Spring/Summer 2023
Where did you grow up?
I was born and brought up in Malawi along the shores of Lake Malawi, at Chilumba. As a child, I spent much of the time playing at the lake — swimming, paddling canoes, fishing, playing beach soccer and many other fun activities. During the rainy season I was helping my mother with farming, growing mainly cassava. During my childhood years, Chilumba was self-sufficient. Many households earned a good living from fishing and small-scale, rainfed agriculture — people had good catch from the lake and bumper harvests from their gardens; the community was booming.
Park Muhonda, Geography Instructor
When did you know that you wanted to be
a scientist?
Later, in my high school years, things changed. Chilumba, like many other rural communities in Malawi, started to experience livelihood failure, often manifested as persistent food insecurity. Smallholders’ livelihood crises have since been attributed directly to weather perturbations/climatic shocks. However, I began to notice that livelihood vulnerability was deepening: Even in years of “normal” rainfall, livelihood crisis (or food insecurity) persisted. And many more smallholders were pushed to the edge day by day.
So, right from this tender age, I knew I wanted to pursue a career that was fundamentally integrative and focused on people’s well-being/livelihood challenges in particular places (i.e., rural areas). My overarching thought was: What can I do (or what do we need to do) to contribute to improving livelihoods in rural communities like Chilumba?
Your research is broad, encompassing social science, geography, water resources, economics and more. What are the common threads that pull it all together?
My master’s research in a rural community in Zimbabwe inspired me to question the simplistic explanations that squarely blamed deepening rural livelihood vulnerability on unkind weather. I came to realize that rural livelihood vulnerability can better be understood through a multidimensional approach. Eventually, I adopted political ecology as a framework and a common thread that underpins my research in rural livelihoods analysis.
What is livelihood analysis, and how have you used it?
Livelihood analysis could loosely be defined as an attempt to analyze people’s livelihoods or the livelihood system in the context of various constraints, and/or shocks. Here is one example. In Malawi, smallholder farming has become specialized into maize monoculture, eroding crop variety and diversity. Maize, however, is not drought resistant, and maintaining yields requires fertilizer and fresh hybrid seeds each year, which the poor smallholders cannot afford. Maize monoculture has increased vulnerability to fluctuations in weather and market food prices.
I have also used livelihood analysis to understand small scale fishers’ livelihoods, asking who benefits from Lake Malawi fisheries and how.
What other opportunities are you looking forward to pursuing within CEOAS/Oregon State as you settle in here?
I am thinking about a collaboration with a colleague from the College of Forestry to develop a study abroad class on community-based climate change adaptation and resilience strategies in Africa (focusing on communities near globally critical ecological systems in Malawi and Uganda).
What do you do for fun?
When free, I enjoy swimming, which has been my hobby since childhood. I like playing with my two daughters. I also like watching TV and going on outings with my family.
