Love's Harvest 2010
Helping the rural poor of Malawi grow the food they need on their own land.
Today’s program included visits to Shire Parish and Malawi Parish. We began at the home of Fr. Medson Mulomole of St. Mary’s at Chigaru, and saw our very first kitchen garden designed by a priest at his own home. Pastor Joseph was terribly impressed that Fr. Medson is studying kitchen gardens and it is a clearly a huge advantage for One Village at a Time projects to have a priest advocating Permaculture in his community. Sophia Tiesa, the treasurer, showed us her kitchen garden before leading us to the demonstration garden, which was off to a very good start. Pastor Joseph encouraged the women to use grey water from washing plates and clothes, mixing it with ash to apply to the soil. Chigaru is a parish with great potential. Its priest has vision which impacts the parishioners. Fr. Medson has purchased five hectares of land for a larger Permaculture project and he presented Love’s Harvest with a development plan for consideration.
Chigaru is also the site of one of St. James’s priest house building projects. It is a dream of Love’s Harvest to see more networking between Episcopal mission projects in Malawi, integrating various efforts so that our projects begin to support and nurture one another. This is particularly exciting as it relates to St. James’ because John Springer and Kate Malin were first introduced to Malawi on a St. James’ mission trip in 2007.
We then drove to Malawi Parish, to St. Paul’s Church, to meet Fr. Dan Mzimbo, the Youth Director for the Diocese and Priest in Charge of Malawi Parish. Like Fr. Medson, Fr. Dan is a stellar example of a creative, dynamic parish priest. Two years ago, Love’s Harvest began one of its initial efforts at kitchen gardens in Malawi Parish and it was a failure. The problem of access to water was insurmountable at the time. After that visit, John and Kate did not expect to see much at St. Paul’s. What a surprise! Without question, this demonstration garden was the best we’d seen.
Lush, full of a variety of thriving plants, protected by “soldier” plants, it was spectacular. Fr. Dan pointed to the scrubby plain land surrounding it and said that the garden used to look just like it. Pastor Joseph struggled to find the words to express his happiness. All around the garden fence, the children were lively and laughing, drummers were drumming, people were chatting. There was such life in this place, a complete change from the last time we were here. Fr. Dan is a marvelous leader, and although there has been no change at all in the women’s access to water, there has been an enormous change in their mindset. Each woman has been given a pig from Love’s Harvest in addition to a kitchen garden at her home. The pig kholas were stand-outs architecturally. John Springer Architect gave their owners kudos for such excellent design. Fr. Dan spoke powerfully about the blessing of Love’s Harvest, saying “You helped us discover where we were and then you lifted us up.”
We spoke with the women about plans for harvesting, about selling and valuing the produce. The women plan to bank some funds, use others to help the vulnerable people in the community, and some to improve the church. We were delighted to learn that while Love’s Harvest provided the pigs and the cement for the individual women, the parish contributed the rest of the materials for the pig kholas. This sharing of resources is a very healthy sign. We met two widows who had “lost everybody,” who did everything on their own. They each had a garden and a pig and were very excited to be able to provide for themselves. After visiting at these two parishes, our group returned to Blantyre to do a little shopping for gifts for our families and friends in the U.S. Then we were off to Agnes Mkoko’s house for tea. Agnes is the former Mother’s Union coordinator for the Diocese of Upper Shire. Though recently retired, Agnes was instrumental in getting Love’s Harvest off the ground in that Diocese and we enjoyed seeing her home (and Permaculture kitchen garden) and hearing about her work providing for orphans on a family farm.
We then had a lovely visit at the home of John Msusa, our extraordinary driver whose wisdom, expertise and care made this entire trip possible. We met his wife Chimwemwe and his four beautiful daughters for a second lovely tea! (In case anyone is worried that we are not eating enough in Malawi, you may put those fears to rest). Our last meeting of the day was dinner with Geoffrey Tamutamu, Diocesan Public Health Officer. We caught up with him on his various projects, including Nets for Life, and had a lively discussion about monitoring and evaluation and capacity building—two phases Love’s Harvest is getting used to as our projects expand. Tomorrow is our last full day in Malawi and we will see two villages in beautiful Mulanje. The five of us will also begin to think about how to process this trip, how to re-enter our lives and where we go from here.
