clearing the land
flattening some terraces
a juice break
mixing up the different soil types to create good growing conditions...or at least that was the plan - the proof will be in the seedlings!
work on day 2
everyone mucking in to fill wee bags with soil, and later adding seeds
some seeds being soaked prior to planting
planting seeds
some cheeky wee kids from the school across the way
the final count, 656 wee bags with seeds
Hi all,
Apologies for the delay in any communication recently, our social lives have picked up to such an extent that spare time is now fairly limited. Added to that is the fact that now we have a much quieter living space, it is actually possible to sit and read of an evening – which has been really nice. In addition, any spare time I have had on a computer has been spent trying to investigate all the possibilities for mum’s Malawi trip, starting on Friday. So all in all, we’ve been kept busy. Which is great!
Friday was a public holiday due to Ramadan ending and Eid celebrations beginning. This is all dictated by a man sighting the new moon with the naked eye, so although the new moon can be predicted, the sighting cannot due to the weather. However, luckily enough it was a beautifully starry night and so Eid was on! To celebrate, Rach and I, and the Swedes (5 of them) went to a gig at the French Cultural Centre where we looked pretty bogan (to quote an ozzie term) as we turned up with clinking plastic bags and had no seats so had to stay on the dance floor the whole time (dancing around our plastic bags!). Good times! I could feel the burning stares of the more 'cultured' people behind us, but didn't care too much as they should have been up dancing more anyway! Then off to a bar in town, where I bumped into an Aberdeen medic I used to know (Mark D, for anyone who's interested) and some guy attempted to steal my bag but was thwarted by rach jumping a wall (the story is longer, but that's the jist of it). As we had no work the next day we stayed over in town with friends, rather than getting the taxi back. The next day we had a very lazy morning then off to a BBQ at another friend's house, with spectacular sunset views. Another beautifully starry night. I can see how one could get some spiritual inspiration out of a cosmic alignment such as that. Another wee boogie in town and then back to our Blantyre crash - i think we should start paying rent there! The next day we walked quite a lot of the way back to Bangwe, in order to redeem ourselves from the excesses of the previous two nights. On Sunday we entertained my assertion that there must be a nice way to walk into Blantyre from Bangwe...well, there is! Tricky navigation at the end, in a dense maze of streets which were mostly not marked on the rather substandard map, but all ended well as we made it through to town for a quick coke then off for the bus. A really great fun weekend!
Weather: pretty warm, but not heating up as quickly as previously, and for the past few days there’s been a chilly wind. Imagine a good Scottish east-coast summer day – mid twenties temperature, with a cooling breeze.
Work (for a change will make up the majority of this post!):
Last week I ran a tree nursery work camp at the Bangwe Youth Centre. Hot work in the sun, so we only worked until noon each day to avoid the heat of the day. The work camp was really quite well attended, for a local non-residential camp. These have tended not to get quite such dedicated commitment, as people are tempted off to do all the other things they need to get on with, and only turn up as and when they feel like it. The camp ran for 4 days, and most days I think we had between 6 and 10 AYISE volunteers, plus myself and 2 of the new Swedish volunteers (Malin – pronounced Maulin, and Joel pronounced Yooel). Day 1 was dedicated to clearing the land upon which we would host our tree nursery. This was really hard physical graft, and I was worried that might deter some people from returning for day 2. But return they did, and were rewarded with much less physical work as most of the land had by this point been leveled, and so the only really physical work was gathering good soils to plant the seeds in, and water.
The Youth Center has not been paying its water bills due to lack of funds, and being on a high tariff, so they have been disconnected for a long time. This is quite a typical example of the faded glory of AYISE. It can give the appearance of being as good and effective an organisation as is must have been 3 years ago when funding was comfortable, but in reality it is just struggling on by the skin of its teeth. The power was cut off to my office on Thursday afternoon, as they had not paid that bill either…and yet they prioritise throwing a going-away party for the Glaswegian students…
To return to the topic of the tree nursery work, it went very well and we planted 200 Gliricidia seeds, 122 Pine seeds, 200 Acacia seeds and 134 Nsango seeds. We also, as the photos show, have leveled an area of land which can be used if and when the tree nursery programme expands. Seeds and the wee plastic bags for planting them in are free from the Department of Forestry, in Limbe, and so we could potentially expand the operation. Two issues may deter me from instigating this expansion (and if I don’t instigate it, I doubt it will happen): 1 – if we cannot find suitable people / places to take the seedlings; and 2 – if we cannot find dedicated individuals to continue the planting process.
This second point could be hampered by the fact that in the middle of the work camp we had to inform the AYISE volunteers that their membership had been dissolved. To comment in their favour, many of the members did turn up to complete the camp over the next couple of days – perhaps to improve their chances of regaining membership?
This rather dramatic sounding turn of events is intended to get rid of individuals who pass the entrance interview for membership and then contribute nothing towards AYISE or the community, but use the resources AYISE makes available to them. New members, who will be encouraged to re-apply from the end of September when all the processes have been ironed out, will face a different and more relevant interview (rather than just asking about knowledge of current political affairs, I hope there will be some of test of their initiative and drive, and aspirations for change in their community), and will have to agree to more rigorous and enforceable regulations regarding their “active” participation. Many of the current members make a mockery of the term Active Youth, and this needs to be shaken up.
However, it has not all been the fault of the members, and changes will have to take place in their management too. Before they were disbanded, the most active dozen members (of a membership which is stated to be over a thousand!) would meet twice a week, ostensibly to discuss what they were going to do to improve their community. However, these meetings would rarely yield any actual action or results, decisions or sometimes even aspirations. This could be due to the fact that they have had no advice or guidance on how they should be operating, both in the meetings and as an Active Youth body. To address this, the new membership will be managed by a dedicated member of staff (to be hired), as Chris M, who is currently the Membership Officer (among 100 other things) only really has time to attend one membership meeting a month, and even then only for about 5 minutes. Of course, T.I.A – “this is AYISE” (or perhaps “this is Africa”) – so nothing will ever pan out how I expect, so I guess we’ll have to watch this space…
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