News: September 2005 - Environment

ENVIRONMENT

The New Experimental Veggie Garden

In our last Newsletter, we reported that we were about to build this vegetable garden. The garden is located adjacent to Mwaya Beach on land where really nothing would grow, and our aim was to prove to the local community that we could grow good, healthy vegetables in this environment. Force, the environmental project manager, and his team of workers have worked miracles. We now have 97 beds of lush vegetables, including carrots, potatoes, peppers, aubergines (eggplants), cucumbers, beans, maize, chillies, peas, water melons, pumpkins, etc., etc. This garden is really an experimental vegetable garden, and we are not using any form of chemical pesticides or fertilisers; instead we are intercropping and using natural plants like marigolds to keep pests away. The water is pumped from our well by treadle pump, and the beds are all watered using watering cans so it is very 'low tech' which can be replicated locally. The village chiefs and the community cannot believe what has been achieved, and they are very excited about the prospect of being taught how to grow vegetables themselves.

To show how this garden has positively affected the community, we were delighted to see that six small vegetable gardens have been started by local people since this project started. These gardens are close to the dambo and Hanock, one of the very keen nursery staff, has helped the owners get them under way.

We have been so impressed by Hanock's enthusiasm and by his own private vegetable garden that RIPPLE Africa is funding the initial stages of a large vegetable growing project which Hanock and some colleagues will develop as their own business.

Growing seedlings in the tree nursery in preparation for the rainy season

Progress With the Tree Nursery

With the help of the local community, RIPPLE Africa planted out a total of 9,000 trees comprising natural hardwoods and quick-growing trees for firewood during the last rainy season. This year, we are hoping to plant out between 30,000 to 50,000 trees. Our initial aim is to plant out a large quantity of quick growing sindilera (toona ciliata) trees. These trees grow very quicky and, within five years, will be producing wood that can be harvested for firewood. We aim to plant out a large number of wood lots with sindilera which have the benefit of fast growth but do not destroy the soil like many quick-growing trees, such as gmelina and blue gums.

We have bought a number of trees from the Forestry Department and are providing this wood for people who wish to burn their bricks for house building. The bye laws which were set up last December to prevent the felling of hardwood trees and burning the bush do seem to be working and there have been very few incidents. This dry season in September/October will be a telling time as most of Africa seems to be set alight with the resulting destruction of small trees and young grasses. The ongoing environmental education of the local people seems to be making its point, and certainly the older generation are very aware of the huge destruction of their environment. Malawi has lost 20-30% of its forests in the last 10 years - that is why this environmental project is vital.

Our hope is to influence many other communities with our projects at Mwaya, and we have already organised a meeting with 46 chiefs on 8 September to make them aware of what we're doing and what they need to do with their communities to manage the problems. This will cover an area of 25 km by 15 km.

The Mbaula (Wood Burning Cooker) Project

Two Geography graduate volunteers from England, Nyika and Emily, who originally came out to Mwaya to teach, undertook a really worthwhile and exciting project. They set about carrying out a complete census of the Mwaya area which is split up into three chief's’ areas: Chibako, Chalemba and Mphero. They carried out a their survey in record time with the help of Joey Banda, who is the RIPPLE Africa projects coordinator. The aim of the survey was to establish the number of cooking fires in the area, together with other interesting statistical data, like the population age groups and genders. They came up with some interesting statistics:

Gender ratio:	55% female, 45% male
Age ratio:	44% under 15 years old, 56% over 15 years old
Population:	There are 1436 people in the three chiefs’ areas
Cooking fires:	There are a total of 302 cooking fires

Everybody cooks on open log fires which consume huge quantities of firewood, and this has been one of the main causes of the destruction of the forest. Emily and Nyika, with help from Force and local tinsmiths, organised the design and manufacture of a suitable mbaula (wood burning cooker) that could be distributed to replace all the local open cooking fires. These cookers burn about 20% of the fuel that a conventional open fire uses and are extremely efficient for cooking. In tests, a large pan of cold water can boil in 10 minutes.

It is in everybody's interests for the local community to use these mbaulas as, collectively, it will drastically reduce the amount of cooking firewood required. The mbaulas cost about £4 to make and are sold to the community for the equivalent of 25p. So far, about 100 have been made and distributed to the community. Joey Banda is in charge of making sure this project succeeds and that everybody in the local area will be using this method of cooking in the near future.

Bulls and Ox Carts

RIPPLE Africa now has four bulls and one ox cart in operation. The ox cart is being used for moving soil, manure, seedlings, and timber. This project is still in its infancy but, if it proves successful, we would like to expand this sustainable method of transport. The first two bulls, named Gin and Tonic, have already been castrated and are about to start training to pull the ox cart. The other two bulls, named Rum and Coke, have been trained and are successfully pulling the ox cart, but they will shortly be castrated.

New Thatching Project

The new thatch on the bulls' khola (enclosure)

Ever since we have been coming to Mwaya, we have always been astounded at the incredibly poor standard of thatching all over Malawi, bearing in mind that, in the rainy season in our area, we receive about 1m 20cm of rain. The roofs of the local houses have a very low pitch and are thatched by placing grass on the roof beams, followed by a thin layer of black plastic to keep the rain out, and then more grass is placed on top of the plastic sheeting. This method is very rarely successful, and most roofs leak like a sieve and need to be replaced every year.

An example of the poor thatching which can be seen all over Malawi

We have tried to discover why this poor thatching is the standard in Malawi when, in other parts of the world, people can construct thatched buildings that keep the water out and will last five to 10 years. There are two main problems; firstly, nobody knows how to thatch properly, and, secondly, the grass is very poor because of regular bush burning.

RIPPLE Africa's idea is to train local people how to build the right roofs and thatch properly. During the next rainy season, we are also going to plant good thatching grass in certain areas to be used by the local people to thatch their own homes.

The first thatching project has been to construct a thatched roof for the bulls' khola (enclosure). In the short term, we also plan to thatch a local house, and then possibly thatch the new classroom block that RIPPLE Africa will be building in 2006. Although proper thatching is time-consuming, it may well be the only option for people who aspire to a corrugated iron roof but will never be able to afford one.

The completed thatch on the bulls' khola (enclosure)

			Company Registration No. 04823686 • UK Registered Charity No. 1103256	Contact RIPPLE Africa