Matawere is a village near the town of Mulanje where one of the churches meets. It lies under the shadow of beautiful Mount Mulanje, but in spite of the beauty of its location, life there is hard. Almost everybody who lives there is a subsistence farmer, but most do not have a great deal of land to grow the crops they need. Hunger is a danger never far from people’s minds. People are looking for, but rarely find, additional means to generate income so that they can make ends meet.
One way of helping the farmers deal with these tough conditions came in the form of the humble chicken. It doesn’t take much ground to put up a hen house, the eggs add protein to the diet if eaten and they can also be sold locally to bring in some money.
Not only chickens, but a provider of education on how to keep them had to be found. The government’s veterinary department had the answer. What the UK3 knew about this subject didn’t amount to much, but long-standing friend Neville Coomer of Buckhaven was able to supply useful questions to ask. His many years of farming birds allowed us to work out what we needed to know very quickly. A special mention here must also go to a man called Mr Mwape, one of the most helpful and kindly of all the government officials we dealt with during the year.
A genuine extra mile Christian, he was at his office sourcing materials for us when visibly ill with malaria. His condition was so bad that he was transported home in the newly purchased mobile clinic vehicle, thus unofficially becoming its first patient passenger!
Families from the church and other needy families in the community went on a training course in poultry-keeping, run by the government. Our intrepid birdmen (and women) were taught not only how to build the hen houses and look after the birds, but crucially how to market the eggs and keep records of what was produced. The group was then split into two batches so that the second lot could observe the experiences of the first and learn from them. Thanks to your donations, materials for building these brick and thatch henhouses (or ‘kholas’ as they are called)
were delivered. The farmers built them readily and now at last the birds have been supplied.
Please join us in praying that the birds may be kept from disease and predators and will lay sufficient eggs to meet the needs of these families.
