Tractor Arrives in Time for Next Season
Thondwe, Malawi … Tom shut off the engine and blocked the wheels after carefully guiding the blue and yellow V-Tractor into the semi trailer at his manufacturing plant in Lebanon, Indiana. After packing medical supplies, empty prescription vials, and eight-kidney dialysis machines the doors were closed and the seal securely attached. Two days later a semi secured the trailer and made its way to the nearby interstate to begin its long journey east.
Four months after crossing the U.S., the Atlantic Ocean, and part of sub-Saharan Africa the trailer turned off the tarmac and pulled up to its final destination. The seal was carefully checked and removed and the squeeking doors sprang open. The tractor had reached its new home in Thondwe, Malawi. It would take its place along with a number of other V-tractors previously delivered to the “Warm Heart of Africa”. All of this as a result of the generous work and contribution of Tom Rich and his staff at Agricultural Aid International and the L.T. Rich Manufacturing Company in Lebanon, to the “Warm Heart of Africa.”
Without a dock for unloading the Malawians exercised creative skills honed from years of doing without and a “pallet ramp” helped the farm tractor down from the shipping trailer. Home base at last, the Namikango Mission and Maternity Clinic at Thondwe, Malawi.
After waiting months the V-Tractor was home. The rains would end soon, the engine would spring to life, and fields would feel the cultivating, planting, and harvesting influence of this mechanized life saving device.
The agriculture portion of the Malawi Project focuses on a series of timely approaches to food production. In times of severe famine send food. When the famine lessons, teach them to fish through drip irrigation, mechanized V-Tractors and Walk Behinds, and finish it off with the latest technology modern agriculture can bring to the table. For more information on the V-Tractor, the Walk Behind, and other programs being conducted by the Project to create sustainable living for the people of Malawi, go to:
https://www.malawiproject.org/programs/agriculture/