Small People Big Ideas

Up on the Thyolo Escarpments in southern Malawi in a nondescript area that would not earn itself as a tourist attraction area, is Samson Village where the Manthimba Irrigation Project is being implemented.

Sandwiched between hills and rivers, Samson Village two years ago would appear like any other ordinary village, where the sound of a car would attract throngs of children. The elderly would stop their daily chores to catch a glimpse or gaze in amazement at the passing vehicle.

With its high population density and small cultivatable land, many in Samson Village faced starvation. As a result, most of the men migrated to the lower lying areas along the Shire River in Chikwawa District or to the metropolitan City of Blantyre some 70km away in search of a means of livelihood. The women, the elderly and children were left behind to cultivate the unyielding land.

Today, the story is different. This ordinary village with its extraordinary people has earned itself national recognition through its irrigation project, funded by the World Bank through the Malawi Social Action Fund (MASAF) Public Works Programme. People are thronging to this remote village to see how people’s ideas when nurtured and their efforts harnessed, can turn fortunes around.

The Manthimba Irrigation Project is the brainchild of Charles Mkwapatira, a grade school dropout, who was pushed to the edge by poverty and hunger.

One day, in the year 2001, Mkwapatira woke up and thought he would do something about the perpetual starvation in his family. Picking up a hoe, a panga and a watering can he headed for a small patch of land that he owned on the banks of Mapelera River, a perennial river flowing through the village. Using his hoe, he dug a canal out of a pool and diverted water from the river into his garden. He then cleared the small patch of land with his panga and started watering the garden with his watering can. Unknown to him, that day marked the beginning of an era for Samson village.

In an area where people laze out most of the year, lying in the shelter of their mud huts during the day and dancing lopoto in the evenings, a man working in a garden in summer would attract attention. Within a short period, Mkwapatira was the subject of gossip and fireside stories in the village and beyond. Some thought he had gone mad. A few, however, went to see what Mkwapatira was up to and were convinced into trying irrigation as a solution to their hunger.

“At first, there was only one irrigation canal which I had constructed to divert water to my one hectare garden in 2001. One afternoon in 2002, my friend Richard Gelevulo, and I were listening to the then Minister of Agriculture as he extolled the virtues of irrigation farming. At this time we were walking along Mapelera River and we started wondering if we could not apply the idea, which in any case, I had already started on a modest scale with my small canal” said Mkwapatira.

Mkwapatira and four other men who shared his quest to make hunger a thing of the past resorted to seek permission from community leadership, Village Headman Samson, to dig a canal from Mapelera River into their fields in a bid to expand their production.

Realizing that the group was reaping fruits from this initiative, more people in the community started flocking to the group to participate in the project. By 2004 membership had risen to 150 but more people kept expressing interest to join the group.

“Initially we were only five members probably because people thought that we were just wasting our time” said Mkwapatira.

The ever-increasing requests for membership impelled the group to seek assistance from MASAF through Thyolo Local Authority to enable them extend the canal and accommodate more people.

In May 2005, MASAF responded to the financing request from the Local Assembly and funded the Manthimba Project with a sum of MWK1.7 million (US$12,200.00). The project aimed to build and extend the canal first built by Mkwapatira to run a 3.6km length covering about 93 hectares of land. As part of the project, members of the community were asked to dig the canal and were paid MWK200 (US$1.40) per day for one month. People used the wages to buy farm equipment which they then used to develop their own small pieces of irrigable land.

Some of the project funds were used for civil works and buying pipes to ensure water was reaching the furthest points of the project.

Today, each garden has a pond where fish are grown. Vetiver grass, a special type of grass provided by the project, is also grown along the canal to protect the land from soil erosion and siltation of the canals.

By the end of 2005, membership had risen to 500 and the lives of people of Samson Village have been transformed.

The small project has become a national phenomenon and migrants are coming back to the village. The land all around the area is green throughout the year. Maize, the country’s staple, is grown three times a year. The sorry sight of malnourished children sitting solemnly under mango trees, flies all round their faces, is a story of the past. People are now flocking to Samson Village to buy various food items grown throughout the year using water from the Manthimba Irrigation Project. If replicated across the country, food security in Malawi will be a reality.

MASAF is now showcasing Manthimba Project as one whose impact is widely appreciated.

Dotted across the country are other projects funded under the Public Works Programme that have changed people’s lives for the better. Some have benefited through irrigation projects such as the Manthimba, others have covered the bare land and hills with trees, and others have opened up their areas to the world through better roads and bridges.