Conservation Farming Woes (aka Nothing's Easy)

It's been awhile; I've been in the field part of this week [more on that], at the plot, at the office, etc., etc. Have been on my feet all day except for yesterday, and it feels like the cartilage in my knees is down to the thickness of felt. Oh well ... they still worked well enough to dodge a runaway taxi this morning.

Anyway, as I mentioned some posts ago, the NGO I work with is promoting a method of farming known as "Conservation Farming" or "Conservation Agriculture". For those of you not steeped in agriculture, I'll give a brief summary:

1. "Conventional agriculture" is the ages-old practice of turning over the soil. The reasons for this is that a) the soil is loosened up for planting, and b) turning over the soil buries weeds. In Zambia, the turning over of the soil is accomplished either by hand (typical of the northern half of Zambia where tsetse flies are endemic), or by animal traction (e.g., oxen) pulling a single-share Ransome Victory plow [a post about the R.V. will follow in the future]. Anyway, the long and short is that you turn over the soil and plant right away; this gives your maize, sorghum, groundnuts, etc. time to get ahead of the weeds that will eventually resprout. You then weed the field once or twice and (hopefully) harvest.
2. Conservation agriculture is a possibly older practice (in some sense) that is coming back into vogue with recent concerns regarding soil erosion as a result of conventional agriculture. You see, when you turn over the soil surface and expose the bare soil to wind and rain, a surprising number of tons of soil are lost through erosion. This fact was starkly pointed out during the Dust Bowl years in the U.S., and through a number of publications, most notably "The Ploughman's Folly", written by Richard H. Faulkner in 1945. Conservation agriculture (hence, CF) puts emphasis on less disturbance of the soil profile, and therefore, less instances of soil erosion and the associated loss in soil fertility.

I think I'll post the manual online once I get back to my laptop (the Conservation Farming Unit (CFU) website is down these days), but basic tenants are:

• Digging planting basins or furrows that will be utilized year after year (preventing the need of turning over the entire soil surface).
• Applying lime (to reduce soil acidity) and fertilizer precisely (in basins or furrows) according to the crop being planted.
• Planting crops on time (for maize in Zambia, that means the first big rain after Nov. 15th).
• Weeding regularly to reduce the overall weed population.
• Retaining crop residues on the soil surface after harvesting in order to cover the soil during the long dry season.
• Annual rotation of crops (i.e. planting maize, then groundnuts, then cowpeas, etc.)

There is little doubt that CF is numerically a "better" system ... there are a number of glowing reports about how CF is sweeping Zambia. That may be the case given the amount of promotion of the practice being carried out by CFU, but my eyes and my gut tells me that actual, spontateous adoption (i.e. what Stephen Carr refers to as "osmosis between farmers") is slow. Though the technology isn't way out of reach, it is a technical system that needs to be diligently followed in order to for it to work; i.e., the chances for it to fail are quite high.

WARNING: I'm blithely skipping through tomes and years' worth of socio-agricultural research with the following statement: Simply presenting an agricultural methodology that is "better" in terms of lower ecological impact, higher agronomic returns, and so forth does not automatically guarantee adoption by farmers. Anyway, assuming people will adopt a system that is "better" disregards the reasons or history behind their existing systems and how those fit into broader socio-economic-political-cultural-ecological landscapes. When adopting a new system, farming families have to take into account literally hundreds of factors, particularly in the case of risk-averse, subsistence farmers. Put simply, what you and your ancestors have done since time out of mind is far more reliable and trustworthy than a brand-new system about which you have no clue.

That said, CF does work; when done correctly, yield gains, particularly in maize (the mainstay of Zambian agriculture and its staple food) can be huge, i.e. 300% increases. I've done it before in Kasempa during the drought season of 2004-05 and it worked alright, given the lack of rain and my lack of anything relating to farming knowledge; I did it again in successive years through 2007. What I've learned is that it takes a lot of trial-and-error to fine-tune the system; differences in soils, weed populations, rain, etc. mean that the same system doesn't work exactly the same in different places, such as Serenje and Kasempa. You desperately need to go through those iterations in order to have something you know will work when you roll it out to the farmers, because failure in the first season can stain the reputation of a methodology, making it less likely to be tried out by other farmers in successive seasons. Furthermore, to quote Roland Bunch, you have to "Start slowly and start small," working closely with just a few farmers.

So, with this convoluted portrait of CF, we come to our field visits to farmers earlier this week. Our agency set up six lead farmers as Field Extension Officers (FEOs) in spatially disparate villages throughout Senanga district; each lead farmer works with 10 farmers to monitor their CF plots. Earlier in the year, our agency set up the parameters for the plots, which are 1 lima (0.25 hectares or 2,500 sq. meters) in size and composed of maize (50%), cowpeas (25%), and groundnuts [peanuts] (25%). The FEOs were educated in CF techniques in Kaoma; later, they and all 60 farmers were given seeds, fertilizer, and lime.

On our monitoring visit, we found that for the most part, CF was having a very rocky start for a number of reasons:

1. Site selection: In two of the villages of the four villages I visited, the fields were quite distant from each other, making regular visitations and monitoring a difficult task, especially given that the FEOs work on foot.
2. Soil variability: Senanga is divided into two very distinct soil/water regimes: a) the "East Bank" [of the Zambezi River], which features a drift of Kalahari sand that occupies much of Western Province, b) the Barotse Floodplains [Upper Zambezi Floodplains] which features a significant amount of silt deposition from annual flooding. What we found was that on the sandy uplands, leaching was a significant issue; even in cases where the farmers had applied fertilizer as recommended and planted early, the crops showed evidence of nutrient deprivation (particularly phosphorous). Conversely, in the floodplain, nutrient loss wasn't as big an issue, but the constant moisture and rich soil meant the weed pressure was much greater; in roughly half the plots, it was difficult to discern where the crops were amongst the weeds.
3. Plant population and spacing: It appeared that most of the basins had been planted with half or less the recommended number of seeds. This was not surprising, as the traditional way of planting is to simply drop a pinch of seeds in a hole or furrow; also, I've found over the years Zambians prefer to have plenty of space for their plants to grow in the belief that bigger cobs or beans will result. Also, Zambians tend to be sparing of seeds; putting four maize seeds or eight groundnuts may seem rather profligate.
4. Weeding: Though the floodplains do favor faster weed growth, even in upland fields we noted that weeding was being performed on the traditional schedule (twice); this means weeds are allowed to grow in thickly prior to being chopped back, which leads to nutrient and moisture competition with the crops. From my experience, the problem of weed interference is considered by farmers as one of shading moreso than anything else; also, weeding is hard labor that I think many Zambian farmers put off until it is absolutely necessary. Another point is that many of these weeds are the Stygian, nuclear-powered quack grass I've encountered before; I now think it was the inspiration for the many-headed Hydra in the ways that it just keeps growing back.
5. Pests: Spring hares (linyuka), moles (lipeba), and grasshoppers have in turn hammered the maize, groundnuts, and cowpeas in many places. Though this is not directly related to the CF practices, it does affect crop performance.
6. Monitoring: This is the hardest one to point out, but our lead farmers and their charges are all doing CF for the first time. No one really has any institutional knowledge regarding the practice, and therefore has no basis from which to conduct monitoring. Therefore, many of our farmers are committing sins of omission rather than sins of commission; they don't really know what they're doing right or wrong.

This is not to say that CF is foundering; a number of farmers, particularly widows, pointed out merits to the system, esp. the fact that their crops were ahead of many other farmers and that they didn't have to wait to rent plows for their field. Also, a few fields with good conditions and management were doing quite well.

However, it was a good lesson in agricultural development which bears enumerating:

1. Sites need to be spatially close together so that monitoring can be done quickly and frequently. Also, fewer sites should be selected so that experts can also easily monitor and check in with lead farmers to ensure basin spacing, fertilizer application, planting, and weeding are accomplished on time and correctly.
2. Work on practical measures to counteract the tendency of nutrient leaching in sandy soils needs to be carried out. Similarly, work on alternative methods of weed suppression, particularly for the ubiquitous couch [Elytrigia repens] and kapinga grasses, needs to be carried out for farmers working in the floodplains.
3. Work on practical measures to keep pests off the crops, i.e. living barriers, sprays, noise makers, etc.
4. Last, but not least, we (as ag developers) need to be invested in ensuring what we are promoting can and will work for farmers. That means constant monitoring, test plots, sharing experiences with farmers, etc. ... i.e. significant time and work.

Erghh ... I've got tired fingers, enough of the Two Ears of Corn for today.

Ah, the waning days of 2010 ... here's to a better, more prosperous, well-fed world in 2011.

Rain

Happy Boxing Day.

It didn't rain yesterday or last night, or since Tuesday. I was hoping for a bit of a soak ... I planted the next round of Faidherbia albida trees yesterday, as well as some cowpeas [Vigna unguiculata], roselle [Hibiscus sabdariffa], and bambara nuts [Vigna subterranea] nuts.

To be perfectly honest, I am fearing that a repeat of the 2004 - 2005
season might happen here. I'm unaware of the rest of the country, but
we have only really had two decent rains since I got here on Nov. 18th.
What other rain we've had is patchy; you can watch the storms dance
past like dancing revelers, sending ephemeral curtains of rain
everywhere but where you need it. It's only slightly maddening.

We are seeing some effects of the dryness; we've gotten reports that
grasshoppers have torn up many farmers' cowpeas, likely a result of
them being the only green, juicy thing in the field (the bean leaves are
quite tasty). That's bad enough; we've been promoting the cowpeas
for food security, more protein, etc. What's worse is that we're now
hearing that the grasshoppers are moving onto the groundnuts
[peanuts]. A lousy harvest of those and our peanut butter venture
becomes somewhat extraneous. We've informed the Ministry of
Agriculture and Cooperatives (MACO) about the issue and delivered
some grasshoppers to them two weeks ago; so far, no response.

Whenever you talk about agriculture, particularly rain-fed
agriculture, you have to recognize what sort of gamble a farmer
undertakes. I took a number of classes on soil science at Wisconsin,
and we learned about something called the "Law of the Minimums";
put simply, it is the idea that yield of any given crop can only reach the
level allowed by the most limited nutrient. So even if you dump a
billion tons of nitrogen on your crop, a phosphorus, potassium, or other
nutrient can prevent that nitrogen from doing anything. Well, rain the
limiting factor and the one that you can do the least about. A year with
little rain and you can pretty much kiss your crops goodbye. Irrigation
isn't really an option; we don't have the infrastructure to irrigate
anything larger than a quarter-hectare, and that itself is only possible
on the narrow seepage along the Zambezi River. As a farmer, you
simply look at the sky, wait, and pray.

There's so much more that could be said, particularly the preference
for thirsty / hungry maize over more drought-resistant, lower-feeder
indigenous crops (e.g. millet or sorghum); but that's a subject of some
chapters or a lifetime.

Correction

In that last post, I said that Zambia has more Jehovah's Witnesses than anywhere in the world. WHOOPS! I meant more per capita than anywhere in the world. Anyway, there are still a lot of them, and they have very nice churches.

Give me Christmas

I'll start by saying "Merry Christmas" to everyone. Zambia is a predominantly Christian country, but Christmas isn't necessarily universally celebrated. To wit: Zambia has the highest number of Jehovah's Witnesses in world, and from what the guards (who are all well-read Watchtowers) have told me, Christmas isn't celebrated in their church. Another big church in Zambia is the Seventh-Day Adventists; again no Christmas. However, the Catholics, the Bread of Life, the United Church of Zambia, the Evangelical Church of Zambia, the New Apostolic, and so forth were certainly celebrating the day.

I avoid church on Christmas just because Zambian churches really have no schedule. If the pastor gets the spirit rolling, he might preach for two or three hours; I have a large posterior and expenses are definitely spared on bench width, so I qualify excessive time at church as a sanctioned form of torture. Christmas really bends the clock; I left home for the fields this morning around 9:30, and saw a number of people headed for their churches; when I came back around 17:30, they were just leaving.

The other reason I avoid church is that I miss home a lot at Christmas. I miss the family, the snow, church (mercifully limited to under two hours), and especially the food. When talking to my cousins on the phone today, I had to beg them to stop describing the dinner plans. Just to hear the words "prime rib", "London broil", and "salmon" makes me want to crawl under a rock and weep. Don't get me wrong ... nshima [the stiff porridge made from maize or cassava or millet or sorghum that is food in Zambia] is fine, I eat it daily and enjoy it well enough; it does fill you up. However, I'm able to countenance nshima by pretending no other foods exist, a delusion that is supported by the fact that in Senanga, there is no other food.

To be fair and balanced [to paraphrase Fox News], I don't mind that Zambians have yet to turn their Festive [Holiday] season into the cacophony of consumerism that we now consider acceptable back home. There is no "Black Friday", no kids hollering for toys, no presents under the tree, no tree, etc. For those who celebrate Christmas here, it is about Christ's birth. And maybe the one time in the year you get to have chicken or goat for dinner.

Merry Christmas ... I miss you all.

How to kill time.

It's 8:20 and I'm sitting in the conference room at Moto-Moto Villa, waiting for our third and final day of our Zonal Executive Committee of the Senanga District Agriculture and Commercial Show Society (SDACSS) to begin.

Two points of note in that sentence:

1. Waiting: Development work in Zambia consists of a lot of waiting. Waiting for someone important to show up; waiting for a vehicle to be available; waiting for a meeting to start; waiting for food at a restaurant. I reckon that I spend around 35% of the average day in an unwanted stasis mode; hence my jumping around from task-to-task in order to feel busy. It used to make me impatient; now I don't get too bent out of shape. Maybe its because no one has a watch, or if they do, they don't really look at it; maybe it's because no one of an official status does anything before 8:00 (other than show up and get things going); maybe it's simply because they realize (more than Westerners) that trying to cage time is a foolish endeavor. To paraphrase Tommy Chong, they're just not that into time [,man]. Oh well ... boredom and waiting around got me started in agriculture.
   

2. Lots of titles. It seems that import can be imparted simply through sheer weight of letters; in fact, if you were totally unaware of anything else, you would know that you were in the developing world according to the length of peoples' titles. Especially if that person is held in esteem or is of ascendant political office. Mubutu Sese Seko (the former President of Zaire [Democratic Republic of Congo]), for example, had a full title that went something like Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa Za Banga or "The all-powerful warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake." Wow! He did leave fire in his wake, considering Congo DR's present state, but at least he was a good anti-communist. Anyway, the point is that to gain status, you need to add titles, roles, etc. It's somewhat amazing; in order be considered legit as a group in Zambia, you need to establish a bureaucracy before you get started.
   

Anyway, it's closing in on 9:00 and people are trickling in ... guess we'll be starting, any time from now.

Notes from the back of a bus ticket

I was in Lusaka again last weekend; it was an unplanned trip ... I went for a funeral for the wife of my former boss. Funny; five years ago, I would have found an excuse not to travel 1,400 km in three days. Now, it seems like the natural thing to do.

Sitting in the back of the Barotse Express bus, I jotted down a few notes on the back of my bus ticket:

1. Traveling with commodities: What we've become so used to in the States is never seeing goods (foods, clothing, housewares, etc., etc.) outside of the store or in our own house. This is not the case in Zambia. Buses are carrying people and their katundu, which includes commodities they might be selling in Kaoma, Mongu, Senanga, etc. You see, prices of goods in Lusaka (wholesale) are remarkably cheaper; if you can carry a bunch of goods with you on the bus and sell it, so much the better. Therefore, there were large packages of laundry soap bars perched precariously overhead for much of the trip, next to what appeared to be women's handbags. On rougher buses, esp. the old Tatas and the smaller buses, you find that you share space with poultry; on trucks, this can encompass all livestock. I once spent a horrifying few minutes dodging a boar that had loosed its bonds on the back of an ore truck ... ah, but that is a tale for sometime or never.
   
2. Obama America: People's eyes tend to glaze over whenever they hear America. It's not that they are drugged or tired; it's simply the same reaction most Americans have whenever I mention Zambia (Africa). Americans generally visualize natives with spears, loinclothes, jungles, the Serengeti, hungry children, etc. It's no sin ... they are simply reflecting on what they've seen in popular media. Reverse the situation: Zambians watch movies that feature lots of Chuck Norris, Sylvester Stallone, and Randy Travis; everyone has cars, money, and guns. Also, there is little understanding of America as a diverse nation; it's perceived as white, Christian, powerful, rich, etc. For example, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are perceived as a result of America as a whole, i.e. the people are indistinguishable from the government. George W. Bush, therefore, enjoys a mixed rating in Zambia; people generally dislike the idea of any war here, but liked his dedication of PEPFAR monies to fight HIV/AIDS.
   ;; The election of Barack Obama hasn't really changed much of that, with the exception of the shift in the perception of America. This doesn't mean most Zambians are familiar with Obama's politics; I fancy they could care less if he was a Tea Partier, a Libertarian, Natural Law, or the It-Saturday-Lets-Party. It's more the idea that someone with African roots could be the President of America ... it enhances the possibility of America. I wonder if the shirts, belts, etc. that sport his face and name are therefore in celebration of Obama or for that possibility.
3. Call boys: When you are a young man and have no gainful employment in Lusaka (or Kitwe, Ndola, or any town), you'll take any work you can to get by. One common profession is that of a call boy. Call boys congregate around transport; the minute you approach the Intercity Bus station in Lusaka, a hoard of call boys surrounds you and subjects you to an interrogation regarding your destination, your luggage, which bus you should ride. The idea (I think) is that they get a pittance for guiding people to a particular bus. They also perform tasks like helping cars and buses back up, washing buses, mock fighting utilizing martial arts skills gleaned from hours of low-budget kung-fu flicks, and generally adding the spice of inebriated confusion to an already chaotic situation. Amazingly enough, the minute you get a ticket, you become a non-entity to them. Somehow, they just know ...
   
4. Quotes: Last but not least, I saw some lines on the backs of buses that got me wondering: The Juldan Motors bus between Jo-burg and Lusaka features a rather chilling statement "Only the Strong Survive". For those who taken the Kafue - Chirundu route through the Zambezi Escarpment, these words are too true. In fact, it could be the motto of Zambian buses. Red Bomber (my antagonist from two weeks ago) featured a slightly lighter note: "Taking Transport to Another Level". Funny, that could be a higher or lower level.
5. Lastly, the back seat: great if you like to ride with the windows open (Zambians dislike wind blowing on them); not so great if you are taller than 4'6" and have two rambunctious young girls engaged in a hair-pulling contest in the seat next to you.

I reflected on why transport is so lousy in Zambia and the simplest answer is likely the best. People who make decisions regarding transport don't have to ride the buses.

The King of The World

After hiking up to the site where our food processing facilities will be (and getting lost in the scrub and finding the remnants of an cattle abattoir), I went back into town and indulged in one of the great delights of my life: ice-cold Coca-Cola in a glass bottle.

Without tipping my hand too much, I'm old enough to recall the debacle that was New Coke. Remember? All those cans went out on the shelf, all the promotion, all the hype ... and it went over like a proverbial fart in church. Now, to be fair, Coke recaptured some of their lost steam brought back "old Coke" in the form of Coca-Cola Classic. It's been some time since I've had Coke in a can in the states ... I wonder if that's still the label?

Well, neither here nor there. The Coke in Zambia never went through New Coke, old Coke, Coca-Cola Classic. It never has had corn syrup / sugar / high fructose whatever, either ... Zambians eat almost all the corn they grow. Nope, this Coke is cane-sugar, and takes me back in my mind to the lunch counter at (now I'm really dating myself) Woolworth's in the Sault that where Mom used to take my sister and I.

I remember researching for a poorly-written paper during my undergraduate years and coming across a advert from 1945-6 where a circular Coke sign sporting a knowing grin was pouring a bottle of Coke into an equally happy planet Earth. Coke did conquer the world; my metric for how far out a place is depends on their availability of Coca-Cola. For example, Shang'ombo over on the Angola border, has been reported to be missing much in the way of Coke (and other softies). It is therefore, in my book, remote. Difficult for Coke = difficult for everything.

The last note of worth is the glass bottle. Unlike a Fanta or a Sprite, whose bottles have their own distinctive cylindrical shapes, the Coke bottles seem shaped perfectly to roll across your forehead. Which is what I did for a least two minutes after finishing the drink itself.

Indulgences, indeed: sweet Coke and coolness on a heated brow.

The Distance between There and Here

It's still blazing hot here ... I've noticed that after a heavy rain (such as what we had on Wed.), the top layer of the sand quickly dries out and the heat just ratchets right back up. The ultimate kick in the teeth, though, is that I stay in a "modern" house, one made of bricks/cement with a roof made of iron sheets (i.e. corrugated iron). It doubles as an efficient oven by retaining most of the heat throughout the night. Consequently, I usually wake up around 03:00, drenched in a puddle of sweat and parched. For whatever reason, my mosquito net doesn't keep the mosquitoes out; rather, it seems to trap all 1,000 of them in the space with me. To mitigate their presence, I burn coils; for the coils to work, I have to shut the window. Again, at least I have the Internet. And a shower. And a kitchen. And a flush toilet.

I would trade it for a thatch roof sometimes, esp. at 3:30.

Today I was reacquainted with farming again. It's actually been some years since I've done any farming in Zambia (2007), so it was great to get back behind the hoe. I do it for two reasons:

1. I'm a big believer in empathy. My organization promotes Conservation Agriculture to small-scale farmers, a packaged system of farming practices developed by the Conservation Farming Unit of Zambia National Farmers Union. In order to get a better idea of how it works here in Senanga, I should therefore try it out. More on this later ..
2. I love gardening, farming, and hard work ... the only place I spent significant amounts of time outside of my office or my apartment in Madison was at the F. H. King student garden, making compost and teaching the undergraduates what little I know. Some twisted part of me longs for the physical weariness that comes from swinging an axe or a hoe; I suppose it's the mental catharsis that comes with repetitive labor.
   

Unfortunately, today was a rather harsh reunion of me with the soil of my adopted country. My late arrival in the country plus all the running around I've done recently pushed back my date for establishing a demo plot far past the optimal planting date (i.e. the first heavy rains after Nov. 15th). In my past lives in Zambia, this wasn't a big deal; in my village in Kasempa District, nearly everyone disappeared to their fields by late October, so all I had to keep me busy was farm; in Serenje, I had ample time to prep the site at the Farmers' Training Center. This time, however, I'm looking at a plot full of grass and shrubby trees.

Looks easy enough ... grass; grass has roots, soil is sandy, grass should pull out easily enough. Sure. Like a number of things I've discovered to my chagrin, this grass appears to be an ancestor of quack grass. A Stygian, Hell-spawned ancestor ... the roots are hard, intertwined, and have spear-like suckers that could easy pierce a hand, a foot, etc. Working with our elaborate tools that are designed for optimal human comfort (i.e. small hoes with 30" handles), we (BM and I) tore into the grass for a few hours. It was great, just as I remembered ... the dull pain in your lumbar region, the throbbing hands, the sweat. At one point I was being tortured by what looked like the ancestor to all horse flies, which kept landing on my back and biting me through my shirt. I finally killed it and showed it to BM, who promptly declared it a member of the tsetse fly family and that sleeping sickness would ensue relatively soon. So reassuring.

By 17:30, our efforts with our limited tools gained us a 10m x 10m plot that is relatively free of weeds; ironically, in order to set up our conservation agriculture plot, we have to break one of the main tenants, not tilling the entire soil surface. The lesson for me was learned: get new tools. BM is claiming the virtues of bigger hoes, which would at least take some of the pain out of my back; I'm thinking of having the welders in town work up some sort of long-tined rake to get at the roots easier. Either way, I'm a big smarter as a result (I think).

My reason for describing all this is that policies are constantly being made with recommendations for what African farmers should do; however, no one really looks at what they actually do, other than to deprecate those practices as wasteful, primitive, backward, destructive, etc. Furthermore, I wonder if policy-makers understand the why behind those practices. Mother Nature is an almighty unforgiving mistress in these parts, dealing out drought, floods, and weeds with easy alacrity. Simply switching to a system that is agronomically better may not answer questions involving risk aversion, tradition, or the nature of the basic ecology in an area.

So, we'll continue to piddle with the hoe and see what works and what doesn't.

Oh, I feel the sleeping sickness coming on; good fortnight.

Pula

siLozi, the language of maLozi who live in buLozi, share some words in common with siSotho, seSwazi, seStwana, etc. It derives from the days of the Mfecane, when the power of the Zulus in present-day South Africa caused a displacement of tribes northwards that included the Makololo, who conquered the Luyi / Lozi kingdom and ruled for two generations before being overthrown. Or something like that; the Mfecane could almost be equated with a meteor dropping into the ocean of southern Africa, and the effects echo nearly two centuries onwards. The long and short of it is that maLozi (the Lozi people) speak a language that is a mix of the Bantu languages you might hear in other parts of Zambia, and something resembling seStwana or seSotho, though thankfully without the clicks.

One word siLozi share with their southern neighbors is "pula" (rain). It has a much deeper meaning in drier Botswana; pula means rain; it also can mean prosperity, indicated by the word being used as the name of the currency of Botswana.

It came as a blessing in any language to have rain fall here; it's difficult to describe the heat in terms other than Philistine; more importantly, you can see the anxiety in the eyes of farmers, particularly those growing maize. The advent of rain is akin to the advent of spring in the Upper Midwest; people seem to burst forth in activity. I'm doing the same ... we're putting together a demonstration plot next weekend and it will mean a couple of days of hard labor, but looking forward to the opportunity to grow anything at this point.

Legalized poison

The expression "elephant in the room" comes to mind whenever I consider alcohol consumption in Zambia. Though it is readily apparent to anyone who has eyes and ears, it never seems to enter the discourse on development. There is a presence of it in HIV/AIDS literature, e.g., someone who takes alcohol may make poor decisions, but nothing much else. Hence the term "elephant in the room" ... Jumbo is so big that you sweep around him rather than taking the broom and driving him out.

Before continuing, I'd like to remind everyone of the motif; I'm all the way around the world from being a teetotaler. I have and will continue to enjoy a cold beer or two every few days, and on infrequent occasions (read: holidays like Thanksgiving), five or six. I have no excuse other than it cuts the thirst, is an effective social lubricant, and sometimes, well ... you get homesick.

That said, alcohol in Zambia comes in about four varieties:

1. Lager beer - Considered a symbol of status, lager beers made either from maize (Mosi, Mosi Gold, Castle, Black Label, Rhino) or sorghum (Eagle) are drank across the country. Supplementing these are beers out of Tanzania (Kilimanjaro, Safari, Bia Bingwa), Kenya (Tusker), Congo DR (Tembo, Simba), Botswana (Olsens), and, of course, Namibia, which along with Windhoek, supplies Senanga with large bottles (750 mL) of Castle and Black Label which are colloquially known as "Bombers" (pronounce both 'b's). You won't know the quantities consumed from the empties as they are all recycled, but their is a near constant shortage of lager in many parts of the country. The price of a bottle is roughly 6,000 ZMK, or about $1.25 USD.
2. Spirits - A wide variety of spirits are made in Zambia and sold in different sizes, from 1 liter bottles of vodka, scotch, gin, etc. all the way down to plastic sachets, of which I'll mention more later.
3. Opaque beer - This is more apparent in its consumption than the lager beer, as they are sold in 1L cardboard "packs" similar to milk cartons back in the USA and are simply thrown out once finished and left to be burned or for the termites to chew them up. There are a number of varieties: Lusaka Beer, Chipolopolo Special, Nkwazi, Timwenge, Chat, and of course the flagship, Chibuku Shake-Shake. The packs are usually shared between two to four men who sit in a circle with makeshift cups and pass the pack around whilst talking. If someone is taking the beer straight from the carton, that means he is on a mission. Opaque beer also comes in large tanks (for bars near breweries) on the backs of trucks; these trucks will back up to the bar and pour the brew into a drum, from which it is sold to customers.
   
4. Homebrew - This is a tougher bird to catch. Rural Zambians brew a number of alcoholic beverages from a variety of sources:
   

• Munkoyo: A catch-all phrase for local opaque (i.e., not clear) beers made from either maize, millet, or sorghum that are fermented with local roots. It can be fresh (no alcohol and therefore served to children) or left to ferment for a set number of days. Hence, it can be known by names such as "Three-days", "Five-days", or the ultimate, "Seven-days", which is judged as "very strong" and which is known to be an elixir of language learning by many foreigners. Though monkoyo is well-known, it can also cover such drinks as kataatakatuubi, which aren't exactly the same and are more popular in Northern Province.

• Kachasu (aka Lutuku): What happens to well-ripened monkoyo is that it is distilled to make a form of moonshine that is extremely potent. Though illegal, I'm not sure anyone enforces that law, though reports of people committing extremely foolish acts after "taking kachasu" are not uncommon. It is incredibly cheap; last I checked, a dollar would buy two 750 mL bottles. It is also wildly dangerous; the alcohol content can range from 100- to 200-proof. I've never actually tasted it, though I bought some when I lived in Kasempa to clean the grime off of my bike chain; it worked quite well.

• Imbote: Honey-wine. Not as strong and actually decent tasting, but it takes some knowledge to brew. This means that it is only brewed when the grains have run out, so if you see a lot of imbote being drank, that means hunger is on the march.

... I'm not nearly the sociologist to delve into the reasons behind drinking anywhere. Culture history, tradition, poverty, religion, etc., etc. all play roles in the use or abuse of alcohol. It would be relatively easy for me to say "Zambians drink a lot", but relative to whom? The U.S.? I've been to Miller Valley in Milwaukee, WI and have seen five football stadiums worth of beer in one place. Anyway, for every Zambian I know who drinks alcohol, I probably know three or four times that who don't drink it or if so, rarely and in minuscule quantities.

What does worry me these days, though, is the new player in the realm of alcohol consumption in Zambia: the sachets of spirits known as tujillyjilly. They essentially didn't exist in Zambia until 2006, and now they can be found virtually anywhere. Each sachet contains roughly a double-shot of 80-100 proof spirits and costs around 1,000 ZMK ($0.20 USD). Their small size allows them to be easily carried and concealed, and their low cost allows them to be purchased in large quantities. Essentially, it is now cheaper and easier to get drunk. Even more worrying is the increased prevalence of youth drinking, especially in the rural areas ... whereas in the past, there existed a parental- and communally-enforced age limit, tujillyjilly is being bought by young men and boys who couldn't otherwise afford alcohol.

Tujillyjilly is universally cursed by Zambians for those reasons, but efforts to reduce its sales and distribution have not gone well; Zambia is open for business, and most people admit the distillers are good money-makers and tax-payers, so the sachets keep rolling out.

Though I'm not a sociologist, I do know why people often turn to booze. To forget, to relax, to lower inhibitions, etc. In a poor society, when chances for advancement look bleak, alcohol might seem a bit of a release from the everyday grind. Tujillyjilly appears to offering that release to a larger portion of the social spectrum due to its price and portability.

So, the elephant gets bigger. Makes me wonder how JP's research is going; as far as I've heard, he's the only one looking at Jumbo right now.

Name change ...

I guess I got tired of my blase blog name (and I'm spending more time with it), so a change was in order; therefore, I paraphrased a blog entry from Good Intentions titled "Whites in Shining Armor" for the new title.

With my right hand in the air, I can swear that I have almost nothing to offer Zambians. Indeed, despite five years of work in rural Zambia, despite a masters' degree in Agroecology that focused on agriculture in southern Zambia, I can readily say that my knowledge of agriculture and its challenges (and the solutions) are a single dim flame against the wealth of knowledge that the least small-scale farmer commands. If anyone could claim to be "saved", it would be me.

My only claim to fame, if it were, is the capacity that I've gained through respecting farmers to listen and empathize. The attention to local language, taking the cotton out of my ears and stuffing it in my mouth, watching what people do, and questioning why agriculture is carried out the way it is paints a more accurate picture than broad ethnographic descriptions (e.g. "most Zambians farmers are ...) that disregard issues of "place" ... the combination of ecology, economy, politics, societal norms, history, and cultural references that influence and are influenced by farmers.

To whit ... in a workshop the other day, a discussion of how farmers simply broadcast rice into a paddy and then let cattle trample it in was being characterized as backwards, unproductive, etc. I tentatively raised the point that it seemed like a pretty fast and easy way to sow rice, esp. given the myriad of things going on at the same time. Many of my colleagues agreed; the in the context of other tasks (herding, tending gardens, sowing maize, etc.), its tough to spend a lot of time planting nurseries and planting them out. That sort of thinking guides much of my work on agroforestry.

Maybe Zambians and Africans as a whole would be better off without aid workers, Peace Corps Volunteers, etc., etc. However, I'd be much worse without them, so they are stuck with me. Therefore, I'll coach all my efforts with the basic tenant of the Hippocratic Oath "First, do no harm." That said, I must therefore first know the farmers.

Now ... where can I go about beating this rusty sword into a hoe?

AmaSnaps ??

Wow. It finally worked.

Our Internet lacks blazing speed, so I thought I'd try uploading a picture, and here it be.

I do like clouds, sunsets, etc. This one fascinated me for a good 15 minutes; they just have such depth over here, almost as if they are painted on a limitless palette.

Will try to get in one a day.

Riding The Red Bomber ... Any Time From Now

Transport in Zambia is something that is quite possibly the greatest exercise in character-building I've yet experienced. You all are aware of what that phrase refers to, right? An uncomfortable experience that makes you somehow a better person. I doubt that definition is universal; many people would rather be a better person as a result of something enjoyable, like being at the beach or eating a really good dinner. Also, the result may not include betterment; some might react in strange ways to difficult situations; i.e., they retreat into some small corner of their mind and wait for it to be over.

I guess these days, I measure my development as an actor on the stage that is Zambia by my reaction to transport conditions. At first, it was cool, largely because it was new. Back in 2004, when I had a fine head of hair and an overgrown beard wreathing my face, I thought nothing was cooler than sitting on the back of an ore truck waving at kids who thought I looked like Jesus. That evolved into anger after awhile. Anger because of (oh boy, I found numbers):

1. The constant stops to buy fresh vegetables at nearly every stop in 150 miles.
   
2. The breakdowns, blowouts, engine knocking, and poorly loaded trailers that seem insistent on spilling their contents all hell-to-breakfast.
   
3. The music that never played at less than full volume.
   
4. The questionable men who stepped on the bus to preach at every stop, passing the hat after their "sermons".
   
5. The reckless driving by men who reek of opaque beer or tujillyjilly (small sachets of spirits).
6. The lack of personal space. If your lap is empty, there is room for another passenger, because your lap can stow someone's katundu. That can range from small children, chickens in woven baskets, and, in my case, large bags of small dried fish called kapenta.
7. Buses never leave until they're full. And I mean kaikuta (really full). This is an effort on the part of the conductor and the driver to get as much bang for their buck as possible. Therefore, the answer to the question of "When is the bus leaving?" evokes quite possibly the greatest expression of time ever created: "Any time from now."
   

What really got me was the passiveness of passengers regarding this transport. People complained to no end, but nothing seemed to change. That opens a significant space for much of what is hindering development in Zambia, but that's a topic for another blog.

Happily, the anger gradually passed. With my job as a Volunteer leader in 2006-07, I drove a Toyota Landcruiser some 43,000 miles around large parts of Zambia. This job woke me up to the nearly constant dangers inherent in being a driver in the Real Africa. You are nearly insane from the high alert you must maintain at all times to avoid children, goats, weaving bicycles, blowouts, potholes, errant tractor-trailers, etc. Nearly every day, I literally took my life into my hands, or at least, placed it in God's; too many days to count, I nearly met God thanks to the rigors of the road. In a sense, it built a strange respect in me for the denizens of the highway.

Now, I don't really get angry much. I might talk with whoever's sitting near me, or simply look out the window and let the erstwhile socio-ecologist in me track the landscape and how it is shaped by, and in turn, shapes people. Or sleep; though I can't rightly call the exercise by that name; it seems more like not being awake.

The last few instances have been the real test. Mongu to Lusaka is approximately 600 kilometers (360 miles). In a fast car, it takes about seven hours; the condition of the tarmac isn't great, and you can't blaze through Kafue National Park (which the route bisects) because of speed bumps designed to keep the big buses from killing thousands of impala or themselves upon the flank of an elephant.

Thursday we left Mongu after a workshop in a Volvo sedan at around 16:00. Lacking a spare, we proceeded cautiously through most of the journey; by 23:00, we were nearing Lusaka and on good tarmac when our luck gave out. Then we spent four hours finding someone to repair the tire; thanks to some people drinking large quantities of beer along the roadside, we managed to find the mender's house around 1:30. Now imagine for a minute three men knocking on your door to ask you to patch a tire at 1:30 in the morning and your reaction considering the situation. However, in Zambia when opportunity knocks, you answer and our tire was hand-patched and remounted in a little over 80 minutes.

Sunday, I boarded a Higer bus in Lusaka called the Red Bomber (the fact that it was blue didn't seem to influence its name). We left at 14:00; somewhere before Mumbwa, we blew a tire in the back, but the driver decided to continue onwards w/o any repairs; it was, of course, a double tire, so like kidneys, we still had one left. Somewhere in the dark forest west of Kaoma, I woke to men shouting ... we had stopped to pick up a child who appeared to have the worst broken femur I've ever seen. The shock of the noise and the sight of the girl's foot twisted 180 degrees off true woke me up a bit, so minutes later, when the other tire let go, I was little surprised or shook. It took awhile, two hours, to change the tire, as there was no spare (deja vu), and tools were at a minimum. My flashlight and multi-tool were a big help for the wheel caps, which require an Allan wrench to remove normally. After the change, we crept along on four wheels rather than the usual six or eight, and made Mongu sometime around 02:00. I staggered to a taxi, got to the Concern office, and passed out in the open guest room.

I never really was perturbed by the 24+ hours on the road. In a sense, it was a great learning experience:

• Take spare tools along, such as hex (Allan) wrenches.
• Keep spares handy.
  
• Never ride the Red Bomber again.

Part of the reason I can keep my cool is that I know that a) the world is not going to end if I'm late, b) me losing my temper does nothing to improve the situation, and c) I'm not by my lonesome being stuck out in the willies; there are others stuck as well. People were telling jokes in Nyanje and Bemba; some were asking questions of me; others were chatting by the side of the road or smoking. One woman, who repeated numerous times that we were being shepherded by Jesus (of which the situation demands warranted consideration), made a good point: at least we hadn't had trouble in the park, where there were numerous man-eating critters. As for Thurs/Fri, my two companions were from work, and we had great conversations the whole time about development (another topic for later), sang along to Louis Armstrong, and actively discussed the merits of jazz. In a sense, we were having a rough time, but we were in good company. This bears heavily on whatever I do here; nothing is easy for anyone, but responses to situations often outweigh results.

Worth a Thousand Words Some other Time

I wish Celtel, I mean Zain, I mean Airtel would get it's act together. Things seem to work right, texts / calls are cheap, network is solid, etc. And then they take it apart and start over. That John Lennon song keeps running through my head for so much of what happens in Zambia.

Speaking of YouTube, it's ironic that I can't get it here (the satellite connection is not quite that fast). Why ironic? YouTube is how I listened to Zambian music while in Wisconsin, particularly the classics like PK Chishala, Paul Ngozi, the Mulemena Boys, and the Glorious Band (yes, that's really their name, and yes, they are Glorious). Even if some misanthropic part of me was longing for bus rides, I could find the Mt. Sinai Choir and blare it out to the world (within my office). Now, I have to bomb around Lusaka to find these guys. Oh well.

Pictures, pictures, pictures. How do I get this benighted thing to work?? Maybe I'll post them to Panaramio, they don't seem to care how much I put up, but with all the various online processes I have running they don't seem to want to go up right now. Doop-de-doo, former computer engineer befuddled by technology, dum-de-dum. In the meantime, I can study siLozi.