Planting Malawi October 2009 Newsletter

October 2009

EMMANUEL INTERNATIONAL MALAWI

PRAYER & PRAISE:  We had a great time with Andre’s parents who were able to visit us for 2 weeks  Lara turned 6 and Ezera will be 3 tomorrow!  Pray that Alex will be able to find a new ministry that fits  Our neighbour, Uncle Dixie, is in the hospital with meningitis. Our househelp was in the hospital with meningitis last week and has recovered fine  Pray that we’ll be able to finish the toilets and shallow wells before the rains come  Praise for subsidized fertilizer for the poor. Pray for good rains and harvest

Planting Malawi Isaiah 61.3

an update from the VanWoerdens in Malawi

Back in Namasalima [river diversion project] Five hundred people, digging every day – not working in their gardens, preparing for planting, but stretched out in a long line, digging a channel. This was the scene in Namasalima on any given day this month, in the early morning hours. It’s a race against time, to beat the rains. Because when the rains come again, it will not only be time for planting maize, the people of Namasalima will also live with a fear that their homes will be flooded again.

was damaged again. Fixing the dike was really only treating the symptom. The real problems are deforestation upriver and agricultural encroachment on the river, which has caused heavy siltation.

The course of the river was changed, forcing water to flow up against the dike, which was causing erosion of the dike. So this year, we de[see River Diversion, p. 2]

This is the same place we fixed the dike last year. There was no flooding last rainy season even though the dike

Counting Elephants [game count at the national park]

Lara is 6!

It was time for the annual game count at Liwonde National Park. I (Andre) decided to take our gardener with me, since he had the weekend off and I knew he had never seen an elephant or any other wildlife. The first day we walked a 13km transect across the park. It was a long walk and a little disappointing because we really didn’t see much. Only if you were walking right up front with the armed park ranger, did you have a chance to catch sight of a fleeting antelope or warthog.

After our long bush walk, Isaac had lost hope that we would see any elephants that weekend. But I assured him we wouldn’t be going home until we’d seen an elephant. We went for a drive through the park and saw more wildlife than we could count. We started losing track after about 50 elephants (but saw 100-plus) and hundreds of waterbuck, impala, kudu, bushbuck, warthogs, and baboons, as well as a few hippos and a couple distant crocodiles. The next day we

sat at a hide for the game count. Not only were we trying to count dozens of various kinds of antelope and warthogs, we soon discovered we were surrounded by elephants. First a group of 7 to our right (which turned out to be 11), and then a group standing in the trees to our left – we could count about 15, but on closer inspection and counting and recounting many times turned out to be 29 – and then a herd of 38 on the [see Elephants, p. 2]

P L A N T I N G M AL AWI | O C TO BE R 2 0 0 9

River Diversion [cont’d from p.1] cided to divert the river by reclaiming the original channel. Over time, what was once a river has been converted to gardens by farmers taking advantage of residual moisture during the dry season. So starting the river reclamation project involved 500 villagers digging up immature crops of maize and tomatoes to make room for the river to flow once again. After digging a channel of some 800 meters and placing approximately 5,000 sandbags to build and repair dikes, each participant received a 50kg bag of maize and 10kg of beans at the distribution yesterday. We beat the rain!

Elephants

Randomly Malawi:

move behind us. When the weekend was all done, we had seen more than 200 elephants and countless other game (and unfortunately also found too many poachers’ snares). It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to count all those animals! And I think I fulfilled my promise on seeing elephants – a successful first African safari for Isaac.

I (Alex) helped organize a fundraiser for the church – a jumbo sale and fun day. They needed prizes for some of the games, which the pastor volunteered to buy. I was a little surprised when he came back with sugar, soap, deodorant, and notebooks for prizes. I was even more surprised when people were excited about the prizes and kept buying tickets for a chance to win. This is Malawi! Sugar and soap are luxuries, and deodorant, well, it’s out of this world (body odour)!

Digging Toilets We are currently building 24 pit la- especially at Namasalima. So it’s good trines at 2 schools (Mbidi and Misango to see the latrines under construction Schools, which we’ve written about be- now. It’s a much needed development. fore). Neither of the schools had any The only problem is that the funding for both projects came toilets – actually, most late in the season so, rural primary schools just like the dike, it’s don’t really have any pit latrines being a race against the toilets, which makes lined with bricks rain, to line the 4for some bad sanitameter deep pits with tion conditions – 1600 bricks (we don’t want barefoot students, to be building fish “toilets” in the general ponds). So far the bamboo area which is progress has been a minefield to walk good but we still through, and no desks need at least another except a common week or so to finish dirty floor to sit on lining all the pits. with up to 400 stuOnce we’re above dents per class. I told ground, the supermyself I wouldn’t want structure can be built, to leave Malawi withrain or no rain. out doing something about that problem,

Malawians generally follow instructions to a T. Alex had asked someone to go buy something at the store and bring back a receipt and all the change. When he came he was distraught because the cashier had been unable to give him 50 tambala of his change (about 1/3 of a penny). While I was telling Andre this, we saw a policeman directing traffic, furiously waving his arms at cars coming from all directions – he was really taking his job seriously! And at Andre’s river diversion project, the people had been instructed to dig a channel 5m wide by 1.5m deep. During the project people complained that the sides kept caving in, which is not surprising considering the channel is exactly 5m x 1.5m, straight sides and all!. But that’s what they were told to do I guess! It’s been almost six months without rain (except for the occasional sprinkling) and the rains could come any day now. People have been busy preparing their gardens, making ridges, so that they’re ready for planting as soon as the first rains arrive. People are also busy fixing their roofs, adding grass, and building new homes so that they might have a dry place to sleep.

Thank you for your continued prayers and support!! Andre & Alexandra VanWoerden [Lara, Talia, Ezera] Private Bag 12 Zomba Malawi 265.888.169.380 (Andre) or 265.888.169.382 (Alex) [email protected] vw-mw.blogspot.com

Emmanuel International Canada PO Box 4050 Stouffville ON L4A 8B6 905.640.2111 [email protected] www.eicanada.org