Honey is Money

Destroyer gave me the skinny on the reputation of Peace Corps in Malawi. Apparently, of all the aid organizations, and there are many many in Malawi, PC is considered the most extreme because our site placements are the most remote locations. In addition, within PC itself, the Environment group is considered most hardcore because, of the three groups, Environment volunteers are placed in the most remote locations. Perspective noted with a grain of salt.

So here I am 3 hours from the nearest town and half a day’s journey to the nearest city. My main project here is to organize the beekeepers in the area, formalize an association, and start producing quality honey on a scale significant enough to warrant bottling and retail sales. This was a project I chose because it showed the most potential. At the moment the beekeepers vary greatly in location, training, experience keeping bees and processing honey. They are somewhat in disarray.

Villages and homes are spread out for miles in these hills between Vwaza Marsh Game Reserve and Nyikha National Park. The citizens are all tobacco farmers and some (including women) keep bees on the side, either as supplementary income or just to eat. However, hives are very expensive, as are the necessary equipment needed such as bee suits and smokers. The start-up cost is very high and most cannot procure the initial capital required to keep bees. There are alternative, low-cost solutions to these problems, such as local hives and local bee suits made from local sustainable materials (mud, palm tree branches, maize sacks, etc.) at a fraction of the cost. We need to educate and implement these alternatives to give the group an initial push, a jump-start. Once a hive is well positioned the maintenance and labor required is minimal. The fixed costs are almost nothing and variable costs are also minimal and only occur at the processing stage.

The tobacco plantations are also an issue because tobacco causes a bitter taste in the honey. Thus, hive placement needs to be far from the plantations, in the hills. Hives require many trees to hang them on, and unfortunately the hills are rapidly becoming void of trees; deforestation due to trees being cut down to make charcoal, firewood, and tobacco drying shelters. Tobacco is good money here, but it is terrible for the land. Honey, on the other hand, is a sustainable business and the market prospects are very attractive with current demand far outpacing supply. More hives also means more trees as they will need to be preserved for hanging.
There is a lot of work to do and a long road to achieve the goals set out. I know nothing (well, a little now) about honey, about business in Malawi, and lack the confidence of an experienced entrepreneur. I have only a modest business schooling and a banker’s bravado, which I clutch fiercely in these waters I have never navigated for there is more at stake than my own failure: the livelihoods of the people. There are other projects in the works, and they too have potential, but not as much promise and scale as the honey business. Honey is money.

So far I have been able to get the community excited and have already sold some honey here and there. Some make excellent honey here, the best I have ever tasted and customers agree with that point. But the fear that this project will fall apart, that two unaccomplished years will pass, that it will not sustain, sits heavily on my shoulders. This weight only grows heavier knowing that my predecessor was so admired and remembered as an incredibly successful volunteer by the community and by Peace Corps.

The community has doubts, although they have been very supportive and active, I sense my age is a concern. A sensible reluctance, considering the previous volunteer was 28. What could a 23 year-old offer to people that have made a life here for centuries? Some laugh when I tell them my age, some stare in disbelief (“boza!”), and some just flat out call me a liar. Pretty amusing. I find comfort in my schooling, confidence in the American spirit that anything is possible with hard work, and a quiet faith that I’m here for a reason. I will forever fear failure. This is a phobia I seemed to have acquired late after adolescence that I now see as a quintessential fallacy of manhood: that to fail is to be forgotten.