This weekend I went up north to Mongu, the de facto capital of Barotseland. I went to attend a workshop on crafting a new cashew nut policy for the government, the first step in resuscitating the one crop that is proven to grow well here. It was led by industry representatives, and the meeting was composed of "stakeholders".
Brief of aside: "Stakeholders" is what you might call a buzz word ... Zambians in the development business toss it about with a careless abandon, but it rarely means a specific group of people (i.e., people who hold a stake in whatever is being planned). Anyway, suffice it for now to mean "everyone". Our everyone included representatives from nearly every government office, a few cooperative leaders, and some emergent farmers [not subsistence, but not yet commercial]. However, we forgot some stakeholders: Zambia Revenue Authority, Forestry Department, and (whoops!) representatives from the Baroste Royal Establishment (BRE) who hold all tenure over customary land in Western Province.
It was a bit tedious, and you could tell people were anxious to get to how the crop would be produced; however, it was more about defining (as a matter of government policy) who would take responsibility for extension, who would have priority to conduct research, etc. A necessary first step; without some policies to back up the crop, there can essentially be no possibility of an export market. No export crop = no production, because Zambia's consumption of cashews is measured in single tons.
After we got out around 13:00 hrs, we ate lunch, then I broke off to sell some peanut butter. Mongu is a substantially larger market than Senanga given it's significantly larger population (at least 40,000 and more likely 50,000). Furthermore, it features a broad array of wholesalers who handle the distribution of nearly everything to the rest of the districts in Western Province (Kalabo, Lukulu, Senanga, and Shang'ombo) and even further north to the western edge of Northwestern Province (Chavuma and Zambezi). Anyway, I didn't get too far before we had more orders than we have production capacity, so I stopped at 16:00 hrs. After washing up, I went up Lyambai Road and watched the sunset over the Barotse Floodplains at a small guesthouse enthusiastically named "Cheers!".
The Floodplains are considerably different in Mongu than in Senanga; first off, Senanga sits on the main channel of the Zambezi River, whereas Mongu is 25km east of the river. Second, in Senanga, you can see the headland to the west (known locally as "the West Bank"); the Floodplain, thus bounded and possessed of a horizon, seems comprehensible enough. In Mongu, you cannot see the far headland; the green swath of the Floodplains stretch unhindered to the north, west, and south. Gazing at the headland that stretches along the eastern edge, it seems more like the shoreline of a green sea. It's in subliminally beautiful, but its depth and size create in me a strange sense of acrophobia.
The walk back to the guesthouse gave me something to do the following day. Along the Lyambai Road, which seems to be the upscale part of town, is a single Gliricidia sepium tree. This is a big deal to a crazy agroforester like me; it is on par with Leucaena leucocephala as an alley-cropping species, and is one of the species we'd like to integrate into our Conservation Agriculture program as a supplement / substitute for mineral fertilizers. This tree is the fourth one I've seen in Western; unlike L. leacocephala, it's a rarity; I suspect from my previous experience that G. sepium don't volunteer readily (i.e. seeds falling from the tree easily germinate). Also, they tend to seed in the middle of the dry season (they are an exotic species) and the seeds are probably chewed up long before the first rains fall. Anyway, I decided to take a walk on Saturday and see if I could find another.
Zambians must think of me as exceedingly peculiar; whenever I'm walking around, I have my head cocked back, and swivel my gaze around in measured movements, looking for patterns in tree silhouettes. G. sepium has the same shape as the lovely jacaranda trees, though the leaves are remarkably different; Gliricidia's leaves resemble that of an ash, though much smaller, whereas jacaranda have tiny leaves. Unfortunately, all my patterns that I saw in my three-hour stroll through the dust and sand were jacarandas.
I did gain a sense, however, of the strange phenomenon of a forested landscape in a city which had formerly been a forest. My guess is that the original mukwa / miombo forest slowly disappeared in an ever-expanding circle around the nucleus of the town; as the old forest receded, compounds (Zambian-English for "neighborhoods") slowly appeared as land was allocated by either the BRE or the Mongu city council. As houses were built and people started to spend more time in the same place, they invariably planted trees.
Which trees were planted and why they were planted is an endlessly fascinating question for me. Some are fairly easy to figure out; papayas, mangos, guava, lemons, and to a lesser extent, mulberries. Others I can guess at are the ubiquitous cashews and the periodic eucalyptus [gum] or pines; likely the result of government forestry initiatives, which promote trees for timber or economic utility (and excludes most indigenous species). However, I can't for the life of me figure out how people decided to plant Persian lilac or jacaranda; was it for shade? The pleasant smell? The flowers?
The whole point is that unlike what I've been told informally and what I read between the lines of nearly every paper dealing with subsistence agriculture in Southern Africa, Zambians do not hate trees or are on some zealous Puritan mission to beat back the savage wilderness (see Bill Cronon pre-Wisconsin De-unionization travails for that bit of philosophy). Zambians cut trees for pretty good reasons: farming (food), charcoal (sale), firewood (cooking), timber (sale). Though the effects are not good, the reasons are the same as those in past generations in America, esp. for those of us from the Upper Midwest. They are trying by all means to lift themselves up out of a grinding poverty. Eventually, the forest returns, but in a remarkably different format, one designed for a changed human context.
I'm not saying that it is the same forest, or as "good". The mukwa forests are rare and don't replace themselves that quickly (or ever?), and usually, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone. However, I have to empathize rather than criticize; out of Michigan's original pine forests, something like 600 acres remains that was never cut. The rest went towards the noble purpose of "building the country."
Makes it tough to point the finger ...
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