is stronger than his victory—nothing past, nothing present, and nothing future.



On Easter morning, and each day of our lives, we celebrate the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which triumphs over every other reality. In the face of the world and its systems, we proclaim the resurrection, saying, “We have seen the Lord.” We see him in the lives of our brothers and sisters. We discover him in the faces of the poor, in the faces of all the victims, and in the faces of our children. We see him in the lives of Christians who have suffered and died because they believed. And we see the Lord in the bread and the wine. He shows us, as he did his disciples, the evidence of his suffering. He invites us to reach out, take, eat, and drink; he wants us to remember him, to see him, and to know his victory.
His way is life. The world’s way is death. We can now stand before the world’s false realities and securities, free to deny them, denounce them, and remove ourselves from them. We stand before the reality of the resurrection and confess with the first disciples that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.



We stand before the world as fools. We are foolish enough to believe that Jesus’ way is stronger and truer than the way of the world. We rest secure in the knowledge that he has, and will, overcome. We are called to be fools for Christ, a people saved by his cross and converted, finally, by his resurrection.

May God convert us to such foolishness.

Some photos, some people!

We'll share some photos this time, of some various aspects of our work and our joy.


Jane, one of the CDF's with her little boy, the same one I held in 2006 as a 6 month-old. Time flies.



Hans is just astounded at the little lady who is carrying a 50 kg bag of cement which will be used for the restoration of a grain bank.



Mr. C is showing a maize cob from his farm. It is drying and some of his maize may be ready, fully dried in a few weeks. This garden was planted in late November. The Food for Work gardens will take into June to be ready for harvest.

Assumptions

Today, there is another voice that you read. Hans wants to share some of his thoughts.


My son once told me that I should not ‘assume’ anything. As in the modern vernacular it may turn out to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’. Even after having spent over a year in Africa I still find myself assuming things. One of the most striking is that any kind of planning or thinking that I do might not apply, be relevant, be of concern to or even assist in the assumed progress of Africa. Take for example when we have a Food for Work program which is currently underway. Charts on what is growing where, how much, the time of planting, fertilizing, weeding, and expected harvest seem simple enough to capture on a document that might reflect the goals for the FFW. Life is not a simple straight line. The earth is round. It took mankind even a while to get rid of the flat earth assumption.

So the written, bureaucratic, non-African in some places, is not as easily constructed as one might like. Should it be? We forget the reality of just living, having enough concerns about what will my family eat today or why is my child sick and the hospital so far away or why are the FFW field so distant from my village?

The best way to overcome assumptions of course is to live beside someone or work with someone or dialogue intentionally with someone. Not a perfect method but at least there is a sharing to overcome the mis-understanding that people are either lazy, don’t want to do it, cannot get it, don’t appreciate what you do, are not smart enough, etc!

Village life is different. Distances to and from ‘your’ garden, to the water supply, to any kind of market, to school, to a hospital, even to church are significant. Significant because most of it is done on foot often without shoes. Here we arrive with the large SUV able to move mountains. Drink coca-cola whenever we want. Seem to have an endless supply of money to pay for things like seed, fertilizer, tools, storage facilities, etc. What do they assume about me? There is a challenge to find a middle road, a way to walk together to share and know that we are together or as one villager reflected “you have sympathy with us”. Does God have sympathy with us?

Enjoy some pics of the village life. Take them for what they are. Another person’s life, simple, often struggling, rejoicing and celebrating life just as we do before God’s grace.





The granery where the cobs of maize are kept.



Such a hospitable family who showed us the hard work done in the gardens.



The proud farmers in the soya bean garden.



Maize and relish drying in the sun for future use. The relish is tomatoes and pumpkin leaves.

Dreams of the Poor.

When we first came to Malawi, we were asked “what does poverty look like in Malawi?

We can see the young boys everyday hanging out by the grocery store in their tattered clothing, bare feet and always with their hands stretched out as you come along. Everyday we see the young boy leading the blind man in amongst the traffic also with his hand out. Everyday the same woman with her baby on her back meets us as we walk into town with her hand out, pointing to her baby and gesturing that she needs food. And more women, boys and men, old, young, are all at their own place along our walk into town. Everyday we see the disabled on the ground dragging themselves along as the traffic of cars and people pass by. Yes, this is extreme poverty staring us straight in the face each and everyday. This is what poverty does to many people. Their only way to get a little is to beg for it. They cannot find another way. This has nothing to with self-worth as it only has to do with survival.

Then we go to the villages and where there is singing and dancing when the food aid is brought in. But it is time to have conversations with the beneficiaries. What is your life like? What are your hopes and dreams? Mary’s husband has left to go into the city, never to return leaving his wife and eight children between the ages of six and twenty. When her garden’s harvest runs out she gathers and sells firewood to buy food. Her children cannot go to secondary school even if she has been able to scrape together the school fees because they don’t have proper clothes and have no food. She dreams for her children to get an education and for her family to have enough food all year around.

I meet Sosage who is a widow 58 years old, still has four children at home and five grandchildren from her eldest who has passed away. She too does piecework, gathering and selling firewood to buy food whenever she can. She shares that she would be dead if it wasn’t for the food aid. She shares how weak three of her grandchildren were that she thought they too would die. A kind CDF gave her a blouse to wear and another gave her a chitenja. Her simple dream but a dream it is, is to have food and clothes for her family. When one has so little the dreams seem so little too.

And then there is Margret, a warm, kind woman. She had a job in the city as a home craft worker. She lost it when the new government came in and abolished that department. Not that she was making enough income, not nearly enough. Even with her husband’s small salary as a market fee collector they had a difficult time feeding their six children. And then her husband was killed by a car as he walked along the road one evening. She had no choice but to go back to her village where she was given one and a half acres to farm. Her home is tiny with a grass roof, everyone sleeps on straw mats and four young orphans came to live with the family when her sister died leaving the children alone. Her husband’s village is helping her eldest go to driving school not that they might have a car but that he might be able to become a driver. At times her church is able to provide some funds to allow her two daughters to go to secondary school. What happens during the hunger months? Cooked green bananas and mangoes make up the one daily meal. Food aid was God’s blessing during this difficult time. Margret worries for her children. They must get an education and leave the village. She dreams of a little bigger house with iron sheets for the roof so that eleven people could be a little more comfortable and dry.

Why are the dreams of the poor so difficult to realize?

A Holiday in Cape Town

Because of visa rules we needed to leave Malawi for a while and so we have taken a week and are now in Cape Town, South Africa. What a shock to the system! We know there is poverty and hardship in this country as well but the places we have seen show little of that. The sun shines brilliantly in the blue skies, the mountains are so impressive, the ocean a beautiful turquoise and the history leaves such a powerful story. The shops, the malls, the restaurants, the wine are all so plentiful! It is baffling how this large continent is of such extremes!



But it is a holiday for us and we are enjoying the V&A waterfront, standing at the Cape of Good Hope, going up to the magnificent Table Mountain, enjoying the fine foods and drink. We have learned so much about the difficulties and struggles that apartheid caused and how painful and yet how valiantly the human rights issues has been and still is being fought. We heard the stories when we visited Robben Island from our guide, a former prisoner because of his activism but who still avocates for proper housing, good education, health care for the poor in South Africa.

We are still here for a few days and will continue to explore and become refreshed to continue our work in Malawi.

What possibilities , what hope!

This week we had that great opportunity to dialogue with villagers about planning! Planning is not something that is commonly done. What today brings is what we live with and accept. It was even said in context of the death of a young child from malaria that that is God’s plan. The God that I know wants only good for his people. It pains and troubles me that what man does or doesn’t do, gets laid on God. Why are children dying everyday of malaria when nets and proper medication would prevent so many deaths! In two weeks three of the folks we work with lost a little one to malaria.

I digress as what I wanted to share with you is an excitement in a new community with whom we are working. No aid has ever been brought in there; certainly no development work has ever been introduced. The intention of the day was to sit with the committee, and a few group leaders to hear and share a plan for the future harvest. We stopped at the local grocery store, at a trading center on the way and picked up a case of 20 pop because that would take care of a snack or better, their lunch. Anyway we arrived and thought we should meet in the church because the six chairs they had weren’t going to do it. They sure weren’t! One hundred and twenty-five folks showed up wanting to listen and contribute to the dialogue we wanted to begin with these communities.




We told them about the need to plan (with a translator of course).using the story of Joseph of course. Would they be able to visualize a picture of the harvest from a multitude of community gardens? So we asked them what they thought the maize community garden would yield with the half ration of fertilizer that was provided. What kind of value was there really in their harvests? Traders usually would come in right after the harvest and try to buy up as much as possible at the lowest price. Four months later however, most villagers would have used up their own little store. They cannot afford to buy! Their money has been used up very quickly with other needs, school fees, medicine etc.




So the challenge is what to do with the harvest? Would it not be better to wait to sell when the price is better for them? What would they want to spend the value of the harvest on? Seed and fertilizer! Good answer! We’re beginning to plan! We need a grain bank to store the harvest. I shared with the group that I read in the paper that fertilizer was dropping in price by at least half to 4500 kwacha for 50 kg bag. It is now over 10 000 (yes 5 zeros!). One young man stood up and reminded me that there is an election coming up and this is probably a campaign tactic. Oh, oh why are we all so cynical about politics! I did remind him that their might be some truth in it because fertilizer all over the world has dropped because the oil prices have dropped. Let’s hope!




We proceeded the same way with each of the inputs (groundnuts, soya, sweet potatoes and cassava) they were given, to arrive at a value of the harvest from the community gardens. The folks were very excited to see some of the results and so were we. The biggest bang for the kwacha is soya. (Actually it is tobacco but it is not a commodity we are promoting but the other countries are really buying it up for about $10 US a kilogram! It is amazing the number of field of tobacco there are and how labour intensive it is!)

However, Malawians are heavy into maize for food and diversity will be a long haul. It really seems to be if a Malawian doesn’t have nsima, they are hungry and so many are hungry for 6 months of the year.




The conversations were great. They were with us for three hours easily! They were excited and pledged to expand the gardens, to work really hard, to get the rest of the community involved and not allow corruption! We will supply the cement and the iron sheets for the grain bank and they will supply the bricks, sand and labour. What a plan, what a joint venture and how much fun it is to work together. This is how we must see God, the One who gives us opportunity and challenges because he so loves his people so much everywhere.

Nsima: what is it?

Some of you have asked what it is we eat here. When we are at home our food is very much what we are used to. Cereal in the morning. In the grocery store we have a few choices, cornflakes, bran flakes or rice krispies and I always mix it with some type of granola. Hans is a great French toast chef and along with regular eggs we do well for breakfast. Lunch and supper is also simple and quite similar of what we might eat at home in Canada.

However the fruit in season is absolutely delicious. The mangoes are now so ripe and succulent, the pineapples so sweet and juicy. Never have I eaten such flavourful bananas. They are smaller than what we get in Canada but they make the best banana and peanut butter sandwiches! Advocados are plentiful and you buy them for eating “today” or “tomorrow” or two days from now. The seller will find you the level of ripeness of the one you need. They make great guacamole or cheese, tomato and advocado sandwiches.

When we are in the villages, usually twice a week we get the nsima meal. Maize flour in water is cooked for about fifteen minutes until it get pastier and firmer. It is then scooped into patties. This is the staple food and everything else is considered relish. The relish is usually a cooked green such as pumpkin leaves, spinach, okra, or kale mixed with bits of tomato. Because we are visitors we may have chicken or goat in a gravy, just a small piece but enough to give the nsima some flavour. On occasion some scrambled egg may take the place of one of the relishes. And we are always given a bottle of fanta or coke. (quite the sugar rush). This is a feast for the Malawian villager.

We eat with our hand and thus we are offered water and a basin to wash up before we eat. A prayer of thanks is always offered up. It is difficult to partake of such generosity when we know of the hunger that is all around us. But we must never refuse and we so experience the kindness of the villagers.

The Path to Food for Work

It’s Saturday and we look back on the week. We have had meetings, have the motorbike into the shop again but most interesting and vital to this project is the Food for Work aspect. It is good to feed people but the real necessity is for people to have food security. The villagers have decided to work as beneficiaries on community gardens. This hopefully can provide a means of saving food for more difficult times in the near future. This aspect for planning the future is a most difficult and foreign concept in a culture where most people can only think of the immediate day and its needs.

A plan for storage, maintenance, security and governance needs to be established. Most villagers have some extra produce after the harvest, sell it but four months later probably have no money to buy the produce back usually at a much higher price. So a good plan, understood and accepted by the communities is the objective.

On Wednesday we left to view some the acreage donated by the village headmen and see the beginnings of the hard work done by the beneficiaries. The day was rainy, of the drizzle kind but welcomed by the farmers. With us we had the two young men who were hired to supervise the workers and keep track of the time and the work done. What a job! All travel by them is done by bicycle. We drove off the main road, on to the dirt roads for twenty-five kilometers before we were near enough to get out and walk a kilometer or two to reach one of the gardens. BTW over one hundred gardens were being planted!

An acre holds 70 ridges by 70 meters. That is a lot of digging and hoeing to prepare for the maize, soya, groundnuts, sweet potatoes or cassava! The villagers were so proud to show us and we usually had a huge following as we walked one behind the other on the path to the gardens. The maize was already germinating after having been planted just two weeks ago.

The mangoes were so ripe and looked lovely on the trees. A young boy showed me how he peeled them. Just use your teeth! We received a gift of a shirtful of delicious mangoes. I may have mentioned it before but a farmer who has no mango tree on his acre suffers greatly when the hunger months arrive. If nothing else mangoes, is food!

In the weeks to come we will be replicating these walks into the gardens many more times with each village proudly demonstrating their hard work and effort. We always celebrate their work with them. Pray for good rains at the right time and a good spirit of community to continue.

To Chipoka

One day break gives us just enough time to do some wash and tell you about the excitement as food was distributed in the area of Chipoka, a district that lies along Lake Malawi but just doesn’t get enough regular rainfall.

On Monday we drove the beautiful road to Salima and on to Chipoka. The landscape is magnificent! Three months ago the land was dry and brown. But as soon as the rains began a wonderful transformation also began. The whole land becomes a beautiful, green garden all tilled by hand! The hope also blossoms for blessings of God.

As we drive along we love seeing all the people who take the same road as a footpath to school, markets or to their gardens carrying their hoes on their heads.

I can’t get enough of the baobab trees. They each seem to have their own character and the stories about the trees are plentiful. Actually the stories are all told under the baobab tree!

The off loading went well. One thousand bags of 50 kg each filled the church from back to front five bags high. The pastor was overjoyed. Because we had to buy maize flour this time, the young men who did the off loading turned quite white and needed as shower of sorts!

At the first distribution day, Henni had the privilege of sharing our love from the churches of Canada with a few words and Hans did the same the second day. The first day was extremely hot and fortunately a little cooler the next day. But how patiently the people listen to all the speeches and prayers that must be made before the actual distribution can begin.

Imagine the folks who are lifting bag after bag and so when a different village gets its turn, new lifters take a shift. The elderly often had someone with them to carry their bag and often the very ill or handicapped would have someone else come to pick up their bag. Hans probably carried over a dozen bags out himself, a few bags to the side of the road. It was so appreciated but today his shoulders are still feeling it!

It was a day of celebration and all the singing and dancing was in thankfulness to God, the God of all, Canadians and Malawians included.

Sleep and Some More

Here in Lilongwe the temperature lies between 24 and 30. During the rainy season it is a little more humid. It was difficult to fall asleep and remain asleep when we first arrived. Our bed was protected by a mosquito net that really felt claustrophobic. Hans would wake up during the night and feel the netting in his face and wonder what was crawling around. And it being a dark color everything just seemed so much hotter. Often we would wake in a big sweat.

So we ended up with a king size white net which took care of the claustrophobic feeling. Opening the window curtain during the night, allowed the night air and breezes to cool us down. Darkness falls shortly after 6:00 p.m. and that seems to tell us too we should be getting sleepy. It is not unusual to find us preparing for the night by 8:30. But that means that by 5;00 a.m. we are awake, if not earlier. At 4;00 a.m. we can hear the islam call to prayer. It is a rather musical tape that is not unpleasant (it is heard another 4 times) and then the chirping of the song birds begin as well. Slowly the day light appears.

The mornings are usually sunny, bright and have a comfortable temperature. As the day progresses the sun can get very hot and you just want to find the shade. Once we were stopped to speak with someone and as he spoke he pulled us under a tree. No one is as foolish as to stand in the sunshine. But the sunshine can change very suddenly into furious downpours. We have walked to the market on a beautiful sunny afternoon convinced we didn’t need umbrellas and then be caught not an hour later in a drenching downpour. Oh well, the rain is never cold. It is tricky to dry the wash however. As the song goes, “Rain, Rain, Rain, Beautiful Rain”. It is life for so many especially the farmers whose soil is more sandy than what we see in our area. It is difficult sometimes to imagine that anything would, should or could grow in it. But alas, as we walk by the courthouse each day, an open aired building available for all to see and hear, we see a patch of corn growing, slowly at first only breaking the ground when we first arrived, but now, two feet tall, interspaced with pumpkin greens, the relish for the nsima the daily staple for many. Rain, sun. crops. The endless cycle with too much or too little of each results in a diet of catastrophe or celebration.

The end of 2008!

January 1, 2009

The first day of the New Year brings opportunity to reflect back and look forward. I am still overwhelmed with the last three days of 2008!

On Monday we left early in the morning to take part in the off loading of maize in Ulongwe. It was still foggy on the way out but the roads were busy with the daily business of going to work, going to the markets and working in the gardens. Just imagine that Malawi’s land is almost totally worked by hand!

Amazing balance these men have with these kind of loads

We came to our destination where we interviewed young men and women for two jobs as supervisors for the Food for Work projects. It required much stamina as the distances would be very long from one center to another.

At the same time Hans was trying to trace the maize trucks. Where were they? They were supposed to be here by ten. It was noon already. Finally a group went out looking for the lost trucks. Fifteen kilometers up the road, way beyond our center one truck was found. Unfortunately the truck tried to turn around but got stuck in the soft sand.

Before the day was over two trucks were stuck, one of them twice, needing to be off loaded before they could be unstuck and then loaded again. But with the help of amazing villagers and some intuitive problem solving, all the maize ended up at the center safely stored by 8:30 that night using two flashlights!

Another early morning and we were met by a huge crowd of people patiently waiting for their bag of maize. It was astounding to see these people having walked or cycled for kilometers and kilometers, some for as many as thirty-five. Most of these folks were not eating any more maize-based meals and were depending on what was growing wild. The mangos were just starting and so green cooked mangoes were often the only food they had. Even all the committee members, the volunteers felt they were fortunate to have one meal a day. Everyone is hungry at this time of the year (the hunger months.)

However there was much celebrating as the poorest would have some sustenance which we know they will share. It is overwhelming to see the joy and the thanksgiving offered to God and the donors. Because it is a Food for Work project, 80% of the beneficiaries will work in community projects every week to strengthen the food security of their community. The other 20% are people who are very vulnerable and are either, sick or elderly.

The volunteers worked so hard for three days and they were like all of us grateful for all that was done. We thank God for the experience to work with the people here and at the same time are so challenged with the craziness that those who have one basic meal a day do not see themselves as the poorest. And yet they go hungry everyday as well.