Hello! We would like to start off the New Year of 2019 by sharing one incredible story of how one person's gift of a Back to Eden DVD changed the lives of an entire community in Africa. We sincerely thank you for helping spread Back to Eden gardening to regions in need globally. We hope it inspires you and touches your heart!

"My name is Chisomo Njewa, a young man, aged 34. In 2013 when I was doing my studies in Monitoring and Evaluation at the Catholic University of Malawi, I started a project whose aim was to see "how we can make a difference in the communities where we live by using Social Media." I then called the project Sowing the Seeds of Love. Repo village was chosen as a model village.

The "seeds" was a figurative speech of different actions of love or charity towards our neighbors or our friends in different parts of the world as we now talk about the world being a global village. I began by creating a Facebook page where I later posted a story of a man with disability his name Moses Chamba. Thank God, one hour after I posted the story of Moses Chamba who had mobility challenges as he couldn't afford to buy a Tricycle, a lady from US wrote me and immediately sent funds through Western Union and finally Moses Chamba was bought a Tricycle which has changed his life up to the present as he is able to travel easily and get resources to support his life and his family. This marked to be the first "Seed of Love" that was sawn in the project." 

"After seating down with the community in Repo Village, we decided to start growing herbs and food. In Malawi, my country, allot of people are dying deaths that could have been prevented. Mostly children and women die because of malnutrition and also lack of conversational medicine in our hospitals. It is why we decided to start growing herbs and food. When conversional medicine is scarce people ought to know what plants are herbs and what they heal. A well nourished community contributes so well to the development of the country and indeed the world. I posted about our idea and a Seeds Donation drive was started which enabled us to receive seeds of different kind of herbs and food from individuals of all over the world. 

A green house was created for the project where we had sawn different kinds of seeds received and labelled them. Some did well some did not do well. Then I started doing internet research on Permaculture, so as to come up with solutions of how best to deal with the type of soil in Malawi and the weather as we have suffered great effects of climate change in the country the past years leaving most communities food insecure year in year out." 

"In the middle of my research on Permaculture, Mr. Lawrence Hoppis from California wrote me and he expressed how passionate he had been following Sowing the Seeds of Love. I gave him my postal address and he sent us lots of seeds which we also have here in Malawi, and in the package, there was also a newly bought disc of Back to Eden Film, and also my first laptop which he donated to me as most of my internet access was done by a phone, a Nokia that time. Using the laptop, I watched the Back to Eden film for the first time. I have not been fond of documentaries but something strange happened, I watched the film from the start to the end and immediately repeated it. The whole week I was watching the film daily. Everyone who came to visit me at home would watch with me too and everyone had positive comments about the film.

From what I watched, we took that concept into Sowing the Seeds of Love. We developed our first organic cabbage garden, tomatoes garden, onions garden. We also developed a Chicken pass on project to support the organic farming methods we developed in the village."

"Back to Eden Film became my favorite film and it changed the game in Sowing the Seeds of Love. Since that time Back to Eden has become my life style."

"The biggest game changer in the film is on Soil Cover, this is the biggest challenge in Malawi as most of our trees are cut down and our soil is so open and losing out the fertility. This results in most people to use Chemical Fertilizers which are degrading our soil and the yields are so small. On long term, we planted trees with the community to create a wood lot of fruits with the community food forest." 

"Our Eden is lost, we really need to get it back and create food forests for poor communities in Malawi."

In the course of dealing with Repo Village in creating a food forest for them, there have been challenges met, mostly effects of Climate Change, like the flash floods of 2015. Additionally, financial challenges from supporting individuals from the US made it difficult for us here in Malawi to rebuild what we lost. Given an opportunity to be Gardener of the Month in Back to Eden, it will be great to be so. I will still do Back to Eden gardening with the community of Repo Village as an example to all communities around. Indeed in Malawi as a whole I will continue organic farming and respecting nature as it is and not destroying it with the chemicals we are always using. 

This is my story of my experience of Back to Eden in Malawi Africa with Sowing the seeds of Love and the community of Repo Village.