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.