Deforestation

While in Malawi, we learned a few things. First, Malawi is considered to be one of the poorest nations in the world. Apparently, it has made some of the top 10 lists. What is funny is that Malawi is more developed than Mozambique. I suspect that the problem lies in the population density. There are many, many more people per square mile in Malawi than in Mozambique, where there are large tracts of sparsely-populated land.

In Malawi, there is a great deal more industry. Locally-made products are sold in all the stores, while in Mozambique only a small percentage of products are local. It seems, also, that there is a more fertile environment for growing crops. We saw corn planted on every spare square inch of land. However, there have been droughts over the past 15 years and to the subsistence farmer this is devastating. We see the same thing over here - in a year of good crops, people get by just fine. In a bad year, you see malnutrition, sickness and starvation.

One of the problems that Malawi faces is deforestation. We took this picture while we were driving up on Zomba mountain. Long-term missionaries tell us that not long ago, it was like driving up into a rain forest up there. It was dense with trees. As we drove up the winding road, we saw bicycle after bicycle loaded down with cut and stacked wood. We even saw one man carrying a huge load on his back. And up on the mountain, we saw entire slopes like this one, with every tree cut down. When all those stumps rot out, I imagine the mudslides will begin. I am not an expert on this stuff, but it seems a grim future for Zomba mountain. There is a forest service up there, and I hope that they are caring for it responsibly.


Why are they cutting down the trees? For cooking. Many, many people are still living in homes with no electricity, or do not have the money to purchase or use an electric hot plate. A very high percentage of people (and in Moz especially) are still cooking outdoors over fires. To use bottled gas is very expensive (especially to get it set up, with a cooker and with buying the gas), and solar ovens are complicated. When we lived in Namibia, I constructed and used a solar oven, but after about a month I gave up on it. It was very difficult to cook with, even in a constantly sunny place like Namibia. Of course, there are better-quality ones and better systems, but often it requires a commitment to longer cooking times, and different cooking methods that poor, uneducated women aren't willing, or are unable, to make. There are no easy solutions, and there are quite a few people who are working to try to create options for the poor, and to work on education so that deforestation will not continue to be the devastating force for land destruction that it currently is in many third-world countries. - Cami