Brick by brick, tree by tree, Carmelite Missionary Sisters plant skills to limit Malawi’s deforestation

KAPIRI, MALAWI — Sr. Patricia Chimimba remembers when the forest near her convent in this town outside Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, was so thick with leaves and foliage that one could hardly walk through it.

Nowadays, Kalumba Forest, 37 miles north of Lilongwe, is degraded, replaced by grasslands dotted with tree stumps. Religious leaders and environmentalists say that Malawians' dependence on firewood and charcoal as their only source of income and to meet their own energy needs has led them to chop down vast portions of the forest.

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