Becoming a DIY-er: Furniture, Bucket Wine, Dried Papaya, and Chiponde

After living in Malawi for just over three months I have realized how much I used to depend on, and how blessed we are with the conveniences of the United States. In the States it is often said, “time is money.” We often don’t do the time consuming activities that we could do ourselves because it eats up time we could be working, and therefore making money. However, convenience also comes with a price, where if we did it ourselves we’d save that money we are so eager to make. In the U.S. we simply live to work, where other places in the world work to live.

Being a volunteer, and living on like $3-4 a day I no longer buy things because they are convenient and quick, but instead have learned to do/make things my own. Money is something I don’t think about as much, or maybe I should say spend much of, because as a volunteer it seems pretty much non-existent (however, in reality $3-4 a day is actually a lot higher than many Malawians live off a day). Plus, Malawi has blessed me with a lot of what I guess I could call “free time,” that I may not of had in the States, for trying new things I would never of thought of because I could simply just go to a store and pay for the convenience.

Over the last month and a half I have spent a lot of that free time making my house a home, and filling my time with projects to entertain myself and keep myself busy. (I never knew how easy it would be for me to live alone and not be bored. I have realized that I am a master at entertaining myself). My first project was building my two-burner cook stove that I mentioned in a previous post. After I accomplished that I was feeling very ambitious and decided that I wanted to try and build my own furniture. I figured I was involved in Habitat for Humanity for four years in college and building furniture couldn’t be too different from hammering nails in a house. I drew up my own designs in a sketchbook, a table/countertop for my kitchen and a bookshelf, and brought them to a (my 1st) carpenter. To say the least I think he thought I was crazy for wanted to do this myself. But besides that he told me he didn’t have any wood and to come back in a week. My first thought was how does a carpenter make any money if he doesn’t have any wood to build stuff? The answer….who knows haha. I went back the next week, and still no wood, and he said he would call when it arrived. (Apparently wood is brought down “from the mountains” and takes a long time to get here.) While waiting for this man to call (he never did call by the way) I decided I would try and search for another carpenter in the area who may have wood. I talked to two more carpenters (who also didn’t have wood), before I finally found someone, or I should say my landlord helped me find someone, who said they would bring wood for me in a week. Well, a week turned into like three weeks (I guess someone got sick in his family so he couldn’t come), but finally a man delivered 8 planks of wood to my house. He also let me borrow his handsaw so I could saw the planks to the correct length and width. (Talking about convenience…going to say Home-Depot and buying wood, all in one day, yeah that doesn’t exist here!). So after many hours of sawing, lining up boards, hammering things together, and having my neighbors stare in amazement I ended up with something close enough to a countertop for my kitchen, and a place to put all my books in my living room. It may not be perfect, but it works. My food and books are finally off the floor. Oh, and I also can’t lift my arms (sawing isn’t easy…).

You could say that building my own furniture (or maybe it was the unreliability of all the carpenters in my area) made me want a drink (other than my everyday option, water)…bringing me to my next do-it-yourself (DIY) activity of making my own bucket wine. Who would of thought making your own wine was even possible? I mean, obviously it’s done (someone has to make it), but to think it’s not even all that hard, it’s actually really simple/really hard to screw up, and that you can just use a bucket….ahhh I don’t know, the whole concept still amazes me and I only wish that I knew how to do this when I was a poor college student. I guess I’m thankful I learned as an even poorer PC volunteer. Anyways, yes. Bucket wine seems to be the DIY creation of many Peace Corps Volunteers in Malawi. We even have a Whatsapp chat group named “Fuck-it, Let’s Bucket” to talk about recipes that are good, and ones that don’t turn out so well. I didn’t come up with the name, and maybe it’s a little vulgar, but you have to admit it’s pretty funny. Sometimes a glass of bucket wine is perfect after a long day in the village.

My first batch of bucket wine was sweet ginger, and wow is it amazing. I’m not exactly sure how to test alcohol content, but I guess you can just trust me when I say it worked…or maybe now I’m just a light weight because I no longer have the pleasure of drinking delicious Wisconsin beer. I used a very simple recipe I got from my friend Trevor. All you really need is some sort of fruit, water, yeast, and sugar. Instead of typing up a whole guide on how to make your own bucket wine (because now I know all of you are eager to save money and try this yourself) I thought I would let you read the details below on Trevor’s blog post if you’re interested.

http://tales-from-malawi.blogspot.com/2015/06/diy-bucket-wine-beer-champaign-mead.html

Click on the link to read Trevor’s instructions if you are interested in trying this at home! I can say first hand that it is worth a try, and fun to experiment with. I plan to make my next bucket very soon….mango season is right around the corner.

Furniture and wine aren’t the only things I’ve taken time to make myself. This past week I also attempted (and would say was quite successful) drying my own fruit, and making my own chiponde (peanut butter). Again, who knew these things were even possible when my whole life I’ve so easily just gone to the store, paid $5, and gotten a bag of dried mangos or a jar of peanut butter. The thing is, in Malawi I don’t exactly have that luxury. I haven’t seen dried fruit here (there’s a good chance it’s in the capital city, but out of my budget), and with as much peanut butter as I’ve been eating, if I keep buying it every time I go to town, I’m going to have a large hole in my wallet, and be hungry for the remainder of the month (maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the point…PB is expensive on my PC allowance for how much I go through). So instead I decided to do-it-myself.

The first fruit, because right now it is in season, that I successfully dried was papaya. By simply taking advantage of the heat from the Malawian sun, this was so simple, and makes for a very delicious, long-lasting treat. (Drying fruits and vegetables is something I’d like to incorporate into my projects in the village; teaching people the benefits of food dehydration, especially related to food security, as Malawi is expected to have a very long “hunger season,” especially this coming year due to the lack of rains and poor harvest). This project really didn’t even take any big effort from me. All I did was purchase the papaya (a whole 30-ish cents), make a solar-drying contraption, and slice the papaya into thin pieces. Purchasing the papaya and slicing it was easy, but finding materials to make a solar food dehydrator was where a bit of creativity came in. I’ve seen solar dehydrators made from wood planks, black paint, and clear plastic, but since none of those things were available to me (or would be easy for a villager to purchase) I decided to find things I already had. I ended up using a bucket lid, a black plastic bag, a clear plastic bag, and some clothespins (all things that someone without a lot of money can easily acquire). I lined the bucket lid with the black plastic bag, placed the thinly sliced papaya pieces in the lid, covered and clipped the clear bag with the clothespins, and placed the lid in the sun for 2 days. Wala, magic. I have dried papaya to eat for when the season is over….although I doubt it will make it that long.

This week I also took the time and effort to make my own peanut butter, known as chiponde in Chichewa. Although it took me close to 3 hours to make one jar, and about 10 minutes to eat ever last bit (because it was so delicious), it was worth the time and experience, and Malawians often have this time to spare as well. I think I will continue to make my own chiponde instead of buying it from now on. (This is also something I want to teach my village to make. Groundnuts are cheap and easy to find in Chipoka, and high in protein. Selling chiponde would also be a great IGA- income generating activity- for people to earn some money. I haven’t seen anyone selling it yet, so I’m hoping to introduce this idea.) This way I also know exactly what ingredients are going into it, and it even seems to taste that much better knowing I made it myself. A few weeks back a friend had given me a small bucket worth of groundnuts (peanuts), and the only other ingredients you need are a tad bit of salt and sugar (I used honey) to your taste, and a little oil for consistency…all easy to come by in village. Again, I’m wondering why I’ve never done this at home…but then I remember that I probably wouldn’t have had, or given up, 3 hours of my morning to make peanut butter when I could instead run to the store in 15 minutes and buy a jar. Well, truth is, my life full of conveniences has now been replaced with taking to time to and learning to do things myself. Here it isn’t as simple as running to the store. It may take me hours to get into town, and it simply isn’t worth it for the travel expense. I’d end up spending more for the minibus then I would on the peanut butter itself. And on top of all that, experimenting with making chiponde was a fun adventure that filled my morning with learning new things, leaving me the opposite of bored.

First I needed to shuck all of the peanut shells. By the time I was done with this my fingers hurt haha. I don’t think I’ve ever split so my peanut shells in my life before this week. Next I started a fire and roasted all of the groundnuts that I just took from the shell. This only took 10-20 minutes; you only need to roast them until they are all about equally brown, and the only reason you do this is so that the peanuts don’t have a raw taste. After they are roasted, and you let them cool, you need to take all the pink (now brown) outer casings of the peanuts from the actual nut. Because they have been heated, this casing actually comes off quite easily by just putting a small amount between your hands and rubbing your hands together. I learned that this part should definitely be done outside because otherwise you will have peanut scraps all over the house. Luckily I do most everything outside anyways so even though I didn’t think about that I was already outside. Once you’ve rubbed off all of the outer peanut casings you need to mash/pound the peanuts. For this I borrowed my landlord’s mortar and pestle, but I know other PCV’s who’ve used a wine bottle and bucket and it works the same (not everyone in village will have a mortar and pestle so sometimes you need to be creative). Pounding the peanuts in small amounts was most successful because this way you can get the peanuts as fine as possible. After having probably too much fun pounding, I just added a little salt, honey, and oil, and stirred everything together, and before I knew it was feasting on delicious homemade chiponde!

As you can see I’ve been experiencing lots of different DIY adventures during my time here in Chipoka. I’m also sure this wont be the end, as I’m very interested in building a bee hive, and being able to produce my own honey instead of having to buy that as well (again, honey could be called a special treat for a PCV). On top of that I have been double digging up parts of my yard, have started a compost pit, and soon plan to get my garden in the ground. I’ve started seedlings and am really only waiting for my fence to be built to keep the goats out of my yard. The thought of growing, and making all my own food from scratch, and knowing exactly where it comes from and how it was made really excites me. And I figure what better time than now to make all of this happen! I can honestly see myself bringing these skills back with me to the States in two years, and hope that I will find, and take, the time to “do things myself” even with the conveniences available. It makes you appreciate the product, and the value of your time that much more when you DIY!

#peacecorps