Fertilizing relationships

I’ve decided to try something different.

Enos Banda, the farmer I live with, needs fertilizer for this year’s crop. The cost of fertilizer, however, is beyond his reach. Each bag costs 10 000 Malawian Kwacha, about what an average Malawian worker takes home in a month. Of course, as a subsistence farmer, Enos doesn’t bring home a salary. To cut to the chase: options are limited.

But then again, Enos is playing host to a white man from Canada.

This is where things get complicated. How do you live, eat, and laugh with a friend for five months and then decline him the money (about $500 CAD) he needs to buy the fertilizer to feed his family? Then again, why even think to deny your friend the money in the first place? Maybe because playing favourites in a village community is almost certain to have unintended (likely negative) consequences, or maybe because assuming the archetypal role of the white man distributing largesse to a black African isn’t particularly desirable.

I thought about it. Here’s what I decided.

1. I would help Enos buy fertilizer.
2. The money would be a loan which Enos would have to pay back.
3. If the rains didn’t come and his crops failed despite fertilizer, he would have to pay back only a third of the loan.
4. As incentive to repay, if he pays back the entire loan, he’s then eligible for another loan, not just for fertilizer this time, but for improvements to his home.

That’s it. I told him that I’m worried about what could happen to our friendship if he can’t (or doesn’t) repay, that I’m worried about how the community will view this loan, but that I’m also worried that he and his family wouldn’t have much to eat without fertilizer.

We’ll see. I’ve decided to stay in Malawi with Engineers Without Borders up until 2010 so I’ll be around to see what happens. For a farmer and his family who have hovered near abject hunger for far too many years, I hope it will be the start of something different.