March has certainly done it's best to come in like a lion and evolve into a rampaging bull elephant. Some seriously worrying thunderstorms have come ripping out of the east recently. The Senanga Safaris Lodge (where I take all my sunset pictures) had the roof ripped off the kitchen; numerous trees have lost limbs, etc.
They start innocently enough; late in the afternoon, you look out over the eastern sky and see absolutely picturesque cumulus clouds that reminiscent of the beginning of Columbia Pictures movies; exquisitely detailed shapes that fill half the aerial hemisphere (there isn't really any air pollution here). Somewhere during this reverie, you notice that the locals who usually walk around because it's the best way to kill time. The leaves start to flutter, then you hear the distant roar of air moving upwards at an alarming rate. Then you see the locals running. A good note for visitors; when in Zambia, do as Zambians do, esp. when massive convective storm is oncoming. Run.
It was between storms today that I went up to the District Forestry office to plant a couple hundred Faidherbia albida seedlings. It's the wrong time of year for planting, but you have to jump on your opportunities when you get the chance; me working with them on a small project now may mean a bigger project later, and who cares whether you end up with 320 seedlings with really skewed root-to-shoot ratios.
A little boring background here; from what I've seen so far, F. albida [along with most other tree species] that are raised in nurseries usually have to be maintained in order to keep them from sending tap roots into the soil underneath the planting pots which are open on both ends to aid transplanting (I'll post a picture when these trees germinate). Therefore, you have to do something to prevent the roots from gaining a foothold in the underlying soil. Mostly that involves manually moving all the pots from one place to another to break any roots that form before that breakage becomes fatal to the seedling. This means once a week, you are shifting however many trees you've planted, not a fun job when you've got 100 hectares of gum [eucalyptus] trees to move around. Some alternatives are raised, permeable nurseries (platforms) in which the tap roots are air-pruned. I've noticed that a 3-5 cm thick bed of rice hulls also works quite well in keeping the roots from descending. However, your trees tend to keep growing to the limit of soil nutrients and moisture; if you have plenty of both, you end up with a relatively unwieldy tree at planting time. This can be problematic if you're transporting the seedlings, doubly so with a thorny tree like F. albida.
Again, oh well. Guess we'll prune them and see what happens.
Anyway, it was shortly thereafter when speaking with a forestry officer, we had a discussion about where to locate potential tree nurseries. I opined a distant village east of Senanga where we have received good reports on Conservation Agriculture and they have paid their share capital for our cooperative almost entirely in full. They are the hardest working; they'd obviously be good candidates for mobilizing a nursery, maintenance, planting the trees, etc. Though my counterpart acknowledged their capacity for work, he thought it would be better to put the nurseries near to the East Bank (the eastern shore of the Zambezi), as those could more easily be seen given their proximity to the road. Seen by whom? Bosses. Chinondos. Big men. MPs. Donors.
It's one of the ironies of "development" that the people who are arguably the most qualified with regards to need, motivation, ability, etc., are stymied because of distance, lack of infrastructure, etc. It's an even more bitter irony that this is often keyed to how easy it is to get to a place. No one likes a bone-jarring ride through the bush; as you climb the ladder, those teeth-rattling rides get even less appealing. Therefore, it's no surprise that most "development" work in Senanga District heavily favors the areas adjunct to the tarred road that runs north to Mongu. The roadside is punctuated by signs that proclaim some "development" project undertaken in a nearby village. Needless to say, that stripe of villages is our most problematic; they rarely pay their shares, complain acutely about a "lack of attention", rarely self-organize, and so forth. Reason: they've seen too many NGO's, too many GRZ projects, too many handouts, too little follow-up, and zero accountability. "Development" in that area is as regular as the sun; if some project doesn't suit you, just wait: another one is sure to come.
So it goes. The tree nursery will be where it can be seen; people will be "trained"; an "action" plan will be written; the seeds, the tubes, and the soil will be gathered and planted. All this will be done at no small cost. In one or two years, the project will end, with the nursery neglected, half the trees unplanted, and most of the villagers chalking up agroforestry as a failure.
That's alright. I'd rather find those individuals from wherever who are willing to stick their necks out a bit and gamble on some trees. No inputs; no workshops; one-on-one training and seeds, then it's up to them. I've been happily surprised by this approach so far.
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