Rest and Relaxation

It's been a week best forgotten and remembered. 

Out at our food production site, we are slowly but inevitably finishing up the construction and are days away from electrifying the site. As I mentioned to a friend, it will be nice to start following up on my thus-far neglected marketing side of the job; I keep having to remind my partners in the cooperative that we can and should celebrate the completion of the site, but keep in mind that the greater struggles are still in front of us with regards to actually selling our products in order to sustainably purchase the raw crops from our farmers.

On the home front, things haven't been so good. I won't delve into it now, but I've been brought face-to-face with a number of deep fears and emotions twice this week, and in lieu of distractions, have spent more time than usual in introspection. It's not my strong suit; consequently, I stick to the old Midwestern standby of burying hurts with physical labor. Hauling bricks, moving 50kg bags of rice, sweeping, digging, hoofing from place-to-place through the sand, raking, etc. Anything to take the sharp edge off anticipation or worse, regrets.

I guess I'm aging a bit, though, and maybe in a positive way. I used to turn hurt almost entirely inwards (it's not healthy, by the way). The appreciation I have now is that a problem shared is a problem halved; I've received warmth from friends abroad and within Senanga, confirming my underlying belief in humanity being, for the most part, basically good.

Well, all for right now. I'm taking the day to harvest seeds, work in the garden, clean up my accumulated junk, etc. A big meal of curried fish and fresh vegetable stir-fry over Mongu rice; read a couple of articles tonight; a long night's sleep. Recharge the batteries, if you will, and maybe a long bike ride for May Day.

A bit of homage to my best friend back home, who always is there for me. Thanks, G.

The Woodpile

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here. 
No, I will go on farther--and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through.  The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me.  He was careful
to put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather--
Teh white one in his tail; like one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled--and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it I could see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
and the pile somewhat sunken.  Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
what held it, though, on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall.  I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spent himself, the labor of his ax,
and leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.
 
-Robert Frost

Prepping Faidherbia albida seeds for planting (Part I)

It seems the Ku'omboka ceremony was peaceful, though attendance was very low. Depending on who you listen to, it was either the heavy government presence or the threat of violence by Lozi youths, though I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in between. Nobody wants to stop a bullet, much less on a holiday. Overall, still have mixed feelings about missing the (?) festivities, but water under the bridge.

Otherwise, literally worked myself sick this weekend; went hard at it all week and Saturday, but pushed a bit too much. Despite our being on the doorstep of the cold [relatively] season, the midday sun feels like it is about three or four feet away, and the temps are in the Philistine range. I always go about 45 minutes or an hour more than I should ... then I crash. The real killer here, though, is the three kilometer walk through this damnable sand in the absence of shade from our production site back to town. I'd be a shambles in the desert, I've decided.  

Anyway, I woke Sunday with a sore throat and even more phlegmatic than usual. Ugh. Nothing like catching a cold in hot weather; how does one pull that off? I don't know, but I succeeded.

Therefore, didn't do much; didn't write my overdue reports; didn't write up any success stories; didn't do much other than clean up my room. I wanted to sort out a bunch of Faidherbia albida seeds I had sitting on my shelf, but was remarkably unmotivated to pick through them to remove those that had been eaten by bruchidae (bruchid beetles), so I put them in a bucket and poured water on them, hoping the bad ones would float off (often bad legume seeds will float, whereas good will sink). No luck, however ... seeds with visible holes mostly sunk. Grr. Cranky about the poor returns, my sore throat, and my whistling nose, I threw up my proverbial hands and left the bucket, seeds still immersed.

When I thought of late in the day, I decided to dump them out and dry them for later sorting. I noticed that most of the bad ones had imbibed water and had swollen to two or three times their original size, making separating them relatively simple. The unaffected (presumably viable) seeds had not changed size whatsoever.

Hmm ...

Five Years and No Ku'omboka

We're inching closer to being finished at the production site ... yesterday, we poured the slab for the rice mill, though I still haven't a clue how we'll lift it. And we negotiated with the prison to dig the trench for the water line. It is something that I definitely have mixed feelings over; we started at K2,000 (about $0.42) per meter, and I got the price down to K1,750 ($0.37) ... afterwards I briefly wondered over the enormity of paying 37 cents to dig a meter of soil to waist-depth by hand and how we bartered over the price as if it was a bunch of bananas. Chalk it up to things I'll have to answer for someday ... all in the name of some greater good.

Today (Saturday) is a bit of a bummer for me; I've been in Zambia in mind for seven years and in body for five, in all those years, the only cultural event I really wanted to see was the Ku'omboka, the great Lozi celebration of the ceremonial movement of the Litunga (Barotse King) out of the Upper Zambezi [Barotse] floodplains just north of Mongu. The urge was even greater given my pseudo-anthropological agricultural research ... to witness the actual representation of a transhumance event, particularly in the modern context, is a unique opportunity.

Over my time in Zambia, I've only had one opportunity to attend Ku'omboka and that was in 2005; unfortunately, that was also a sub-par year for rains, and since the river didn't flood, the Litunga didn't move. Taking this job, one of the major draws for me was the chance to see the Ku'omboka firsthand. Unfortunately, the events of 14 January (the Liundangambo incident) have left a bad taste in the mouth of the Lozi people, directed mostly at the government for what they consider the heavy-handedness of the police's response to protesters on the 14th, resulting in woundings and a few deaths due to gunfire. The people also seem to be upset, though less openly, with the Barotse Royal Establishment (BRE) over their alleged complicity with the government. Due to the latent anger, rumor has it that the BRE did not want to have the ceremony, but was compelled to do so by the government, which is fearful of losing its standing in the international community due to perceived internal strife. That makes some sense: not staging what is arguably the biggest cultural event in your country due to rumblings of secession or threats of violence would not appear in the trappings of a stable country. 

It's also rumored that their will be a protest against the ceremony ... young men in particular will be wearing black shirts and black mushushu (berets) rather than the traditional red as visible sign of mourning. There have been threats of bodily harm against anyone wearing the usual red mushushu or the libisi (traditional dress) ... in sum total, there is a strong desire to both depopulate the ceremony and cause trouble. The government has, in response to the tension, dispatched over 600 police officers to Mongu and has an army regiment on standby east of town.

I must qualify that the above is based on a large amount of rumor. However, two very close associates of mine who aren't given to the vagaries of hearsay both strongly recommended I skip this year's ceremony. It would have been a bad idea to go, anyway ... the U.S. State Dept. has forbidden its employees on visiting, which usually includes us by default. Besides, I don't want to go just because I've seen none of the enthusiasm described with a great deal of poignancy by Lozis; they say that in a usual year, people get into a really festive spirit, lots of dinners, parties ... generally, a great of happiness and pride. This year seems to feature a great deal of apprehension, doubt, and anger.

Hopefully, nothing violent will come of this; it'll all be a bad memory and I'll get to see it sometime in the future, when we can laugh together and affirm one of the greatest qualities of Zambians ... their love for peace and order.

Bit-by-bit

We scored a big success yesterday getting the oil expeller and the rice polishing machines up to the site. We reckon them as big success as we have nothing like a forklift, a floor-jack, a come-along, a pulley, or the billion other mechanical tools we take for granted in our garages back home. Nope. Like the pyramids, we move things using ramps, levers, and quantities of bodies. Our only assistance is in the form of one of the two tractors whose sole purpose is hauling heavy stuff through sand that can't be negotiated in other vehicles.

Have I mentioned it's sandy here?

Anyway, I dismantled the oil expeller as best I could the day before; it is a piece of Chinese engineering that appears to be made entirely out of cast iron. Removed the big three-phase electric motor (about 75kgs); then removed the only piece of steel in the whole outfit, the auger ... it had to weigh over 100kgs; Munalula and I nearly dropped it once it cleared the shaft. It still weighed a great deal, but was less problematic than before.

The rice mill, however, remained untouched with the exception of removing the motor from the mounts; I was leery of taking out the polishing mechanism, as it's a bit touch-and-go in there and the machine's worth a couple grand (or multiple million kwacha). Therefore, it weighed literally a ton. There is nothing like having a metal box that weighs over a ton sliding down a plank with 20 hands and a strap acting as brakes.

It took the better part of the hour, but they are now in their respective sheds sitting on mukwa pallets; if we can get them mounted and electrified, we will be in good shape for next week for the as yet unscheduled state visit to open the site.

Electricity is also nearly a reality ... after K69,000,000 ($13,000), we have a line to our site. Once we pass inspection, we can turn the proverbial lights on and run the engines. Again, there is a lot of distance remaining (we have to hack out the water line, a meter-deep trench that runs for 2.5 km), but it's simply a question of time and labour.

I think what is the hardest to articulate about this whole process of raising a food production site essentially out of the ground is that you can't take your eyes off of anything for a single minute. I regularly have to remind our builders to stick to the contract, make straight walls, level floors, use enough cement, dig power lines deeper, keep an eye on how many bags of cement are used, etc. It's a bit frustrating ... check that, it's incredibly frustrating to have to deal with guys who are constantly cutting corners and take very little pride in their work (or have a much different definition of what they can be proud of). I remarked to my boss that once this production site was finished, agri-business development and I were through.

Joking of course (?) but not many readers don't know what it's like to build a business entirely from scratch. I'd imagine fewer still have done it in a country like Zambia, where despite the desire for development, you struggle with an arcane and conflicting government regulatory system, the endemic graft, the constant system of pulling favors, poor material or communication infrastructure, and a limited choice in work quality. It is not fun, sexy, rewarding, etc., etc.; it is a process wrought with headaches and the taxing of one's patience to it's ultimate limits. Something you might later say, "yeah, I worked on that ... learned a lot, great project, but glad it's over with."

We'll see.

Southern Carmine Bee-eater

These are a couple of photos I took a few weeks ago; however, I didn't know the name of the bird, so I didn't want to post it. I found it plowing through a tour book looking for a vacation-spot that won't totally break the bank.

Southern Carmine Bee-Eater (Merops nubicoides)

This little guy didn't really mind posing for the camera ... it kept looking around, but I'd approach step-by-step, really quiet.

When these take flight, it is one of the more amazing explosions of color you might imagine. Its as if, during their creation moment, they were forced to fly through a paintball tournament were fluorescent bullets were the norm.

Southern Carmine Bee-eater at Wikipedia.

Have an excellent week!

Grumblings and musings

I've been to Lusaka for five days, mostly doing the legwork for getting the small agribusiness that I'm partnered with up and running. This involves the hidden minutiae of details that come with a finished product; in our case, that is packaging and supply chain development (in that order). It's a surprisingly long and rather expensive process to get what looks to be as simple as a printed plastic bag manufactured; considering that we operate pretty much without any sort of Internet communication makes the effort that much harder. It's not that email doesn't exist or is used, but there is a certain level of trust that must be achieved between suppliers and consumers before they bother to email you back. This is especially true of the mainly South Asian community that seems to be the ubiquitous owners of most the manufacturing and mid-level retail shops in Lusaka; they rely more on actual meetings where they can size a customer up and find out if they are legit or not.

I realized mid-writing that I don't or haven't written much about what I actually do for a living. It's pretty sample; I hunt snipe with a slingshot, or something along those lines of difficulty. To put it shortly, I work with a farmers' cooperative union here in Senanga; my main goal is to build up their agri-business (with assistance from Concern Worldwide) whereby they purchase share-holder farmers' produce (paddy rice, groundnuts [peanuts], and sunflowers) and do value-addition (read: food processing) to make polished [white] rice, peanut butter, and cooking oil. We are trying to do the processing, packaging, marketing, etc., etc. It's a walk-off in theory; we can process and sell foods locally, bucking the high transport costs that are incurred bringing processed foods all the way from Lusaka, 700 km back east. Easy, huh?

In my former life as an programmer / analyst consultant (I don't believe it either), I was mentored by two guys; Bert and Jerry, who were 10 and 20 years older than me. Not officially mentored; most of the knowledge-sharing occurred at the bars of Jefferson City. They were both ex-Air Force, and had seen something of the world; I attribute some of my decision to leave the world of corporations and mainframes behind to their rather sage advice that you only get one chance. (Thanks fellas ... I'm broke, can barely use a PC anymore, worry over brain-damage from too much malaria prophylaxis, peregrinate all over a country I didn't know existed while I knew you, and am finally and thoroughly happy). Anyway, Bert had a great saying, ostensibly to explain our good salaries and our suicidal workloads in comparison to our partners we worked with ... "If it was easy, everyone would do it." 

All our capital investment has to travel those same 700km from Lusaka. Costs are therefore 10 to 15% higher as a result from the word go; a pocket [bag] of cement costs about $5.00 more; our welders seem to be entirely devoid of materials; we have no gum [eucalyptus] trees for electric poles; our pipes are too small; our government offices have no supplies; stones are hard to come by for pouring the foundations; our masons have questionable credentials; our nails are overpriced and seem to be made of leftover tin; our agency's paperwork is glacial in its size and complexity; we can't seem to recover more than 10% of the loans we gave out over the past two years; we blink and stare in response to the scope of the costs.

To put an even sharper edge on the issue, we are on a short timeline; the Minister of Agriculture is coming at the end of this month to officially open our new production site where we'll make all this wonderful food, we are essentially 90% of the way there. Unfortunately, the according to the old "90/10 ~ 10/90" rule ... our last  10% that we are waiting on are the electricity (Zambia Electrical Supply Company (ZESCO)) and the water supply. The first is one of the last national-level government-run, i.e., "parastatal" companies, and the second is sort of a regional parastatal, meaning it is a government-run parastatal within Western Province.
 
My economics knowledge is pretty spotty, but African parastatals are basically the result of Keynesian theory gone hog-wild and becoming interlocked with good, ol' "big-man" African politicism. You see, not long after Independence, the Kenneth Kaunda government nationalized pretty much the entire economy, mostly driven by copper mining. There were any number of "Zam-" companies ... Zam-Beer, ZamBeef, Zamchick, NAMBOARD; hell, even the grocery stores were all under one national body, but I forget their name. The idea was that everything would be centrally planned by the wise old elves running the country, and that an economic / social utopia would doubtless result.

Unfortunately, the parastatals weren't long around before becoming domains of patronage, nepotism, favoritism, and so forth. The lack of competition birthed a lax work attitude, an utter lack of innovation, no real alternative for the consumer, etc. The gross inefficiencies were papered over thanks to the high price of copper in the 60's and early 70's; however, when the bottom dropped out of that respective market in 73/74, the government didn't respond by cutting back or reforming the system. They tried to borrow to cover the deficiency until the copper price rebounded; however, that didn't happen for almost 30 years.

Needless to say, things really got tight by the late 80s when the IMF and the World Bank were pushing structural readjustment hard, the pressure to move to a multi-party democracy from the West, and the degradation of social services became acute. The KK govt. was voted out in 91, and the successive administration wasted no time slaughtering almost all the sacred cows. Down went Zambeer; NAMBOARD; the grocery stores; everything really fell apart fast. However, there was no time to adjust, no public debate as we see in the midst of our current American economic doldrums; it was a case of dismemberment by fiat, there today, gone tomorrow.

Too bad about Zambeer ... I understand it was quite good.

Anyway, the short-and-dirty is that not all the cattle were led down the chute. ZESCO was left intact. So were most of the water & sewarage companies. NAMBOARD was killed, but later resurrected as FRA. They reached for full economic liberalization, but the backlash was too much, and fear of political consequences kept some of the patronage houses upright.

I can't say outright that ZESCO here is a patronage gig, but it is the picture of inefficiency. The W & S is not bad, but they simply have nothing to work with (e.g. pipes, pumps, well-drills, etc.) I attribute much of the reasons to a surfeit of Zambian patience and no mechanism through which customers can complain; with no need to worry about customers flying the coop, no one would listen to them, anyway. Also, these guys can't really do a lot on their own; orders come from above, and initiative (though actively preached) is rarely practiced.

Furthermore, poor performance in these outfits doesn't result in any punishment other than being transferred; if you goof up, they ship you further away from the centre of the country, but almost never fire anyone. In my experience, I've seen teachers so drunk on duty their eyes lacked coordinated movement; clinic officers hand out incorrect dosages resulting in sickness or death; managers using government funds to fuel trips to remote fishing grounds to purchase bream to resale for personal gain in towns; unexcused absences lasting months.

I've never seen anyone fired, though. I can't figure why; maybe the act of dismissing someone is so inimical to the Zambian persona that it doesn't happen, or maybe there is fear of repercussions ... who knows?

(exhaling) ... but like the Catholic prayer instructs, I can't change any of that, so I beg for the patience / strength to do what I can. I apologize for my writing being so spotty, but it is cathartic. And it's a blog, for pete's sake.