A wheelbarrow for NGP - a fundraising plea

Nature's Gift Permaculture is a centre (on the farm of Nature's Gift, Lilongwe, Malawi) that provides "training and education through demonstration with the goal of achieving community based food and nutrition security" (http://www.naturesgiftpermaculture.org/)

I have been working on the farm for the last 3 and a half weeks. Here is a bit of a background on the place:

The residential areas are converted horse stables made from fired mud bricks and thatch, wich keeps the place well ventlated.



Our water comes from a borewhole that is pumped up using solar power. The centre is based around the principles of permaculture. On their website, the centre states that "Permaculture systems are ecologically harmonious, efficient and productive."

In this way, the food that is grown here is grown with as little effort as needed to receive maximun results. A nutritionist that regularly works here calls this type of food farming "low-imput, high-yeild farming". If you look at the previous post the principles of permaculture are written there.

We have a (fantastic) composting toilet!






No smell, no flies, no sickness, just wonderfully healthy soil all around!

The biggest project that NGP is undertaking now is to grow jatropha (I think that is how you spell it). Jatropha is a fuel replacement. Growing the seeds and processing them accordinly will yeild good (maybe even better but definitely more sustainable) fuel. In malawi now there is a fuel shortage. This is mainly due to the fact that there is no forex in the country (hence the demonstations - a post on this to come). However, realistically, we have few years left of fuel and we need to start making a plan, fast. Ironically, eventhough we have no fuel here to to mismanagament of funds, in a way Malawi is also better off - the country is getting a headstart at preparing themselves for when there really is no more fuel. Out come the bicycle taxis and lift sharing etc etc etc.

Malawi is lucky to have a place like NGP. Infact, Eston Mgala, the big go-to man on anything to do with permaculture, and who is also the community outreach coordinator for the centre, says that his goal is to make Malawi a permaculture country. He says Malawi is small enough to not e daunted my the hugeness of the project. He is going to the International Permaculture Conference in Jordan later this year, and when he returns he is going to present, to the Malawian government, permaculture as the model for sustainable development (real sustainable development, says Eston) in the country.

The centre is only a years and a half old. Their funding is not expansive, and things are sometimes a bit tight. Also, the centre is not starting tree propogation and the commercial garden is being revemped in order to grow and sell a larger variety of vegetables and fruits. Becasue there is so much happening, the one and only wheelbarrow that the centre owns if often needed in more than one place. A new wheelbarrow costs 14 000 kwacha, which is about R650. Nothing really, but when everthing is expensive in Malawi and the centre has other more pressing needs for their money, they right now cannot afford to but another wheelbarrow.

And so I am asking all those who can spare R50, R100, even R30, to please get in contact with me and I will give you banking details (my banking details because I want to get all the money together and then suprise the centre with the full amount in one go - obviously acreditted to you all).

I really hope that you can all, in some way, help out with getting the centre a wheelbarrow.



Kelvin (and I) say Zikomo kwambiri - thank you very much!

A Return to the Kitchen

Let us suppose that in order to be a liberated woman, you need to renounce skirts, children and home life, and instead embrace office jobs, suits and power positions.

Now let us suppose that in order to empower yourself, in whatever position you find yourself in, you take the power to choose what will liberate yourself, how you will liberate yourself and choose to do what makes you happy and not what is perceived as the 'right' position.

Meet Julia*. She is a graduate of a good Malawian boarding school and of an auto-electrical college. However, she has chosen to learn to cook good, balance, nutritious foods; home grown organic foods, and make people aware of what they eat.

About a year and a half ago, Julia and her husband did the Permaculture Design Certificate and have since moved to Nature's Gift Permaculture farm to continue learning about a sustainable way to grow food, cook food, and live. She now over-sees the Food and Nutrition team on the farm.

The farm employs a number of permanent gardeners and Monday to Friday, Julia cooks or oversees the cooking of lunch for the gardeners, the management team and the volunteers and interns that work on the farm.

The emphasis on the meals is that most, if not all, of the food eaten is grown on the farm. The lunches form part of an ongoing demonstration that people can be completely self-sufficient in feeding themselves. The centre wants to show that sustainable grown food can not only ensure food security but also nutrition security.

The permanent permaculture residents on the farm say the same thing, you can have food security but you also need to have nutrition security is you want to have a healthy country. If you only eat maize, you will become malnourished. Therefore, you have to have a country acknowledges its richness is food resources and is therefore will nourished.

According to management and other workers on the farm, Julia takes huge pride in her garden, as much pride it seems as a person might take in their first big pay cheque or their doctorate degree from a prestigious university.

She learnt to cook from her mother. But she also used her taste sense. In this way she learnt to cook food that she felt like, that seemed like a nice taste combination and that were what she liked (at the time anyway).

Julia has one son, Kevin, and he was born with malaria. But with proper medication and most importantly proper nutrition he is now the fattest, brightest, bouncy-est baby I have seen in a long time. He rarely cries, even now when he is teething.

Just goes to show the importance of balanced, healthy food!

Story Gathering in Malawi #1

So after much determination, positivity and some tears, I have an internship in Malawi, gathering some ol' stories, writing some ol' childrens' books and illustrating them ol' books. *pause for ecstatic dancing*

In about a month and a half to two months time I will be working just outside of Lilongwe, Malawi at a place called Nature's Gift Permaculture, a community centre that centres around permaculture (ethical food planting, effortless food planting, all-benefiting and non-invasive food planting) (find the link to NGP in the heading on on the side of this blog under "my favourite links" section). My brief (a snippet from the e-mail that Hope Thornton sent me):

"We think that one of the most effective ways of teaching about permaculture is through song, dance, and stories.  Would you be interested in an internship that focuses on education through story telling- perhaps with the final outcome being a children's book (written in Chichewa and English?). You could work with local communities surrounding our area to help you gather data regarding already existing stories and provide space for living and a base for research."

I am going to be the 'leader' of the project, self-directing, self-motivating etc etc etc. Hope has told me that the centre is only about a year old and so they do not have a lot of extra man power to throw around. But they will have in-put in directing me towards specific themes that they want to focus on. However, with me being the director I can use the themes as spring boards and can also focus on things on the side line that may not directly relate to specific projects. 

What I foresee is that I will be doing anthropological field work, theatre/drama-type workshops, art and story work shops and documenting story tellings (pictures and videos) and anything else deemed appropriate. This is why I love love love field work, because while you have an idea of what you would like to look for, you essentially go into the field not knowing what you will find and how you will go about finding it! And it is with this unknowing stand-point that you often find the most amazing finds. Because you do not have a preconceived idea about what you will find,  it is like starting a new life each time you go into the field. It is like you have a new chance to treat this situation in a better way. You spend your life living your life in a certain way, stuck in a rut, or not necessarily stuck but pretty much doing everything in much the same way. Which is great and is what I would like to have. When I have done everything else that I want to do: 
-like shave my hair
-live in an ashram
-learn all the different dances around the world (while travelling to each of these places)
-hike to base camp of Everest
-live in a light house for more than a week
-live on/work as part of a crew of a tug boat
-dance at the Moulin Rouge and then 
-dance with Madam Zingara's or Vaudeville. 

Then I would like to (maybe) buy a house. Maybe rent... But have a place where I can unpack my books, buy my own bed and my own coffee pot where I will make coffee every morning, check my emails, do whatever work I am doing, clean my house every Saturday morning. And maybe paint the walls a colour that I love. 

If at this stage I am still an Anthropologists and I am still going out into the field, then I will still have a new start each time I start a new project. And even if I have routine I will still have pockets of excitement, heady excitement, when I don't know what I will find, and who I will become. Because in field work, you can't but help being changed by the experience, and sometimes in profound ways. You may learn a lesson, experience a shift in beliefs and values or you may change your life's path completely. And all in participating in Anthropological field work. Qualitative field work, where it doesn't matter that you will only have worked with one community in your work (unlike say Sociology or Economics field work where researchers do quantitative study, where amount matters more than the in depth quality) and that it will have taken a few months. What is important is that you have focused on specific examples, areas or situations and therefore we realise that there are no over arching solutions or answers to the problems or questions in the world. And this is why you can work with the same themes in you life work, but each situ is new and fresh - cliche? A fresh start.

*

In Malawi, I will be starting a-fresh, in more than one way. Keep connected and you will see how. You can subscribe to my blog, and if you are friends/family with anyone else who has expressed desire to keep updated about what I am doing on my adventures, then please tell them to subscribe to my blog. I would love to hear from you all, so comment and get involved with my stories, adventure and research. 

My progress thus far is this: I have money from my 21st that I will use a small portion off, added to my small saving to pay for immunisations and transport costs to get to Malawi. Hopefully there I will be provided with accommodation (this is still  unknown on my side). But I have applied for several fundings so these will (they will they will they will!) kick into effect a few weeks into my travels. If anyone knows of anyone who has an old digital camera (one with removable lenses, not a little point and shoot), an old one that they are no longer going to use and would like to donate it, do let me know. And if you know of anyone else who has any gear that I might need, gear that they are definitely NOT going to use again, do do do let me know. 

Until "Story Gathering in Malawi #2"

Keep excited