The sun has slightly moved away from the hills on the east. From where Amina Ndisale kneels, it is about 30 centimetres between the sun and the hills.
It is already blistering hot. But Amina stays where she has knelt for more than half an hour. A big mango tree standing a few metres from where she kneels could give her excellent shelter from this heat. However, she will not go under it.
She throws a lump of wet clay at a small hill of trash. She throws another lump. She will continue with this until the hill – almost as tall as herself – is thoroughly covered in the wet clay.
Like all people in this part of Karonga in northern Malawi, Amina has seen the length of the period rains take to stop falling shorten over the years. The pattern of the rains within this shortened period is also erratic. And the end result is that people’s yields have leaned.
“The harvest is no longer as much as what we used to get,” says Amina, 63, and mother of six.
As a woman, Amina has more trouble to suffer than her husband in the wake of this changing rainfall pattern which scientists say is one of the direct effects of climate change.
Culture accepts that Amina’s husband, like all husbands, is the bread winner. Yet, it has all reasons to spare him the shame when his family has nothing on the table.
Instead, it will be people like Amina that will labour to come to terms with pressure from the children and the bread winner himself because there is no food.
Across the country, this picture mirrors a situation over 4 million women are in. According to the 2008 population and housing census, there are about 3,861,971 females between the ages of 14 and 49.
The 14-49 years age bracket comprises the most sexually active age group and most women within this age group are mothers.
In the wake of such unfairness in what is expected to be a shared responsibility, it would not be surprising to see Amina toiling in the sun all day in an attempt to hold food on the table.
And as the rains keep going, Amina has found gathering trash and burying it in small mounds for a while and applying it to her maize field later as perfect means of keeping food for her children and husband on the table.
“It is very simple,” she boasts. “It will take you anything that can rot except bluegum, mango and gmelina leaves to make this manure. Bluegum, mango and gmelina leaves are less nutritious.”
She calls what she is preparing chimatu manure, probably because the trash that graduates into manure is smeared around with wet clay, an action called kumata in chiTumbuka.
“You can even use fresh leaves to make this manure,” says Sheri Kayuni, another woman who has adopted the concept. She comes from Kaswera II village in TA Mwilang’ombe’s area in the district.
“These leaves could be mixed with fresh cow dung, maize bran or ash. A layer of such leaves is separated from another by either the dung, bran or ash. Within three months, the manure is ripe and ready to be applied to the garden.”
Kayuni is not sure of how much of such manure she should exactly produce for a particular size of a garden. However, she is stark sure that 16 such mounds are enough for a garden measuring up to an acre.
On average, each mound is roughly around a metre in diameter and 1.5 metres tall.
The manure is applied into the gardens before the rains and between planting holes. In there, the manure holds the little water it gathers when rains fall. This ensures that plants are always in a moistened environment even when rains do not fall for some time.
That aside, the manure gradually releases the nutrients leading to a robust crop that cannot be realised even with chemical fertilisers.
With this manure, communities in Karonga have held food onto their tables despite seeing the rains run away from them.
It was not raining there early in January during the hustle and bustle necessitated by the earthquakes that hit the district late last year. And the rains had bid goodbye by late in March, meaning that the rainfall season lasted for less than three months.
However, one going around villages in the district now will see traditional granaries fully filled with maize. What caused this magic?
“This manure is so good. I have never suffered from hunger ever since I started using this manure about three years ago,” says Sara Ngobola, wife to Mwangobola, a traditional leader in the district.
“The amount of my harvest has always been increasing since I started using the manure.”
No wonder, the communities in the district have firmly adopted the concept of using such manure. And the grip is tightened by the Karonga Agricultural Development Division (Kradd).
With its jurisdiction spreading over Karonga and Chitipa, Kradd is championing production and use of such manure as means of ensuring that food remains on the people’s tables even when the rainfall season keeps waning.
Paramount chief Kyungu is impressed that his subjects have adopted this adaptive concept in the wake of climate change. And he is pleased with the agricultural development officers there too.
“I am very much impressed,” says Kyungu. “This system has brought about improved harvests although the rains have not been enough to warrant a good crop harvest.”
“I am particularly impressed because it is women that have taken a leading role in making use of the concept. I know that this is because they are the ones who suffer most when there is no food on the table.”
But the paramount chief wants things to change.
He says: “I will talk to all my subjects and ask them to embrace this. And I know we will win because the [agricultural] advisers are there. They have always made people aware of the roles they are supposed to play in things like these.”
Malawi and many other southern African countries have seen the worst as a result of harsh weather patterns resulting from climate change. Harvests have leaned because rains no longer fall reliably. Floods have also provided another version of torment as the rains are sometimes just too heavy.
But while most people can hunger because of floods, there is no excuse for them to suffer because of inadequate rains. Organic manure is a proven treatment for weather patterns that lead to lean harvests.
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