2017-06-12 African Forest Forum / Forestry Development Authority - Rapid Forest Carbon Stock Appraisal Opening Speech

The following is a more or less verbatim account of the speech I gave today as a substitute for our Country Director at Rapid Forest Carbon Stock Appraisal (RaCSA) workshop being hosted by the African Forest Forum in Monrovia. 

The Managing Director of the Forestry Development Authority;

The Chairman of the AFF Secretariat;

The ****** (fill in according to attendees);

Ladies and gentlemen, may I simply say ... "All protocols observed".

******** 

Dr. Mary Molokwu-Odozi expresses her sincerest apologies for her unfortunate absence today due to 

her very crowded schedule. I hope that my few words may suffice on both her behalf and for Fauna 

& Flora International.

*********

My name is Carl Wahl, and I am currently serving as FFI's Project Manager for the Wonegizi REDD+ Pilot Project in Lofa County. Though I am relatively young as a West African, I am somewhat aged as a Southern African, having spent twelve years working mainly in the Republic of Zambia, but also in the Republic of Malawi and the Republic of Mozambique, respectively. 

It is a privilege to stand before you and discuss the fundamental aspects of trees and forests in Liberia, a country recognized as the last bastion of West Africa's forests, specifically, the Western Guinean Lowland forest ecoregion which encompasses nearly 100% of the Liberian nation. And, although it it is repetitive to say it, Liberia, despite her relatively small size, contains nearly half of the forest in West Africa. 

However, these facts are a poor representation of the awe-inspiring nature within the forests themselves. In the past eight months, I have had the privilege to periodically work with demarcation and carbon-assessment teams in and around the Wonegizi Proposed Protected Area. What I see on those trips are sights that are worthy of the same acclaim as the Redwood Forests in the United States, or the massive temperate rainforests of southeast Alaska where I worked as a US Forest Service Forest Ranger. In Wonegizi I have seen absolutely mindblowing profusions of trees of gargantuan proportions, with root buttresses spreading 10 to 15 meters across the forest floor, bearing up trunks of trees of more than a meter and a half in diameter stretching in height to 40 meters or more. Within these forest strongholds exists such a diversity of life, both known and unknown, that enumerating it would take far more than the short time alloted to me.  

Unfortunately, this walls of this bastion of forests are slowly crumbling. In some cases it is the exportation from the forest of a local or international commodity, such as timber, precious minerals or bushmeat. In others, it is the crowding in of a growing population clearing forested land to grow crops to support their families. Though I may be struck down for saying this as a conservationist, I feel an sense of empathy with either case; both my grandfather and my great-grandfather were loggers who along with many other men at that time exploited the great pine forests of Northern and Upper Michigan in order to provide for their families, send their children to school, and in a small sense, contribute to the development of the American nation. In that sense, a Liberian family or the Liberian nation is no different from my ancestors in that they are capitalizing on the highest value forest resources to perpetuate and improve their families livelihoods. 

What spurs this explotation? In simple terms, I would say that currently there is relatively little value for leaving the forest or the forest resources alone, or even for sustainable offtake of forest resources. Rather, a poor person looking for money to put clothes on their childrens' back, pay for their children's schoold fees, or to purchase seed rice to plant their fields, ends up being coerced by his or her poverty to exploit whatever available resources are at hand in order to meet those most pressing needs. When this poverty is multiplied across a village, a town, a clan, a district, a county, or a country, the forests literally suffer death from a thousand cuts. 

I want to emphasize this fact: currently in Liberia, forests only yield monetary returns upon removal of a forest resource from the forest base. In a society that is increasingly joining the monetized global economy, there is almost no compelling reason for a citizen not to protect or sustain these resources. 

This is the fundamental heart of the ideas underlying the principles of Payment for Ecosystems Services. Whether it be a conservation agreement with a protected area, or a national benefits sharing mechanism for monies received from the sale of carbon credits, PES represents a series of mechanisms whereby nations with extensive forest resources such as Liberia can commodify these services that we have heretofore taken for granted; provision of clean water, provision of clean air, stabilizing the soil and agricultural base, regulation of pest and disease outbreaks, and the like. In this specific workshop, the enumeration of Liberia's forest carbon stocks will no doubt be the primary focus of discussion. This is a critical first step in the long process of developing the national carbon market to the state at which Liberia governments, communities and individual citizens can actually see benefits from the act of positive management of forest resources as a viable alternative to unsustainable exploitation. 

Payment for ecosystem services is still a new thing, not only in West Africa, but the world as whole. Therefore, I would like to urge the assembled attendees to approach this workshop with an attentive and open mindset so that we can make Liberia a pioneer of payment for ecosystems services to which the region and the Continent may look to as an example!

With that, I would like to thank the assembled participants, our facilitators from the African Forest Forum, our hosts from the Forestry Development Authority for allowing me to declare this workshop officially open. 

January 18, 2017 - The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here, Part II

(This post was originally started on the 13th November, then I trailed off ... see below)
[Nov 13]
We're having a bit of a day off today; Monrovia rolls up its proverbial sidewalks on Sundays, with the local populace engaged mainly in church through the morning and well into the afternoon (one universality among African Christian is they scrimp not on worship of the Lord). It is not entirely ubiquitous; others relax with their families, men play football [soccer] with friends, girls clubs play kickball in the afternoons, etc. There is the mistaken aspect of ubiquity as churches are plentiful, few business are open, streetside vendors are far fewer, and church-goers are dressed to the nines ... men ill-fitted in their best suits, second-hand affairs that fit their spare frames like boxes, women well-fitted in the explosion of color that serves as the Continent-wide feminine sartorial expression.

Speaking of boxy suits; as is my wont, I mainline news via the television (we activated our DSTV subscription) and through the internet. It seems that something major happened this past week; a man who had been treated as a clown and buffoon for most of the over-long primary election season and then was summarily reviled by the mainstream media as a misogynist, racist, protectionist incompetent gained more than half of the electoral voting population's ballots (there is an ongoing outcry against the electoral college, as for the second time in living memory, the President-elect apparently did not win the popular vote). Since the world woke up to the changed reality Wednesday morning, there has been a significant uptick in urban protests against the as-of-yet-inaugurated administration, with a concurrent level of anxiety attendant to Balzac's oft-misquoted expression that "Our greatest fears lie in anticipation".

I'm not much of a political wonk; you lose a bit of connection to politics when you are not in the States, and our interregnum period in D.C. between February and August (punctuated by a month in Zambia in July) was nestled in the bosom of Democratic leanings ...D.C. polled something like 90% for Clinton. Most of our handful of friends, inclusive of government workers, NGO types, etc., thought little of the GOP candidate's chances, trusting in the fundamental goodness of the American voter to, if at least not like Clinton, to vote for her as a rejection of the unprecedented crassness of her opponent.

[Jan. 18]
A few days off now from the Inauguration. The import of the job hasn't seemed to wear off on The Box yet. He has since the election tweeted what seems to be endlessly (I would count, but holding the pg dn key still took forever to scroll through the list). They say he's redefining how the presidency interacts with the media; from what I can gather, that means we'll get 160 characters assembled into Tweets that resemble little more than what they are ... electronic shouts, digital soundbites that gain enormous, albeit temporal, weight through unseen algorithms and news cycles that hone in on each shout as if it was some gravitational singularity. Then a day later, another Shweet, another blurb, and something new to pay attention to. A week, two weeks, the collective number of chaotic Shweets (or Shwits?) have overwhelmed your capacity to discern a pattern to the Shwit. The mistaken assumption is that there is no pattern - that it's a massive, random cloud of Shwit. All the way around the world from that, the chaos is the pattern. Keep everybody guessing. Keep everyone following conspiracy theories down rabbit holes. Systematic vs. direct causation.

... Nearly a decade ago when working with the USFS in Ketchikan, Alaska, my crew of YCC workers were helping with the cabin / rec team to restock the firewood on a spit of the mainland east of Revillagiggedo Island. On the return trip quartering southeast towards Clover Pass, our shallow-draught landing craft was suddenly surrounded by piling water, an unfortunate regularity in the Behm Channel with its demonic combinations of tide, currents, and wind. We were fortunate to have a man named Abele (pr. "able") at the tiller who, after hollering at us to clear the scuppers and "button-up" (secure our emergency flotation jackets), took us up on a broad northeastern arc around the mess. However, it was touch-and-go, with waves coming over the gunwales and desperate glances between Abele and I over the head of the crew (who thought it was a fun ride, oh to be young).

I think now some ephemeral waves are piling up around us. In the waves, I had few thoughts other than that crystallising awareness of the thin veil between this life and the next (the flotation suits gave us 20 minutes before we went into hypothermic shock). When you have the appearance of confusion and panic, you do tend to shut down and focus on aspects which you perceive as pre-eminent to your survival, or lesser so, your persistence in a given state.

You can worry persistently about the Box and his ideologies, but I wonder if not his campaign was quite simply his salemanship at work. He was selling a product ... himself. Hats off ... he did it in spite of very limited endorsement, celebrity or political (both rendered somewhat meaningless in this campaign; the prideful part of me that reads books, published a thesis, and entering arguably a third career in developing countries has a good ol' boys dislike of some smug know-it-all talking down at you). He won; he sold himself.

Now to unwrap the package and see if it's snake-oil or substance.

[ .... ]

Boy, this is going nowhere slow.

Liberia. So much to process, but as per my earlier anecdote, you pare it down to the basic necessities. As a student of configurations, I both reject and succumb to the absurd Western practice of treating both Africa the continent, and by proxy, Africans, as a collective whole ... scratch that. I have neither the sufficient imagination, nor the gullibility, to suppose on how people are in Cote D'Ivoire or Sierra Leone. All I know is Zambia, bits of Malawi, and now Liberia. As per the configuration terminology, what "resonates"?

(Harmonies - similar between the two)

1. Love of carbohydrates in ample quantities;
2. Street vendors;
3. Daily subsistence allowances;
4. Supremacy of vehicles as a determination of class;
5. Availability and quality of lager beer;
6. Church;
7. Basic respect between individuals that mandates greetings and basic respect prior to interacting;
8. Too many convoys on crowded streets; 

(Discordant ... Discordia; here vs. [...] there)

1. History, pt. 1 great social / political disruption ... none
2. History, pt. 2 (America ... UK) 
3. Stout beer that is more like a burnt porter;
4. Rice ... maize;
5. Cassava rendered edible in six ways [fresh, roasted, fufu, dumbo, GB, gari] ... cassava rendered edible in three [fresh, roasted, nshima];
6. Stews ... separation;
7. Humid... Semi-arid ... ;
8. No cows ... cows;
9. Imported foodstuffs ... local production; 
10. Coast ... landlocked;

The preceding post does not reflect the views of the author's employer, Fauna-Flora International. 

October 8, 2016 - The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here

It's been awhile, no?

So, if you might be able to gather from the above, we left the high, dry southern African plateau for the sweltering rain-soaked Grain Coast, as Liberia was once called. It was not a direct move; my girlfriend had to leave Zambia on the 2nd of September, 2015; after a six-month interlude until my contract with Concern Worldwide ended, we sorted the last distribution of inputs using vouchers for the Conservation Agriculture (CA) project I ran in Western Province. In the intervening days or isolated weeks where I was back in Lusaka, a fellow American from Alabama and myself became somewhat proficient at distilling whiskey (moonshine, mountain dew, white lightening, poteen, swish, white dog, steam, kachasu, lutuku, etc., etc.). We didn't do it because of particularly wanting a drink (there is no lack in either quantity or diversity of drinkable beverages in Lusaka); it was more like why I suppose people climb mountains, e.g., to see if they can do it.

Anyway, it was a dry rainy season and by the time I was wrapping up and headed home in February, it was apparent maize yields would be poor in the south and west of the country. I flew home on the coldest weekend of the year, packing my bags and filling up the back of my old pickup in near-record time; I then looped through the Midwest, seeing some friends in northern Wisconsin, giving a talk to some relatively wide-eyed Soil Science graduate students, catching up with former classmates, seeing my sister and her family in South Bend, IN. I then drove to Washington, D.C. to move into our new apartment with my girlfriend and to begin what I thought would be a relatively easy job search in the D.C. Metro area. Of course I can get a job! I have years of development experience! Hire me before someone else does!

To zip through that in a hurry ... it doesn't work like that. To summarize:

1. Had to figure out Obamacare ... wow, no wonder people are upset. It's neither clear nor cheap, and I had a number of odd health issues, none of which I had in Zambia, but fell on me in the States. To put it mildly, not having great insurance and no job still means you get crummy health care and weird bills that you're obliged to pay for.
2. Full-time jobs in D.C. are available, but the competition is stiff and for the most part, online. Having not had to apply for a job in a number of years, I was more than a bit rusty, particularly with the online bits. I shaped up my LinkedIn profile, worked on my resume, had a number of first interviews, screwed up quite a lot, etc. Overall, I got back into fighting shape, but the job market in international development when your 39 in 2016 is far different from the job market in computer programming when your 22 in 1999. The intervening years are not kind; the market likes the young up-and-comers, and ofttimes we'd get home aching and footsore from job fairs asking ourselves what the point had been. It was almost sheer luck my girlfriend found the current job I've started with Fauna-Flora International (FFI from here out, folks), and thank God, was the timing right. We had both reached the bottom of our respective wells of patience after six months and nearly 200 applications between us, and had I not pulled through on FFI ... well, you don't think about what may or may not have happened, but again, thank God. 
3. In the meantime, D.C. is not a cheap place to live. We were lucky to have one job that though part-time, had bonus pay in the form of groceries. We both temp'ed, something which is, though not quite as bad as substitute teaching (which I did 13 years ago), was really hard on my pride. You fill printers, sort office supply closets, work as a receptionist, answer phones, smile hard (though not crazy) at everyone in the hopes they will hire you back, because at minimum wage in D.C. ($11/hr) you need a solid 20 days of work just to cover rent. In the meantime, we did whatever else we could; I refurbished cast iron cookware and resold it both on the Internet and at neighborhood flea markets over the weekend (something that was facilitated by Paypal Here, as urban America is increasingly a cashless society); I did lawn maintenance for generous friends part-time; I helped an old man in Silver Spring, MD prep his garden, etc. Getting part-time work other than temp'ing often seemed even more ephemeral than full-time work; who wants a 39-year old bartender with a heavily-salted beard and graying temples facing the customers?

Please don't take me wrong; there was a lot of good in the District (many of the old expressions the old farmer used wore off on me, such as his reference to WSHDC as "the District"). Again, we had very solid friends, everything is literally right at hand (though devastatingly expensive), we had family nearby, etc. As a recent lover of gardens and growing things, and as an old lover of American history, the District is a treasure trove. Our neighborhood of Takoma Park, was a few short blocks from Fort Stevens, a shockingly close shave of a Confederate campaign to take D.C. in 1864. Lovely place all-in-all, but just not the right place for us at the present time.

At this point, too, it serves to note that for me personally, America has grown a bit strange in the long period since I was fully ensconced in the place (my two years at Madison aside, particularly as I was so heavily invested in the study of Southern Africa in general and Zambia in particular. The ongoing national election which is front and center at all times and all newsfeeds has been in a word, shocking; the abyssal depths of crudity and mean-spirits to which one of the candidates (He-who-will-not-be-named) continues to plumb is disgusting; however, what's worse for me is the torrent of hate which his excavations have revealed. My fellow Americans have, from my relatively distant view, have developed a worrying tolerance for, and acceptance of, fear and hatred. Worse still is the absolute loss of dialogue and reasoning in a country that most of the rest of the world that I've experienced aspires towards as a better model. What happens when that model rolls in the gutter and covers itself with excreta in a near jubilant fashion? I love my country and my home deeply, but my heart aches and worries for her in this strange view from abroad. 

So ... Liberia. The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here. Well, that's a topic for a bit later.

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This post and it's content are the thoughts and opinions of the author alone, and are not condoned or endorsed in any way by his employer, Fauna and Flora International.

April 19th, 2016 - The Maize Front

It has been difficult to be away from Zambia in what is turning out to be a crucial year in the continuing saga of maize: 

• Zambia announced back on the 6th (April) that maize exports, inclusive of bran, the by products of milling off the endocarp when making white (breakfast meal);
• Maize prices in Zambia are allegedly going to be controlled by government, but the routine of cross-border smuggling (through buyers purchasing at retail and reselling in DRC and Malawi) from two years ago and last year is replaying on a much greater scale;
• Queues for maize meal have been increasing, with buyers at supermarkets (e.g., Shoprite, Pick-n-Pay, etc.) limited to one 25kg bag per person;
• Prices have gone through the roof for the commodity, particularly in southwest and western Zambia, with 25kg of mealie meal selling at K200 ($21.39USD);
• Farmers in the same region as above are selling cows ... something of a !! because only better off have cows and they are not usually sold unless they are on death's door. "Prices" are in barter; families are getting 4 or 5 bags of maize (unmilled) for a single cow. This represents a kwacha value of K280 to K350 ($30 ~ $37.4 USD) per cow, as reported on-the-ground from Mwandi, west of Livingstone.

Word from ZNFU:

CME Soya futures price for May 2016 delivery opened trading at US$354.21/MT on 18th April 2016.

Local Soya beans spot prices were still hovering around ZMW5, 900-6,400/MT ($630 - 684USD) last week according to information captured on the ZNFU market price information system.

...

Malawi is forecasting a further reduction in its maize output this year. The country’s production estimates are currently around 2.43 million tons against a national consumption requirement estimated at 3.2 million tons. Zambia has been a major source of the maize grain to Malawi over the last year through both formal and informal trade. Meanwhile the Malawian President on 12th April declared a state of national disaster as the northern part of the country experiences floods and the southern drought.

On the local scene GRZ through Ministry of Agriculture is expected to issue a Statutory Instrument (SI) to facilitate the trading of maize grain and maize products sometime this week. This follows recent announcement by the Ministry of Agriculture that the country had adequate stocks to meet the national demand for maize.

 The CME Corn futures price for March 2016 delivery opened trading at US$147.71/MT on 18th April 2016.

 The offer price on the ZNFU market information system was in the range of ZMW 1,300/MT to ZMW 1,900/MT ($139.03 - 203 USD) in the week ending 18th April 2016.

...

AVERAGE DAY OLD CHICK PRICES
... No changes were registered in the price of day old chicks during the course of the week. However, day old chick outlets/agents have indicated that there has been a significant drop in the sales of day old chicks this year mainly caused by the increased cost of production, particularly increased cost of feed which some of the small scale farmers cannot keep up with.

March 12, 2016 - The People's Republic of Takoma Park

Welcome back dear readers, and my apologies for the delay. I left the pleasant, sun-soaked environs of Zambia for the brutal cold of Upper Michigan, leaving Lusaka on the 10th and arriving as the world turned in Kinross by the afternoon of the 11th. Since then, I drove from the Eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan through Wisconsin, seeing friends, giving a seminar on Zambia to admittedly bamboozled Soil Science grad students, then through Chicago nearly killing myself and others when a brake line gave out on US-12, then off to my sister and bro-in-law's place in South Bend, Indiana. By the 22nd of last month, I turned the Ranger east and drove 622 miles to ... Washington, D.C. Yes; the center of the world, as Mongu once was, Lusaka, etc. Specifically, to Takoma Park where my partner found us what is known as an "English Basement". After our run of cold weather and a light dusting of snow, I was curious as to whether that moniker referred to either the heating system or utter lack of insulation, but I'll let that one go ... imagine this place will be an oasis when Washington's infamous muggy summer gets going. 

Being here is something of a trip; there are no Faidherbia albida, no Julbernardia, no Brachystegia; relatively few off-shaped decurrent trees whatsoever, more of the Acer, Querus, Pinus, varieties. Far more cars, though better-organized traffic than Lusaka. More Mexican restaurants (yay, but expected) and quite a number of Ethiopian (yay, unexpected). Convenience and 'right now' seem to be the order of the day; it's hard for me to hear people complain about Washington's light rail system, the Metro; to me it is a shining example of organization and efficiency. I am blown away that I can get on the red line (a five minute walk from my doorstep) and in less than an hour get anywhere in the city (and relative to Chicago's El[evated] train, without the pitching and yawing I would expect). I am learning that the District is spatially very much a small city, albeit one with both the visible trappings of power (the Romanesque buildings, the politicians, the relative cleanliness). With a bike, one might circumnavigate the District in a half-day or so; though with a car this same activity could be a lesson in frustration, as the surrounding suburbs of the greater "DC Metropolitan area" in Maryland and northern Virginia contribute a staggering amount of traffic to the region; we were on 495 on Sunday, typically considered an easy day for driving, and there was still stupendous traffic. 

I'll contribute more later, but except for a bout with a nasty head cold, I've been trying to stay busy with meetings (e.g., USAID F2F discussions, ICT4D, Africa Restoration Project, etc., etc.), applying for jobs (both part-time and full-time), and volunteering with Casey Trees. Trying to stay out in with people, meet new people, and stay fresh with agriculture, both the local urban scene and with stuff back in Africa. 

And making cornbread: 

And photographing magnolia trees:

January 16th, 2016 - Not a viable field

This blog represents the views of the author's alone, and does not represent the views of his employer, Concern Worldwide.

News from the World of Maize:

Over the past few days, I hosted a friend of mine who works in southwestern Zambia and northern Malawi. He clued me in to some of the bits of information:

1. Maize stocks in Malawi are at spectacularly low levels ... he revealed a date of March 4th as the proverbial D-Day. I did a bit of digging online and FEWSNET has the following concurrence Currently food insecure populations in 12 districts spanning parts of the southern and northern regions are receiving assistance. Response programming to these areas and an additional 13 districts have enough funding for implementation through February 2016. Assistance originally planned for the month of March 2016 is uncertain due to a remaining 25 percent funding shortfall
2. It was interesting the deadline of March, which is keyed to the availability of direct budgetary aid, something which the Malawian government relies on to a greater extant that most countries in the region, a by-product of not being blessed [cursed] with mineral or other resources of the extraction variety. Part of what R. said got me trolling through the web; it appears that Malawi's President Peter Mutharika is under pressure to accept donor aid, particularly from DFiD, with some strings attached, namely that Malawi decriminalizes homosexuality. This has caused quite a stir in what I consider a significantly more conservative country than Zambia. According to the BBC, a moratorium was enacted on the laws, but full repeal of the law is a huge issue of realpolitik for Mutharika, who risks incredible backlash on the issue against both himself and threatened recrimination against the LGBT community. 
3. This has been accompanied by a steady rise of maize prices on the market (as is the case in Zambia) that has not been helped by the suspension of sales from ADMARC, Malawi's parastatal [government-run] agriculture marketing board which is by the largest buyer and seller of maize in the country. This has been exacerbated by the theft of maize by local ADMARC officers.

This morning, four hours after we parted ways, he sent this he sent this chilling text as he drove through Southern Province:

"Country is f***ed, not one viable maize field from Maz[abuka] to Choma, brutal!"

11 January 2016 - 30 Days to Go

The views expressed on this blog are those of the author along, and do not reflect the views of his employer, Concern Worldwide.

Happy New Year's! You patient and erstwhile readers ... 

My last day of work for Concern Worldwide Zambia is 29th January, and I have a plane ticket home booked on the 10th February. Goodbye, Zambia after 12 years. As such, I made a solemn oath to myself to write a blog post and journal entry every day, if for nothing else to remember sometime in the dim and likely more brutal future what I was experiencing these last few weeks. 

It is strange; in some ways, the process of disengaging oneself from a place and a context of cultures (Lozi, Tonga, Kaonde, Lala, Indian, White African, Chinese, ex-pat, et cetera) is that you run through the process of engagement, albeit in reverse. Maybe it's the odd way my mind works ... but separating yourself from what everyday amateur sociologists refer to as a "space" brings you back up the path from where that space was normal. E.g., you start to shed your expectations / assumptions of how people behave, how the world should work, how to begin and end things, how to speak with someone, and so on. In my case, I have become far less stressed and far more forgiving because there is an end (at least here) to the crazy results-based tilt-a-whirl that you climb on in the donor-funded development world. On the 29th, I will climb off, handover the reins to my replacement, and have 12 days to blink and think, and to wonder to myself, as I do over most of my memories ... Was it all real? Did I do that? How did I do that? What happened to all those people? Did I make a difference? Will they remember me? 

Unfortunately, deep pondering is something I can little afford whilst trying to sell my worldly possessions (mainly a car, a bicycle, and a bookshelf), handing over 12 years of agroecological experience, and looking for a new job in my soon-to-be new home, Washington, D.C. Hence the necessity and the catharsis ingrained in typing these things out ... it's 20-40 minutes where part of me steps back and views the passage of this vessel through this life, and marks somewhat cohesively which course it chose and why.

Outside of my head, we traveled en-masse from Lusaka to Mongu in one of the agency's Land Cruisers yesterday, leaving at 8:20a and arriving at 5:20p (17:20hrs). Along the way, it started raining west of Kaoma, and it rained intermittently for the rest of the journey. Mongu is a lovely place when it rains; the sandy streets and shoulders of the main roads flatten out and become hard enough to walk upon easily; the air clears of its load of dust and soot, and the grass! Oh, does it grow ... especially in the semi-divinity of the floodplains and along it's margins, the matongo and shishanjo areas.

Before leaving, I took a swipe (pardon the upcoming pun) at what some friends of mine at Grassroots Trust have been promoting and to which I'm slowly signing onto ... the idea that instead of the usual digging operation that is inherent in Zambian weeding cultivation, e.g. "hoeing" or "weeding", you engage in slashing the weeds in the interrow (the space between the lines of maize). I learned this entirely from my friend Sebastian Scott, who like me keeps something of a blog on how to do agriculture in a way that is ultra-conservative of organic matter, inclusive of weed growth. To make a long story short, I intercropped orange maize with black sunnhemp, a heavy nitrogen fixer in our small plot next to our office in Kalundu. Though we've had limited rains in Lusaka, my raking the area into rough terraces and the shade from the trees in the area have helped the maize, and it is surprisingly healthy. Anyway, after watering the little office garden (more on that some other time), I had 30 minutes to slash the sunnhemp down, though  being the total idiot that I am, I neglected to take before (only after) photos.

So what you are looking at is the remnants of the weeds that were before slashing at the same height as the maize. though I am by no means experienced with the one-handed slasher common in Zambia, it was relatively quick to figure out how to slash, e.g. a short swing, standing behind one row of maize and slashing the next, etc. What's left behind is a green mulch that hopefully with contact with the wet soils add a bit of nutrients to the slightly nitrogen deprived maize. More importantly, however, is the increase in light reach the maize leaves vis-a-vi the decrease in shading by plants in the interrow. Last, but not least, I was impressed by the ease of it ... rather than being hunched over hoeing, digging and lifting a blunt piece of dumb iron, I was upright swinging the slasher in short strokes. Noticeably harder on the forearms, but I would trade that any day for the ache in the back, the sore hands, the exhaustion and the time.

Anxious to see how this turns out.