Purchasing rice ...

Sorry for the hiatus, readers. I've been so knocked out after work that spending anytime on the Internet beyond responding to work or family emails. Part of it is due to the heat, which has attained the Philistine levels we last felt in February ... walking through the sand to work takes 35 to 40 minutes one-way, and the walk back after a day of work saps any energy I have left.

It's not only the work and the sun that leaves me beat; to be frank, I'm weary ... to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, I feel like butter that's been spread too thinly over bread. Though we've made significant progress at our production site (the rice mill is operating well, the oil press is worn-in, and the peanut butter is still floating along), dealing with setting everything up, writing reports, strategic plans, trying to find markets, and dealing with recalcitrant farmers has me beat. For example, last week, we had set up to make our first big purchase of Supa [Mongu] rice (our preferred variety) up in Liangati along the east bank of Zambezi floodplains. We informed the Zone Chairperson, our contact person who in theory is supposed to inform the Area Farmer Associations (AFAs) in that area. Unfortunately, he told not a single person, not even in passing ... his (and the community's) focus was on the upcoming; a campaign gathering replete with food, drink, and chitenges (and likely money). Our guys went up there to find only one person had gathered rice (he had heard about the purchase whilst in our office the previous week), and he had only told his wife, as he was headed up to Mongu. Therefore, instead of 100 bags of rice, we gathered 13.

We'll try again this week, but if it goes south again, I just don't know what to do. We're coming almost to the farmers' doorstep to purchase their rice at a fair price, but that doesn't make a purchase a foregone conclusion; funerals, rallies, church functions, basically anything will derail a purchase. It's partly because we're operating differently from the Food Reserve Agency depots that have paid staff who are on-duty throughout the week, or briefcase buyers that camp out until their truck is full or barter goods get finished; we try to schedule a specific date and place for our purchases because we have to hire our transport to fetch the crops, and furthermore, you have to pay the guys to inspect, weigh, and re-bag the crops which represents a significant cost. Our farmers' simply don't understand that the logistical costs have to be borne by the cooperative (i.e., themselves) and that impacts the business; they figure that if they miss a day, we can just come back later. Explanations of this to farmers by our Zambian staff members are met with polite nods and murmurs of assent, but no real comprehension; having been fed a steady diet of government-supported maize production, purchase, and consumption, they expect all crop marketing to be entirely subservient to their own arcane schedules.

We'll see ... we paid the seller something like K1,300,000 ($260) as soon as he came back with the Goods Received Note (GRN) yesterday. That's tall tickets for out here, and if people can figure out that we'll pay them good money in good time, maybe the purchasing will pick up.