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!