Visitors from Zomba

Here we have 3 new visitors from Zomba (600km away, in the South), to add to the five students and interns from the Natural Resources College in Lilongwe. OH eight more hungry mouths to feed!!
Our guys are great, they make everyone so welcome: totally hospitable.
The people from NRC come to do practical work as part of their Degree/Diploma courses, while the people from Zomba are just regular farmers.

The introduction to our link with Zomba follows:

Dear John and Mary,
We are writing on behalf of The Chifundo Foundation. We are a small charitable organisation educating some of the most underpriviledged children in the Zomba area of Malawi. Further information is available on www.chifundo.org.

We met at the John of God's meeting earlier this year and you told us of your work in researching sustainable farming in Malawi which is of interest to us.

Our programme now in its seventh year provides total education support for the very poorest in the best private schools. They start at nursery and we support them right through to secondary/vocational and beyond. The first students enrolled will be ready for secondary next year and the needs and supports keep changing.

In 2012 we decided with our Malawian team on the ground that a permanent learning environment would be valuable to meet all the learning supports for the years ahead. For this purpose we acquired a 2 acre site last year and commenced development this year. The first phase, the clearing of the site and construction of a security fence has now been completed. Next year we will commence the construction of the main Learning Centre which will provide all the educational supports for the children as they progress. This will include study rooms, tuition areas, library, computer, art, other skills as well as many other learning supports.

The reason for writing to you is that we hope to allocate about 3/4 acre of the site to development of vegetable and other farm produce and would love to benefit from the great work you have done in this area particularly the sustainability and permaculture nature of your work. The idea of training some young people in your research farm would make much sense. Perhaps you could let us know how such a collaboration could be put in place, and how best to process it. Our hope would be to cultivate and plant the first crop this spring.

Thank you for all the inspirational work you are doing, we look forward to hearing from you and to working together in the future.

Best regards,
Elaine and John Cogavin

They have arrived. They are most welcome and we hope they go home enthusedand bring some seeds and seedlings.