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.
