In food security, there is safety in numbers

At 5 am on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Cledonia Nkhonyo and her four
children wake up to the sound of the bell from the parish church
signaling to all villagers in Group Village Headman Kachule in Dedza
to go to work in their fields.

Besides her own eight acres in which she cultivated maize and beans,
on other days, Nkhonyo also works in the five acre community maize
garden and the village demonstration garden where farmers in the
village learn modern farming methods and replicate them in their own.

Six years ago, Nkhonyo’s household used to experience hunger after
every harvest season. Then, all her 10 children were living at home
and they depended on two acres of land for farming.

Last farming season, she experimented with applying manure and
fertilizer in her maize fields. In the end she harvested 300 bags from
the increased acreage which she has been selling during this lean
period at K4,500.

“I also used some of the bags to pay labourers in my fields or I sell
so that we eat meat at least everyday. I have also managed to pay
K45,000 fees for my son at New Era Private School ,” she states
proudly.

But how was this turnaround made possible?

Irrigation, Rural Livelihoods and Agricultural Development Project
(Irlad) is a government agricultural project being implemented by the
Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security to raise agricultural
productivity and incomes of rural households in the districts of
Nsanje, Chikwawa, Blantyre, Phalombe, Zomba, Dedza, Lilongwe, Salima,
Nkhatabay, Rumphand Chitipa.

Nkhonyo benefitted under the project through the Input for Assets and
Farmer Services and Livelihood Fund through which the farmers
themselves demanded extension services which were provided through the
district assembly agricultural office.

Theresa Jabesi is one of 150 farmers in GVH Kachule who benefitted
from Irladp project activities in the village. For moulding bricks and
providing dambo sand for the construction of the community warehouse,
she received 10 kg of Pannar Seed and a 50kg bag of Urea fertilizer to
use in her one acre maize field.

With expert advice from extension workers, where she used to harvest
10 bags of fertilizer, she expects at least 40 bags this year.

Patricia Magola and her four children will not go hungry this year
thanks to assistance from Irladp. For working in the community maize
garden and moulding bricks for the warehouse, she received a bag of
fertilizer and seed.

This season she expects to harvest at least 8 bags of maize from her two acres.
Under the second component of farmer services and livelihood fund,
farmers of Kachule in Dedza were trained on improving marketing of
their produce and encouraged to carry out public works in exchange for
inputs under the Inputs for Assets project.

According to Irladp project coordinator Dickxie Kampani, the project
started in 2006 co-financed by World Bank and International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) with about US$52 million over five
years.

The project has five components, namely rehabilitation of irrigation
schemes, farmer services and livelihood fund, social development and
community mobilization and project coordination and monitoring and
evaluation.

Under the project, 2,500 hectares of irrigation land is undergoing
rehabilitation including the main government schemes of Muona in
Nsanje, Limphasa in Nkhatabay, Likangala in Zomba and Nkhate.

Kampani said about 38 new irrigation schemes are being developed, 18
of which are small scale (10 to 50 Has).

Kampani however said relying on the decentralized system at districts
has been a problem for the project because most assemblies lack
capacity so they fail to adequately support the project.

Dedza district agriculture development officer William Kamlomo said
Kachule under T/A Kachere has been a beneficiary of Irladp activities
through the establishment of an irrigation scheme, agro-forestry,
community resource centres and farmer cooperatives.

In Kachule, the project also empowered the farmers to incorporate
issues of gender, equal distribution of resources and community
mobilization as the farmers were able to work together on five acres
of a community maize field.

After identifying land for the community garden, GVH Kachule gave the
farmers the go ahead and they would mould bricks while working in the
garden.

The field was divided into small areas which the farmers worked on
individually, applying manure and fertilizer as advised by the
extension workers.

A total of 15 bags of Urea fertilizer and 250 mounds of compost
manure, prepared by the farmers themselves, went into the garden in
the end.

“We have put in place procedures on how the maize will be divided and
what it will be used for. The harvest from this garden belongs to the
whole community,” Nkhonyo said.

After applying compost manure, Nkhonyo said the farmers believed the
extension workers when they said the land would be fertile for a long
time and they would always harvest more than an ox-cart of maize each
season.

According to GVH Kachule, the 450 bags of maize which they hope to
harvest from the community garden will act as safeguard in times of
hunger in any one of the 792 households under his care.

In the past, if farmers harvested more than anticipated, they would
sell soon after and when food shortage hit the village, the households
were not prepared.

“150 farmers have worked in this field and this maize will be stored
in the warehouse which we have constructed under the inputs for assets
programme. Each farmer received a bag of fertilizer and seed for
working on the warehouse,” he said.

The farmers of GVH Kachule did not just stop at working together
increase maize yield and put money in their pockets but also
conserving the environment.

In 2008, about 90 farmers, of whom 50 were women, started an
agro-forestry nursery of green and red acacia trees in the village to
plant along Thethe river in the village.

The villagers saw the need for a forest after noting rampant siltation
in Thethe river because farmers would cultivate crops along the river.

The women suffered most, according to the forest supervisor Ellen
Dimba, because there were no trees to use for firewood in the trees
and they would travel long distances to fetch it.

About 5,500 trees were planted and since then, the farmers take turns
weeding the forest, binding the branches thereby ensuring all the
trees survive to maturity.
Most of the farmers stated that such agricultural development has been
successful because of the leadership qualities of their village
headman.

GVH Kachule agrees: “Being a chief is not about allowing access to the
graveyard or presiding over disputes between villagers. You have to
look after the well being of your people. What are they eating, are
they staying in good homes?”

Helping couples make informed choices

If it were not for women like Asimenye Mwafulirwa, women and men of Mvera Support Battalion and surrounding villages in T/A Chiwere in Salima would not have made informed choices to put their children’s livelihoods and own lives first.

Mwafulirwa has been working as a Community Based Distribution Agent (CBDA) since 2008 and she has met with hostile couples who believe that modern family methods are too dangerous.

“I have been chased from people’s houses like a dog but I keep on visiting them until they understand what I am telling them and decide for themselves how they will use the information,” says the brave young woman.

Trained by Family Planning Association of Malawi (FPAM) in 2008, Mwafulirwa is a distributor of contraceptives door to door in Salima. She is one of 15 men and women who on a weekly basis visit couples in their areas of work informing them about family planning methods and how adopting them could change their lives.

They work in a catchment area of 5,630 people, each CBDA looks after the inhabitants of two villages, being there for them when they need help and visiting them frequently.

With a client list of over 200, Mwafulirwa is a hub of knowledge on sexually transmitted infections, HIV and AIDS and contraceptives.

Contrary to popular belief, Mwafulirwa says she does tell her clients about the advantages and disadvantages of using modern family planning methods.

While protesting the use of modern methods, the people in GVH Chiwere’s area argue that traditional methods of swallowing Mzama (pigeon peas) and tying Mkuzi have worked for them for many centuries.

Mwafulirwa says she has failed to get an understanding of how Mzama or Mkuzi works and her long client list can attest that people’s mindsets are changing.

One of Mwafulirwa’s clients is Donna Simfukwe (Mrs Mwangonde), 32, who as a Christian believes that mankind should be fruitful and multiply. As soon as she and her soldier husband married, she had five children in quick succession.

Her children are now aged 12, 11, 9, 8 and three. So how does she explain the gap between the fourth and last born?

“My husband and I didn’t believe in stopping the natural occurrence of having children. We believe in the bible and it doesn’t stop people from having as many children as they can. So we had five, four of them born one after the other,” she says.

While her friends joined community based organizations or became caregivers for the chronically ill, she was busy looking after her children or expectant with another child.

When a CBDA approached the couple, the Mwangondes realized how giving birth too quickly was affecting their life.

Since she started using the pill, her last child was born in 2007 and she has since joined a home based care group as a volunteer.

“We were buying nappies every year. To find soap, clothes and food for the children was not easy. Each year I would have only one chitenje for the baby. My children were always malnourished because I would stop breastfeeding when I became pregnant,” she says.

UNFPA reproductive health officer Juliana Lunguzi has touted family planning as the vaccine for preventing maternal mortality.

With the use of family planning, maternal deaths could go down from the current 807 per 100,000 live births, Under 5 mortality could reduce from even further from 100 per 1,000 live births to at least 72, as per Malawi’s MDG targets and the number of abortions which take place per year could go down from 80,000.

It has become so important that it is being repositioned as the catalyst for achieving the Millennium Developmen Goals (MDGs) 5 and 6 on reducing incidences of maternal and child mortality.

Being one of the policy themes of the reproductive health programme of the Ministry of Health and its partners, Lunguzi says there is need to increase the contraceptive prevalence rate from the current 41 per cent (including 3 per cent traditional methods) and cover the unmet need of 28 per cent.

The family planning method of pills and injectable, popularly known as Depo Provera, are the most popular in GVH CHiwere but unfortunately CBDAs like Mwafulirwa are not allowed to administer injectables.

This problem has been solved however as FPAM holds an outreach clinic at the Mvera Support Battalion where couples who have made choices such as injectables or vasectomy can be assisted, according to FPAM programme officer Bessie Nkhwazi.

In its outreach clinics, FPAM restocks family planning commodities, provides regular and emergency contraception, pregnancy tests and conducts voluntary counseling and testing for HIV.

Village Headman Mdoola says the Chiwere area has a population of close to 400 households but farming land is not enough.

The most popular crops grown are maize, groundnuts, tobacco and soya but every year, people continue to harvest less and less, especially the cash crops.

The village headman says in the last growing season some villages got less than 15 coupons to buy subsidized fertilizer and seed at K500 when more and more farmers could not afford inputs.

“We will have enough this year but if the population continues to grow, some families will start moving from here and settle somewhere else. Maybe along the lake,” he says.

He says when CBDAs started working in the villages, they were not taken seriously when told that the benefits of using family planning methods included fewer maternal deaths, healthy children and enough food.

“I now believe it. It was difficult at first to link how the issues were related because most of us believe in the traditional ways. We now have health personnel coming here and more and more people are attending the clinics,” he says.

Wanted: A vaccine for maternal deaths

There are many things that cause 4,624 Malawian mothers to die during childbirth every year. These are gender inequalities that prevent a woman from going to a hospital early enough to deliver without her uncle’s blessing; unavailability of reliable modes of transport to take her to a hospital equipped with basic emergency obstetric care or a health centre with only a nurse midwife to make 10 deliveries a day.

These causes of maternal deaths are in one way or the other linked to matters of culture, good roads, training of nurses and midwives and even shortage of drugs and medical supplies in our country’s hospitals.

But what it there was a way in which these 13 deaths of mothers per day could be prevented? What if there was a vaccine which mothers could take and avoid by a small margin dying while giving life?

UNFPA reproductive health programme officer Juliana Lunguzi believes if women tried as much as possible to use a family planning method, some of these deaths could be eliminated: family planning is the vaccine, she says.

If more women used contraception, 80,000 abortions could be avoided every year and deaths as a result of abortion related complications would be minimized

If many women decided to take a pill a day, 80 per cent of maternal deaths due to obstetric complications such as bleeding, ruptured uterus, infection, pre-eclampsia would not be a daily occurrence in our country’s hospital.

If this is one of the solutions, why is it family planning usage is only at 41 per cent, 3 per cent of which is use of traditional methods, according to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (2006).

Some of the commonly used methods in Malawi include male and female condoms, pills, depo-provera, Norplant, intra-uterine device or loop, vasectomy or sterilisation, all of which are available at government and private health institutions.

Currently, 100 per cent of Ministry of Health hospitals provide family planning services while it is available in 96 per cent of health centres and 58 per cent in Christian Health Association of Malawi (CHAM) facilities.

Lunguzi says despite this availabaility of services, the contraceptive prevalence rate has been creeping up too slowly due to over reliance on fixed service outlets.


Family planning is just one of the components of reproductive health programmes that government with assistance from various partners is undertaking.

Other components which together can make a woman’s happiest day end happy are prevention and management of sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS, maternal and neo-natal health, management of unsafe abortion and elimination of harmful cultural practices.

Although it’s a long term strategy, family planning is currently being repositioned as the key strategy for achieving Millennium Development Goals of reducing maternal mortality from the current 807 deaths per 100,000 live births to 55 by the year 2015.

“Calculations show that investment of US$37 over the next decade will save Malawi US$76 over and above reducing maternal and child deaths. So it’s something very important all round,” Lunguzi states.

Increased investment in family planning programmes would also cover the 28 per cent of women who would love to use contraceptive but are unable to because of unavailability of their chosen method of contraception.

Increased use of contraceptives, especially among youths, would prevent the 35 per cent of unintended pregnancies among youths, in turn reducing 80,000 abortions which occur annually.

However, the youths are not actively engaged because contraceptive continue to be shrouded under the umbrella of family planning. If you are not married, you have no business seeking a family planning method.

17 year Rhoda Falasi is a Form 1 student at Chitowo CDSS in Dedza should be targeted for family planning methods but she has never been approached.

“I would like to know about family planning methods but I don’t really know of any because I am too young,” she says.

When pressed how she will make sure she doesn’t get pregnant when the time comes, Rhoda says maybe when gets married, the community based distribution agents (CBDAs) in her village will come to her.

She is however aware that some youths in her village inform others on using condoms during sex but she is yet again yet to be approached by her own peers.

Rhoda lives in Chitowo (population 29,404) in Dedza, an area that has garnered acclaim for reversing incidences of maternal deaths from 24 per year in 2001 to zero in 2009.

This was made possible by promoting community involvement in reproductive health through training of village health committees, setting up CBDAs and establishing community safe motherhood task forces.

The taskforce is given the responsibility of following up a pregnancy outcomes, examining and recording maternal deaths in their areas, according to Chitowo chairman of the taskforce, group village headman Dzoole.

The taskforce encourages the mother to deliver at a health centre and failure to do so, by-laws are enforced through fines of K1,000 or a goat.

But it is the role of CBDAs that is very crucial in Chitowo, as Mary Nyondo explains. She is mandated with distributing two contraceptive methods, condoms and pills.

Previously viewed as taboo (zolawula), Nyondo says most people in the area have done away with traditional methods and receive her more warmly when she visits them.

“I go door to door visiting my clients and counseling them on the methods they can use. When they select a method, I give them and inform them when I will visit them again,” she says.

But does she realize the importance of her work?

“Of course,” she says, “during training, we were told that if women in our areas do not give birth frequently, they will not die during child birth so we are doing our part in this work.”

Although she doesn’t distribute female condoms, Nyondo says some women have expressed interest after hearing about them on the radio. She hopes soon she will be able to distribute them alongside male condoms.

But when her clients choose the injection (or depo provera) or sterilization, she is trained to refer them to a hospital and she gives them a referral letter.

For now, she only counsels and approaches married women although this is not by choice.

“Some girls have approached me but only to tell me they fear their parents finding out they are using family planning. I have seen girls dying from child births and some died not knowing it could be prevented,” she says.

In her work, Nyondo travels on foot in the villages of Mphunda, Chitimbe, Chintiyande and Mkhanga logging in women she has helped and she should visit them again.

The fact that no woman has died from child birth related complications is enough reason for her to carry on.

A male CBDA Zebron Moyo is one of five members says secrecy is very important in the work they do which is why he only visits couples when they are together.

He works in six villages: Magwaza, Kauma, Chintokoma, Chagwiranyama, Nabwenje and Mtembe delivering condoms and pills with the hope of reducing maternal deaths.

Moyo is father of six children, three of whom are boys one of whom is married. His son finished stopped school in Form 1 and went on get married, which he says he regrets not stopping him now.

His daughters are still in school, one is in Standard 7, another is Standard 5 and the last one in Standard 4.

When asked whether he would be free to approach youths in his area about family planning methods, Moyo says the youths have other activities which keep them occupied such as playing bawo or dancing chitelera and sharing ideas HIV prevention messages.

He would however want to inform his own daughters of his work and its importance to their life but cultural traditions do not allow him to do so.

It’s accepting his young daughters will need to know about contraceptives that he has a problem with however important it might be.

If only he knew that he was administering a vaccine, perhaps he would sit his daughters down and tell them the hard facts of maternal deaths and its impact on the family, community and nation as whole.