Peanut Butter!

We have recently hired a woman in the village to make us peanut butter. She roasts the peanuts, adds a little bit of salt and sugar and smashes them up. We are buying the jars for 200MK each from her. They are about 220MK in the store, so it is cheaper for us and a lot of money for her. She started making extras that we are selling to other Peace Corps Volunteers. The orange tub is actually a Gatorade container sent in a care package from Jack and Bonnie. The other containers are just old peanut butter jars that we have used. Jif has got nothin' on this stuff.

We are applying through Peace Corps Malawi for a Groundnut Sheller to help a farming group we have identified in the village. Then hopefully the local villagers will grow less tobacco and more groundnuts to make peanut butter. Check out the Fully Belly Project and a short 9 minute video that shows the sheller in action. In exchange for the sheller, the community must provide for one bag of Portland cement, or the kwacha equivalent to pay for it. This bag of cement costs about MK2,600, or about $18.50. The cement is then used to make more GN shellers. We have been told that the device will shell the same amount of groundnuts in one hour what it would take a person to shell by hand in one week.