Senanga, Zambia = Houghton, Michigan

The morning came far too early today; the setting full moon, unencumbered by it's earlier eclipse, was bright enough to make me think daybreak had arrived. Furthermore, Concern's backup driver Franco was banging around this morning, starting the Land Cruiser, loading the foodstuffs for whatever training they are carrying out today, etc. Usually he wakes up around 6:15~6:30, so I figured I had overslept. I pulled on a pair of jeans and wandered out shirtless to put the coffee on and see what was happening. Doubtless I freaked out a couple of the partners who had come in to ride out with Franco and were dressed like it was a brisk January day in Chicago; they think my tolerance for weather in 40s is strange, to say the least.

Anyway, it turned out to be 5:05 in the morning. I helped them load the truck and saw them off; Franco looked miserable ... he really hates cold weather and dislikes driving in the dark. I don't blame him; night or twilight driving in Zambia is really scary. Not so much that it's inherently dangerous for the driver, but because people from the outside of town who are incoming to sell their vegetables, cassava, dried fish, etc. leave their villages in the middle of the night in order to get to the town market as early as possible. They tend to walk in the middle of the road (I've never gathered why, other than the road is warmer and easier to walk on than the shoulder) and they do not wear anything reflective; needless to say, you just drive over them before you can see them. Night is worse; everyone heads home, albeit many of the menfolk are in altered states from the tujillyjilly [packets of booze] and are weaving all over the place.

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I took my bicycle south along the old Senanga-Sesheke road last Saturday to scout out any potential fishing spots and to see the floodplains whole hog; despite being here seven months, I have only observed them from the sandy uplands. It is something else, and I entirely lack the ability to describe them. Even pictures (which take an abysmally long time to upload) would fail to capture their breadth. It's amazing; I've never been any place where most of the horizon appears to curve, rather than form a straight line. I can't remember the name of the phobia of vast spaces, but it flitted around the edge of my thoughts; it was like floating along in a sea of grass. Periodically, I would observe a person moving through the plains away from the road, but they seemed almost ephemeral in their distant, silent passage through the tufts of grass. If it weren't for the broad-shouldered Zambezi wending through it's midst, you could imagine becoming fully unmoored in the place, as if you had dropped off the edge of the world. It made me think of the story about how some undoubtedly bored engineering students from Michigan Tech had made and posted an exact replica of a M-DOT roadsign that read:

End of the World: 2 Miles
Houghton: 4 Miles

My lord; they could have put that same sign on that road and it would be 110% true.

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There is a constant reminder of other aspects of the western Upper Peninsula (I hail from the E.U.P.) around Senanga in the form of two old trucks, one in the parking lot of the Mwanabinyi Motel near to where I stay, and the other over by the ZESCO warehouse lot. Both are big, four-wheel drive "sand" trucks that are blocked up and in various states of metal decomposition. It's nothing new to see blocked-up vehicles, either in Senanga or in Zambia at large; vehicles are run until they quit (likely from the lack of oil changes), then taken apart quickly or slowly depending on whether or not their parts are interchangeable with newer vehicles. Senanga, Mongu, and I'm assuming Sesheke all feature the big sand-wagons, as I like to call them, due to the deep sand that dominates the uplands. You can age them by their make ... the oldest vehicles appear to have served with the Afrika Korps; German vehicles that I can only characterize as Teutonic in their appearance; blocky, heavy, encumbered with far too many buttons, switches, levers, pedals, etc. (The few I've seen running have cabs that resemble cockpits in the sheer amount of instrumentation.) The newer hulks are, of course, Chinese in origin, mostly Dong Feng's with relatively flat noses. I always chuckle when I see them because one particularly witty Peace Corps volunteer in my past crudely referred to them as "Dick Tooth's".  

The middle-aged vehicles are varied in European origin, but the ones that stick out are for me are the aforementioned derelicts, which are both Sisu trucks. Even if you weren't from the U.P., deriving their origin wouldn't be hard; they both have "SISU OF FINLAND" emblazoned on their doors. "Sisu" is an interesting word in Finnish; it roughly translates to patience and/or perseverance in the face of difficulty. My guess is the term originated from the long winters in both Suomi and New Suomi (the western U.P.) in which 5 to 7 months of real cold is endured. Anyway, the trucks are a relic of the foundation of the agricultural cooperatives during the second republic days (President Kenneth Kaunda's one-party state era). The Finnish government figured heavily in setting up the cooperatives, sending experts, vehicles, etc. For those of you so inclined, the old "Lima" program of the late 70's and early 80's that shapes agricultural policy even today was heavily influenced by the Finns. To whit, that was when the notion of subsidizing small-scale farmers by giving them loans for inputs through cooperatives, for better or for worse, came into vogue.

Like most ideas in Zambia before or since, they were originated and were carried out through the centralized government hierarchy. Plans were made in Lusaka and were carried out accordingly ... regardless of location, distance, infrastructure, etc. Deviations from the plan (as of the present day) were neither encouraged nor tolerated; you did what the bosses at the next level up said to do, and that was that. The Sisu trucks hauled inputs to the villages in October and hauled crops (mainly maize) back out in May. Like most plans, it looked enormously good on paper; and like most plans, it fell apart in the implementation. Their was no mechanism to collect loans from the villagers; corruption in the system was rife given the lack of accountability and the nepotism inherent in hiring and distribution of inputs; the government continued to pay artificially high prices for the maize to the villagers, after which they sold it at a loss to the parastatal milling companies to keep the urban population happy; etc., etc. It was much of the foundation or reinforcement of the habits which we fight today: loan repayments are still a joke, farmers keep trying to grow maize despite it's being inappropriate for much of Zambia because the government subsidizes the crop, and it's still sold at a loss. I don't blame the Finnish government or people; it was a good plan, but the consequences keep echoing on ...

All this ran through my mind as I gazed at the nearer truck one day; I asked Franco about it, and he looked at it rather wistfully, commenting "Ahhh ... the Sisu trucks were very good; they never had breakdowns."


Guess things mean different things to different people.