Lessons learned

A training took place. Twenty Malawian men and women, all different ages, gathered here at the center for a one week permaculture instruction. Permaculture can be loosely defined as: a deliberate effort in designing a life that provides a reasonable amount of human needs while rebuilding the natural systems. Let’s just say it is more the sum of its parts, and these parts are very practical and respectable ways of living. For example: conserve resources (water tanks with solar panels and seed saving), reusing resources (composting and redirecting your grey water), and growing a whole bunch of different organic veggies and fruit trees (not necessarily in tidy straight rows) that are beneficial to each other, as well as your health and eventually the soil. I don’t see too many hippy dippy Malawians, and I believe these approaches to be necessary in an environment where resources, food, and money are taxed, limited, and essential. These methods, among many others, are demonstrated here at the center and taught to various Malawian individuals and communities. At the end, a graduation ceremony. Faces are shining as they receive their diploma and energies burst as dancing and the singing create a live band without instruments. Biswick, a lead instructor that lives here at the center, performed like a warrior chief stoking his ramparts for war when he sang. And Sam, the visiting instructor from Monkey bay with the gentle lion heart; danced with the flexibility of a yogi.  Everyone celebrated with such joy and abandon; their accomplishment inspiring release through song and dance and purpose.

As for my own lessons. Bent nails are hammered straight and reused as if new. PVC pipe is ugly but also durable against the termites. Hot chilli pepper water can help clear an aphid problem, but also burn your gloveless hand for about eight hours following. The air potato… it actually grows on vines and tastes exactly like a potato! Colonialism is alive and well. Hitchhikers are as regular as a glass of water. Joyce Banda is the president of Malawi, and also a woman! Hope you like Carlsberg.  Light bulbs here burst to let you know when they are done. Toads like to sleep in shoes. Loofas grow on trees.  ‘Zikomo’ means thank you.

I wake to what sounds like a bonfire party in the distance, but it is only the diversity of birds rising up the sun. Woodpeckers are prevalent throughout the day. So too is the off and on singing and laughing of all the Malawian workers here. I can hear when they just dumped a new bucket of groundnuts near my room. Stories are swapped between me and the interns or else I’m bumbling Chichewa (the local language) to a passing Malawian. A hyena yelps in the distance letting you know evening is setting. Bushbabies (which I really hope to see!) are the sort of clucking noise I’m told. I fall asleep to the sound of crickets, cats scrapping, that damn rooster. It is brisk out and I do not regret my flannel sheets.

And beyond...

Dirt paths line the sides of the tarmac where you can watch bicycles and people traveling as the airplane lands. They parallel the highway, leading into the city Lilongwe, which resembles more of a large scattered town, sectioned off into areas (Area 1, Area, 2, Area 44), with dozens of roundabouts shared with bicycles and left hand traffic, pedestrian crossing spontaneously, booths hawking cell phones, hubcaps, and/or belts, dusty shopping centers and supermarket bargain margins, dirty trousers and colorful chitenje (cloth wraps), sacks on heads or carts heaping. All very bustling. I live in Area 44. The streets narrow as the dirt paths widen and become the road that leads to my new home. It’s called Kusamala.

You enter through the courtyard, which is enclosed by the stable rooms, an office, a common room, house the resident interns. Sizeable rooms with brick walls and concrete floors, single bed and bamboo shelf… electricity! Peanuts have been laid to dry next to the rooms. There is a small garden we open our doors to, with a cozy sitting area under a green covered trellis and hibiscus growing everywhere. Exiting the courtyard, are gardens within gardens.  The resident garden has plants nooked and crannied into any old space, here and there traces of novice planter interns come and gone, and yielding mostly hot peppers at the moment, a bit of kale, and hope. There are wild tomatoes and papaya sprouts popping up in the grey-water collection (maybe not eat those), a banana tree dwarfing an avocado tree, a random poinsettia here, a cow pea there. The chicken coop is behind, housing eleven chickens, a confused rooster, and eight fluffy baby chicks (they just hatched when I arrived!). The commercial garden is beautiful, growing enough vegetables to supply their CSA baskets once a week, and where we often nibble and supplement our own greens from. There is a medicinal garden, a nursery made of bamboo poles and plastic, a ‘memo’ (demonstration) garden, exemplifying permaculture, a food forest, a staple field of maize that has just been harvested and is waiting to be ground up… I will get a full on tour tomorrow.

There are three other interns at the moment, Daniel here ten months and can speak Chichewa like a local, Carolina a spunky old spainard, and Piere who is endeavoring to start up his own NGO in the area. Interns seem to come and go, always leaving traces and stories behind, a booming beehive, a failed herb spiral, a thatched dome, to name a few, and all the planting in between.  There are three resident workers: Molly the director, Catherine is logistics, and Marie is the chief agricultural officer. They along with the handsome Malawians, two very knowledgeable permaculture heads (Inuk and Biswick), a handful of farm workers (stoked to have just discovered Rosetta Stone -English), three African ladies who cook lunch, all run the center. Everyone has fun and inspiring stories, are quick with a smile, and a definite sense of humor.

This, I believe, to be key to living here. As most everything built is ramshackled together, often out of tire string and bamboo, and frogs hopping out of the wood-works, our rooster crowing at midnight, there are spiders out of your worst nightmares, pot holes the size of VWs, a stove that works half the time, night gaurds who ward off the wild hogs, vuvu the cat snarfing down a snake in the kitchen (!!), and being the bumbling newbee… laughter can be crucial. But so too can the appreciation for the crazy beautiful birds, the smell of dirt and sweat, and the most beautiful sunsets.