Friday, June 18, 2010
Photos
So I've uploaded some photos (http://picasaweb.google.com/taylorjlarson/ZambiaThusFar#) and will upload some better ones once I find my camera cable. I'm too distracted watching a soccer game at the moment to write a quality post but I will soon. all the best
Thursday, June 3, 2010
In Solwezi
It occurred to me last night as I was scooping up my mashed sweet potatoes with a lump of nshima (mashed maze) during dinner that my diet was heavy on the carbohydrates and steamed vegetables, while a bit lacking on the protein side of things. This made me feel a bit better about the severe peanut butter addiction I have noticed developing. It didn’t really occur to me that I had an addiction until I realized upon doing my dishes that I had eaten three tubs in the last week and a half. I’m not sure if there are medical consequences for eating too many peanuts but I guess I’ll find out.
In other news I’m getting ready to bike to Solwezi for a provincial Peace Corps meeting. I’m not sure how far exactly it is but I’ve heard 180k. Sufficiently far to be the furthest I’ve ridden a bike on a single trip. I’ll let you know if I actually make it, or break down and hitchhike. Either way I’ll try and post this when I get there.
Life here has been good and has settled down a bit. I was trying to explain the energy here the other day and I came up with intensely laid back. Meaning that things move at a less scheduled and frenzied pace than back in the states but that everything is new and things have a tendency for coming up all of a sudden. I don’t think I am doing a good job describing it, but Its been fun getting used to it.
I’ve been going to meetings with several of the farmers co-ops in my catchment area and there is a new one which has a lot of exciting ideas that I hope to be able to help them with. They want to start a bee keeping project as well as pool money to buy an oil press to press both sunflower and groundnut oil in order to sell. Also they want to start planting rice which I think would be a great alternative to the massive amounts of Maze currently under cultivation, both for the nutrition of the people here as well as the health of the soil. There is also a man who is interested in starting a coffin making business which is great because there is not a single coffin maker here and people always have to go to the Boma in order to get one—your market is pretty constant.
It’s harvest season here which means people, including myself, are busy. I inherited a modest sweet potato field from the former volunteer which has proved to be the bane of my existence for the past week. It occurred to me while the sun was beating down on my already sore back as I reached down to scoop up another potato from the hole I had dug, that this was perhaps the definition of toil. Not the literary definition of course but the essence of what the words themselves are striving to capture. I’ve been in a hurry to harvest these sweet potatoes due to the fact that both moles and people have been helping themselves. This is just a minor annoyance to me and in some regards saves me some work, but the issue of theft is a big deal to the farmers around here. The government has set prices for agricultural goods, especially maze, and will come in once a year and buy at that price. There is also the black market where what are called briefcase buyers will come before the government buyer and offer a lower price in hopes of then reselling to the government and thus making a profit. The problem is that most of the maze they buy has been pilfered from hard working farmers. No farmer in his/her right mind would sell at the reduced rate unless they were completely strapped for cash. Where as people who steal the maze want to sell on the sly before all the maze is sold to the government. Anyway this is a bit of a rant I guess but it’s a very big problem here and one which people and co-ops are fighting hard to combat.
The other big problem I’ve come across here is deforestation. I live in the most forested province in the country so it’s not as in your face as in other areas but it’s easy to see the strains being placed on the forest here by human populations. Zambia currently has the second highest rate of deforestation in the world behind Brazil. It used to be third but Malawi finished cutting down its major forests so they dropped off the scale. The reasons are clear, people burn either charcoal or big logs in order to cook their meals and rely heavily on the forest for building material. The idea of forest management is not very prevalent I think due to the fact that the forest has always taken care of itself. I’m excited about the bee keeping project because it will help align the interests of the population here with those of the forests and I hope to be able to start other projects along a similar line.
Anyway, if you can’t tell I’ve been typing this post very fast as I’m racing my laptop battery. It says I have 10 mins left but I think I’ll just stop here. If there are things you are interested in or want to know more about let me know. It’s weird just typing to an anonymous audience. I do appreciate the comments, they are nice to read. I apologize if I’m slow on the responses to those and emails and facebook messages, the internet is very slow here not to mention far away so reading them is much more feasible than responding. But I hope to be able to catch up in Solwezi. Until next time…
In other news I’m getting ready to bike to Solwezi for a provincial Peace Corps meeting. I’m not sure how far exactly it is but I’ve heard 180k. Sufficiently far to be the furthest I’ve ridden a bike on a single trip. I’ll let you know if I actually make it, or break down and hitchhike. Either way I’ll try and post this when I get there.
Life here has been good and has settled down a bit. I was trying to explain the energy here the other day and I came up with intensely laid back. Meaning that things move at a less scheduled and frenzied pace than back in the states but that everything is new and things have a tendency for coming up all of a sudden. I don’t think I am doing a good job describing it, but Its been fun getting used to it.
I’ve been going to meetings with several of the farmers co-ops in my catchment area and there is a new one which has a lot of exciting ideas that I hope to be able to help them with. They want to start a bee keeping project as well as pool money to buy an oil press to press both sunflower and groundnut oil in order to sell. Also they want to start planting rice which I think would be a great alternative to the massive amounts of Maze currently under cultivation, both for the nutrition of the people here as well as the health of the soil. There is also a man who is interested in starting a coffin making business which is great because there is not a single coffin maker here and people always have to go to the Boma in order to get one—your market is pretty constant.
It’s harvest season here which means people, including myself, are busy. I inherited a modest sweet potato field from the former volunteer which has proved to be the bane of my existence for the past week. It occurred to me while the sun was beating down on my already sore back as I reached down to scoop up another potato from the hole I had dug, that this was perhaps the definition of toil. Not the literary definition of course but the essence of what the words themselves are striving to capture. I’ve been in a hurry to harvest these sweet potatoes due to the fact that both moles and people have been helping themselves. This is just a minor annoyance to me and in some regards saves me some work, but the issue of theft is a big deal to the farmers around here. The government has set prices for agricultural goods, especially maze, and will come in once a year and buy at that price. There is also the black market where what are called briefcase buyers will come before the government buyer and offer a lower price in hopes of then reselling to the government and thus making a profit. The problem is that most of the maze they buy has been pilfered from hard working farmers. No farmer in his/her right mind would sell at the reduced rate unless they were completely strapped for cash. Where as people who steal the maze want to sell on the sly before all the maze is sold to the government. Anyway this is a bit of a rant I guess but it’s a very big problem here and one which people and co-ops are fighting hard to combat.
The other big problem I’ve come across here is deforestation. I live in the most forested province in the country so it’s not as in your face as in other areas but it’s easy to see the strains being placed on the forest here by human populations. Zambia currently has the second highest rate of deforestation in the world behind Brazil. It used to be third but Malawi finished cutting down its major forests so they dropped off the scale. The reasons are clear, people burn either charcoal or big logs in order to cook their meals and rely heavily on the forest for building material. The idea of forest management is not very prevalent I think due to the fact that the forest has always taken care of itself. I’m excited about the bee keeping project because it will help align the interests of the population here with those of the forests and I hope to be able to start other projects along a similar line.
Anyway, if you can’t tell I’ve been typing this post very fast as I’m racing my laptop battery. It says I have 10 mins left but I think I’ll just stop here. If there are things you are interested in or want to know more about let me know. It’s weird just typing to an anonymous audience. I do appreciate the comments, they are nice to read. I apologize if I’m slow on the responses to those and emails and facebook messages, the internet is very slow here not to mention far away so reading them is much more feasible than responding. But I hope to be able to catch up in Solwezi. Until next time…
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