Hotter’n’blazes:

10.17.09 - Okay, I’ve been slacking for a while. Dial-up, and really bad dial-up at that, ruins the motivation to get on-line unless absolutely necessary. So does relentless, oppressive heat! My eyeballs are sweating! I arrived with Handsen in Feira on Wednesday, at the confluence of the Luangwa and Zambezi Rivers – the lowest place in the country, right in the corner bordering Mozambique to the west and Zimbabwe to the south. We will be heading back to Nyimba tomorrow morning. I was told there would be A/C at the guest house here, but was misled, and it has been a sweaty, fitful four nights. Tonight will be no better. Luckily, the room is a thatched roofed, and there has been a breeze starting after about 4am that has provided a couple hours of good rest, and the view from this place almost makes up for less than great sleep. I haven’t gotten to fish, swim, or see the Lower Zambezi National Park, but it’s been a nice and scenic stay on the two rivers. I did get out on a couple of the little banana boats of fishermen who offered me a little scenic paddle. Otherwise, for the past 4 days we’ve been meeting with fishermen from most of the villages along the Luangwa Road, discussing fishing methods, trends, and the market to see if there might be some role for COMACO in terms of supporting a more sustainable use of the Luangwa River fisheries.

Handsen and I have been staying at the Imyala Lodge, perched on a rock outcropping a few hundred feet above above the Zambezi. There are two picturesque fishing villages below us on either side, that offer the sounds of village life that make this place feel homey; roosters, children playing, women laughing. The best part is that our meals are made for us here, by the wife of the lodge manager. We buy everything from mealie meal to cooking oil, veggies and relish, and at lunch and dinner we have a homemade plate of n’shima. I’ve felt like all I’ve done since arriving in Feira is ride around in the Cruiser and eat! On

Thursday evening, the 14 year old nephew of Protazio, one of the COMACO extension agents that I’ve been working with was taken by a crocodile in the Zambezi while fetching water. We spent time with Protazio today after arrived back in the boma after the funeral. He told us that the kid had just set the bucket down when the croc burst out of the water and grabbed his leg. The younger brother tried beating it with a stick, while the father rushed from their hut about 100 meters to try to rescue him, but he was pulled under before he could make it there and hasn’t been found. He was supposed to be writing his 7th grade exams very soon. So was his older brother when, in 1991, he was taken by a croc at the very same spot. The things we take for granted when we tell Africans to protect their wildlife!

Charles, the 10 year old son of the lodge manager has become my new best friend, attached permanently to my hip whenever I am around. I met him while taking my obligatory sunset shots a few nights ago, when he and his friends mistakenly thought I was “snapping” them, which I subsequently did at their request. Charles has not been hard to find ever since. Yesterday I left him at the lodge for a meeting, came back three hours later, and he was asleep on my porch. It’s 6am now and he’s sitting on the floor next to me as I write this. Problem is he can see me moving in my room from his spot, a rock outcropping over the Zambezi. He is a budding photographer and took some pretty hilarious shots. I will add new photos within two weeks, but unfortunately the dial-up connection will not handle them! Hopefully you will be able to tell who took what pictures.

10/3/09 – Right now the weather at home must be perfect!?! I wish I could say the same for here, in the valley, where it seems to be getting hotter by the day as I start 18 days of field work. This was really poor planning on my part, ending in October in the lowest lying, hottest part of the country, around the confluence of the Luangwa and Zambezi rivers. Today was my first day back in the field – a short one at that – and I can only describe it as miserable. 46 degrees? I’m not even capable of doing the conversion at the moment, but I’m guessing 110? I chopped off my hair, and that at least has been some relief. I had been telling everyone that Zambia is no hotter than NC, and less humid at that, but today as my brain started to boil I had to concede. Zambia wins the prize for excruciating heat – Ryan loses!

I arrived here in Nyimba last Wednesday afternoon and quickly found my way to the COMACO office, aided by the tell-tale teal green paint job of all Community Trading Centers. There I found Handsen, the Nyimba/Luangwa Regional Coordinator, who gave me a tour of the facilities and town. Nyimba is southwest of where I’ve been thus far, near the border of Mozambique. It’s a small town. I’ve got a room IN the Trading Center, which entails emerging into the workplace in the morning to use the bathroom and bathe. No running water inside – bucket baths - and food and toiletries quickly disappear from the work kitchen and bathroom respectively. And yet somehow I am taken with Nyimba. Handsen is great and has quickly introduced me to all the staff and programs COMACO is running and explained the issues facing the area.

It took me exactly one poorly planned night here to buy a fan, set up a mosquito net, and take the plastic wrapper off the mattress. That first night boiled down to a choice of a) suffocation and dehydration, cocooned inside my sleeping bag liner to avoid the mosquitoes, or b) bearing myself to the skeeters in an already uncomfortably hot and still room. I chose c) all of the above. In the end it was a false choice, as I was bitten through the sleeping bag liner while boiling in a pool of my own sweat on a crinkly plastic mattress cover! Hell, why not throw in a 4am delivery to the CTC and a nice, long, outside-voice conversation between the security guard and delivery man who might as well have been hanging out in my room?

After finishing what I expect to be 18 days of field work in Nyimba and Luangwa I will bee-line it for Lundazi for follow-up meetings and report writing, as well as running water, a private house, and the company of some friends. I should at least get up there for my Mzungu radio show on Radio Chikaya, with PeaceCorps Ryan and VSO John. I had prepared a set-list for the show on my last Sunday in Lundazi, only to have it cancelled by a prolonged power outage. Despite the heat I’m looking forward to starting the field work because my books aren’t going to last and there ain’t nothin’ productive to do to pass time in Nyimba!