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.