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)