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

The Windmill

Today we turned on the windmill to begin filling the reservoir. We are very pleased with the performance we saw today. We'll return on Monday to get the results of from the weekend.

It's a beautiful structure rising out of nowhere on the edge of a dambo. Quite the sight to see!

The tank is fitted with an inflow pipe just above and overflow pipe. The overflow is directed back into the well to prevent excessive groundwater losses in the event that the tank is full and the farmer is not prepared to use any water.

Ideally, the farmer would begin irrigating before the tank overflows so as not to waste any wind energy cycling water through the tank.
 

Water flowing into the tank

Club members were all smiles seeing the pump fully operational. It isn't difficult to see its potential from this point, delighting even the skeptics in the group. The club intends to begin using the land around the tank as a community garden so that each farmer has an opportunity to learn how to irrigate from the tank.

Keep checking in next week to see the results!

Harvesting Broccoli

Petros and Mr. Storo harvest broccoli for the first time.

Just call me Mr. Broccoli

AWP project coordinators discuss harvesting methods with a farmer

Lunch in the field consisted of a carrot wrapped with lettuce, a.k.a. "vegetarian hotdog" or "rabbit's delight"

Windmill Reservoir

With successful tests under our belts, we have stepped up our work on the windmill irrigation scheme at Mziza. We have come up with a reservoir system that will act as a buffer between the pumping and delivery structures.
Expected benefits are:

1. Water is available on demand


2. Water will be under pressure at the top of the delivery system (and at the bottom if we use pipes instead of canals)


3. The volume of water pumped into the tank can be easily recorded


4. Farmers will know exactly how much water they are applying to the field (with the exception of evaporation)

Downsides to this system are: the capital cost of the reservoir (i.e. cement ain't cheap); evaporation will be greater in the reservoir than in the well; standing water attracts mosquitoes (and watering at dusk may put farmers at risk of malaria). There is not much that can be done to reduce capital costs because structural integrity should not be compromised. A crack in the floor of a house does not affect the utility of the house; whereas a crack in the reservoir floor is catastrophic. Every insurance must be made that the concrete will not crack. As for evaporation and mosquitoes, a simple covering over the reservoir will reduce these problems significantly.

Domestic Well II

Another domestic well fitted with a pump. This time, we were asked to provide this pump to a woman at Mgwayi village. She is doing some permaculture around her house, growing plants with waste water from the home.
The well is a bit deeper this time at approximately 7.2 meters. We faced no major challenges in getting this pump in there, and it delivers a flow of nearly 2,000 l/hr.
The location of the pump is visible to many people from communities near and far; it sits close to a major foot path leading between Njewa and Chisapho townships.

It has garnered admiration from nearby families and organizations working in the area.

Windmill Video

Domestic Well

Last week on Friday we installed a water pump into a domestic well. This is the second pump we have installed for domestic use, and the first that will be shared and used by a village community. (The other domestic pump is used by an individual in a village setting).

Almost 3 weeks ago, the chief at Mziza approached the AWP coordinator in his village asking if the it is possible to use the pump to draw water from their domestic well. We knew it was possible, and had plans to install one in some village at some time. What better time than now, when we have been invited to do so by the chief?

We had a crowd around as we began the installation. The usual suspects where there: club chairman, club members, village chiefs, and a whole bunch of interested kids. There was little need to do in-depth training, since some of these guys have installed their own pumps before. The club members have agreed to help the community get used to the new pump and keep an eye on any maintenance issues.
The pump will help keep the well clean. But the responsibility still falls to the community to make sure that their drinking water is safe. It doesn't matter how hard you try, if cows are drinking this close to the well, it will be contaminated.

We Have A Truck!

Thank you everyone who contributed towards the truck! Africa Windmill Project now has a tuff 4x4 truck to continue conducting trainings in remote villages. Christopher and Blessings delivered supplies this past week for one complete windmill to the village of Mziza. Below are a few pictures of the action, thanks again for being a part of Africa Windmill Project.

Blessings is tying down the supplies.

Enabling families in the US to HELP families in Africa

Africa Windmill Project has a pressing need.

A Truck.

Our current transport is pictured here. We call it the "goat" named because the horn is broken and sounds like a sick goat when used (which is often, because, well, it's Malawi).

We love the gas mileage this car gets, but used parts that we can find to fix it have about 10% of their life left. We have rebuilt and re-rebuilt this car. The villages we work in are not located on roads, speed bumps here in the US are nothing compared with the creeks, ditches and other obstacles that stand in our path when trying to reach our sites. Also, now that the farmers are seeing success they need to be able to take crops to market, which is more than a days walk in some cases.

When I asked Christopher if he would write a blog about this pressing need, this was his response...

"I will try to get a blog post up about the distance and conditions of the villages. I think one thing to remind the donors is that this will directly impact the people we are working with. Supplies will arrive on time and in 1 trip (rather then 5 or 6 different trips) and we will be able to search out new markets for their crops. Also the truck will help us in the future be able to reach villages farther from town that are neglected by support organizations and government programs"

So, if you are willing to donate money towards this need,

PLEASE go to www.africawindmill.org/donate.html or mail a check to Africa Windmill Project 2869 Carew Avenue, Winter Park, FL 32789 c/o John Drake (make all checks payable to Africa Windmill Project).

You will be directly impacting farmers and their childrens lives in Africa. Thank you for your generosity. We appreciate you!

Water filter

A slow sand filter, or Biosand filter, is a type of water filter that uses sand, stones, and a layer of good bacteria to filter contaminated water. A Biosand filter can be up to 99% effective at removing organic contaminants, including bacteria and viruses.

Many designs have been used, ranging from large concrete cisterns to small individual sized plastic containers. We have been working on making a small sized filter that can supply enough drinking water for a household in Malawi. After the results of our initial water tests, we feel compelled to improve the situation.


After constructing the water tank, we filled it with stones and sand as recommended but found the sand too muddy. We are looking for an alternative to the sand we found. One idea is to dig out sand by river bends. Hopefully, we'll find what we are looking for.

The rains continue in Lilongwe, promising a strong harvest and prosperity in the coming year. Some villages have begun to see shortfalls in last year’s harvest as they scramble for other sources of sustenance such as cassava and potatoes grown in their winter gardens during the dry months.


This week, we saw the results of the water quality test we performed on Friday, 14 January 2011. Just looking at the coliform count plate tempted my gag-reflex: there were 29 colonies of E. coli in 1 ml of Mziza’s drinking water. According to World Health Organization standards, 1 to 10 colonies per milliliter represents a high risk of illness and greater than 10 colonies represents a very high risk.

We are discussing ways to improve the water quality at Mziza. Ideas range from covering the well to solar purification. Covering the well is a must, but may not be sufficient to keep contaminants out. The bucket is thrown into the well 50 times a day, depositing bacteria and food for bacteria each time. Putting a pump on the well will reduce the contamination due to fetching water. Protecting the pump from wind and dirt will also reduce the amount of bacteria in the water. In the end, the well may not be deep enough to eliminate contamination from run-off.

We tested bore-hole water from an enclosed suction pump at Mgwayi village, approximately 40 miles from Mziza, and discovered 1 E. coli colony per milliliter: a high risk water source. The question remains open on the best method of fetching, pumping, storing, and purifying water, and there is no silver bullet. However, we will make some changes to the well at Mziza and continue testing the water. In the meantime, we will encourage people to use chemical treatments or boiling to purify their water.