Starving in the Land of Plently

Malawi has over 600 indigenous foods rich with nutrients that can be harvested throughout the year. In fact, Hunger Season should be the most fruitful time of year in Malawi. However, nsima is the staple food here and most people focus their efforts on growing maize, which was originally imported from America, to be pounded into Millie Meal for nsima. It was introduced in the 1800’s and local farmers preferred the plant because it is a hardy and maize has its own cover protecting it from pests. Malawians have eaten nsima throughout history and years ago it was made of millet, which actually has more calories per acre than maize, survives fires and does not require fertilizer. In modern Malawi, white nsima is preferred, as white bread is in America. Unfortunately, the finer, whiter second grind (ufa woyela) is preferred to the more nutritious first grind (mgaiwa) for making nisma.

My new passion is learning about permaculture(a theory of ecological design which seeks to develop sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems, by attempting to model them on natural ecosystems). The idea behind Permaculture is to let nature grow the way it wants. If you clear a plot of land and let the soil sit without planting anything it will still begin to grow because nature wants to always go back to its original state. Therefore gardens should not take too much work to continuously produce. Unlike maize which can only be harvested once a year and requires hard labour to till the land, plant and harvest every year which causes moisture and nutrients to escape resulting in a need to water and buy fertilizer.

These are all the foods produced throughout the year on Never Ending Food Farm's 2 acre plot, just outside Lilongwe. http://www.neverendingfood.org/

This is Kristof from Never Ending Food Farm with is maize towering over him. He has inter planted other plant varieties and his maize is twice as tall as the surrounding farmer’s fields and he is yielding more produce per acre.

 

Permaculture also promotes smart design such as using stacking techniques and garden keyholes.

Okay! I am going home to play in my garden now.

Hunger Season

In a Monday morning meeting security briefing my colleagues talked about how the number of break-ins and thief increase during ‘hunger season’, which is a 4 month long season that real people have to endure almost every year. In Ottawa this winter, I was talking to a guy about poverty and he wasn’t concerned about it because ‘people who live in poverty are so happy.’ I tried to point out to him that nobody wants to live in poverty. Poor people have to wake up earlier and work harder everyday just to survive and their health and quality of life is often nowhere near what we are use to in the west, who enjoy fancy things like plumbing, glass or screened windows to keep the bugs out, textbooks in schools, crayons... I hope you can agree with me when I say that guy is an idiot.

Malawi Milk Producers Association (MMPA)

I am working with the MMPA, which is an umbrella group of 3 milk producer associations in Malawi. We have been advocating to ammend the milk act in Malawi which was written when there were 5 large state run dairies and now they just protect a oligopoly of privately owned dairies. However, the majority of people cannot afford that processed milk consuming an average of about 6 litres a year, despite the surplus of milk being produced in some areas of Malawi. This surplus is often wasted because 80% of the population cannot afford to shop in the ‘formal sector’ at super markets and the ‘middle class’ in Malawi is not growing. If we change the policies that protect these monopolies and allow the informal sector to thrive more small holder dairy farmers will have access to emerging markets in the poorer areas. Producing milk that is affordable to the poor and promoting a culture that drinks milk would have significant impacts on a country that suffers food insecurity and malnutrition. For example, 53% of children have stunted growth due to malnutrition and Malawi continues to lose productive power in the labour force as the 12% with HIV/AIDS, including people taking ARV’s require more energy in order to have the strength to work.

Counter arguments are about health and safety; however, there are many factors that complement the informal market including the fact that Malawi has a culture of boiling milk even when it is pasteurized and boiling just as if not more effective at killing disease than pasteurization does. The pasteurized milk is collected from the small holder farmers that would be producing for informal sector so you can’t complain about the source and one is more likely to give a cow TB than to contract it through milk.

I’ll give you more information as it develops.

Stop Stunting

I am pretty used to being the 6 foot baby giraffe towering over everyone, but I do find many Malawians to be particularly short.  I also started noticing public health posters to “stop stunting” all over town. I read that 53% of children have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The main meal here is “nshima” which is corn with all the nutrients smashed out of it and turned into “Miele Meal”, which is then mixed with boiling water and ends up looking a lot like mashed potatoes. At lunch they give you huge portions with a little bit of relish (vegetables), and maybe some local chicken or fish. You use your hands to roll it into a little ball and dip it into the relish. Not very healthy. A lot of the work we do at the VSO Malawi office has cross cutting themes that promote better nutrition and diversifying diets which are vital components of improving food security, securing livelihoods in agriculture, increasing educational levels and improving the quality of life for people living with HIV/AIDS.