The end of 2010

Happy new year everyone! It’s been a great year for me, as I hope it has been for you. This past month I have been very busy-- so much to write about and so little time to write it.

The first half of the month planting season was in full swing, so I was busy in my village planting my garden and working with various farmers in their fields. I distributed legume seeds to help crops with varying levels of success; no one likes change, and it takes a very special type of farmer to try new things or accept strange ideas. The same can be said for the basin-digging method promoted by the Zambian government: it saves time and labor and increases yield, but many farmers find it stressful and challenging to use this new, more mathematical and methodical style of tilling. They aren’t used to having to measure their fields and basin spacings, they’re used to just digging the whole field in one fell swoop, which is a lot of labor for them and increases erosion and weed germination. Some farmers were so tired from over-digging their other fields that they didn’t want to spend much time practicing the simpler digging method with me. As for the legumes: intercropping legumes with cash crops like maize helps increase nitrogen levels in the soil and increase the overall health of the land and the plants, but very few people are familiar with these plants and trees and are reluctant to plant them in case they do so incorrectly and harm their cash crops, their livelihood, the thing on which their entire family depends. I did manage to get a few farmers on board, and I’ve made it a goal to spend this next year talking to more farmers to prepare for the next planting season.

Around mid-December I bid farewell to my village and traveled by bus (about 12-14 hours) to Chipata in Eastern Province to attend a workshop on appropriate technologies run by an MIT program called D-Lab. The workshop lasted only 4 days; I could have happily worked for longer, especially since the shortness of the workshop meant many of our projects were left unfinished. Some of our projects included maize shellers, fuel-efficient stoves, corn cob charcoal, hand washers, and mango pickers, juicers, and slicers. While the technology itself was cool-- effective but still simple enough to be easily accessible to villagers-- what was more important was the inventive mindset we were practicing. In a country where schools teach through route memorization and standardized tests, it’s great to give creative minds an opportunity to think outside the box, to encourage them to find solutions to problems and not wait for the solution to be dropped into their laps. By thinking creatively, our Zambian counterparts may invent even better contraptions than the ones that already exist. My own counterpart started out asking me what we were doing and how we were doing it, but by the end of the workshop he had stopped following my lead and he was bossing me around. ;-)

After Chipata I returned to Lusaka and then traveled south to spend the holidays in Livingstone. On Christmas Eve I crossed the border into Botswana and entered Chobe National Park, the Elephant Capital of the World. We went on a boat tour and saw elephants swimming right by us, which was pretty cool. We also saw a leopard out in broad daylight, surprisingly. We spent the night in the camp, sleeping in huge canvas tents and drinking wine at table-clothed tables. It was an interesting merger of English colonial influence and the African bush-- it was a very classy sort of camping experience. I just hoped Santa didn’t get mauled by lions on his way through our camp…

Christmas day was more elephants and some lions, plus Christmas brunch in the camp with mimosas. In the afternoon it rained so hard it hailed and I got soaked! Despite the soaking and the lack of wrapped gifts or snow or pine trees, it was still a really great way to spend Christmas.
Christmas day we returned to Livingstone and stayed through the new year. I got to ride an elephant and pet a lion-- that was quite an eventful day! The elephants were part of an elephant sanctuary; the lions were young cubs raised in captivity but taught to follow their instincts so they could one day be reintegrated into the wild. The lion program faces a strange paradox: funding for the program comes from tourists wanting to walk with and pet the lions, but the presence of the tourists must make the lions used to people and slightly more tame, which it against the intent of the program. So the tourist industry helps and hinders the program’s ambitions simultaneously.

On new years ever I visited Victoria Falls. It is truly a site to behold. A bunch of us walked along the top of the falls to a pool where we could look down over the edge to where the water fell into mist. It sounds dangerous but was actually pretty safe-- the current was not very strong, so it was a bit like wading through water back home, except if you fell and didn’t get back up right away you might be swept the 50 ft. downriver and over the edge. The pool itself was right at the edge of the falls, so that was quite a sight to see. Overall it was an invigorating experience; a great way to start the new year! That evening I went on a sunset cruise and watched the African sun set over the last day of the year. Good-bye 2010, it’s been real.

So that’s my very busy December in a nutshell. While I missed being in my village, it was nice to get out for awhile and see other things. I feel rejuvenated, energized, ready to go. Of course I also feel sick because I spent 10 days sharing a hostel room with 16 other germ-carrying people, one of whom stole my cell phone, but I’m not gonna let this cold bring me down. I think 2011 is going to be a very good year.