A day in the life ...

Our showers on Monday afternoon are still waiting for an encore. Traveling east to Lusaka from Mongu, I noted how little maize had yet germinated in the fields along the way; the heavy rains have yet to set in, so farmers are accordingly holding off planting maize.

I reflected on that the other day as the guard and I were planting the maize in my spacious back yard ... you have no idea whether it will or won't rain in the upcoming days. There simply is no weather forecasting; ZNBC has a meteorological report that is almost laughable in their vagueness; they tend to use expressions like "it will rain in places in Western Province" or "very warm in Western province", as if sandbagging will reduce their culpability. To their credit, though, the ITCZ moves almost on a whim and the horse latitudes can end up over our heads.

The eight hours on the bus have become something of a routine. Today, the seat had a broken back, so I spent the entire ride leaning back 45 degrees. The ubiquitous kid-on-the-lap-of-a-mother spent much of those eight hours grasping at my temple or pressing his feet against the back of my seat, much to the bemusement of his mother, who refused to believe that the seat was broken. Don't really pay any mind anymore ... I read the summer edition of Lapham's Quarterly, which was themed around the sea, with the presence of mind to skip past the pictures that would appear (or are?) pornographic to a Zambian, such as The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife (look that up yourself) or Ulysses straining against his bonds to join with the scantily clad Sirens.

Periodically, as is my wont, my gaze would remain fixed on the landscape out the window. In the 400 miles east to west, the forest and soils change imperceptibly on the course but notably on the extremes. You leave Mongu, a beach without an ocean, and arrive in Lusaka, islands of rock surrounded by a sea of garbage. In between, you phase agriculturally from cassava interspersed with maize (Mongu / Kaoma), to maize interspersed with tobacco (Kaoma East), to maize interspersed with cotton (Mumbwa). Cotton is deceptive ... untrained eyes mistake the scratch lines for CA basins.

At the end of the journey, I rolled aching off the bus into the melee of Lusaka's Intercity bus terminal, resembling a mobile version of Lot's wife. I went straight to the office to discuss the upcoming meetings next week with the World Bank, NEPAD, and NORAD to form a CSA alliance; my hope is we can shift the conversation from scaling-up (i.e., adding beneficiaries in a stochastic way) to adoption analysis, with a focus on graduating farmers through progressively more technical aspects of CA. Shopped a bit for food; grabbed a burger (to satisfy my Western cravings), came home and wrote up a case study for the annual report. "Watched" (via CBS.com) the sportsticker of Michigan's last-minute loss to Ohio State (why did they go for 2?). Type blog. Rest.

Grateful Year #10

Been trying my hardest to forget it's Thanksgiving, and work helps; my staff is scrambling around trying to get the demo plots going in each of the project areas, monthly reports are due (which means I make a lot of phone calls and emails to people who forget each month just how long a month is), and I'm flying down to attend a big Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) conference in Johannesburg on Monday. It would be pretty blase (a lot of sitting, listening, and swapping cards after awkward conversations over poorly mixed cocktails), if not that I am representing my agency in a select group of NGOs (somehow named the "Big Five") to some awfully large actors on the global development stage. Programme reviews the following week; coordinating a motorcycle safety training; case studies; field visits (where I get to be the bad guy to poor performing extension workers); urban demos; M&E training; IPM training; partner agreements.

Maybe I won't miss Christmas.

On my way home from work last night around 21:30 (9:30 p.m.), I bought two boiled eggs from a 8 or 9 year old boy who doubtless had to come with an empty carton. Last night I dreamed that the rains didn't come; I woke this morning upset over that (rain's in the back of your mind all the time in my line of work), itching the mosquito bites on the soles of my feet and thinking of home.

It's time for the grateful list, i.e. what I'm grateful for:

1. Not being broke. I was broke for a long time and it's hard.
2. Mollisols/Ultisols. America has some of the best soils in the world. I wonder what the pioneers would have done if they came rolling over the Appalachians and found Kalahari sands in the Ohio Valley.
3. Running water. Frequent bucket baths make functioning showers the greatest thing in the world. 
4. Health. 
5. Fresh food nearby.
6. The neighbors. They are just about the nicest people and the kids speak Lozi in short sentences very loudly, usually in a descriptive manner about whatever's happening ... helps with learning.
7. The guards. They do a lot of stuff without too much instruction.
8. Cell phones. I used to talk to Mom & Dad once every three or four months and it was like the line was made of gold. Now it's whenever the both of us are awake and it's cheap. 
9. Old Crow Medicine Show. Chug along.

Happy Thanksgiving.

An October to forget

It's somewhat inexplicable but our rains have commenced quite a bit early this year. The evening before Independance Day (Oct 24th), we had a shower that finally broke the back of the crazy heat that dominated most of the prior two weeks. We've had a few showers come through; enough to green up the garden noticeably and induce the weeds to start poking their evil heads above the sand.

I'm of two minds about rain like this; on one hand, it wakes farmers early out of the stupor due in no small part to the heat that characterizes late August through (usually) mid-to-late November. This will get farmers "on-the-jump" prepping their fields; on great downfall of most Zambian agriculture is late preparation that turns into late planting which is agronomically a big hit to maize yields.An early rain also helps us greatly; our system of minimum tillage (where we dig small basins in rows at regular intervals to microdose inputs, and into which we later plant seed) becomes that much easier when the sand wets up a bit. Otherwise, digging basins in dry sand is a bit of a Sisyphean task.

On the other hand, the early rains serve as a reminder as to how far behind our project is; we were forever getting a confirmation of monies, hiring new staff, procuring transport (motorcycles), sensitizing communities, selecting seed growers, etc., etc., etc. (Let's just say we'll not dwell on the hell of October or September). It's work; it's usual. You just try to roll with the punches.

Would give anything to shake the dry hack that afflicts the heads and tails of the day; not sure if it's the drop in the temps (to which I would gladly suffer much greater ills) or the profusion of plants that have blossomed in the past week. Or to shake the blues; having trouble with what I believe is familiarity and what I'm sure is loneliness. Some of the perks of the adventurous overseas life ...