Temwa - Sustainable Community Development, Malawi

Sunday, 21 May 2006 00:00

We have recently started a new project, a demonstration garden, this has been set up so that we can look at ways of improving diversity in people’s diets and to cut the costs of doing so. This project is particularly pertinent at the present due to the well documented food shortages that almost half of Malawians are experiencing right now. Incidentally this issue seems to have slipped to the bottom of the pile as far as the international media are concerned.

Julia, our current volunteer, has worked hard to make this project a success over the last few months and we all anticipate the results to be positive in the first year. The project grows varieties of vegetables that may be suitable to the local climate but varieties, which haven’t been grown in Usisya up to now. Things like spaghetti marrow, butternut squash, courgettes etc. So firstly an objective is to show people that there are many new vegetable types that people could be growing in Usisya.

Secondly, there are 2 experiments running in parallel. Half the beds are being fed with chemical insecticides and fertilizer and the other half with homemade remedies and organic liquid fertilizer. Hopefully over time the latter method will prove to be more profitable though perhaps this won’t be obvious until a couple of years down the line. If it does become obvious then it should reduce the cost of having such a garden considerably.

So far everything appears to growing well, except for Okra, which is being eaten by an unidentifiable pest. We’ve also set up varying systems of irrigation from under ground piping to your conventional watering can. Apparently only 10% of water reaches where its supposed to unlike 90% if it is fed from below the surface. Hopefully this will show an obvious difference in time.

The most important thing with this project is that its highly visible. We want everyone to come in and take a look around and maybe take away with them some of the methods we are using. The visibility also means that this project can’t just fizzle out. It puts Temwanani under the sort of pressure we should be under, to actually make a difference here in Usisya. And finally the potential benefits of such a project can be shared by all and not just a minority.

Having done a great deal to set up this project Julia has now had to leave Temwanani to return to the UK and we all want to say thank you for helping us no end with everything over the last 5 months. We have all learnt a lot from you and people here will miss you.

We plan to end this year’s growing season (April/May) in the Demonstration Garden with another open day where we will present all the information about the project as well as samples of all the vegetables grown for people to taste. We will also be taking seeds from the harvest in an attempt to set up a seed bank so people have ready access to the seeds of these new types of vegetables.

We all really believe that this project is incredibly important so fingers crossed that there’ll be a lot more variety in what people eat in Usisya for the future

Report by Project Manager Sam Clark.