Key person: Charles Chibale
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We met with Charles in Kaishe, at his mud brick house. The previous night there was a storm that flooded the area, which has again destroyed some houses, and even Charles' outside bathroom fell down in the middle of the night. It is causing some concern for the crops of cassava which is a staple food security for the region as the fear is the root crops will be rotting.
In 2021 Charles decided to move away from Kaishe to live in Samfya (90km away) but still come to the area for farming and to continue to run the partnership. He was living in his own house on a plot that was purchased many years ago with the assistance of a loan from Bright Hope.
Charles now has many children in higher education, which he is struggling to support. It is costing him around 100,000ZMK (US$5,000) per year to fund his children into these schools, including Joseph who is going to study medicine.
He has also been selected as the Rural Development Committee zone member for Kaishe. The committee is charged with meeting with the community to discuss what proposals they want to push to the council and government to see development in the area. So far, they have been granted the building of a secondary boarding school that is about to start construction and are in the process of proposing power lines to be connected into the village.
For these reasons, Charles has now decided to move back to the village of Kaishe full time. He will be able to rent out his house in Samfya and concentrate on his own farm to produce funds for his family.
As outlined in the report from 2022, the preschool has now closed due to a government decree that all schools should run their own preschool.
Charles had still been conducting these trainings at the skills training centre, training around 20 people each year but the uptake has been low, due to the deep mindsets of the Bantu people in the area. There have been around five trainees that have been doing quite well with the new methods for maize.
Cassava though has been a huge success in the area as people have seen the introduction of the new methods and better-quality stalk seed that can produce good root tubers in one year rather than the traditional three years. This programme has spread far and wide as much of the cassava now grown is with the new method and stalks.
This is currently being used as accommodation by the teachers at the local school, as they have no other accommodation available. It was decided to give it to them at no cost to ensure the teachers would stay in the area and not move away which would have caused the school many problems.
All the financially supported activities have now finished. Charles assures us he still has a heart for the community and wants to start trying to address mindsets through the local church.
Charles' plan is to start with his own CMML Brethren Church and get alongside the leaders to help them answer the questions "Why do I go to church?", and "Why am I a leader here?" There is the problem of a lack of literacy in the area, and Charles wants to start mobilizing the previously sponsored orphans into helping teach literacy classes through the churches.
For farming, Charles wants to invite people to come to his own farm to act as interns who work for him in return for knowledge of how to farm. He will look at how he can them help the interns to set up their own farm with some seed capital.
There is a request for an oil press to be added to the community project. The press can make oil from sunflowers, groundnuts and soyabeans. Oil is a life essential and currently all oil is brought into the area from outside, which increases the costs.
The best crop for oil is sunflowers but currently not a lot is grown in the area. However, Charles felt that if there was an oil press present, people would start to grow this crop.
We discussed the first step is to grow a good crop of sunflowers to see if this would be viable for the farmers. Charles has purchased 20 kg of seeds (white coloured which are good for oil), that he wants to share out among six farmers to try to grow a ¼ lima each (25m x 25m). They can take these sunflowers to an oil press 42km away which will determine if the business is viable.
No funding is currently required for this partnership. We will reassess with the sunflower project in a year's time.