John Buchanan is a complicated figure in Malawi’s history. He was one of the missionary group that established Blantyre Mission in 1876, later ran his own estate, and was the Acting Consul who first declared the British Protectorate in 1889. He is of interest to me since he was the first European to live in Zomba, his home just half a mile from where I live now.
His role at the Blantyre Mission was that of horticulturalist and agriculturalist. This oriented him strongly to Malawi’s natural environment, on which he soon built up formidable expertise. He marvelled at the richness of the vegetation and especially the tree cover that marked Malawi’s landscape in his time. He soon knew enough to give a prescient warning:
“Denude a country of its trees, and you change the climate from a moderately wet one to a very dry one. Streams that should keep running all the year round become dried up by evaporation, and instead of a rich vegetation in the form of trees differing in size and height of stem, foliage beautifully varied in tint and form, you have a partial desert burnt and dry.”
Sadly, this is what has, in fact, happened in Malawi. Already this is making life challenging, to say the least, for many families who depend on agriculture for their livelihood. On current trends, conditions are set to deteriorate further.
Hence, there is nothing for it but to change the trends. Malawi needs to be reforested and a very small contribution to the effort was our tree-planting day at Zomba Theological University on Friday. Aiming to create a “green campus” in our strategic location at the heart of Zomba, we hope to signal what is possible for the city and the country. This is also a formative experience for our students who will serve in future in many different parts of the country. Our hope is that they can be agents of the restoration of the vegetation on which the future of their country depends.
Thinking Mission Blog 