The Learning Process Begins

Nyimba
May 24, 2008

I am now in Nyimba and things are great. The meeting with OPPAZ went well and it is nice to know that I might be seeing Cherie from time to time. Eli and I traveled to Nyimba together . The bus was supposed to leave at 5:30 but it finally pulled away at eight after idling for two and a half hours while the bus filled up. The driver would occaisionally rev the engine to attract customers. We were pretty sleepy for the first half of the ride. By the time we got to Nyimba we were a little less groggywhich was nice because we met with my project partner Albert immediately after getting off the bus.He is pretty great. The association has room for improvement for sure. Albert has a real vision for how things could be with more time and effort. So far I am really comfortable with the way he sees my placement fitting in. He is really keen on getting me involved and also understands that I have a lot of learning to do before I can have any serious positive impact so I am glad that we are on the same page.
The organization has the mission of “Facilitating good governance among farming households or agricultural technological advancement , high productivity and increased well-being in a gender balanced and HIV/AIDS free environment.” There are 25 Infromation Centres, which each represent a sub-district of the association. Albert conducts periodic workshops in Nyimba where representatives from each Information Centre gather. Following the workshops they take the information that they have taken from the workshop back to their community to share. The workshop that I attended was well organized and he communicated some great ideas, although it was mostly in Nsenga so a fair bit was over my head.
The language here in Nyimba is Nsenga, which is part of the Nyanja language family. We practiced lots of Nyanja in Lusaka so my basic greetings are good and I’m getting ready to get into a more serious language learning mode. It’s definitely harder than French, Spanish or German. Just when I was getting somewhat comfortable with the a few phrases I moved in with a Bemba speaking family that has recently moved here. The father, Mwila, is a classic. He is always smiling and very jolly. His wife is beautiful and there are three adorable little girls that greet with curtsies. There is another teenage boy named Steve that lives there as well. The girls only speak Bemba so that has presented a new linguistic challenge. The family is very hospitable and won’t charge any rent for the week so I am trying to find ways thet I can help out around the house. Today I bought some Jam for breakfasts. Pio, one of the farmers from the NDFA workshop said that he only had jam at Christmas time so I was glad I could get a nice treat. He couldn’t tell me if it was a good price because he had never bought it before.
Last night we watched a sinful Nigerian romance-murder-love triangle drama. It was pretty classic. This family definitely seems upper class for Nyimba standards. It will probably help increase my ability to understand poverty to stay with a less well off family, but these five days will be a nice middle gear in the culture shock process.
I’ve been through culture shock a couple of times but I’ve never dived in this hard before with no one familiar around. Mom and Maddie’s calls and Carly’s letter were definitely nice to receive.



Kacholola
May 29 2008

I was dispatched to an even smaller town called Kachalola to act as an extension agent there. It has been a real trip so far. In the introduction session I sat on this chair at the front facing everyone while everyone discussed my arrival in Nsenga. There is much less English here so the Nsenga is going to need a turbo boost. It is much more rural African feeling here. No one has even heard of Pizza or Pasta so tales of traversing snow covered mountains on skis become exotic tales. I’m really digging it here. The people are even friendlier than in Nyimba. If I could score a family here that I enjoyed as much as the Mwila’s it would be great though. Tommorrow I’m visiting my new friend Daka’s farm and hooking up with Pio in the afternoon to tour the town.

June 2 2008

I have now visited several farms. I am unbelieveably impressed with the irrigation systems that are already in place here. They are much more advanced than the descriptions sounded. Some are much better than others but the association is about sharing ideas so there is potential for some great learning interactions between farmers. Kacholola is a very hilly area that has many springs and streams. This is unique for a community in Eastern Province and allows for the growing of crops such as banana, tomatoes, cabbage, onion and winter maize. This gives Kachalola a unique comparative advantage in the region where crops such as groundnuts (peanuts) and cotton are more common. On the Kacholoa side farrows are dug to divert water away from streams to irrigate crops, while on the Kabaza side of the Tambalala hill, there are farms on land that was water logged and furrows were placed to extract water from the land to make it farmable. I wonder about the degree of downslope migration of nutrients with these significant volumes of water constantly flowing downslope. Many farmers have expressed interest in piped irrigation which would definitely reduce soil erosion.
Almost all of the farmers identify similar dilemmas. First and foremost is market access and second is the access to fertilizer inputs. Accessing markets is very difficult. Transportation infrastructure is incredibly limited. Dramatically even compared to places I’ve visited in Central America and Asia. Gasoline is around $2.75/L. The closest markets to Kachalola are Nyimba and Feira, which are accessible by paid hitchhiking (even with large quantities of produce). However, showing up after an expensive day long trip in one of these places with hundreds of kg.s of perishable produce makes the farmer vulnerable to accept low prices and often ends up incurring little to no profit.
There is a hotel in Kachalola that once was quite a fancy big deal operation. Now it is dilapidated with and empty pool dried up grass and periodically cold beer ( depending on if there is paraffin in the refrigerator or not). There is no power in Kacholola and no power means no running water. A hotel really loses its luster with no power or running water. When the hotel was run by the government it flourished and all of the government buses from Lusaka to Chipata stopped here for lunch. There were 38 staff members and a restaurant. All together, this hotel once presented Kachalola farmers with a significant demand for food. Following Privatization of the buslines and the hotel to an unenthusiastic investor has seen the hotels prosperity wind down to a standstill. If the hotel could be revived it could be a keystone to development bringing jobs and agricultural demand.

Dad, Sarah and Steph, I loved getting the phone calls from all of you. Thank you so Much. Kelly and Pam thanks for the letters and Maxy, keep up the texting bro I’m loving it.

Feira
June 6 2008

Today Pio and I left for Luangwa boarding school to do some market research. Selling to an isolated consumer seems much safer than to people who will be trying to flip your product for a profit. Since marketing was identified as such an issue I am glad to be learning what it entails. We waited by the roadside in our fanciest duds for two and a half hours before we caught a ride to Luangwa bridge. There we waited another three hours to catch a truck south to the high school. Along the way we ran through some calculations together, talking about the net profit that Pio would make after accounting for transport, fertilizer, and seeds. We came up with a couple of figures and we had in our heads that we would start the bargaining at 1800Kw/kg. Thinking they would maybe want 200kg a week would mean a profit of around 240,000 Kw / week ($68 CDN)if the price settled at 1600Kw/kg. We showed up and heard that they buy there cabbage from Lusaka and drive it over 400km to the school. The prices were hard to compare since their Lusaka prices didn’t include transport but when we mentioned 1800Kw they said yes without even bartering. The trip was definitely a success. We also went all the way to Feira where we learned that the price of tomatoes is 100,000Kw/box (its 40,000 in Kacholola). From there we took a canoe to Zumbo in Mozambique and had a Mozambican beer and saw hippos on the way.

Kachalola
June 9 2008

I have a new neighbour named Moses who is a government agricultural extension worker. He is a great guy and I now have someone to share my charcoal cooking duties with. He is a real source of knowledge and he drafted me a map of the Kacholola (which I’ll post up soon). He just attended a workshop on promoting the idea of farming as a business and he has a lot of knowledge about irrigation techniques and consequences. Having someone to talk with and collaborate ideas with is really nice and I think we will do lots of learning and sharing together. He also has a motorbike and said we can share rides together (Don’t worry Eli I made him let me wear the helmet).