New Mission for Berthine.
Half a year after launching her book ‘I Will Heal Their Land’, the Tree of Life Foundation asked Berthine to join their team. She was more than happy to do so.
Berthine: “Tree of Life is one of the two NGO’s that bought Deon’s farm in Malawi, to continue training small scale farmers in regenerative farming and agroforestry. Deon had called it ‘the Eden Africa project’. To be asked to help take care of the garden of Eden in Africa, was the greatest honour I could think of.
I had to say ‘yes’.”
Deon went back to South Africa and left this project in the caring hands of a great Malawian team and the Canadian partner ‘Stand as One Ministry’. Berthine has now joined this team as a project-coordinator, from the Netherlands.
Berthine: “Our lives have changed tremendously. I’m traveling to Malawi a few times per year to help coordinate the farmer outreach program and organize an international agroforestry course in collaboration with the Agroforestry Promotion Network. We now work with farmers in 8 villages around the farm who combine several lessons that can also be found in my book. Last April I visited John Bonongwe. He was the first farmer who adopted this new way of farming. He now had more than enough food to eat, and enough to share. He even gave me two home-grown pumpkins to show his gratitude. He said; ‘it is as if I’m dreaming. Previously I needed all my land to grow maize and only harvested 7 bags. Now I grow maize on half of my land and harvest 20 bags.’ On top of that he grows sweet potatoe, cassava, peas and beans. Fruits from his newly planted fruit trees are a promise for the future. I feel like I'm dreaming as well! ”
Together with a team of volunteers and her colleagues from Malawi, Berthine is now developing educational material to help spread this method faster.
