Road Grading, Malawi Style {Malawi Mondays}

{Malawi Mondays is an attempt to show glimpses into "how we see Malawi" as someone who has moved here from another passport country. Hope to give a little picture of how life here is beautiful, exciting, difficult at times and full of learning experiences}

When we lived stateside, our house was  on a black top road that turned into a dirt road right after our property. As the boys grew up, they loved seeing the road grader pass our house. The drivers would always keep a bag of dum-dums nearby to hand out to the boys (and other kids) watching them do their "thing". 

The purpose of road grading is to smooth out roads so that cars can easily pass along, while also keeping the water draining (yes, I had to ask my husband the purpose ;). 

This is how we road grade, Malawi style.....

There are no air-conditioned tractor cabs with shiny blades.

Instead of blades, you use your hoe, and the strength of your back.

The government pays people in the village to grade out a certain sections of the road.

The ditches are cut lower and the excess soil is thrown into the middle of the road.

There is a long triangle of sorts (not pictured) made of 2 x 4's that is used to measure the road and make sure the slope from the middle to the edge is at the correct angle.

The soil is unbelievably  hard right now as rain has been non-existent since April.

The distance from the highway to Esther's House is 2.8 km and it has taken about a month to grade the road section by section to here.

There are a few blacktop roads in all of Malawi, but the rest (and vast majority) are dirt roads. This is how the roads are maintained all over the country!