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.
Friday, July 2, 2010
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…
Friday, May 7, 2010
bats and such
So it’s been awhile, but hey time’s polychromic here meaning this post is coming exactly when it’s supposed to. Currently I’m sitting in my hut waiting for the invasion of the bats. I thought yesterday I had adequately bat proofed the place, but as it turns out I only succeeded in trapping the bats once they penetrated my defenses. I hope by the end of writing this I’ll have discovered where they are getting in.
Anyway, a lot has happened since I last updated this blog so I’ll give y’all the cliff notes of the last month of my life. I passed my kikaonde test with a score of intermediate mid which from what I gather means I can greet people, tell them what I want and make apparently hilarious semi-sentences— I’ve never gotten so many laughs in my life. I said goodbye to my host family which was a bit sad because I really liked them and then swore in at the American ambassador’s house which was about the swankiest event I’ve been a part of. After a bit of celebration it was off to Northwestern province where I stayed at the Peace Corps provincial house while buying everything I would need for the next two years. I was briefly a millionaire but after buying my pots, chair and mattress I managed to rectify the situation. Then after a couple days in the provincial capital I loaded up a land cruiser with all of my possessions, drove to my village, unloaded everything in front of my hut and watched to cruiser disappear.
I’ve been in my village (I guess I’m not supposed to write its name?) now 6 days. I arrived in the early evening of the district by-elections so the place was abuzz. A different district in Northwestern pulled all the Peace Corps volunteers from their sites due to a bit of violence associated with the elections but things have calmed and those volunteers are now back at their sites. I’ve been working on getting my garden up and going, building my bed and trying to meet and remember the names of every member of this and the surrounding villages. I’m having much more success with the former two. The past two days I’ve been attending an agribusiness workshop that the agricultural camp officer in my village is putting on with one of the local farmer’s co-ops. I really like my camp officer and am looking forward to getting to work with her. Yesterday was her birthday so I helped her make and eat a cake.
Tomorrow I’m riding 35k into the big city of Kasempa where I hope to buy a hoe, borrow a saw, post this blog and meet up with the only other Peace Corps volunteer in this district. He lives a lot closer to town then me and has a house about 4 times the size of mine so I think I’ll probably stay at his place and then come back the next day.
I have a new address in case you’ve been waiting to send me a letter. I’ll put it up under my address section of this blog but here it is. P.O. box 120045 Kasempa, Zambia.
Well I guess maybe the bats aren’t coming tonight but I’m too tired to wait any longer I think it’s nearly 9! So maybe I’ll add to this post tomorrow or more likely I won’t but I’ll try to get them up on a regular basis.
I wrote this post yesterday but I thought I'd add an update. I've been staying in kasempa with Ken and was in a bit of a bike accident this morning with a motercycle hitting me from behind. I'm fine but they guy on the motorbike went flying and is at the hospital. I think he will be fine I'm going to see him today. my bike is pretty busted up so I may have to try and get a new one. Anyway nobody was too seriously hurt and I'm fine, just a bruise on my leg. Nothing to worry about (mom). Ok I'm off, I hope this post finds you all well
Anyway, a lot has happened since I last updated this blog so I’ll give y’all the cliff notes of the last month of my life. I passed my kikaonde test with a score of intermediate mid which from what I gather means I can greet people, tell them what I want and make apparently hilarious semi-sentences— I’ve never gotten so many laughs in my life. I said goodbye to my host family which was a bit sad because I really liked them and then swore in at the American ambassador’s house which was about the swankiest event I’ve been a part of. After a bit of celebration it was off to Northwestern province where I stayed at the Peace Corps provincial house while buying everything I would need for the next two years. I was briefly a millionaire but after buying my pots, chair and mattress I managed to rectify the situation. Then after a couple days in the provincial capital I loaded up a land cruiser with all of my possessions, drove to my village, unloaded everything in front of my hut and watched to cruiser disappear.
I’ve been in my village (I guess I’m not supposed to write its name?) now 6 days. I arrived in the early evening of the district by-elections so the place was abuzz. A different district in Northwestern pulled all the Peace Corps volunteers from their sites due to a bit of violence associated with the elections but things have calmed and those volunteers are now back at their sites. I’ve been working on getting my garden up and going, building my bed and trying to meet and remember the names of every member of this and the surrounding villages. I’m having much more success with the former two. The past two days I’ve been attending an agribusiness workshop that the agricultural camp officer in my village is putting on with one of the local farmer’s co-ops. I really like my camp officer and am looking forward to getting to work with her. Yesterday was her birthday so I helped her make and eat a cake.
Tomorrow I’m riding 35k into the big city of Kasempa where I hope to buy a hoe, borrow a saw, post this blog and meet up with the only other Peace Corps volunteer in this district. He lives a lot closer to town then me and has a house about 4 times the size of mine so I think I’ll probably stay at his place and then come back the next day.
I have a new address in case you’ve been waiting to send me a letter. I’ll put it up under my address section of this blog but here it is. P.O. box 120045 Kasempa, Zambia.
Well I guess maybe the bats aren’t coming tonight but I’m too tired to wait any longer I think it’s nearly 9! So maybe I’ll add to this post tomorrow or more likely I won’t but I’ll try to get them up on a regular basis.
I wrote this post yesterday but I thought I'd add an update. I've been staying in kasempa with Ken and was in a bit of a bike accident this morning with a motercycle hitting me from behind. I'm fine but they guy on the motorbike went flying and is at the hospital. I think he will be fine I'm going to see him today. my bike is pretty busted up so I may have to try and get a new one. Anyway nobody was too seriously hurt and I'm fine, just a bruise on my leg. Nothing to worry about (mom). Ok I'm off, I hope this post finds you all well
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Back from the Bush
As with all blog posts thus far, this one comes to you live from Lusaka, home of the internet. I hitched in yesterday with some friends and met up with some japanese volunteers who together with my buddy Ken cooked up a giant pot of curry which was the best thing I've had since the fried caterpillar my host mom made a few weeks ago.
I saw my site this past week and it is pretty awesome. It's basically a cottage in the woods. I live close to a family and not far from a school and clinic. I got the chance to meet the local headman, some farmers, teachers and clinic workers all of whom seemed excited to work with me. It was incredibly relieving to be able to put a face on what I will be doing and who I will be working with for the next two years. then the past couple days my counterpart from my village made the 13 hour journey down to Lusaka for a workshop where we discussed what I will be doing for the first three months I'll be at site. It was great and appears I will be able to stay pretty busy. I'll try to post pictures when I can figure out how to get my camera working...
Some people are heading out to some Chinese store to buy discounted soy sauce so I don't want to let that opportunity pass me by. Hence this blog is rushed and short. I promise to make a more detailed/interesting post in the near future.
I saw my site this past week and it is pretty awesome. It's basically a cottage in the woods. I live close to a family and not far from a school and clinic. I got the chance to meet the local headman, some farmers, teachers and clinic workers all of whom seemed excited to work with me. It was incredibly relieving to be able to put a face on what I will be doing and who I will be working with for the next two years. then the past couple days my counterpart from my village made the 13 hour journey down to Lusaka for a workshop where we discussed what I will be doing for the first three months I'll be at site. It was great and appears I will be able to stay pretty busy. I'll try to post pictures when I can figure out how to get my camera working...
Some people are heading out to some Chinese store to buy discounted soy sauce so I don't want to let that opportunity pass me by. Hence this blog is rushed and short. I promise to make a more detailed/interesting post in the near future.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
I'm Back in Lusaka today buying groceries and splurging on ice cream. Tomorrow morning I leave to go on second site visit which is where I actually get to see where I will be living/working/being for the next two years. I'm pretty excited and I'll pass on the limited information I have obtained about my site thus far.
I'll be in the Kasempa district of Northwest province in a village about 25k outside Kasempa proper. I'm pretty close to a school and health clinic which basically means I'm downtown. My hut has apparently been painted bright green so you won't be able to miss it if you find yourself bumming around northwestern Zambia. My closest Peace Corps neighbor is my buddy Ken who lives about 35k away on the other side of the Boma (Kasempa). My next closest PC neighbor is about 150k in the next district over. There was a refugee PC volunteer at my site for the past year who had been evacuated from Madagascar due to political turmoil in the country. He's just finishing his service so hopefully I'll be able to pick up where he left off. Other than that I don't know too much but I'll take some pictures and notes this week and try and get those posted up here…
My size of my home stay family tripled yesterday in preparation for a wedding that is taking place today. I'm pretty bummed I have to miss it as I had already, sort of, learned one of the dances. Also weddings seem to be about the biggest party in Zambia. It was funny talking with the sister of my host mom last night about family relationships in Zambia. The way extended family is done here has been a bit confusing for me thus far but I think I'm starting to figure it out. Basically, all family lineage is passed on through the women. I've gathered this is due to the fact that when a woman has a child it can be relatively certain it's hers whereas if a man's wife has a kid, who knows. So for instance the son of my host mom and her sister are considered brothers where as the son of my host dad's brother and his son are cousins. I don't think that last sentence made much sense but just think about it. Anyway, apparently before Western/Christian patriarchy showed up here there was quite a bit of power held by women and many of the chiefs were women. I've been told the British colonial authority refused to recognize many of the women in power and thus overtime they became disenfranchised. This is a gross simplification but it's interesting to think about seeing how much of a male dominated Christian culture Zambia is today.
In other news, there are four (slow) computers at this internet café and about 20 Peace Corps volunteers waiting to use them and groceries to be bought so I think I will try to write a real post sometime after I get back from site visit so that you all don't give up on this blog completely. Everything is going great here and I hope this finds you well.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
New Things
So I’ve made it to Zambia. Actually I’ve been here for a bit over two weeks. I’m writing this now from my bed in my homestay with the hope that tomorrow brings the first chance at internet access since arriving in country. If not then I guess I’ll save this post and pretend I wrote it at a later date. Anyway, things here are great and Zambia is beautiful country both geographically and culturally.
Upon arriving in country, me and 46?... other peace corps volunteers were picked up at the airport… eventually and whisked off via land cruisers to a training center in Lusaka. We spent the first 3 days there attending meetings, getting shots, fitted for bikes and sleeping off jetlag. On day three we were sent off on what is called first site visit. Myself and three other volunteers stayed with a current volunteer, Aurora, in the eastern province for 3 days. She is a LIFE (Linking Income Food and the Environment) volunteer just like me so it was cool to get to see all the work she was doing with farmers and schools in and around her village.
Currently I’m in Chongwe which is about 45 kilometers outside of Lusaka. This is the site for pre service training. I am staying with a host family consisting of my mom, dad, two brothers and some cousins. Ironically this is about the same setup I had back in the states. The family is great and they are helping me immensely in learning my KiKaonde.
Everyday, except Thursdays and Sundays I have 4 hours of language training in the morning and then 3 hours of technical (learning how to farm) in the afternoon. Thursdays the Education and LIFE volunteers meet all together for a myriad of reasons. This week it was for safety and medical meetings where we were briefed on everything that could possibly go wrong over the next two years. For the sake of my Mom I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say 6 of the worlds 10 deadliest snakes live in Zambia. Thursdays also always include a number of shots, I have been pumped full of so many vaccines that I’m feeling a bit invincible at the moment.
My day to day life will be pretty routine over the next couple months as I continue with training. The internet café here in Chongwe hasn’t paid its bills recently and thus is without an internet connection, which in turn makes it hard to raise the revenue to pay the bills I would assume. Either way my access to internet is and will be quite limited for the duration of training. So if I am slow in answering emails or other forms of electronic media, don’t be surprised. You could always send a letter or make an expensive phone call as you are bound to get more interesting stories than I post here (peace corps reads these blogs). I hope this post finds you all well.
Here are a few pictures…
Actually the internet says no, so I'll try to work out the kinks and post pictures next time.
Upon arriving in country, me and 46?... other peace corps volunteers were picked up at the airport… eventually and whisked off via land cruisers to a training center in Lusaka. We spent the first 3 days there attending meetings, getting shots, fitted for bikes and sleeping off jetlag. On day three we were sent off on what is called first site visit. Myself and three other volunteers stayed with a current volunteer, Aurora, in the eastern province for 3 days. She is a LIFE (Linking Income Food and the Environment) volunteer just like me so it was cool to get to see all the work she was doing with farmers and schools in and around her village.
Currently I’m in Chongwe which is about 45 kilometers outside of Lusaka. This is the site for pre service training. I am staying with a host family consisting of my mom, dad, two brothers and some cousins. Ironically this is about the same setup I had back in the states. The family is great and they are helping me immensely in learning my KiKaonde.
Everyday, except Thursdays and Sundays I have 4 hours of language training in the morning and then 3 hours of technical (learning how to farm) in the afternoon. Thursdays the Education and LIFE volunteers meet all together for a myriad of reasons. This week it was for safety and medical meetings where we were briefed on everything that could possibly go wrong over the next two years. For the sake of my Mom I’ll spare the details but suffice it to say 6 of the worlds 10 deadliest snakes live in Zambia. Thursdays also always include a number of shots, I have been pumped full of so many vaccines that I’m feeling a bit invincible at the moment.
My day to day life will be pretty routine over the next couple months as I continue with training. The internet café here in Chongwe hasn’t paid its bills recently and thus is without an internet connection, which in turn makes it hard to raise the revenue to pay the bills I would assume. Either way my access to internet is and will be quite limited for the duration of training. So if I am slow in answering emails or other forms of electronic media, don’t be surprised. You could always send a letter or make an expensive phone call as you are bound to get more interesting stories than I post here (peace corps reads these blogs). I hope this post finds you all well.
Here are a few pictures…
Actually the internet says no, so I'll try to work out the kinks and post pictures next time.
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