New Irrigation Sites with World Relief

World Relief, whose mission is to empower local churches to serve the most vulnerable, works with 30 church communities in Salima District, Malawi. In January we began training Ministry Team members in irrigation techniques at Siyasiya, Salima.

Later this month we will take the trainings to a new site. We are particularly excited for this phase of the project for a number of reasons. First, the new site is remote, which means the people are good farmers, excited to work with townsfolk like us, and rich in resources. The second exciting thing is just how rich in resources: we will be using spring water for the irrigation training.

As you can see in the above picture, that borehole flows without pumping! The means that many farmers don't need water pumps and other farmers can irrigate their gardens higher elevations.

We will begin later this month, working with the World Relief field coordinator to establish a resource management plan for the springs alongside irrigation and fish farming activities.

First Roots in the Ground at Siyasiya, Salima

Farmers were busy in their irrigated gardens the past three weeks, putting to practice what they learned during the initial trainings in April. At Salima, the St. Barnabas irrigation club transplanted tomato seedlings into the first section of their garden.

Though they said they had some challenges at first, the irrigation process has not been difficult for them. They were excited to share with us their plans for expansion.

 

Brick water tank at Katsumwa

On Thursday we joined with farmers at Katsumwa to lay the brick wall on the slab we poured back in March. The farmers put a lot of work into the project and we really appreciate that. The tank will be approximately 15,000 liters capacity when finished later next week.

Getting Ready For Growth

The Mziza Farming Club is getting into irrigation as early as possible this season. On Monday this week, we delivered farm inputs which the farmers accessed through a revolving fund for input loans.

In order to access the loan, a farmer was required to participate in irrigation training and plant at least two season under the new irrigation techniques. Farmers who proved that they could be successful irrigation farmers could then apply to receive inputs to expand the size of their irrigated gardens.

Each member will pay back the loan over two consecutive planting cycles this season. In this way, the loss of capital incurred by paying back the loan is mitigated by the extra income of the second planting. In other words, with two planting cycles it is easier to balance the crop yield between: 1) paying back the loan, 2) eating a balanced diet at home, and 3) using income for other purposes (e.g. paying school fees).

Grass Mat Making at Mziza

Not just an outstanding lead farmer, our good friend Mr. Store is also an expert mat maker.

We stumbled upon his craft before a meeting with the Mziza Farming Club.

Composting round 2

Even as a club, making a heap of compost and manure like this is tiring, especially during nthawi ya njala (that is, time of hunger: the colloquial name for the months of January-March). Caloric intake is down, but so are traditional work loads; cultivation is finished, harvesting is pending, and there's little to do on the farms, traditionally. But modern farming, sustainable farming, is a year round endeavor.

The farmers get tired but just when they seem to be giving up, we start talking about what this pile of animal droppings is worth in fertilizer equivalent. First we ask the farmer's what they would charge for this work if they were hired piece workers on someone's farm. The job usually ticks in at about K4,000-K5,000 kwacha. Then we explain that this heap of manure will yield roughly 1 metric ton of compost, enough to supply the nutrients required to grow one quarter acre of corn. Corn, as we all know, requires 200kg of inorganic fertilizer per acre, or 50kg per quarter acre, which costs about K15,000. Thus, the fertilizer equivalent of the compost costs three times more than they would charge for the labour to prepare the compost.

Of course, if you do it wrong, this compost could have a low nutrient content or take ages to decompose into a usable substance. No one said it didn't take some skill. But it is worth the effort, and the farmers tend to pick up their feet a bit higher once they can quantify the fruits of their labour.

So far we have seen some very good work from farmers and we look forward to seeing how far they take the skills when we are not around to watch each step.

Siyasiya Irrigation Club

And finally, Siyasiya Village in Salima District. Yesterday we met the last group of irrigation farmers to be trained in 2013. Last but not least, this particular irrigation site is promising for the farmers and exciting for the AWP team.

 First, just look at the turnout for the orientation meeting. The village was aware that only 15 farmers would be participating this year, but that did not seem to matter to the 60 or so others who showed up anyway.

The irrigation club was formed out of the Ministry Team of the local churches. The Ministry Team itself is a joint initiative of the churches and World Relief. In Salima district, World Relief has helped establish more than 20 similar ministry teams.

The AWP team knows how important good organization is for the success of community development projects, but having that organization as an extension of the local churches is more than we could have asked for, a true blessing.

The entire community have embraced the project and seem keen on diving into irrigation. We hope to deliver more than their expectations, a true blessing in return.

Mzindo Irrigation

It had just stopped raining in Mzindo families run to the village headman house to hold a meeting with him. The ten families remain standing waiting for traditional leader to come out. He comes out, and finds people with clothes dripping. One representative tells the chief about the irrigation farming. The farmers did not know that AWP had already met him to discuss irrigation farming in the area.

Later that day, AWP starts off on the 30 km drive to Mzindo village to hold the first meeting with farmers interested to participate in irrigation farming. AWP finds farmers sitting around a big tree with a big canopy that provides good shade to children, mothers, fathers and the aged. During the day, most people would converge around these trees to relax after working in the crop fields; play Bawo; listen to cases; attend village meetings; watch traditional dances like gule wamkulu and any other traditional activity.

This day, only adults sit around to hear what AWP has brought to the village. Children play in the tall grass nearby. The meeting begins with introductions and finishes with AWP telling farmers about sustainable irrigation farming and the water pumps that would help them to have improved crop yield each irrigation season. AWP asks the farmers for their commitment to an irrigation project in the area. This sends farmers into hand clapping and ululations.

One farmer rises up and tells AWP how they have had problems using watering cans to irrigate the crops; the activity of drawing water alone is tiresome as compared to the irrigation technology they saw in Mziza village, not far from their village. This farmer finishes by saying the introduction of hand cranked and pedal pumps for irrigation farming will help them to harvest more food in a year. The farmers want to be the beginners in learning the new concept of farming.

The meeting ends with a visit to a new site where the village headman has offered land for establishing an irrigation garden for other farmers within and the neighboring villages. 

Fly on the Wall

If you were a fly on the wall at the AWP office today, you would be the fly most equipped to provide high-impact irrigation training in probably the whole of Malawi, even in all of Africa. Maybe you'd be the best six legged irrigation trainer in the WORLD!

Ok, not many irrigation experts to compare in the insect family, but if you were a human on the wall at AWP (get off the wall and have chair), I hope you and the rest of the staff present today would be ready to deliver some outstanding training sessions to farmers in the field.

Teaching a group of adults whose ages range over 40 years, who may or may not be able to read, who usually have heavy burdens put on hold outside the classroom, teaching such a group is no easy task. And you just try for ten minutes to focus with an empty stomach... no, didn't think so.

After a few hours spent discussing how our training programme should adapt to the particular challenges we face in the field, we came up with a short protocol to guide us. 

1. Adults can only be expected to learn 5 simple things a day. If we selfishly take all those things for irrigation, we still should only expect 5 learned outcomes. Some things aren't so simple, so fewer expected outcomes is better.
2. Good teachers deliver their outcomes over multiple routes; we should bring the learned outcomes through a variety of components: verbal/aural, visual (photographic/text), tactile, and participatory. These should be highly memorable and form memory indicators or associations.
3. The visual and tactile elements should be left in the hands of the trainees to review/repeat in the future.
4. We should hit the key memory indicators once more at the end of the training session.

January Update

Hello Friends of AWP!

January has been spent kicking off a series of new projects in Malawi. As such, we need to kick off the Blog for the year too!

First, we want to thank everyone who has been reading the blog. I know that people read the blog for different reasons, and providing a variety of content is one of our goals this year. We want to showcase our work, provide technical details for those who land on this blog in search of pump/tech designs, and raise awareness for food security and other local issues.

We have spent this month meeting the farmers who will be in training this year.

At Nathenje: a 15 member support group organized by National Association for People living with HIV and AIDS in Malawi (NAPHAM).

At Mzindo: 5 families organized under AWP through outreach conducted by the Mziza Farming Club.

Still to come: Katsumwa, Siyasiya and Kanyelele.

Guest Blogger Today

Guest Blogger Jessica Irvin from Defending the Fatherless  guest blogs today.  She and her family support Africa Windmill Project in many of ways.

As the 2012 Christmas season fades into another year of memories, I continue to be bothered by a brief, 6 or 7 second news clip that my husband and I saw late one night in early December.

By most accounts, it was a heart warming moment-the result of one women’s kindness to a child—a child she would never meet, but was thoughtful enough to consider.  We’ve seen it played out before, probably participated in a similar activity at one time or another.  And, please don’t misunderstand my point-this woman was doing nothing wrong-in fact she was doing everything right by our cultural standards and norms. Yet, the words that she spoke have stuck with me in a way that I can only describe as nails on a chalk board.  It stopped me in my tracks.

The scene was of a jolly middle aged woman, hands full of shopping bags loaded with Christmas treasures, happily donating a gift to a child via a local charity who may otherwise not receive a gift on Christmas morning.  The phrase that made my heart beat a little faster, “It feels good to give to a child in need.”

Seems harmless enough and it’s true.  It does feel good to give to someone in “need.” 

What got me is that we had just returned home a few weeks prior to viewing this clip with our little son from Ethiopia, once in “need” of a family and now forever in our arms.  

I had just witnessed NEED beyond understanding.  True need—like for the basics—for things like water that doesn’t cause illness, food that satisfies a hunger that has often been growing for days, clothing and shelter and access to basic medical care to treat diseases easily treated here that devastate whole nations across the world-need for the things that so many of us (myself included) so often take for granted.

I looked at my husband and said, “We think toys are a NEED in America.”

And it broke my heart.  

We bought (literally) into this myth somewhat as each of our children received a couple of new items this Christmas, and with the exception of the toothpaste in their stockings (and I suppose one could make a case for whether or not that is truly a need), none of the new items were necessary for their health, well being or physical development.  None of the items sustained life or gave life.  None of the items had the potential to impact families or even whole communities.

Just as the Father loves to give good gifts to his children, we too enjoy seeing the faces of our children light up when presented with a gift.  I’m not trying to take away from that, but to instead call to our attention that others suffer when we chose to add to our excess instead of, as the bible commands, share with God’s people who are in need (Romans 12:13). 

And there are so many around the world in true need of the most basic resources, with probably the most important of these being clean water.

When I return home from Africa, I’m always a bit shell shocked upon reentry.  I always say it is harder to return home than to return to Africa.  I catch myself thinking thoughts like, “the water I shower with is cleaner than what they have to drink” or “I wash my clothes (well, technically the machine does) in cleaner water than they have available for cooking” or “I simply turn on one of my six faucets and clean water pours out while they hike 6 miles a day to the nearest water source.”  And, none of it can be reconciled in my head except if I am willing to do something to make a difference.

I have seen first hand how life changing access to clean water is for a child, a family, and for entire communities. 

Africa Windmill Project (AWP) works along side the people of Malawi to equip them to make these changes available to them. By educating and supporting rural farmers on how to irrigate crops via simple and affordable water pumps, Malawians are able to work to feed and care for their families.  AWP also works to educate and train the local people on how to maintain clean drinking water, sustainable agriculture practices, and community development-all with the focus of Malawians being self-sufficient and duplicating the model within their own country.

Now, that’s something to feel good about.

To learn more about or partner with AWP as they help empower the people of Malawi to meet their NEEDS, please visit Africa Windmill Project.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38

AWP Manual/Pedal Water Pump

This is Post No. 1 in a series of 5; each post deals with the particulars of our projects. These posts are designed to give more information about the technologies and techniques AWP is promoting.

1. AWP Manual/Pedal Water Pump
2. AWP Windmill Water Pump
3. Basin Irrigation
4. Conservation Techniques
5. Solar Water Heater

                                                                                                                   

1. AWP Manual/Pedal Water Pump

Africa Windmill Project has the goal to bring sustainable irrigation systems to the hands of smallholders, farmers who wish to irrigate 1.0Ha (2.5 acres) or less.

The first development towards this goal is moving from watering cans to a positive displacement pump. The water pump that AWP promotes is a rope-and-washer pump operated by hand or foot. 

As the user rotates the crank (hand crank in the first two photos or bicycle crank in the third photo above), the tyre-pulley spins. The rope is pulled by the tyre-pulley, through the pipe (40mm diameter), down into the water, and back up the pipe. As the washers tied along the rope pass through the water, they lift water up and out of the pipe. This happens many times per second, and a large volume of water flows through the pump. Water flowing from the pipe falls into a 25 liter plastic container, which funnels the water into a larger diameter (50mm to 63mm). Finally, the water exits the pump into a stilling basin at the top of the irrigated garden.

The manual/pedal pump is very effective and can irrigation a substantial garden. Compared to a treadle pump, the manual/pedal pump is superior by every measure.

The cost of the pump is within range of most smallholders and can be earned back in one growing season. Farmers can be trained to build and maintain the pumps themselves, so there is little need for skilled technicians to install or repair pumps. Materials for the pump can be found and purchased in any district of Malawi.

For more information contact Africa Windmill Project through our website: CONTACT US.

Meet Khumbidze Kandodo A 63 Year old Widow from Mziza Village

When AWP formed an agriculture club in the Village of Mziza to introduce sustainable irrigation farming, few women joined, but among the few was Khumbidze Kandodo.




Khumbidze was born in 1948 in Mziza. She never had a chance to go to school in the colonial days. She used to wake up every day to help her parents do household chores and farming in the upland. She says, "back then, people did not cultivate in the dambo areas, for they had plenty food to feed themselves throughout the year." Ways of farming changed when the population started increasing, and there was continuous environmental and natural resource degradation affecting farm yields each and every year. As a result, people started cultivating in dambo areas. However, throughout the years that she has been in the dambo farming, she has had problems on how to improve soil nutrients and water holding capacity and, how to increase yield each growing season.


She said that with the coming of AWP in Malawi there has been a change in terms of farming systems in the village but especially to her life. "When I was joining the club in March, 2011, I thought, I’ll not be able to grasp the concept by looking at my literacy level,” she narrates in Chichewa. “But thanks to AWP facilitators for making the technologies understandable for me. Look at me! I am an old woman but I have done it and am determined to do better than this next year.”





To AWP staff in Malawi, Khumbidze has made a difference. Though she walks a long distance from her house to her garden, she has proved to the world that age is not a limit in development. She promises to do extraordinarily in her garden and meet some of her life needs she has never had in her life. She wants to errect a brick-fired house with iron sheets through farming with AWP.




"I have never slept in good house with iron sheets. I believe, this will be my dream come true. I will be following every theory that AWP is requiring me to implement,” she foretells. I had time to go through her small garden and managed to take a picture of what she has done with her aging potential energy. The few months that she has been with AWP, the 63 year old widow, has managed to grow cauliflower, tomato, onions and green peas.



As for Khumbidze, she does not care where to sit in the garden. She says, “soil is the foundation of life: I came from soil; soil provides me with food, water, firewood and materials for building my shelter. With AWP, I will continuously have food and have some money after selling some crops to purchase other life needs like clothes.”

--by Chawezi Simwela