Ask the questions.

8.30.09

Things are going well, and this past week was unforgettable. I got my immigration situation sorted out, and wrapped up my first week in the field for COMACO, travelling extensively throughout the Zumwanda Chiefdom in Eastern Zambia. The field work is going well, despite daily delays. I have not yet learned how, if indeed it is even possible, to make things happen according to an arranged schedule here. In the evenings, before heading home, the driver and I agree that we will depart at 8am, but at 8am there is no Land Cruizer, or somebody is gone with the keys, or it's not fueled up and we can’t find the person who doles out the cash from our pre-approved budget to fuel up, and so on and so forth. It either drives you crazy, or you smile and accept it….. or a bit of each. On Thursday we were supposed to leave at 8am and at 10:15 when everything was finally set to go the driver took 10 excruciating minutes to dust off the dashboard, sweep out the floors and wipe the windows. It’s hard to stay patient as you watch the morning slip away, but in the end the work is getting done so why fight it? When we're going, it's been going well, and we get home at 8 or 9pm, eat and sleep.

Not knowing what to expect, I was woefully unprepared on Tuesday, our first day. Since we had discussed spending the day in Chief Zumwanda’s village, locating and meeting with local point people who could explain the best routes for us to take through the Chiefdom to reach the villages and areas of interest, I was expecting a relatively short day, maybe lunch in the village, and in the case that we did get started on the actual field visits, that I would at least be in the vehicle for the majority of the time. HA! We arrived in Zumwanda, and we were immediately thrown in front of Chief Zumwanda, where clapping and bowing we explained our plans and heard the Chief’s feelings about the state of natural resources in his kingdom. We were quickly given permission to pursue our work and I have since learned that he is one of COMACO’s biggest supporters in the region. Lesson: If you don’t ask the questions, don’t expect the information!

We were assigned the Chief’s son, the prince……. Prince Albert, to accompany us around the Chiefdom, and after watching a traditional dance being practiced for an upcoming rally of the Chiefs in Chapata, we immediately set off. Without hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, water or food we set off at 10:30 to start village visits, with Albert and Mwangala (COMACO’s IT/Data Manager) in the cab with the driver, Hefta, and myself and Zebron (COMACO’s Area Manager/Extension Agent) standing in the back of the pick-up collecting GPS Data. It was a long day. We stopped in 12 villages, interviewing headmen and learning the location of each of the settlements that has encroached into the Lundazi National Forest. At each village Albert expertly explained our mission to the headmen who graciously told us how long they have been settled in this location, where they came from, what crops they are growing and how they are growing them, and the general condition of life in the area. We reached the furthest settlement in the forest around 4:30 pm, already tired, hungry and thirsty, and while visiting the farmer’s fields we split a raw cassava, pulled fresh from the ground, which managed to get me home standing that night. What Mwangala had not bothered to tell me – because I hadn’t yet asked - was that the reason we didn’t buy food ahead of time was that the budget had not yet been obligated in time for us to get cash. Remarkably, I heard not one complaint the entire day, although we have joked about it much since. We finished at the last village around 6pm, and set off for the three hour drive back. Between the sun and the wind I achieved a nice pink tone – not red – but my lips are only now, a week later, recovering from the day! It seems that once every visit to Africa I get one horrible case of burned, chapped, peeling lips….. the worst. It was an incredible day, but I have not forgotten my hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, SPF lip-balm, and plenty of food and water since. It only takes one day like that to learn!

The purpose of these visits to settlements inside the National Forests, and Game Management Areas is help determine the extent and rate of forest clearing in these “protected areas” and focus COMACO’s future activities in the area. Quite sobering.... to be honest, I’m not sure what these designations even mean as there is no enforcement and people therefore view such areas free forest land to clear and farm. Only the remoteness controls the flow. I am gaining a clearer picture of where the worst problems exist (areas most afflicted by charcoal making and forest clearing for farms and settlements), and will helping COMACO focus future efforts on these areas. On Thursday we sat down with an old man living with his family in the Lundazi National Forest, who was able to list 43 villages inside the Forest, in the immediate area. The term “village” describes settlements that can be as small as a single family's footprint, although it is surprising how large that footprint can become with a couple of decades and a few generations on the land. I’m estimating that the average family is consuming 0.5-1.5 hectares per year, per generation, with depleted fields left fallow to regenerate voluntarily, which is a very, very slow process on these poor soils. This clearing, combined with heavy hunting and the mid dry-season burning of the remainder of the forest, which typically derive from a farmers’ field clearing burns and continue uncontrolled into the forest, is seriously degrading these areas. It seems like 75% of the forest I have seen on the plateau has been burned this year, and the frequency of these burns and the resulting low fuel loads, would seem to be the only thing keeping them from entirely killing the forest. As it is they are just hanging on. This is the case on the upland plateau, but I understand that the environmental conditions in the Luangwa River are much, much better, and I am really looking forward to seeing these less impacted areas in the weeks to come.

My hope, however, is that COMACO can work with the Zambian Forest Department and Zambian Wildlife Authority (ZAWA) to slow the rate of additional forest clearing in the "protected areas" through a combination of education, training, and enforcement, and support reforestation of abandoned fields in fruit and nut trees that can support a villages food needs and provide a surplus that can be sold commercially. In addition, planting lumber and fuel species (including legumes to replenish the soil) would help supply other human demands, further reducing the rate of deforestation. Mushroom growing and honey production, fish farming and other COMACO supported activities can also help diversify nutritional intake and fill the time gap while orchards grow, and COMACO is well poised to develop markets for such commodities and processes to add value (dried fruit, spiced nuts), and invest in research into determining appropriate species and the development of seedling nurseries if they don't already exist.

We have one more day in Zumwanda before I move the process for Mogodi the neighboring Chiefdom to the north. In a week and a half I will be ready to move up to Chama for 1-2 weeks to repeat the process there, after which I will return to Lundazi for 1-2 weeks to wrap up synthesize data for the Eastern Region, before moving my entire base to Nyimba, seven hours Southwest, where I’ll be doing the final phase of this work.

“You try not to think about it”

8/24/2009

Yesterday morning I got a call at 8am from a man saying “I am so-and-so at Immigration in Chapata. I’m having your papers”, which kind of freaked me out. I’d been waiting for my passport to arrive from Lusaka by the end of last week, and figured it would show up on Monday. What made matters worse was that beyond that initial line I couldn’t understood another thing the guy was saying. You could say that we experienced a complete failure to communicate. I would try to ask questions like “do you have my passport?” or “do I need to come to Chapata”, but his answers, if he understood them, made no sense to me. Topping it off, we could not keep a connection. We would talk, he would start to get frustrated, and I would lose him. I would call back, sounding extra friendly and apologetic, but he was getting more frustrated and talking in an increasingly loud, harsh tone, and I swear he was hanging up on me, although I can’t say for sure. By the third lost call, and despite being Sunday morning, I decided I needed to call Carol, the woman in Lusaka who was contracted to help me with my temporary work permit. We agreed to worry about it Monday (today), and I tried not to let it ruin my day. It was a windy, dusty day and I spent most of it reading in bed, drinking the cold pot of coffee that I had brewed the previous night in anticipation of not having power. There being none, town was dead until 3pm, when I met my friend Heba for the finals of the soccer tournament that had been going on for the past couple of weeks in Lundazi. The local team, sponsored by the Lundazi Police Department beat the Rangers - from somewhere south of here - in a heated, come-from-behind, 3-2 ass-clencher, scoring twice in the last 7 minutes. Fans stormed the field each time the Police scored. It was a riot! Wish I had my camera.

I was supposed to start my first day of field work today, meeting with COMACO supported farmers in the Zumwanda Chiefdom. Nemiah, the Director of COMACO’s Lundazi Community Trading Center (CTC), had returned on Friday after being away for most of my first week, and we made plans for a quick visit to the District Commissioner this morning to get the official Zambian Government blessing of my work in the area, something which may or may not be a requirement, although I get the impression that where land and land use are concerned, they like to want to know what non-profits/ngo’s are up to. At around 8am FedEx arrives with my passport and the receipts for my work permit leaving me baffled, but it was 3pm before we made it out of the office and to the government offices where the DC was supportive of the project and welcoming, and we moved on to immigration. There I waited an hour and a half for the friendly officer to return from his “computer lesson” at the local internet cafe, by which point it was too late to make any calls about my temporary permit, which I now, however, am reasonably certain is what is waiting at the immigration office in Chapata. Despite having had to wait for him, Mr. Zulu, the Lundazi immigration officer was very helpful and offered to call Carol first thing tomorrow in Lusaka, and find out from Oscar the Immigration Grouch in Chapata, whether my permit can be mailed to Lundazi. Otherwise I will get to spend Wednesday on the bus, riding back and forth along the 170 km long pot-hole that is the Lundazi Chapata Road. Do your magic Mr. Zulu!

Anyway, tomorrow morning I’ll be heading out to Zumwanda Chiefdom with a WCS driver to meet with Zebron the Area Manager responsible for COMACO activities in the area. Zebron will be assisting me with the data collection in Zumwanda, and I’ll work with Billy in Mogodi the following week, and Nixon in Chama the week after that. Tomorrow we plan to visit a few of the villages, collecting GPS data on COMACO supported farms (locations of apiaries, goat, poultry and fish farms, and the homes of poachers who have been transitioned in to more sustainable livelihoods) and meeting with locals who can steer us in the direction of the new settlements that have been cleared near the boundary and inside of the Lundazi National Forest. Even with the satellite imagery we have it is impossible to see the dirt roads we will need. The following three to four days will involve driving to as many of these settlements as we can reach by road, unloading the motorbikes and riding out to the more remote locations that are only accessible by single tract, and collecting the GPS points on newly cleared fields, that will serve as the ground-truthing points for the land cover change maps that I’m working on. The data will also help determine the needs of these communities and how COMACO can best assist them to provide for their families in a sustainable way.

I am interested to see how people react to my presence and to questions about their lives. The people we call poachers come from hunting traditions, feeding their families the same way that generations of men in their communities have been doing, but has only in the past two generations begun to result in the kind of exponential change that will preclude future generations from following the same course. Life is hard here.

On Saturday evening I found out that two friends that I’ve recently made in Lundazi are on ARV’s, and that an alarming number of people in this area are suffering from HIV and AIDS. These friends didn’t tell me this themselves, and the person who did said that he thinks half the population of Lundazi is infected. Half the population……………………
I asked how he knows that these friends are positive, and his explanation struck me as so sad. “Lundazi is just a small town and when someone stands in a certain line at the clinic, a person sees and says to people ‘that person is positive’.” It’s not something anyone can hide for long. About living amid this epidemic he said simply “You know it’s there. You know many many people have it, and you try not to think about it. You know that if you go to get tested, on that day you will be very afraid and will only think about dying. You know that if you find you are positive you will always worry about dying with no way to do anything. You don’t think about it, and when you meet a girl you wear ‘gloves’.” He was unconvinced that it would be better to get tested and get on ARV’s, than to avoid knowing the truth until you are very sick. I came here knowing that many people are positive, but when I meet a young, strong, person in what should be the prime of their life, it’s just about impossible to think that they may already have been dealt a death sentence that they may or may not even know about. The loss that this represents is too hard to fathom when you start to think of all the smart, talented, motivated people – kids who want to go to college and have families, and parents who won’t be there to teach the ones they have, if they aren’t also infected. And it’s not something you can spend all day thinking about if you want to be productive and make friends. So I don’t know, maybe you try not to think about it?

Finding my Niche

This is the last chance I’ll have to post before I head out to the COMACO Trading Centers in the villages of Lundazi, Chama, and Nyimba for what I expect to be the majority of my time in Zambia. I have a bus ticket for a 4am departure and will arrive in the early afternoon in Lundazi, the larger of the two villages where I will be working on Zambia’s eastern boundary with Malawi. I should have occasional internet access at the COMACO office in Lundazi, but will be off-line in Chama. Dale left Lusaka on Monday after us having only a couple of hours to discuss COMACO’s needs, and how to prioritize and plan my work. The notes I made during our discussions are all over the place – a jumbled mix of sentence fragments, incomplete ideas, an un-prioritized list of needs, and a handful of questions mixed with several names and phone numbers - and I have been attempting to decode while I collect all the data I can find and wait for another researched, Andy, to arrive back from the field and help me make sense of this all and get a handle on what I need to get done in my time here.

Andy Lyons, a Duke grad and Berkeley PhD candidate who did his masters research in remote sensing in Zambia in 1997, married a Zambian girl, and has been back yearly since. In the short time we had to talk yesterday evening, in the cloud of mosquitoes in the WCS office, before he caught his plane back to the States this afternoon, Andy relieved my fears about the land cover change assessment that Dale had thrown out there. It seems unlikely that COMACO would benefit from a full change assessment, and we agreed that a simple subtraction of subsequent vegetation index images will provide all the information that would realistically be used for the project, offering a way to visually determine the extent of clearing in an area between two time periods. We also agreed that the data collection work I have been given is already more than enough to keep me busy for the six weeks I have in the area. And, after receiving a big data dump from Andy, I will head off early tomorrow morning infinitely more confident about the work ahead of me.

In addition to providing a land cover change map, I am in charge of coordinating GPS and photo data collection for a long list of categories of interest to COMACO, including recent land clearing burns, areas timbered for charcoal and cleared for agriculture, all COMACO supported apiaries, fish farms, and homes of transformed poachers, as well as assessing the production potential of areas for rice, mushrooms, peanuts, ground-nuts and caterpillars (yes, food caterpillars!), and determining the boundaries and populations of the six Chiefs in the district, which is probably the size of Rhode Island. Despite my insistence that we start off with realistic outcomes for my fellowship, expectations remain high.

Aside from those previously mentioned, I have met some wonderful people in Lusaka. At the bar/beer garden the other night, while watching soccer, I struck up a conversation with a guy I was standing next to who, it turns out, works for the Zambian Ornithological Society. David, a Zambian, studied wetlands ecology at the Univ. Florida, and is a graduate of Florida’s Environmental Leadership Program which spawned the Natural Resources Leadership Institute that I participated in in 2007/2008 in NC. David and I had a long and interesting conversation from which I learned quite a bit about the environmental issues facing Zambia, not to mention finding out some must see places in the country, and I look forward to spending more time with him when I get back to Lusaka.

Of those at the office I’ve spent the most time - several lunches and some GIS/GPS time - with COMACO’s IT guy, Kabila, who seems to have overcome his initial skepticism of me, and is proving to be a very friendly, helpful, funny, and extremely smart guy. Kabila is 31 years old, married with two children, and lives on the outskirts of Lusaka. He is currently trying to get into a masters program in advanced GIS in Europe. His skepticism towards me, while short-lived, is something I’m realizing is not uncommon for at least two obvious reasons; the first and foremost being the perceived danger of sharing valuable, hard earned data, acquired by the sweat of your company, in the context of a non-profit market in stiff competition for very limited funding. The second reason being that I am a Muzungu.

In Botswana I was a Lechoa or “he who was vomited from the sea”. Thus far I have only heard Muzungo explained as “white person”, although I wouldn’t be surprised if I just haven’t been offered a more exact and colorful translation. In any case, I have heard it much less in Zambia than Botswana, and most frequently if I go out in the evening, walking to one of the few bars in the vicinity, coming from the numerous prostitutes that seem to have made Joseph Mwilwa Road the red-light district of Lusaka. Sitting in my room right now, even with my headphones on I can hear them laughing and chatting out by the front gate. Continuing on the subject of standing out, Mosi Lager from the Zambian name for Victoria Falls, has been my beer of choice, and I had to laugh when the drunk guy at the bar asked whether I really like Mosi or if I am trying to seem like a local. Even I caught the sarcasm in that question, so my response which got a laugh from the crowd was “No Sir, I don’t think I will pass for a local. I also like shitty American beers!”

My favorite part of the workdays so far has been sharing lunch out in the back courtyard with the WCS staff. Mildred, the office housekeeper and cook makes an amazing traditional dish every day, available for a very reasonable 6000 Kwache (~$1.50), and typically consisting of the staple maize porridge, Nshima, with some meat and gravy, which is eaten with the right hand. Grab a bite sized hunk of Nshima, roll into a ball in the palm of your right hand, pinch together with a morsel of meat and/or some greens, dip in sauce, and enjoy with lively un-American mealtime conversation, typically of a political or religious nature. The menu this week has been as follows:

- Monday: Chicken and gravy over Nshima with chopped greens.

- Tuesday: Whole fried Breme (fish) and gravy over Nshima with chopped greens.

- Wednesday: Rice and beans.

- Thursday: Beef and gravy over Nshima with chopped greens.

- Today (Fri): Chicken and gravy over Nshima with chopped cabbage, onions & greens.

Lunch conversation has included whether there is a proper time, place, topic, and method of prayer (whether it requires the purposeful construction of thoughts or just a positive, appreciative attitude and general “prayerful nature”, as well as whether Zambia is capable and physically and mentally ready for free and fair elections. It’s also especially nice since my only forms of transportation are expensive taxis or crowded mini-buses, as well as the discomfort of stocking food and cooking in someone else’s kitchen without running water. As a result it’s been tough to make a decent meal. Rosemary has been as welcoming and lovely a host as anyone could be, insisting nightly on supplementing my admittedly budget meals with some form of meat, but it’s just hard. I’ll miss this in Lundazi, but also look forward to having some quiet work time at the guest house! I foresee days of bread and peanut butter, rice and beans, and lots of coffee – Zambia has great coffee – in the coming weeks.

Well it’s getting late and I have to be up at 3am to catch my taxi to the bus station. In the mean time I’ll drift off to the whine of dozens of mosquitoes clamoring outside my bed net, and the not-so-distant chatter of the prostitutes, on-call at the end of the driveway.

Stretching my legs

Got here Friday afternoon without any real difficulties, after a 15 hour flight from JFK to Johannesburg, and a 2 hour connector to Lusaka. The weather is beautiful, about 70 degrees yesterday and maybe 80 today, but the skeeters are pretty rough in the evenings. I've got a room in the same compound as the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) office here in Lusaka, in the house of an older British lady named Rosemary who has lived here since 1946. Rosemary is a grade school teacher who is a minor celebrity around Lusaka for having spent the night in jail after getting caught with dakka plants (marijuana) growing in her back yard earlier this year, a story she loves talking about…… actually she loves talking in general, but this has come up several times including the first night. Dale Lewis, the Director of WCS/COMACO and his wife Julia, also rent their room in town from Rosemary.

The main problem so far is the lack of running water in the house. Somehow despite having just had a new borehole dug a couple of months ago, which is pumping water up to fill the big standing cistern, there is a mysterious disconnect somewhere between there and the house? Out of desperation, I left early this morning and bought a membership at a gym I had noticed down the road. I worked out for about 10 minutes and then took a long shower and shaved. This is either going to result in my getting a bit more exercise, or bathing less. I just couldn’t do the bucket baths! To flush the toilet I haul water from the spigot by the well and fill the cistern. Somehow the water seems heavier than normal - perhaps due to the unbelievable iron content. At least I think it’s rust that's making the water bright orange and murky. Could be clay? Either way I'm not drinking it and don’t even really think I would want to bathe in it! But the room is nice and the commute rocks! There's also a beautiful garden (yard) out back with a baobab tree that Rosemary planted about 40 years ago, where I can sit and have a beer in the evening if the mosquitoes don’t carry me away.

Dale seems like a great person to work with and for. He's incredibly passionate about the mission of project COMACO (Community Markets for Conservation) and everyone involved with it here in Lusaka seems to be working really hard to make the business model work - the basic idea being to provide markets for local, locally produced commodities - rice, peanuts, ground nuts, honey, mushrooms etc. – to make sustainable agriculture a viable alternative to poaching and charcoal making. I had a beer Friday night with Dale and some of the staff at a little beer garden around the corner from the office and learned a lot about what their approached to the program and the difficult problems they are facing. It really impressed me to see such an out-of-the-box approach to forest and wildlife conservation at work on the ground. I'm really excited to get to work and see the Luangwa River valley, the focus area for project COMACO.

That said, I have a lot to figure out logistically. I think I'll be here in Lusaka for a week or ten days before heading northeast to Lundazi town to start with the data collection. There's not going to be a vehicle for me to use after all, so I'll be busing it to Chama and Lundazi towns from Lusaka where I'll be staying for a couple/few weeks at a time for the data collection part of my fellowship. From what I can tell it's going to be one hell of a bus ride - I'm not sure how long it will take, but I don't think it can be done in a day. Once there I'll be getting rides from COMACO staff to the field to collect data, which should also be interesting.

No real surprises so far. It's nice to see that many things haven't changed - including the fact that you best throw your expectations out the window and go with the flow!