Oral history
Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Collection
RPCV-ACC-2020-006
Christian Erek Porter served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Malawi from 2011 to 2013 as a management consultant in the environment sector. He did his language and cross-cultural training at Dedza University and in a village in central Malawi. Porter lived in a Tongan village near Nkhata Bay on Lake Malawi during his service as a management consultant to the Nkhata Bay Honey Cooperative. During the interview he tells how he spent the first four months of his assignment doing market research by traveling to grocery stores all over the country, watching Malawians choose which honey to buy, and talking to them about their choices. He then, with buy-in from the co-op's directors, put in place modern business practices and trained the directors on how to sell co-op honey at premium prices to return maximum profits to the honey farmers. Interviewed and recorded by Ivan Browning, August 26, 2019. 2 digital audio files (web streaming files combined into 1 file).