Love's Harvest 2010
Helping the rural poor of Malawi grow the food they need on their own land.
We had intended to visit three villages today but one of them, Phalombe, was so remote that we decided we couldn’t safely fit it in our program and ensure we would be back for our flight home tomorrow. We drove East to Mulanje and the beautiful countryside around Mount Mulanje, the third highest peak in all of Africa, to see Soza and Nambiti villages. Soza was our first Mothers’ Union goat project and we were delighted to meet the women again, show them their pictures in our newsletters, and see how the goats and gardens were doing. 22 original goats had become 53 earlier in the year, and today we learned of 19 new babies for a total of 70 goats. There are 53 women in the project, and all have kitchen gardens at their homes. Yasinta told us that some women from Mozambique had asked to join the project and were welcomed.
Mulanje Parish is very close to the Mozambique border. The secretary of the project spoke of the advantages of the kitchen gardens. After eating the produce, they sell the surplus and have some funds for school fees and supplies for their children. The women are not doing Permaculture yet, as Pastor Joseph’s training was cancelled due to impassable roads earlier in the year. Pastor Joseph gave the women some tips to get started in the weeks before he returns for five days of teaching. The Mothers’ Union presented us with many gifts of sugar cane, bananas, papayas, and vegetables. They sang to us, “The love which you have given us we are harvesting right now.” Our Love’s Harvest team has been speaking about evangelism as it is perceived in the American church, particularly in light of the news that some Love’s Harvest projects are serving to attract new members to the Anglican Church. They want to be where the action is! It can be difficult for Episcopalians to address the call to evangelism, and this trip has underscored for us the connection between outreach and evangelism.
From Soza we went to Nambiti, a One Village at a Time project supported by St. Mark’s New Canaan, CT. There we received a splendid gift from God. As we drove up a very familiar dirt road, we recognized Nambiti as Manyamba, the site of Kate and John’s very first project in Malawi: St. James’ Partners-in-Mission 2007 building of a priest’s house.
John, Cindy and Kate had returned in 2008 and Kate preached at the Sunday service. It turns out that Manyamba changed its name due to some issue related to the head man! We were overjoyed to be back in the village again, back in Mulanje where John met Pastor Joseph for the first time, and to embrace those people we had worked and played and ate with, celebrating come together to do a new thing through Love’s Harvest.
Like Soza, Nambiti has not yet received training, but they’ve started their gardens and should soon receive their goats. We met with Fr. Evans Rashid, a relatively new young priest who is living in the house St. James’ helped to build. The group of 20 women have elected their project leaders and will soon be getting started with Permaculture. Fr. Rashid spoke about the motivation this project will provide, not only for the women but for the whole parish, to help those who are struggling. We prayed together and then ate lunch in Fr. Rashid’s home before heading back to Blantyre.
This evening we went to Yasinta’s home for a festive and delicious farewell dinner. We were hosted by Yasinta and her husband Leonard, who serves as a financial advisor and facilitator for Love’s Harvest, along with their children Lucy and Steven. We presented gifts, spoke of our action plan for the remainder of 2010 and expressed our thanksgiving for the talented leadership, love and dedication of Yastina, Leonard and Pastor Joseph over the past three years. It was very hard to say goodbye.
Before heading to the airport tomorrow morning, we have one last meeting at 8:00 am with Rowlands Kaotcha, Country Director for Malawi of The Hunger Project. Then it’s off to Chileka Airport for our flight to Johannesburg and then home. We have had a very full program these two weeks and will need some time to process what we learned. Our group of five plans to get together in the early fall to reflect on this rich experience and plan for our future.
Zikomo Kwambiri (thank you very much)! If you would like to support the work of Love’s Harvest or receive more information about Permaculture in Malawi, please visit www.lovesharvest.org.
