One of the things I love about Malawi is getting to be a part of normal, everyday Malawian life. Many times those who come never get to experience the "real" Malawian village life. What a blessing it is for us to live here in Chiseka Village and be a part of the village and her life.
One of the ladies who comes to the Permaculture Club meetings twice a week is Amayi Bennison. She speaks excellent English and works as a translator for a Church of Christ missionary who comes over each year. She and I have gotten very close and she has been wanting to share her home and her culture with me for some time. This past Friday we worked it out that she could give me and Brooke some cooking lessons.
The above picture is just a small part of her garden that she is growing. She is adding in permaculture techniques as she learns them and has already been telling of the success of this new type of gardening. She was able to nearly double her maize harvest this year by using permaculture. She didn't need to pay for any fertilizer or insecticide! She used compost and manure and was completely organic in her farming. Her crop not only doubled, but it also was much healthier and lush! What a great testimony! She loves the permaculture club and goes home and tries everything that she is taught.
Here is a look beside her home at some of the vines she is growing and the new plants she's able to plant.
This is her family's hand dug well.
Here is her newest permaculture success. This is a rocket stove that she saw when Jeremy took the group to a local permaculture homestead. We frequently take them and show them working permaculture farms and have teachers come in to train them. Amayi looked at the rocket stove and then went home and reproduced it from memory. It's basically a Franklin stove. It uses much less firewood- thus improving efficiency and costing her family less money!
Behind her bath house she has planted a banana tree to grow from the grey water! This is her husband, Mphatso, who is just as excited about the permaculture methods as she is!
Here is another new idea that Amayi Bennison learned from her permaculture meetings. It's a make-shift sink. Of course there is no running water here. So she made a "faucet" to wash hands after using the restroom.
She pours the water in the top and it slowly comes out the bottom! She even planted a vine to grow from the gray water runoff.
Cooking lessons started after our tour! I love her ingenuity! Look above to see how she made an eye for the stove.
Here is Brooke (our friend who is visiting with us for a few weeks) helping to get the leaves ready to cook.
Making peanut flour. We added the peanut flour to the vegetables as they were cooking.
And here I am...grinding the peanuts into flour! I gotta get me one of these!
Our chicken! This was part of our lunch.
Mphatso and Shanki. Shanki wasn't too sure of these crazy azungu ladies hanging around his house! Even though he comes to my house about twice a week! ha! I guess I was on his turf this time!
Amayi Bennison separating the ground up ground nuts from the ones that needed more grinding. She was so good at this she didn't even have to touch the nut flour! She shook and separated it all in that basket! And the doves loved this part! They were hungrily eating the dropped nuts.
Our vegetable leaves! Malawians eat just about every part of the plant! They let nothing go to waste! One of their favorites is eating pumpkin leaves. Who would have thought!?
And of course, no meal is complete without nsima! Oh, one of these days I'll master the art of cooking nsima!
And here is her skillet for cooking the raw ground nuts over the stove fire. Ingenious!
Shaking the nuts!
Here are Shanki's toys! She keeps them all in a maize sack in his room. He wanted to play so she brought the sack out and put his toys on the ground outside. He just played and played! Do you see the football? Well Shanki and his aunt were kicking it around like a soccer ball. Brooke and I got up and showed them how to throw it and catch it and also how to kick a football! She said she always wondered what the purpose of that type of ball was!
After lunch she roasted the whole ground nuts and then we started pounding them into a mush with a little salt. This was the BEST peanut butter ever!!!! It was a lot of work though!
Yummy!
What a wonderful day we had! We learned so much! Now if I can remember it all in order to cook for my family! ha!
