A LIFE TRANSFORMED

摘要

Three years ago, Lucy Banda and her six children lived in a two-room house made of soil dampened and tamped into a dome, with just one bedroom and a living room. Her new house is made of brick and has a tin roof and two bedrooms. "I'm hoping to lay a concrete floor soon," she says. Banda has also been able to buy an ox cart and pay school fees for one of her children. She is thinking of buying land to build a house for renting, and a truck to allow her to trade her merchandise more widely. It is 30 kilometres from Mwambaso, the village where she lives to the nearest town, Mchingi. What made the difference was a boost in the productivity of her land. Three years ago, the harvest amounted to three cartloads of maize and four to six bags of soybeans. She then joined the AGRA programme (see main story), who put her forward as a model participant.