A woman\u2019s loud calls scare chickens away from pounded maize spread on a mat to dry before being taken to a maize mill.
\nIt is mid-morning on December 4 2017 but already sweltering hot and nothing but loud calls of a woman, fluttering of wings, singing of birds and spattering of water can be heard in Kapichi Village, Traditional Authority Kapichi, Thyolo, about 40 kilometres from Blantyre.
\nThukuta Nandolo, 68, is standing by a sprinkler in his garden and keenly watching indiscriminate sprays water maize plants as he takes me through his project.
\n\u201cI sat down and thought to myself; what if I connect bamboos and channel water into the garden. Soon my idea came into being and irrigating the garden became an easy task,\u201d he says.
\nSo Nandolo thought it and did it.
\nHe has been a farmer dependent on rain-fed agriculture all his life. But the impact of climate change jostled his thinking into a much wiser farmer.
\nNandolo, a primary school dropout and a father of six, has used nature and his surroundings to maintain a constant supply of water when land is dry not only to his garden and home but to the entire village.
\nHe says poverty in his household made him think of ways of how he could provide for his family in the mid of unreliable rainfall.
\n\u201cIt was in 2015 when I decided to dig a well right outside my backyard. At 15 metres deep, I found the water. For a couple of months, I used to irrigate my garden with a water cane.
\n\u201cBut as time went, I thought of cutting bamboos and turning them into connection pipes to move water to the garden and into the house. I then set up a tank of about 100 litres up in a tree to store water,\u201d he says.
\nNandolo says he used the system of channelling water from the tank for about a year and another idea popped into his mind \u2013 sprinklers.
\nThese are not common mechanised sprinklers we all know and usually see around.
\nNandolo used the mechanised sprinkler technology to build his own, connecting everything to bamboo pipes hanging in trees. He then placed a metal valve at the tip of it to spread the water around.
\n\u201cI built a three-tree stand and use a bamboo in between to channel water from the tank. At the tip of the bamboo, I placed a spiked can that spins and spreads the water in the garden,\u201d he says.
\nThis is not all.
\nNandolo also developed a hand-held sprinkler which he uses to irrigate ridge by ridge when the need arises.
\n\u201cYou see, with time, many ideas have been coming and each idea that comes, I try it out. Well, I say so long as it helps me with my farming, I go for it. The normal sprinkler helps out but I thought of this hand-held sprinkler because I easily know the amount of water that has been used at that particular moment,\u201d he says.
\nSince he came up with this innovation, Nandolo says his yields have more than doubled.
\n\u201cThe maize you see in the field now is my third crop. I don\u2019t starve in my household. There are times when I plant green vegetables and tomatoes for sale. Since 2015, this has been the trend, I harvest three times a year. So I make money off this innovation and my house is well stocked with food,\u201d he says.
\nNandolo has channelled the water through the same bamboos to his house. He has running water for drinking and ablution.
\n\u201cPoverty made me think of ways I could have never imagined. I cannot afford pipes, so bamboos do the magic for me. I connected the bamboos to my house. Outside, I have a tap which my wife uses to wash the dishes among other things. Taking a bath from a bucket is a thing of the past, I connected the bamboos from the tank outside,\u201d he says.
\nIf you ask Nandolo about how he managed to come up with this innovation, while acknowledging he has no formal science knowledge, he keeps on referring to poverty as his source of inspiration.
\n\u201cThe rains were poor that year, the river is far from here, and I had to think about means to feed my family. Then I thought of digging a well. The rest of the ideas came in with time because I believe what is hard is the foundation, once you get one thing done, the rest just falls into place,\u201d he says.
\nHis surrounding communities concede that Nandolo\u2019s innovation is a holy grail of villagers.
\nGroup Village Head Kapichi wishes her community had more people of Nandolo\u2019s innovative mind, saying water problems would be a thing of the past.
\n\u201cI encourage him to keep up with the good work. I personally told him to come and collect the bamboos at my house for free. That is my contribution to him for the services he offers to the people of this area. We benefit a lot from him,\u201d she says.
\nAgriculture Extension Worker Cosmos Gwaza, who has worked with Nandolo for the past two years as adviser, says he has always believed in his potential and he ensures that, through this innovation, Nandolo should make the most of it in terms of crop production.
\n\u201cHe is an inspiration to many and he helps a lot of people. I have known him for two years and the time I have worked with him, I picked out one thing and that is determination. Nandolo is exceptional and I hope some day he will improve this innovation using modern materials,\u201d he says.
\nBut the other side of the innovation\u2019s coin tells a different story.
\nFor two years since Nandolo rolled out his project, the demand for the project\u2019s services has increased tremendously; hence, Nandolo needs some help.
\n\u201cThe materials I use are all locally sourced. I know I would be able to do far much if I had modern materials such a tank, plastic pipes and cement to fortify the well. These local materials I use do not last long, I am sure modern materials would be durable,\u201d he says.
\nMalawi is an agriculture-based economy and the agriculture sector, despite the country\u2019s enormous irrigable land, has always been reliant on favourable climate conditions. But the climate change phenomenon is progressively destroying the sector; hence, the country\u2019s development.
\nMajor casualties have been small-scale farmers.
\nBut Nandolo found innovative ways to adapt to the effects of climate change.
\nHe manages to keep water all year round for domestic and irrigation purposes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A woman\u2019s loud calls scare chickens away from pounded maize spread on a mat to dry before being taken to a maize mill. It is mid-morning on December 4 2017 but already sweltering hot and nothing but loud calls of a woman, fluttering of wings, singing of birds and spattering of water can be heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":57738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57734"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57740,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57734\/revisions\/57740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}