Saturday marked the passing of Zambia's second president, Frederick J.T. Chiluba (born 1943). We have been strongly advised by Peace Corps to speak no ill of the dead; to quote our Safety & Security Coordinator's (SSC's) last SMS:
ALERT-ALL PCVs
following ex-president Chiluba's death, avoid gathering &political discussion. Respect people's right to mourn. Burial: June27. Thnx.
I doubt there will be much mourning here in Western, as Chiluba is closely linked with the ruling party, and the ruling party has been out of favor since the events on January 14th up in Mongu. However, in other parts of the country, I could see the validity of our SSC's statement. Some Volunteers who have read up on their Zambian history tend to point out things in a way that we Americans don't see as problematic or even are encouraged to do so; however, this is not the U.S. and depending on who you are talking to, pointing out relative faults of someone is akin to pointing out the faults of everyone with whom they are associated (i.e. a party).
What will be really interesting is the funeral procession itself ... political figures warrant a huge number of people, most of whom attend less because of respect and more due to the fear of a conspicuous absence. Somewhat like a funeral in the village, I wot.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Thursday, June 16, 2011
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.
-----
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.
----
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.
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.
-----
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.
----
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.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
Lusaka and the market of mutual dependencies
I was in Lusaka on Wednesday for a whirlwind tour of downtown to purchase connectors for our waterline that is starting to resemble the Great Wall of China in project duration.
For those of you not familiar with Lusaka, it's essentially a series of neighborhoods that straddle or parallel the main roads in and out of town. Each neighborhood has it's certain demographic, characteristics, etc. For example, Kabulonga and Woodlands are where you'll find all the wealthy, elite Zambians, ex-pats; Longacres, most of the foreign embassies; Emmasdale is where the South Asian business community resides; Mwandevu, the city's gritty northern gateway where the illicit charcoal from the forest reserves all gets dropped off; Mutendere, the shanty compound where half of everyone seems to live on top of each other; and Kalingalinga, one of the sadder places in the universe where you can see old women and little kids breaking stones with hammers for a pittance.
Downtown (or "town" as it's known in the local vernacular) is the great beating heart of Lusaka. It is essentially four streets wide by 10 long that parallel the line-of-rail and the famous Cape-to-Cairo road [Cairo Road] wherein lie endless marches of shops. There is no apparent pattern to the place to the untrained or inexperience mind, but five years of wandering in and out of the place looking for stuff leads to a semblance of geography. However, there is a very simple business concept you have to swallow before you can grasp it [or the market in Zambia] which I term "clustering".
You see, from the smallest market of the side of a dusty road all the way up to Downtown Lusaka, people sell similar items in clusters. For example, if you want tomatoes, you find the place where they sell tomatoes and you find something like 40 women sitting side-by-side with identical piles of tomatoes arrayed in front of them, selling tomatoes at nearly identical prices. It goes the same for beans, dried fish, meat, auto parts, hardware, plumbing, etc. If you (like me) are looking for polypipe connectors, there is a stretch of Freedom Way northeast of the Mumbwa / Lumumba Road junction that has a number of stores that carry plumbing supplies at nearly identical prices right next to each other. Fascinating, too, how these stores operate ... you wander in and are immediately met by a 20-something guy who figures out what you want, and knows instantly whether the store has it or not. If not, he assures you that he'll be right back and sprints off into the mass of people on the sidewalk. A few minutes after staring into the same mass, he reemerges carrying something. With some clarification, he sprints off again; more staring, and then confirmation of a part, or a sad shake of the head that means the part doesn't exist within his circle of influence / associated stores. It works surprisingly well; you might pay a slightly higher price for a particular part (sort of the finder's fee, if you will), but you save a lot of footwork and time. I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, but we were able to improvise a number of single connectors from two or three different pieces.
The point of all this is that often, the superficial view of Zambian market views is that it is a relatively chaotic mass that lacks organization, order, rules, etc. However, there is a hidden order; many of these clusters serve as mutually beneficial entities. For example, if one of the ladies selling tomatoes needs to rush somewhere for something, another lady will look after her small child(ren) and watch her stand. If there is a good wholesale of tomatoes, that information gets shared out to others, so that a relatively small group of women can corner that sale and set a mutual price on tomatoes in a certain area. It's not a system that supports individual competition; if you set out on your own, you risk ending up a pariah, ostracized, etc. In our relatively introverted [Western] society, this is acceptable ... you can exist on your own penned up within books, Ipods, existing online through an avatar, etc. Here, it is akin to shunning; Zambian society is based on mutual dependencies that allow an individual to survive through association with a group, be it familial, tribal, locative, economic, etc. The closest parallel I can figure in our context would be deep-sea fisherman; though they are in a sense competing with each other, they look out for each other, sharing engine parts, fishing information, etc. less out of a sense of altruism rather than a sense of mutual obligation. If I don't give Captain So-and-so a hand when he's in a pinch, word might get around, and then what do I do if I end up in a tight spot? Neither a wise course in either the literal or figurative sea.
It's tough for Americans [the land-based ones] to wrap their heads around this. For us, reared in the tradition of the Puritan ethic, Horatio Alger, and so forth, it is the individual through her/his luck, skill, shrewdness, determination, perseverance,or a combination of such that get Ragged Dick into a decent life. Here, it's not that you only have to work hard ... you have to look out for your neighbors. That's sort of the reason why development projects that target individuals seem to have little success; they might get ahead for a bit, but jealousy can cause that person to suffer social ostracism, so the advancement has a limiting factor. This is particularly evident where projects seek to help a specific demographic in a "community" (i.e. female-headed households, orphans and vulnerable children, etc.) without recognizing that the remaining demographics in the "community" might be upset over the recognition, support, material goods, etc. that they cannot access.
I'll try to flesh this idea out more as I move along; it's a tough one and I lack much of the equipment to accurately characterize it, but it's worthwhile for me to explore its corners.
For those of you not familiar with Lusaka, it's essentially a series of neighborhoods that straddle or parallel the main roads in and out of town. Each neighborhood has it's certain demographic, characteristics, etc. For example, Kabulonga and Woodlands are where you'll find all the wealthy, elite Zambians, ex-pats; Longacres, most of the foreign embassies; Emmasdale is where the South Asian business community resides; Mwandevu, the city's gritty northern gateway where the illicit charcoal from the forest reserves all gets dropped off; Mutendere, the shanty compound where half of everyone seems to live on top of each other; and Kalingalinga, one of the sadder places in the universe where you can see old women and little kids breaking stones with hammers for a pittance.
Downtown (or "town" as it's known in the local vernacular) is the great beating heart of Lusaka. It is essentially four streets wide by 10 long that parallel the line-of-rail and the famous Cape-to-Cairo road [Cairo Road] wherein lie endless marches of shops. There is no apparent pattern to the place to the untrained or inexperience mind, but five years of wandering in and out of the place looking for stuff leads to a semblance of geography. However, there is a very simple business concept you have to swallow before you can grasp it [or the market in Zambia] which I term "clustering".
You see, from the smallest market of the side of a dusty road all the way up to Downtown Lusaka, people sell similar items in clusters. For example, if you want tomatoes, you find the place where they sell tomatoes and you find something like 40 women sitting side-by-side with identical piles of tomatoes arrayed in front of them, selling tomatoes at nearly identical prices. It goes the same for beans, dried fish, meat, auto parts, hardware, plumbing, etc. If you (like me) are looking for polypipe connectors, there is a stretch of Freedom Way northeast of the Mumbwa / Lumumba Road junction that has a number of stores that carry plumbing supplies at nearly identical prices right next to each other. Fascinating, too, how these stores operate ... you wander in and are immediately met by a 20-something guy who figures out what you want, and knows instantly whether the store has it or not. If not, he assures you that he'll be right back and sprints off into the mass of people on the sidewalk. A few minutes after staring into the same mass, he reemerges carrying something. With some clarification, he sprints off again; more staring, and then confirmation of a part, or a sad shake of the head that means the part doesn't exist within his circle of influence / associated stores. It works surprisingly well; you might pay a slightly higher price for a particular part (sort of the finder's fee, if you will), but you save a lot of footwork and time. I didn't get exactly what I was looking for, but we were able to improvise a number of single connectors from two or three different pieces.
The point of all this is that often, the superficial view of Zambian market views is that it is a relatively chaotic mass that lacks organization, order, rules, etc. However, there is a hidden order; many of these clusters serve as mutually beneficial entities. For example, if one of the ladies selling tomatoes needs to rush somewhere for something, another lady will look after her small child(ren) and watch her stand. If there is a good wholesale of tomatoes, that information gets shared out to others, so that a relatively small group of women can corner that sale and set a mutual price on tomatoes in a certain area. It's not a system that supports individual competition; if you set out on your own, you risk ending up a pariah, ostracized, etc. In our relatively introverted [Western] society, this is acceptable ... you can exist on your own penned up within books, Ipods, existing online through an avatar, etc. Here, it is akin to shunning; Zambian society is based on mutual dependencies that allow an individual to survive through association with a group, be it familial, tribal, locative, economic, etc. The closest parallel I can figure in our context would be deep-sea fisherman; though they are in a sense competing with each other, they look out for each other, sharing engine parts, fishing information, etc. less out of a sense of altruism rather than a sense of mutual obligation. If I don't give Captain So-and-so a hand when he's in a pinch, word might get around, and then what do I do if I end up in a tight spot? Neither a wise course in either the literal or figurative sea.
It's tough for Americans [the land-based ones] to wrap their heads around this. For us, reared in the tradition of the Puritan ethic, Horatio Alger, and so forth, it is the individual through her/his luck, skill, shrewdness, determination, perseverance,or a combination of such that get Ragged Dick into a decent life. Here, it's not that you only have to work hard ... you have to look out for your neighbors. That's sort of the reason why development projects that target individuals seem to have little success; they might get ahead for a bit, but jealousy can cause that person to suffer social ostracism, so the advancement has a limiting factor. This is particularly evident where projects seek to help a specific demographic in a "community" (i.e. female-headed households, orphans and vulnerable children, etc.) without recognizing that the remaining demographics in the "community" might be upset over the recognition, support, material goods, etc. that they cannot access.
I'll try to flesh this idea out more as I move along; it's a tough one and I lack much of the equipment to accurately characterize it, but it's worthwhile for me to explore its corners.
Monday, June 6, 2011
3 x 10m x 10m = New Conservation Agriculture
The email came back up today ... must be the satellite shifted and pointed back at us. It's nice to have it back ... there isn't much going on in Senanga (ever) and the national news channel isn't what I would call an extensive global news network; they mostly concern themselves with local issues.
We had a small workshop with the seven Field Extension Workers (FEWs) who are our agents on the ground
for promoting Conservation Agriculture (CA). They are a fun lot; I've gotten to know them over the past seven months, and have quite a bit of respect for them, as they are promoting a relatively strange form of agriculture to an audience that can be rather fixed in their ways. Their job is to get trained in CA spend their time promoting the practices and reporting the results to SDACSS / Concern; they get paid a small stipend to do so (~$75/month). Before you get to thinking "Wow, that puts them way over $2 / day!", keep in mind that they often walk six to eight miles through either floodplains or beach sand to visit both disinterested / interested farmers for the whopping sum of $2.50 / day.
Today, we spent most of the day discussing the basics of soil science, the need for increased organic matter in the soil, and how we could increase that organic matter by integrating local nutrient sources into the proscribed CA systems. These include compost, kitchen waste, animal manure, and in particular, certain tree leaves. It was kind of cool for me; we took the idea of the guy out in Wanyau who put green leaves in his planting basins (achieving a 5,000+ kg per hectare harvest) as a basal dressing and expanded it using agroforestry. Kind of a fortunate turn of events to have a method proven for us in advance; we are simply systematizing the process he tried out, though with some twists. For example, rather than gathering random leaves from the forest, we are encouraging them to alley crop certain trees (Leucaena lecocephala, Gliricidia sepium, Cajunus cajun, and Sesbania macarantha) and utilize those trees as the basal dressing in the basins.
To step back a hair ... the current prescription for CA dictates a set of procedures that appear nearly sacrosanct; no burning of residues, permanent planting basins, no conventional tillage, a specific seed planting rate, etc. It comes across (as so much does in Zambia) as canon; deviation from the script written by CFU or GART (find those for yourselves) is regarded as heresy (read all about it). Today, we were essentially asking our FEWs to move slightly outside the box and experiment with some other basal dressings. Why? Frankly, the price of fertilizer is simply staggering in Zambia, particularly to a rural farmer. For the recommended dose of basal dressing (Compound D, N-P-K: 10-20-10, 6% sulfur) and top dressing (urea, N-P-K: 46-0-0) is 200 kg of each (400 kg total, or 880 lbs.) for one hectare. If the fertilizer could be bought on the open market, it would cost K280,000/50kg, or K2,240,000 total. That's the princely sum of $470 / hectare. CA does not deviate from this recommendation, though to its credit, it targets that fertilizer much better to the crops.
What we are doing is asking the FEWs to consider other nutrient sources, particularly with an eye on boosting the soil organic matter in the sandy soils that dominate the area; this can include manure, leaves, ash mixed with kitchen waste, and so on. As such, we spend the day discussing soil organic matter (SOM), its effect on soil structure, nutrient availability, water storage, etc., and how we might increase the SOM using the above mentioned tree species in some creative ways.
As such, after a couple of planting demonstrations, visits around town to put names-to-the-faces of tree species, we shook out a plan: the FEWS will make three small 10m x 10m plots adjacent to their 50m x 50m CA plots to try three experiments.
I went off the grid a bit, though, with my suggestion that the FEWs design the experiments themselves. The perplexed looks reflected 80 years of one-way agricultural education; we don't come up with ideas ... that's your job. I pointed out that the chap in Wanyau had gone out on a limb dumping leaves in his basins on his own volition, and it was time for the FEWs to do the same. The plots, though small, are the basic medium of experimentation, i.e. what happens when we do this one thing differently (apply ash, till differently, etc.). After some cajoling, I convinced them to put ideas on paper for next month, which we'll review. That's where I have to be really careful; if our FEWs feel as if they own their experiments, the process will work out much better for other farmers' eventual adoption. However, if it becomes our (i.e. the NGO's experiment), it will be the proverbial flash-in-the-pan.
Enough blathering for today. It was nice to see people enthused about trees on the farm, though.
We had a small workshop with the seven Field Extension Workers (FEWs) who are our agents on the ground
for promoting Conservation Agriculture (CA). They are a fun lot; I've gotten to know them over the past seven months, and have quite a bit of respect for them, as they are promoting a relatively strange form of agriculture to an audience that can be rather fixed in their ways. Their job is to get trained in CA spend their time promoting the practices and reporting the results to SDACSS / Concern; they get paid a small stipend to do so (~$75/month). Before you get to thinking "Wow, that puts them way over $2 / day!", keep in mind that they often walk six to eight miles through either floodplains or beach sand to visit both disinterested / interested farmers for the whopping sum of $2.50 / day.
Today, we spent most of the day discussing the basics of soil science, the need for increased organic matter in the soil, and how we could increase that organic matter by integrating local nutrient sources into the proscribed CA systems. These include compost, kitchen waste, animal manure, and in particular, certain tree leaves. It was kind of cool for me; we took the idea of the guy out in Wanyau who put green leaves in his planting basins (achieving a 5,000+ kg per hectare harvest) as a basal dressing and expanded it using agroforestry. Kind of a fortunate turn of events to have a method proven for us in advance; we are simply systematizing the process he tried out, though with some twists. For example, rather than gathering random leaves from the forest, we are encouraging them to alley crop certain trees (Leucaena lecocephala, Gliricidia sepium, Cajunus cajun, and Sesbania macarantha) and utilize those trees as the basal dressing in the basins.
To step back a hair ... the current prescription for CA dictates a set of procedures that appear nearly sacrosanct; no burning of residues, permanent planting basins, no conventional tillage, a specific seed planting rate, etc. It comes across (as so much does in Zambia) as canon; deviation from the script written by CFU or GART (find those for yourselves) is regarded as heresy (read all about it). Today, we were essentially asking our FEWs to move slightly outside the box and experiment with some other basal dressings. Why? Frankly, the price of fertilizer is simply staggering in Zambia, particularly to a rural farmer. For the recommended dose of basal dressing (Compound D, N-P-K: 10-20-10, 6% sulfur) and top dressing (urea, N-P-K: 46-0-0) is 200 kg of each (400 kg total, or 880 lbs.) for one hectare. If the fertilizer could be bought on the open market, it would cost K280,000/50kg, or K2,240,000 total. That's the princely sum of $470 / hectare. CA does not deviate from this recommendation, though to its credit, it targets that fertilizer much better to the crops.
What we are doing is asking the FEWs to consider other nutrient sources, particularly with an eye on boosting the soil organic matter in the sandy soils that dominate the area; this can include manure, leaves, ash mixed with kitchen waste, and so on. As such, we spend the day discussing soil organic matter (SOM), its effect on soil structure, nutrient availability, water storage, etc., and how we might increase the SOM using the above mentioned tree species in some creative ways.
As such, after a couple of planting demonstrations, visits around town to put names-to-the-faces of tree species, we shook out a plan: the FEWS will make three small 10m x 10m plots adjacent to their 50m x 50m CA plots to try three experiments.
I went off the grid a bit, though, with my suggestion that the FEWs design the experiments themselves. The perplexed looks reflected 80 years of one-way agricultural education; we don't come up with ideas ... that's your job. I pointed out that the chap in Wanyau had gone out on a limb dumping leaves in his basins on his own volition, and it was time for the FEWs to do the same. The plots, though small, are the basic medium of experimentation, i.e. what happens when we do this one thing differently (apply ash, till differently, etc.). After some cajoling, I convinced them to put ideas on paper for next month, which we'll review. That's where I have to be really careful; if our FEWs feel as if they own their experiments, the process will work out much better for other farmers' eventual adoption. However, if it becomes our (i.e. the NGO's experiment), it will be the proverbial flash-in-the-pan.
Enough blathering for today. It was nice to see people enthused about trees on the farm, though.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Tigerfish
It was a joyous day yesterday; I landed my first through fourth tigerfish off the dock at the Senanga Safaris Lodge. None were more than 15 or 20 centimeters long, so after carefully removing the hook from their jaws [which are no joke] with a pair of hemostats, I'd put them back in the river. This was much to the dismay of the audience watching me; they kept asking me to give them the fish.
The old saying "blah-blah-blah ... Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." wouldn't work here. First off, they are too good by half at fishing; Zambians haul up everything they can catch, because they eat just about everything they catch (or sell it to others). It's partly because fished are usually gutted, scaled, and pan-fried with the head, skin, bones, and tail still intact; this method a) saves preparation time and b) allows one to consume any size of fish, right down to those as small as my index finger. Unfortunately, the broad range of sizes is worrying; there is simply nothing done in consideration of sustaining the catch into the future. But, who am I to say anything ... look at the cod, the Atlantic halibut, and every other wild fish species we've ever happened upon seem to disappear despite being "endless".
Oh well ... at least they fight like the Dickens while they are still around. Any fish that size that can bend a rod rated for 15 lbs. test strung with 25 lb. Fireline is a shoo-in for Gamest Fish Ever.
The old saying "blah-blah-blah ... Teach a man to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." wouldn't work here. First off, they are too good by half at fishing; Zambians haul up everything they can catch, because they eat just about everything they catch (or sell it to others). It's partly because fished are usually gutted, scaled, and pan-fried with the head, skin, bones, and tail still intact; this method a) saves preparation time and b) allows one to consume any size of fish, right down to those as small as my index finger. Unfortunately, the broad range of sizes is worrying; there is simply nothing done in consideration of sustaining the catch into the future. But, who am I to say anything ... look at the cod, the Atlantic halibut, and every other wild fish species we've ever happened upon seem to disappear despite being "endless".
Oh well ... at least they fight like the Dickens while they are still around. Any fish that size that can bend a rod rated for 15 lbs. test strung with 25 lb. Fireline is a shoo-in for Gamest Fish Ever.
Friday, May 27, 2011
Ironmongery
I wish the picture upload was faster; I could then post a photo of my latest struggle. It takes the form of an oil expeller made in (I think) northeast China that weighs about a ton-and-a-half and is one of the more amazing pieces of cast iron I've yet seen.
Brief aside: For those of you who don't know, one of my favorite hobbies back home is refurbishing / reseasoning / rescuing cast iron pans and giving them to friends. If you've never cooked with cast iron, you've neither eaten or cooked. And if you're using one of those chintzy pans from Wal-Merde, you'll be intimately familiar with the quality of cast with which I'm working.
Anyrow, Thursday, a guy from Mongu who is the expert in wiring the motors and operation of expellers came down to help us wire up the starter motors (essentially a mini-transformer box that does some step-down on the three-phase power line fitted with a "start" and "stop" button). I shoveled a meter-deep trench between the warehouse (where the distribution box is) to the oil shed. Did it myself because we had a cold rain all morning (weird for this time of the year) and the trustee remain huddled on the veranda of the warehouse, warning me against working in the rain.
Brief aside #2: Zambians loathe cold. People start dressing up like its December in Ottawa this time of year; jackets and hoodies (secondhand saluala from the States) and a multitude of gloves / mittens are the rule. People hurry wherever they are going and respond to greetings, not with the usual "I've woken well, and you?", with "Cold!" and hustle along. As far as I can tell, most folks figure you'll catch the flu from cold weather. Now, mix in rain, which is still thought by many to cause malaria if you're exposed to it, and you have a situation in which people won't leave the house. As such, Senanga looked deserted Thursday morning.
Anyway, Mr. Likando wired up the boxes. It took most of the day as we kept having to send our trustee, Mr. Simasiko, into town for supplies (our production site is about a mile and a half from the market). We got the oil mill wired up by 19:30 and fired it up at 19:38 (7:38p). By God and all that's holy, in the pale glow of the fluorescent lights, it turned on and started whirring away. I almost broke taboo to hug Mr. Likando; as it was, I just about shook his hand off his shoulder.
The next day, he offered to stick around and show me how to run the mill as his project had some off-days (he supervises a jatropha-to-diesel fuel project that is struggling along in Mongu). So, starting around 7:30, we started the engine up and slowly fed sunflower into the hopper; you do this for 20~30 minutes to slowly build up the heat in the helical screw. It also gives you the time to do adjustments to the screw and tighten or loosen the rings. The former controls the overall moisture of the cake; you want "dry" cake, i.e., all the oil is squeezed out of it; once you get this, you are pressing well. Otherwise, you have to recycle the wet cake back into the feed hopper mixed in with fresh seeds.
It didn't take long for us to break down as a result of a simple mistake. The engine has three belts that run to a large pulley that rotates the helical screw. However, one pulley is run off of those to a small driveshaft that runs across the top of the machine and turns an agitator in the hopper that stirs the seed and augers it down into the screw. The pulley wheel hadn't been screwed in correctly, so it started turning freely on the driveshaft and the agitator/intake auger consequently stopped. We shut down the engine, disabled the belt, and reset the wheel; however, by the time we got it fixed, the cake had hardened inside the rings and frozen the helical screw in place. As Papa Bear Likando said ruefully, "This is why we don't stop the engine."
It's a 60-80 minute job to break the screw loose; you have to knock all the rings loose with a hammer and chisel, then chisel the cake of the outside of the cake, which has a consistency not unlike a frozen hockey puck. After that's all done, you reset the rings, check the screw and start up again.
The second round went far better; we got the adjustments right, and the machine started to really heat up due to the friction. According to Pappa Bear, this was a good thing, as you drive more oil out of the seeds once it gets good and hot. I mean really hot; we could literally fry eggs on the shield, and you could hear the seeds popping inside the rings. The oil was consequently heated, and our shields aren't adequate enough, so I kept getting hit with burning oil the rest of the day as I shoveled cake away from the outlet. I didn't mind at all; Pappa Bear kept up a running commentary, and by God, I was learning. It's not often enough that I'm getting formally taught by a Zambian (by default, people assume/expect you to have more knowledge / be the teacher / etc.) and he was a fount of knowledge. Also, I spend most of my time running around trying to get things working, and very little time actually seeing them work.
PB and I went back to town, and I bought him lunch before he headed back home to Mongu. We pressed a grand total of twenty liters from about 60kgs of seed; much of it's quite sludgy (unfiltered or unclarified [boiled]) and we had quite a bit of wastage due to a lack of shields, drip trays, filters, etc. I'll design these and manufacture them myself or, more likely, have local artisans bang them out. Plus, we need to build a boiler to clarify the oil (heat it enough to kill off enzymes that give a smell and shorten the shelf-life). Lastly, we need settling tanks, drums, etc. In all, we still have a solid month's work ahead of us before we have food-grade sunflower oil; but believe it or not, we are on the downhill side of the work, as we started from the ground in January.
All for now ... back to the mill.
Brief aside: For those of you who don't know, one of my favorite hobbies back home is refurbishing / reseasoning / rescuing cast iron pans and giving them to friends. If you've never cooked with cast iron, you've neither eaten or cooked. And if you're using one of those chintzy pans from Wal-Merde, you'll be intimately familiar with the quality of cast with which I'm working.
Anyrow, Thursday, a guy from Mongu who is the expert in wiring the motors and operation of expellers came down to help us wire up the starter motors (essentially a mini-transformer box that does some step-down on the three-phase power line fitted with a "start" and "stop" button). I shoveled a meter-deep trench between the warehouse (where the distribution box is) to the oil shed. Did it myself because we had a cold rain all morning (weird for this time of the year) and the trustee remain huddled on the veranda of the warehouse, warning me against working in the rain.
Brief aside #2: Zambians loathe cold. People start dressing up like its December in Ottawa this time of year; jackets and hoodies (secondhand saluala from the States) and a multitude of gloves / mittens are the rule. People hurry wherever they are going and respond to greetings, not with the usual "I've woken well, and you?", with "Cold!" and hustle along. As far as I can tell, most folks figure you'll catch the flu from cold weather. Now, mix in rain, which is still thought by many to cause malaria if you're exposed to it, and you have a situation in which people won't leave the house. As such, Senanga looked deserted Thursday morning.
Anyway, Mr. Likando wired up the boxes. It took most of the day as we kept having to send our trustee, Mr. Simasiko, into town for supplies (our production site is about a mile and a half from the market). We got the oil mill wired up by 19:30 and fired it up at 19:38 (7:38p). By God and all that's holy, in the pale glow of the fluorescent lights, it turned on and started whirring away. I almost broke taboo to hug Mr. Likando; as it was, I just about shook his hand off his shoulder.
The next day, he offered to stick around and show me how to run the mill as his project had some off-days (he supervises a jatropha-to-diesel fuel project that is struggling along in Mongu). So, starting around 7:30, we started the engine up and slowly fed sunflower into the hopper; you do this for 20~30 minutes to slowly build up the heat in the helical screw. It also gives you the time to do adjustments to the screw and tighten or loosen the rings. The former controls the overall moisture of the cake; you want "dry" cake, i.e., all the oil is squeezed out of it; once you get this, you are pressing well. Otherwise, you have to recycle the wet cake back into the feed hopper mixed in with fresh seeds.
It didn't take long for us to break down as a result of a simple mistake. The engine has three belts that run to a large pulley that rotates the helical screw. However, one pulley is run off of those to a small driveshaft that runs across the top of the machine and turns an agitator in the hopper that stirs the seed and augers it down into the screw. The pulley wheel hadn't been screwed in correctly, so it started turning freely on the driveshaft and the agitator/intake auger consequently stopped. We shut down the engine, disabled the belt, and reset the wheel; however, by the time we got it fixed, the cake had hardened inside the rings and frozen the helical screw in place. As Papa Bear Likando said ruefully, "This is why we don't stop the engine."
It's a 60-80 minute job to break the screw loose; you have to knock all the rings loose with a hammer and chisel, then chisel the cake of the outside of the cake, which has a consistency not unlike a frozen hockey puck. After that's all done, you reset the rings, check the screw and start up again.
The second round went far better; we got the adjustments right, and the machine started to really heat up due to the friction. According to Pappa Bear, this was a good thing, as you drive more oil out of the seeds once it gets good and hot. I mean really hot; we could literally fry eggs on the shield, and you could hear the seeds popping inside the rings. The oil was consequently heated, and our shields aren't adequate enough, so I kept getting hit with burning oil the rest of the day as I shoveled cake away from the outlet. I didn't mind at all; Pappa Bear kept up a running commentary, and by God, I was learning. It's not often enough that I'm getting formally taught by a Zambian (by default, people assume/expect you to have more knowledge / be the teacher / etc.) and he was a fount of knowledge. Also, I spend most of my time running around trying to get things working, and very little time actually seeing them work.
PB and I went back to town, and I bought him lunch before he headed back home to Mongu. We pressed a grand total of twenty liters from about 60kgs of seed; much of it's quite sludgy (unfiltered or unclarified [boiled]) and we had quite a bit of wastage due to a lack of shields, drip trays, filters, etc. I'll design these and manufacture them myself or, more likely, have local artisans bang them out. Plus, we need to build a boiler to clarify the oil (heat it enough to kill off enzymes that give a smell and shorten the shelf-life). Lastly, we need settling tanks, drums, etc. In all, we still have a solid month's work ahead of us before we have food-grade sunflower oil; but believe it or not, we are on the downhill side of the work, as we started from the ground in January.
All for now ... back to the mill.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Getting on the Boat
The timber industry in Senanga is likely one of the lowest-tech, but yet, highest-value sawmills I’ve ever seen. Utilizing the most jerry-rigged, abused WoodMizers I’ve ever seen, they churn out thick planks for the export market. The straw boss, who doesn’t appear to be a local and speaks in functional, forceful Lozi, told me the planks’ destination was likely (guess?) China. Mostly, they are churn out rosewood (Guibourtia coleosperma [L. muzauli] ) planks that take four men to stack; I can’t imagine driving a nail into those planks for the life of me. Once in a while, they buzz up a Zambezi Teak (Baikiaea Plurijuga) or a mukwa (Pterocarpus Angolensis), which make the beauty of the rosewood pale in comparison; the teak swallows light when shined, and the mukwa features a striking contrast between the heart and sapwood that accentuates with age. Unfortunately, the likely reason you see fewer of those logs is that there are fewer of those trees standing; they have been cut commercially since the Brits rolled in one hundred years ago, and the burgeoning urban market and the voracious Chinese market is quickly mopping up what’s left. Also, people tell me the mukwa and teaks are incredibly slow growing; my experience so far tells me that any tree that can’t mature in less than 10 years is on a short timeframe in the endangered species list.
Anyway, behind the sawmill is one of the denser stands of velvet beans in town. Usually, to collect beans, I set off on peregrinations through the townships to collect a small handful of beanpods from of the fences between houses. Along the river, though, there are pure stands of velvet bean. It’s definitely a tradeoff … I collect far more beans, but you have to fight through all manner of verdant, thorny vegetation, all of which seem intended to set off some sort of allergic skin reaction. Mentally gritting my teeth and resisting the urge to scratch the itch (it creates a rather unpleasant negative feedback loop), I fill an old cement bag within a half-hour; the beans are heavy enough to warrant bearing on my shoulder, leaving one arm free to carry home relish for dinner. It being Sunday, I aimed to get my usual ndombe (catfish) to make chowder.
I was approaching the junction leading into the market when I noticed the police trucks and the large gentlemen clad in what I like to call “beating” wear … i.e. bloused pants, dungaree tops, and brown berets, sporting what appear to be Bren guns of WWII vintage. An arm hanging out of a green truck gesticulated in my direction; it was an acquaintance who works for the local prison. I greeted him, and he me, and he gave me some rare direct advice to go straight home, as their might be trouble brewing with the opposition party (PF) cadres in town. Quite a few were doing as cadres like to do, which is drink a lot of beer and act tough, and pummel any members of the opposing party.
Let me rewind a bit; politicking in Zambia is slightly different than the States. Sure, campaigns are getting progressively weirder back home, but you need to come live in Africa (this one I can generalize) to see a much more vivid upcoming.
First off, the way you demonstrate your allegiance to a party is to wear some sort of uniform, badge, clothing, etc. The “ruling” (what they call the majority party running government) party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, has the edge on this one; people sport very elaborate chitenge-material clothes bearing the president’s smiling image and the party’s symbol and slogan; for the MMD, it is the “The Hour Has Come” surrounding a clock face indicating one o’ clock), and for the opposition Patriotic Front (PF) it is “Pa Bwato” ([Get on] The Boat) with two gentlemen paddling a traditional dugout. For you Zambian history buffs, the old United National Independence Party has a right hand bearing a torch, ala the old Zairean flag.
The second way to demonstrate your party loyalty is a hand symbol that is waved vigorously at any party function, rally, etc. The MMD uses a gesture that emulates the clock symbol [koloko] by extending their index finger and thumb and rotating the hand rapidly (think like the number #1 sign commonly used at sporting events, but a tad different). PF is a bit simpler; they make a fist and shake it up-and-down, sort of like the Black Panthers (I guess ... not much of that in Upper Michigan).
As Peace Corps Volunteers, we are expressly forbidden from participating in any political events; we are guests of the government and our mission is intended to be apolitical, as it should be. This is quite easy in the village; a bit less so in town during an election year. Not wearing a party’s chitenge clothes is not difficult (duh!), but the hand symbols can get me for both parties. Both of my hands have been broken multiple times over the years thanks to football, rugby, labor, etc., so when I wave, some of my fingers remain curled and I give a greeting resembling the koloko movement; therefore, I have to consciously remind myself to stretch out my fingers. With the PF symbol, it’s less of a problem, but I still make mistakes. Today, for example, I saw one of our local Rastafarian community and greeted him in their way (fists up, touch them, then tap the chest) before realizing the context and the people eyeing me. Whoops.
Though I knew the rally was ongoing (it is hard to miss in a town this small), I broke my usual rule of laying low during rallies to pick velvet beans and get fish. It’s fish chowder night! This is a small town! Nothing happens! I’m bored out of my skull!
Lunch was the first clue that it was a different day; PF youth and cadres (none of whom I recognized as local) were in the restaurant I haunt, drinking beer like they were on a mission and hollering along with the near-deafening music. I pounded my nshima and village chicken in record time and headed for the velvet beans. However, the warning I received from my buddy wrecked fish chowder night. Though I doubted anything happened in town, it’s never a good idea to find out firsthand.
So back I came; I listened to various PF party members speak from my back porch. Though the rally was at the football pitch a half-mile away, the speakers they used carried fairly well. Sata didn’t speak until the end of the day. The only comment I’ll make on his speech is that I think I speak much better Lozi than he does (he used a translator). Somehow, this was comforting to me as I picked apart sunnhemp, velvet beans, and bambara nuts and contemplated Zambian politics while anticipating my dinner of white bread.
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