Balaka

I spent most of last week outside of Lilongwe and the WFP office on my first overnight field visit to the southern district of Balaka for three nights. Many of WFP’s resilience-building programmes are taking place in Balaka, so the primary purpose of my visit there was to see these–specifically WFP’s Food For Assets (FFA) projects, which focus on building access to assets meant to reduce disaster risks and build long-term resilience to shocks (pictured below is one of the project sites). My days in Balaka ended up being my best days in Malawi so far. I traveled with two coworkers, Hussein and Dom, who are part of the resilience team in the office. They showed and explained to me the different ongoing projects and also served as translators, making it easier to connect to the farmers and families I was meeting as we traveled to different villages in Balaka.

I left for Balaka Monday afternoon in a WFP car and enjoyed a scenic drive south, part of which was spent driving along the border of Mozambique. Once outside of Balaka, I was picked up by another WFP driver, Francis, who exhibited the warm-heartedness I’ve witnessed among so many Malawians as he welcomed me to Balaka. He brought me to the end of a day-long training put on for farmers to provide instruction on how to use and maintain an instrument called a rain gauge. Fifteen rain gauges were to be installed at the farmers’ homes the next day as part of a pilot FFA project in order to help them to better measure and record rainfall, information that can then be used to plan when to begin planting.

I woke up Tuesday morning to join Hussein and Dom for breakfast right at our hotel, the Coco-nut Lodge, and Hussein and I were then picked up by Concern Universal’s (WFP’s implementing partner for the project) driver. I sat in the front seat and the back had been turned into two long rows of bench-like seats to maximize space. I quickly became aware of how important the large size of the vehicle and high clearance is when going into the field–it is impossible to travel on the dirt roads connecting many of the villages without a car of this size. We then stopped at a nearby store to get waters (which you learn to drink slowly to minimize the need to find a bathroom out in the field) and some snacks for the day as we would not be stopping for lunch , picked up some others from Concern Universal who would be joining us, and then headed into the villages.

We spent the day installing 15 different rain gauges at the homes of rural farmers and their families. After arriving at each home, we would greet and meet the head farmer and his/her family (which tended to be quite large). I was shocked both by how many of the families we visited were female-headed, which meant they were responsible for the majority of the farming, and also by the strength of so many of these women (one woman with her rain gauge pictured to left)! Installing the rain gauges involved cutting down a piece of wood to the correct size, fastening a holder where the beaker would be placed, digging a hole deep enough in the ground to secure the rain gauge and then once constructed and in place, reexplaining the proper use and maintenance of the rain gauge (pictured to the right). I was mostly an observer of this process as my one attempt at helping to dig one of the holes (pictured at the top) made it very evident that I have little experience in farming or manual labour work. I did however spend time speaking with some of the farmers (with the help of Hussein as my translator) to get a sense of what they anticipated these rain gauges would do for their farming seasons. I was surprised to learn that most of them had been doing very little to track rainfall and plan their planting seasons accordingly. There therefore was an air of hope and gratitude among each of the farmers–they seemed more than willing to take initiative and ownership of this project as it meant the chance for a more successful harvest.

Putting faces to the beneficiaries of these projects was quite moving. Seeing their homes, families and lives was both humbling and really put the level of poverty so many Malawians live at into context for me. Overall there was something so wonderfully intimate and personal about the experience. Every family welcomed us in their own way–we were offered fresh mangos by one woman (which I ungracefully managed to eat skin on and all) and were welcomed with song at another. At several villages, huge groups of kids would gather around us out of curiosity for what it was we were doing (pictured below), meanwhile at a few of the locations, it seemed like the entire village came to be a part of the installations in some way.

  

We ended our day at a little stand in one of the villages where goat meat was purchased for a small braai (pictured below). Little did I know that the meat would be cut right off a dead, recently-skinned goat hanging directly in front of us. I will admit, I was a bit worried my stomach was not equipped to handle this, but I am happy to say no stomach issues resulted and I really enjoyed it–so much so that we went back for a second one the following day.

 

I spent Wednesday seeing other FFA projects and accompanying my coworker Dom to a training for rural farmers on how to use past weather patterns to plan ahead for future planting seasons and to account for climate change. We then ended our stay with a walk into Balaka at night. Seeing places after dark is not a privilege I often have here, so it was fun to be able to do this with Dom and Hussein. We headed back to Lilongwe the next morning to coworkers eager to hear about our trip. I hope to be able to spend more time in Balaka in the future as my time there amounted to one of the more incredible experiences I have had. I learned and saw so much, and met some of the hardest working people whose lives are far from easy or luxurious. Part of why I came to Malawi was for the chance to surround myself with people from vastly different experiences, cultures and ways of life–working here allows me that and continues to cause me to challenge my own assumptions and beliefs and ultimately to learn more about my own self. To be able to have a job that allows for that and such enriching life experiences feels a bit surreal. Also an unexpected benefit of my trip to Balaka was that I discovered more fully my excitement for resilience work as it pertains to development–I believe it is an area I could really see myself exploring further in the future.