13th June 2013: Casca and Florence were busy today as they seem to have visited five remote village communities with new preschool groups. The buildings vary but the enthusiasm remains: the enthusiasm of remote women, with little formal education to have education for their children. This idea has
15th March 2013: Maybe Irish Aid didn't know it, but this is our farm. We bought it about this time last year for a group of amazing women to become a commercial, co-operative model farm. It is now run by 16 women and 6 men with the
20th February 2013: Not much but it's a big leap for them! Children in this area of Malawi go to Primary School at the age of 6, like elsewhere in Malawi. But the problem is that by then boys may be doing a full day's work making
20th January 2013: These are the farm children Victor, Victoria, Minus and Hope with their cousins. It is common for a family who have good jobs to be sent the children of relatives who have lost their parents through AIDS, by the chief. Here we see the
10th January 2013: Women at the well hauling water who knows how far and this is what culture and tradition requires from them! If you notice the well, the covering slab is missing and has obviously broken The pump is missing as well, all of which is
28th November 2012: The rains have soaked the soil, it's hot and it's time to plant the Maize; the must-have crop in Malawi. The basins are made over a month, with manure at the bottom with some lime to neutralize the built up acidity. The seeds are dropped
26th November 2012: This is one of the poorest areas we work in. It's poor as a result of many issues like weakness at traditional leadership level, little formal education of parents, resulting in dire poverty, lack of food, poor health, all of which contribute to
20th November 2012: Harisen, Oswold and Dave brought the Timbers from the saw mill. Oswold is just out of Hospital with a leg problem, but insists on coming to work. As well as being our bee keeper he is our carpenter and will put on the roof. Harisen writes: Still
19th October 2012: Maybe this is an especially dry year in the area, but water tables have dropped dramatically. In the immediate vicinity of where we have lands five pumps installed in the past year by an organisation who claim to be very reputable have run
28th September 2012: In Malawi these spuds are called Irish potatoes. I think this is true for many African countries. Most of our earlier attempts to grow potatoes in Mzuzu produced miserable tiny ones but this year we sent to Dedza for new certified seed that Irish
28th April 2012: There are many excellent plans in Africa designed from outside and maybe not passed through African eyes, that haven't really worked. We visited this magnificent structure today at the request of a local chief to see if we might be able to help. It was
On Friday last, Good Friday, 2012 we loaded up our gear including a film crew of students from DIT, 5 bags of cement, GPS and all our various regalia, to travel to a well site using precious fuel, over a bumpy road only to find