Cows in Malawi!!!

If you know me, you know how much I love cows, having grown up on a dairy farm and yada, yada, yada... So, I was in cow heaven yesterday when I took a tour of Heifer International’s dairy cow project in Mchinji district in the western part of Malawi. The staff at Heifer Malawi were kind enough to set up a very nice tour for me and two of my fellow Peace Corps volunteers, and I can’t begin to adequately express how impressed and inspired we were by what we saw.


See an entire photo album of the day here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=196707&id=535098122&l=d58b84274d

For a quick summary, there were several things that really stuck out to me about the day. First, the quality of the cows that Heifer has provided to their project participants is, I think, remarkable. I spent many years judging dairy cows in the States, and I can tell you that these cows are as good as any cows on my family’s farm in North Carolina, and in a dairy show, they would stack up with the best. You would expect that cows sent to poor people in a third-world country would be second-rate, but these were top-notch. Heifer runs a classy operation. Secondly, I was amazed at the determination and drive of the Malawian participants in this project. They started their group, the Bua Milk Bulking Group, in 2005, with a vision of having a large project to bring milk cows into the area to provide nutrition and income for participants. For years, they applied for assistance and tried to find ways of making the dream a reality. Finally, last year, Heifer International decided to work with this group as its first project run out of the newly created Heifer Malawi office. The fact that they worked for four years toward a goal that must have seemed impossibly out of reach is a clear indicator of the passion and fortitude of these people. Now that the project has started, the participants are putting in countless hours to build pens, gather feed, and care for the animals. I’m inspired by the people I met yesterday and I hope that I can find that same drive in the people of my community.

You can support Heifer International at www.heifer.org.

I’m running out of computer time right now, but hope to tell you a little more about this project, and what I’m doing at my site, in the very near future.