Looking Forward

So, 2 weeks of preparation for the new volunteers is through. We had a blast working together to get ready for their arrival. I am blown away that I have been here almost a year, and I am so excited to greet them as they come off of the plane. I look forward to seeing the excitement and apprehension on their faces as they soak up all the newness.

I remember arriving and thinking about how little I understood about life abroad and the Peace Corps, and I also remember thinking how interesting it would be to sit on the resource volunteer side of things watching all of it unfold as new volunteers get a grasp on their new life.

I love it here in Malawi. I love the work I am doing, and I love the potential it has to impact even just a few people’s lives, no matter how hard it seems we have to fight for it at times. I really, really hope that some of that rubs off on the new group of trainees. They are a diverse and talented group, and I already want to be friends with ALL OF THEM!! (We resource vols have had the chance to read up on them a bit – new trainees, if you are reading this, we promise we aren’t creeps!... uh, at least not much :p )

          All of the Resource vol's hard at work prepping for the new trainees arrival in March

All said, it has also been a tricky time as I look forward to the next step of my life. This last year will move every bit as fast as the one I just left. Already there are friends from the group before us that I am getting sad to see go – they are readying for COS in april. (COS = Close Of Service). I really don’t know what I will do after Peace Corps, and it is not for lack of interest or options. I literally want to do ALL OF THE THINGS.

Every possible life path and career path that I have been interested in seems open to me. It is just too hard to decide on or plan for at this midpoint.

As a result, when people have been asking me what I want to do after Peace Corps, I have narrowed down to only 3 things that I can realistically think about for the time being.

1. Spend some time catching up with the people I love. I eagerly look forward to seeing my parents, sister, and brothers – I am sure it will be a tear fest of happiness. I also plan on couch surfing for a few weeks or month to visit my MANY good friends around the country.

2. Mountain Biking - duh, I love this shit. I plan on spending more time trail riding with my good friends – I also plan on putting more effort into racing.

3. Rock Climbing - As much as I love mountain biking, I have come to realize that this is the personal passion I want to chase the most. Short term goals after getting back are Redpoint 5.12 outside, and onsite/flash  5.11b and V6 outside. I also want to work on traveling to competitions more. Long term goals are to redpoint 5.13 outside and to travel for climbing as much as possible. I also want to do my part developing in the crags that are near my hometown.

That’s it. That is as far as I have thought. And I am ok with it (for now). Kind of single minded, but these are all ‘gimmes’ given my passions. I have a lot to look forward in the next year of my Peace Corps service, and I am excited to see where the projects in my village go and what new ones develop.

I want to open up to those of you reading this. Have any specific questions about my service? The work I am doing? What it is like to live in a tiny brick hut in the mountains without power or water? What my favorite color is? ASK AWAY! I will do my best to share questions on here and answer them as openly as possible.

What to look for in the coming months

- My parents experience here (They are visiting Malawi for 6 weeks, 2 of which are going to be traveling and visiting with me)

- Pictures of travel down south to meet them

- Climbing in Malawi!

- Featured villager of the month, this will be tied with sneak peaks of my portrait of Malawi photo project

- More pictures!

Mphalata

22 Jan 2015.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching my very good friend Prince build a trap for Mphalata (Large edible termites). I watched with a smile as he dug on top of a large termite mound, the result was a slanting pit leading down to half of a plastic jug that had been buried in the clay. The whole pit was probably 2 m long and 1 m wide and about a foot deep. Long arching branches spanned the top of the pit, these are then covered with banana leaves and piles of leafy branches cut from nearby trees. The purpose of this is to darken the inside of the pit to encourage the termites to come out and eventually fall into the jug.

I am not sure why the termites act this way, but Prince was excited at the possibility of catching them – the resulting sale of the termites would bring a much needed boost to his income at a difficult time of year. One tin of termites (~20L) brings between 6,000 and 15,000 Malawi Kwacha (about 12 to 30 USD). Considering that the average household in Malawi currently earns around 80k to 150k kwacha a year, this is a noticeable chunk of potential money. (as of this writing the MWK to USD conversion was around 500 to 1)

I had come to find Prince so that we could plant some Moringa trees at his house – we were planning ahead for some live fence posts to use for a shed he was hoping to make next year. I left him to put the finishing touches on the termite trap while I went to retrieve the last of the Moringa seeds from the treasurer of the community tree nursery. When I returned I found him smiling ear to ear with a toothy grin as he dug a hole under one side of the termite mound.

“Have you ever tasted the honey of this animal?” he coyly asks.

Confused, I ask a few questions and watch as he eventually unearths the beginnings of a small hive of a tiny species of stingless, communal bees. The hive was buried deep in the bowels of the termite chambers. All of the digging has unearthed loads of guard termites – 1cm long insects with huge heads and pincers that can easily break skin. Comically the body seems like an afterthought as the sole purpose of these blind termite warriors is to attack anything that threatens the termite nest and to block tunnels from further enemy entry by stopping them up with their chunky noggins. Apparently the teeny bees are always found in termite mounds, they must take some advantage of the protection offered by the guards.

I laughed aloud many times as I watched Prince gingerly try to pick his way around the termites in his attempts to reach the cache of honey. He poked & prodded and unsuccessfully flicked the offending insects away from the slowly pooling prize. I watched as they aimlessly wandered blindly in circles, vainly trying to find the offending predator that has opened up their home.

 I winced sympathetically as he finally took my advice.

“I think you are just going to have to suck it up and shove your hand in there.”

Into the fray his hand went. He got the worst of it in the first wave, and after pulling many tightly clamped pincers from his skin, he was able to scoop the rest of the honey out of the ground and into a small plastic container. During the process I yelped as a few stray warriors latched onto my bare toes and fingers.

It was clearly worth the effort, Prince licked his honey soaked fingers and palms clean. We laughed and smiled together as he started to take bites of the humorously small honey comb. With eat bite he ingested honey, wax, bee bread (stored pollen), larvae and bees alike. You bet I tried it as well. The honey was delicious, though still no match for the best honey taken from proper hives up on the Nyika plateau. The comb with the pollen was, however, unworldly. An exceptional variety of rich, flowery flavors swirled my tongue. The sweet taste was so intense that only the smallest bit was needed.

Shortly after this the sky darkened and light rains started in around us. Because of the weather we were unable to capture the mphalata, but it was still easily one of my favorite moments with my friend Prince to happen so far. I do look forward to eating termites with him, as those little critters are surprisingly tasty once salted and fried up.

The Rains

It is wet, very wet.

Jan 21, 2015

Dry season has been fully over here in Thazima for a month now, we received rains weeks before the rest of most of the country. Showers take place daily, often replaced with heavy rains at night and in the early morning. The temperature has started to drop again and I am reminded by the regular chill that I live in the mountains.

(*note, this was originally written prior to the devastating floods that have taken place in other parts of the country.)

So it has been a few months, sorry friends! Zimachitika (It Happens)!

November and December saw the end of the dry season. Uh… well sort of but not really. While hot season temperatures soared elsewhere in Malawi, the avg. daily temperature remained fairly mild here in Thazima – one of the benefits of living in the mountains. That isn’t to say that it wasn’t sunny and parched enough to make my early start on a permaculture garden difficult at best. My daily routine involved at least one ~3k round trip to the borehole to carry 20L on my head - the water I used for cooking, cleaning, bathing, and watering the few seedlings that clung to life. My water routine was frugal, to say the least, and every extra drop went to the few plants I was able to establish.



Slow Start in the dry season

 

                                     Dry season at the lake - During Lake of Stars Music Fest

                                    Dry Season on the Nyika Plateau - During Camp TIECH

Malawi has been burdened by a month long delay in the start of the rainy season - a problem that will affect food security in many parts of the country. It is estimated that at least 650,000 people will need food aid. Fortunately several governments and NGO's have pledged support in advance.

Thazima (and the Nyika Plateau in general) is unique in that annual rainfall levels are consistently high and even in the dry season, there are once monthly light showers. Local farmers have still had cause to stress about the very noticeable delay in rains. Locally the rainy season typically starts in late November -This year we saw 3 days of showers, and then weeks of patchy and insufficient rains until the very end of December. Finally the skies opened up and light but consistent rains allowed farmers to begin planting their maize and tobacco just before Christmas.



When it rains...



It pours.



On the plus side - Things are finally growing in my pathetic soil

It has been wonderful watching the colors shift over the last few months. The first notable move away from dry season came the week I was at camp TIECH in mid-October. 2 unusual days of solid rains sparked the first changes. At this point you could taste the dry season in the air - a layer of dusty and windblown brown and red dirt seemed to coat everything, this was along with the constant ash; dry season is a time of burning in Malawi. Brushfires and crop residues are set alight in very misguided attempts to ward off snakes and prepare fields for the next season, the ashes find their way into your homes and sometimes food. This worst case farming practice is deep rooted in the culture, based on old and terribly outdated slash and burn shifting agriculture techniques. It is probably the most harmful and yet hardest practice to change here.

Anyways, the rains in Oct. allowed the deep rooted trees to tap into that groundwater and come alive much earlier than any of the shrubs and grasses. It was as if they had been given permission to get a head start on the growing season, eeking out inches of growth between Oct. and Dec., the verdant woodlands of Nyika showed a vastly different world than that of the rest of Malawi - One full of life as verdant trees set flower in order to develop seeds in time for the real rains.

                                                 Thazima after the rains had started

During this time I set to work on my small plot of land next to the house. I was given approximately 1/8^th? Of an acre of low fertility soil by Mzikilla, my village headman (almost as if a challenge – “see what you can do with THAT azungu…”). No longer suitable for maize, the staple crop of Malawi, it had been relegated to cassava. The cassava plants leaving large amounts of exposed soil that only worsened the erosion with dry season wind and the first rains.

                                                                      Storms A Brewin'

I set about the task of improving the soil over the next growing season, starting with the sweaty and backbreaking work of creating contour ridges – A permanent feature intended to control erosion and hold more water in the soil. Next over many, many, trips I hauled stacks of old roofing grass I was allowed to take from a nearby house to use as a mulch layer. Over the last year I have allowed natural trees to start regenerating, pruning them along the way for vertical growth, instead of cutting them down or burning them out as is the local practice. With the first rains I planted vetiver grass, papaya, and pineapple suckers along the contour ridges. Pineapple and papaya have been shown in other developing nations to be successful cash crops to supplement erosion control measures when planted in this way.

UH! Dig those contour ridges!

Finally, with the onset of the very regular and constant rains of the wet season I have planted beans for a food crop and Tephrosia vogeli as the primary soil improving plant. Tephrosia is widely used in the tropics and is a locally available small tree that is known for its fast growth, even in poor soils. More importantly, is its ability to improve those soils via nitrogen fixing nodes on roots that grow deep, allowing water to penetrate the soil.

At this point the intent is to improve the soil in the field enough for next season when I hope to plant local maze intercropped with beans and Tephrosia without purchasing fertilizer.

I have also been teaching my neighbor about the benifits of making a compost pile, and the resulting rich soil has been helping us when planting the tree seedlings we have been putting in. He still doesn't quite get the importance of maintaining one, but the concept is slowly sinking in.

It has been quite a learning process. Upon arriving in country I dove into and devoured any literature I could get my hands on with regards to permaculture and improved agriculture techniques – especially ones that have already been shown to work in this country. As my garden grows I have begun to figure out what works in my area and at what time of the year. The next task is convincing people that the changes they can make are worth their time. I need to tailor my efforts in a way that makes teaching and learning the techniques easiest and most likely to be adopted. Hopefully this demonstration plot goes a long way in supplementing those efforts. I am already enjoying the changes the rainy season is bringing – I can’t wait to see what I can do a year from now.

 Thanks for reading my boring agriculture post!

P.S. You may have been following the international news following the heavy rains that have set in and caused extensive damage around the country. Malawi has been called a disaster area by the president and is receiving extensive aid following heavy flooding in Karonga in the north and deadly floods much further south in the country. (later the flooding impacted districts was extended to include almost half of the countries 28 districts) As of the writing of this, the floods have been subsiding and all PCV’s have remained safe. The next year will be tough for the country as efforts take place to recover from the damages, loss of life, and loss of important crops.

                               It feels good to be green again! (my daily walk to the park office)