Natural medicine project

Sorry I have been majorly slacking with writing posts recently. Classes started up again about 2 weeks ago and I have been pretty busy lately. I'm teaching math form 2 and biology form 3. So far it's going really well. In addition to teaching I have two other major projects I will be working on this year.

In August I applied and was accepted to be the logistics coordinator for Camp Sky 2015 😄 That means me and 3 other coordinators are in charge of planning, organizing, and running the camp next year. I wrote about Camp Sky in April. It was the best week of my Peace Corps service and I'm so excited to be able to help lead it this year. Currently we have booked an awesome venue and are working on writing grants and planning. I'll write more about this later when we have more figured out. 

The other project I've been working on is a natural medicine project in my village. In April I also wrote about a training I went to called ANAMED. It was natural medicine workshop where I, and my Malawian counterpart, learned about health, different plants, and how to use plants to make medicines. We realized that the information we learned would be very beneficial to our village and decided to use it in our community. We are about 15km from the closest hospital and the road to get there is in very bad condition making transport difficult. Because of this, most people don't go to the hospital when they get sick.  We thought that we could use the training we had to make natural medicines and immune boosters for people who could not get official treatment. We started a group of 8 people from my village and a few surrounding villages. The first few meetings we taught our group about plants, how to make the products, and about business. Within our group we appointed a chairman, secretary, and treasurer. Every week we meet to make products that the villagers need. About once a month our group also travels to surrounding villages to give a presentation about health, how to take care of yourself, what natural medicine is, and what products we sell. Some of the products we make include a eucalyptus tincture for cough and sore throat, chili ointment for rheumatism and sore muscles, and moringa leaf powder which is a great nutritional food additive and immunity booster. Our most popular product is anti fungal soap and ointment made from cassia lata and neem leaf powders. We sell all of our products for k300. About 75 cents. The profit we make from selling the medicines is used to buy the supplies we need to make more medicine.  

These are a few members of the group working in my backyard making anti fungal soap. 

My counterpart showing some of the leaves he is drying. Once the leaves are dry we pound them into a power and put the leaf powder into soaps, ointments, or tinctures. The medicinal properties in different leaves are good to help cure different ailments. 

The project is going really well and has been well received in my village and even many of the villages around me. We are currently working with a group of American college business students to make the project more official and sustainable. Eventually we want to start a stand in the local market or at the health clinic to sell our products.