We start our days with a devotional while sitting at the outdoor cafe. We have had great and thought provoking discussions led by Cayce.
After breakfast we headed back to Madisi to tour their permaculture gardens and orchards. Greg and I helped co-found a KC
-based nonprofit organization (The Giving Grove) focused on developing edible tree gardens so this was near and dear to our hearts.
Even though this is June in the Southern Hemisphere – so equivalent to late December for KC – the garden was full of tomatoes, beans, salad greens, along with papaya, guava, mango and banana trees. They even had rabbits and pigs and were developing plans for beehives. This garden would have even made Ben (Executive Director of the Kansas City Community Gardens) smile with delight!
After Madisi our group split up. Cayce and Carol went to Blantyre while Greg and Kevin met with a local drilling company and toured four of the wells they have completed. These are all fairly new (5 years or less) hand-pumped wells which generally replaced brackish shallow water wells. Even with these improvements we still heard stories of women walking 20 kilometers (12 miles) each way to get 5 gallons of water often starting at 3:00 am. Queues for the water frequently hit 50 meters long.
Access to water is an enormous issue in Malawi. Seeing the issues first hand certainly made it much clearer to Greg and me. We met with local chiefs and local water committee 
members, but mostly we just talked to the women and men at the wells. Waking long distances to water wells, waiting in long queues, hand pumping up the water and carrying back heavy containers of water are basically elements of life in rural Malawi – and almost beyond understanding for Americans.
Even with recent advancements large portions (roughly 27%) of the Malawi population still does not have access to clean water and that percentage is rising at alarming pace. We as a church are working to make 
an impact in helping Malawians with this basic human need. In the process can we help create sustainable jobs for drillers and maintenance crews? Can we add organic gardens and orchards at the well sites? Are there other more creative ways we can help?