I am currently on my seventh week in Nkhata Bay working mainly on a permaculture project run by Butterfly Space, a not-for-profit lodge, which trains teachers to run an after-school club. This project is active in fifteen schools across the district; these are split into three clusters of five schools so that hopefully, over time, they will develop an interdependency and can rely upon each other for seeds, tools, information etc. I’ve visited most of them already (by car, by bike or on foot) and you can see some of the pictures above.
A lot of my work involves assisting in the organisational aspects of the project since there are several visits each week, photographs needed from each school, survey information to be updated, and old documents to be reviewed and updated if necessary. Josie (the project manager) will be going back to the UK for a few months and is showing me the ropes to take over as interim project manager while she is away. In June and July there will be a number of school visits to see other permaculture sites, and nearly all schools will also host a community open day; in August there will be a teacher training hosted in Butterfly Space.
I am also working with Africa Direct on some smaller community projects, one of which is a developing a small-scale moringa farm with three Malawian women – Alice, Ivy and Jane. The project is called Umoyo Moringa and is based in Bewlyero village outside of Nkhata Bay. The project has been running since last year and is getting to a point where the moringa is nearly harvestable. The goal of the project is to eventually develop a co-op around the farm and become one of the main producers of moringa in the Northern region, since most moringa is transported up from Southern Malawi. Moringa itself it dubbed as ‘one of the world’s new superfoods’ since it is highly nutritious, as well as relatively easy to grow, harvest and produce on a small scale.
Africa Direct is also involved in a small building project in one of the fifteen schools involved in the permaculture project. They wish to avail of the network already established and help develop these clusters. Currently we are reviewing information collected from surveys given to each of the schools and using supporting photographs to assess the needs of each school and see which school would most benefit from this project.
Everything is going well. I found a place to rent within the first two weeks of arriving. There’s a lot of multilateral relationships between small local projects and everyone helps each other out. I quickly met a lot of people living around, locals and foreigners, and have a group of mates to hang out with after work.
International Development Placement 2019 