Gardening - Malawian Style

I am going to get a bit morbid for a second, so bear with me ... this all turns out okay in the end.  Have you ever heard those stories of massacres in Africa in which hundreds or thousands of people are slaughtered with machetes?  If you're like me you may have wondered why in the world would someone have a machete.  Let alone the notion that many people have machetes.

After living in Malawi for about a day, you immediately solve the mystery.



Machetes are ....



wait for it....

Catch that?

Precision Gardening Tools

In a place with consistent fuel shortages and a lack of access to power tools, let alone power gardening tools, gardeners use machetes to trim edges, and sickles to cut grass.  Most of the grass on campus is trimmed by gas or electric movers, but there are no weed whackers for trimming edges and hard to mow areas. 

Where does one buy such precision gardening tools?  The markets.  Most machetes put Crocodile Dundee's "this is a knife" famous tag line to shame.  Admittedly, it's quite intimidating to see people walking around with giant knives.

Anyone seen this before elsewhere?