A Disjointed Effort

I put off writing these posts until I am eminently bound for a sizable population center with internet. Things usually come up and I don’t write anything, so I figured I will just write this post and then pretend it is up to date when I actually post it, which should be in a week or two. I spent this last weekend in Kasempa attending the agriculture show where I found, I think, the only man growing coffee in the district, hence it is 23:30 and I’m writing a blog post in my hut. The coffee is very good and he said he’d hook me up with some seeds if I visit his farm so hopefully I’ll get some more people around here interested in growing coffee, if only for my well being over the next two years.
I made it to Solwezi on my bike trip without much incident. Provincial meetings went well and then I came back (exciting I know). I built a solar cooker the other day out of a cardboard box, wrapping paper from ken’s girlfriend and the plastic cover off my tech manual. It works great, I’ve managed to cook beans rice and then combined the two to make a pseudo chili… it was good though. While on the issue of food, I slaughtered my first goat last week. Uncle Charlie should be proud as the knife he gave me was christened with its first kill. Slaughtering a goat is intense here in that there is no refrigeration so once you kill the thing you are in a race to eat it as fast as possible. I got my meat fix, which is a rarity these days.
This Paragraph is 3 weeks older than the above two but I think my last blog post could be inserted in between and we’d have a coherent time frame. Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter the order of things, so long as they happened.
I attended a burial for a man in my village yesterday morning which marked my first up-close experience with death and funerals in Zambia. I walked the 2k to the burial site with a couple of teacher friends, and arrived fashionably? late just as they were lowering the coffin into the ground. We weren’t the last people to arrive and we even found some leaving as we approached the cemetery. So I guess, like all other events here, attendance is constantly in flux and gatherings don’t begin so much as they begin to grow.
The sounds of the funeral were some of the most eerily beautiful I’ve heard. There was a constant drum beat and women singing accompanied disconcertedly beautifully by the unconstrained wailing of women who must have known the man well (most didn’t, but all are expected to attend a funeral in the village). Even the shovels throwing dirt over the coffin kept time and those men speaking over the grave fit themselves into the overall sound of the event such that they seemed only to be speaking a verse of the larger composition that was the funeral. The light was also intensely beautiful as cemeteries are the only places near population centers where the trees are allowed to grow to their full potential. Thus the light penetrating the canopy was filtered in such a way that everything touched emitted a muted glow. Anyway it’s hard to put into words—it was neat.
I’m in Kasempa at the moment trying to remedy Lukatazho’s (Luke) flea situation. Did I mention I have a puppy? He’s pretty cute and loves pooping under my bed. He’s impossible to take a photo of due to the fact he never stops moving but I’ll work on it cause I’m sure you all can’t wait to see adorable pictures of a puppy as they’re hard to come by.

Temporial thngs

I have a small field of sweet potatoes intercropped with tephrosia trees (an ag forestry tree that we promote) that is about 2k from my house. It was burned down the other day. I spent a while kicking the dirt but all in all am not too upset as this is the time of year that people burn the bush around here for one reason or another. It did get me thinking though about some of the challenges facing long term agricultural development in the region. There exists a limited ability to invest long term in ones land both due to the traditional land tenure system where land is simply on lease from the chief and because every year your field is likely to be burned down whether you start the fire or not. The ability to put into practice growing trees in conjunction with crops is severely limited if you are unable to protect young trees from brush fires. Next year I think I will try to do some preventative burns in order to protect my field.

Anyway, aside from minor day to day frustrations of living in a culture that is not fully my own, life has been great. I’ve recently joined the futbol club in my village and scored the most amazing goal of my life in my first game. It was a cross that got headed out to the top of the box where I chested it down to my foot and volleyed it into the upper right hand corner. The crowd went nuts.

On the work side of things, I’m managing to stay pretty busy I’ve been working with farmers making compost and manure teas as well as trying to keep up with my own garden. I’ve been meeting with some community leaders about an idea for a farmer’s resource library that I want to see built as part of a larger community agriculture shed currently underway and being built by all the co-ops in the catchment area. People have been very enthusiastic about the idea as it would provide, for motivated and interested farmers, an accessible place to gain access to the technical and innovative ideas associated with agro forestry, conservation agriculture, bee keeping, fish farming, permagardening, etc. On that note we have a bee keeping training tentatively set up for early September with one of the new co-ops in my village who is very motivated. They just bought several 100kg bundles of clothes from the Congo which they are now selling for a profit in the boma to generate some start up capital for their bee keeping, oil pressing and rice growing schemes.

I have found that my a large part of my job thus far dictates that I go around and listen to peoples money making schemes and then try to pick out which ones will work and which ones are scams or ill guided. I’m getting better and I have even started to scheme myself. I feel if it wouldn’t get me fired I could start up a couple of capital ventures here that would make me pretty wealthy.

I’m in Solwezi this weekend for the provincial agricultural show and our nation’s birthday. Nothing like being abroad to turn one into a patriot. I think we are slaughtering a goat for the occasion. Anyway I’m a bit rushed so I think I’ll leave off here but I hope to post again soon because I always am forced to leave a lot out.