No Power, No Patty

2008-10-09

Didn’t feel that good so spent most of the day listening to my last audio book. At about 1800 hours my new cycle came but it still had some problems. First of all, they hadn’t hooked up the rear break so stopping is really jerky. Second, the placement of the seat is too low, but I fear that raising it so that it is at a conferrable height would make it more likely to tip over on turns. The break issue can probably fairly easily be fixed but the seat issue will probably require some more substantial work. A chair that I scavenged when I was in Lusaka also came but the driver had to take off the back and didn’t bring the screws to put the thing back together which kind of sucks. Hopefully I can find something else to put it together with. What the driver didn’t bring, and that I was really looking forward to, was some fruit chutney that I had asked to bring up with the other things. This was annoying.

2008-10-10

Went to the BOMA to charge some things and meet with the person from ALINET to see whether he had gotten the CD’s back from someone he had loaned them out to but analibe (he didn’t have). We did chat for a while however which was nice, he came from southern province about a year ago and his daughter speaks a combination of English and Chitonga but not really any Chichewa. She is really cute though.

2008-10-11

I spent most of this Saturday cleaning the area of my hut around my bed to try to get rid of the mice. They haven’t been as much of a problem lately now I think the main sound that keeps me up at night is the wood bees chewing through my roof. Across the valley I could see a downpour which means the rainy season is fast approaching. I put a tarp over my new cycle as a precautionary measure.

2008-10-12

Well, I was clad that I took the precautions because it rained most of today. This meant that the meeting we were supposed to have got canceled. I spent most of the day reading and doing the last bit of the cleaning that I didn’t get done yesterday.

2008-10-13

I woke up at around 400 hours and biked to the BOMA where, after plugging in my laptop to charge my mp3 players, I went to the Chadiza farmers training institute. I had a look at the field where I will probably be planting a demo plot. Then we discussed my moving my living area to their facilities. The person who had given me the tour didn’t know whether there were any houses that were free so we met with someone at the Agricultural office and our discussion seemed fairly promising that there would be housing, he just needed to confirm and said he would get back to me by Friday. I was then going to meet with the forestry officer but he was in a meeting and the District Education Resource Center (I’m going to shorten it and call it DERC), where I had left my laptop, was occupied so I couldn’t be on it. I went to the market to get lunch supplies, then went back to the DERC and was able to get my back pack with my cell phone charger out of the office. I went to a guest house and charged the phone and ate my lunch. When I got done with that, the meeting was over and I tried to add new podcasts to my ipod but I think my external hard drive has been bumped a few to many times because it wouldn’t turn on. This was annoying to no end and the casing doesn’t have any screws to open the thing and see whether there are any loose wires. So this put a damper somewhat on my previously good day. I then met with my forestry counterpart to tell him about the possibility of my moving sites and to see whether he knew of any vehicles going to Chipata tomorrow as I think I will spend until Friday there, relaxing a little bit, getting a few things, namely a new battery because the voltage of the one I have is too low and to get price quotes on satellite internet. Well I got back to Dovu village later then I wanted because the forestry officer had gone in search of a ride on my behalf. I packed and ate dinner, then went to bed.

2008-10-14

After getting up at 345 hours and getting to the village at just past 630, I picked up my big backpack that I had left at my counterpart’s house and dropped off my bike. He didn’t know of any definite rides so I just was going to go out to the rode and look for likely means of transportation. I spied a ministry of education vehicle and was on it like a hot chicken sausage. The ride was quick, if fairly bumpy. I don’t know why Landrovers, supposed to be really good for off-roading, have such jarring shocks. I got to the PCPH at about 830 and first had breakfast, which I hadn’t had time to do before, then went to Shopright and the market by which time it was 1230ish. I did some procrastination, then went to the internet place till it closed. I went back to Shopright, both to see whether they now had brown bread and eggs (had eggs, bread kulibe), and because I had forgotten to get condiments for the vegetarian burgers I had bought. To my dismay, there was no power when I got back so I couldn’t cook the patties I had been looking forward to.

Monday the twenty ninth of September, approximately 1720 hours: inhaled first fly

(the remaining days up to now to come, probably tomorrow)
2008-09-29
I went to the BOMA with the plan on helping someone involved with the Chadiza based adult literacy and education organization ALINET set up their computer but unfortunately he had gotten in a motorcycle accident and was at a hospital. I went to the post office and found that my absentee ballot was waiting for my attention. I then did some other things and charged my various electrical devices, went to the market, then prepared to head home. The forestry officer had said that he had a letter that had been accidentally delivered to his church at his office so I stopped by there and picked it up, then was on my way back to Dovu. The letter had a bunch of photo’s of home and the garden there which was great (it made me envy my water deprived plot here). Fairly soon into my ride I became plagued by a persistent fly bussing around my face. Despite numerous attempts to blow and sweep it away, the pesky bugger remained. I was just about to round a bend when I solved the problem once and for all by inhaling it. I have yet to be beleaguered by another one of these pesky critters.

2008-09-30
Today I studied a little Chichewa, wrote a little on my laptop, went to the dimba (garden) and did a little reading. All and all it was a laid back day as I recall.

2008-10-01
After doing my usual morning routine, I went to the Zingalume Basic School for a meeting of the JETS (Junior Engineers, Technicians and Scientists) club. They didn’t have any projects underway but we shared ideas and agreed that I would come the next time with a program in mind for the design of a windmill powered pump for irrigation. (I think I will try to make a scaled down model to bring the next time.

2008-10-02
Today was a busy day. I got up at 500 hours, went to the BOMA and met first with the Chadiza boarding high school about doing some programming in the areas of computer science and appropriate technological design. Then I went to the Chadiza Farmer’s Training Institute and met with the director and lead farmer about doing some programming in agroforestry and conservation farming as well as looking into building a wind pump there as well. After stopping at the post office to deliver a magazine (it pleases the postal people they are given magazines) and find a package I have been expecting for a month now still not delivered. I then when to the BOMA and got some bread, tomatoes, ntochi (bananas) and this type of caned fish that is pretty good with crackers although not quite as good with the bread I had. Did some things on my laptop until I needed to get headed home, and then surprising enough, actually headed home.

2008-10-03
This day which is and will always be remembered as a Friday I again headed for the BOMA, although today later then Thursday. I typed some journal entries, then did some administrative phone calling, went to the market and then head home. When I got back to Dovu, I noticed that there was some sort of meeting in progress. When I went over to see what they were doing, I noticed a bunch of little pieces of paper scattered around the ground with names on them and people talking adamantly in Chichewa. Someone came over who spoke some English and explained that the pieces of paper represented households in Dovu. I guess Dovu is a lot bigger then I thought because there had to be thirty of so names laid down on the ground. This was a good opportunity for me to tell everyone about a meeting that we had set up for the Dovu community to come and talk about starting an IGA.

2008-10-04
I got up and prepared for the meeting which was scheduled for 800 hours. It was to be held at a church across the street from my house, and I was walking there when a bunch of people said they wouldn’t be able to make it because they were going into the BOMA for a church service. There wasn’t anyone there when I got there, and I wasn’t sure whether anyone would show up. I was walking back when someone said they were coming to the meeting and that there was more coming. People trickled in, however no one who spoke English, or maybe understood a few words. We had the meeting none the less and decided that there should be two areas to pursue: one of soya bun making and another of goat milk sales. We set up another meeting for two Sunday’s from now and the head women said she would advertise a lot. Hopefully there will be a fluent English Chichewa translator there to help facilitate. The rest of the day was fairly uneventful although when I went to the dimba to water my vegetables I found that all but three tomatoes and two squash had been plowed under which was really frustrating. I am either going to move my garden to the local Zingalume basic school and/or create a demo plot at the Chadiza Farmers Training Institute.

2008-10-05
As far as I remember, all of Sunday was a fairly uneventful day spent mostly reading.

2008-10-06
I rode to the BOMA and met with the person with the computer at ALINET, however he hadn’t gotten a chance to get the CD’s that were needed to run diagnostics and potentially reinstall windows. My new cycle was supposed to be coming sometime this week but I wasn’t that sure what day so I called Lusaka and they said that it was in Chipata and would be coming tomorrow. This was great, although I had wanted to meet with the Chadiza Farmers Training Institute tomorrow. I spent the rest of the day charging my various electrical devices and adding more music to my mp3 player. It takes a long time to find good tracks out of almost 10,000 songs, most of which are rap/hip-hop garbage. I checked mail again but still no package… ARG.

2008-10-07
I woke up and hurriedly got ready as the person I had talked to yesterday had said the person would be coming early. Then I waited… and waited… Finally at 1430ish I tried to call various people but as my service where I am is really bad, it wasn’t until after 1500 that I actually got through to someone. Apparently the vehicle wasn’t in Chipata it was still in Lusaka waiting for funds to get the 400-500km to Chadiza. I was fairly annoyed that I had wasted a day waiting, but anyway.

2008-10-08
Today, even though there was a slight change the vehicle might be coming, I didn’t want to waste another day stuck in Dovu so I texted the driver yesterday and told him I would be in the BOMA and to call me when he was definitely coming. First I stopped at the Farmers Training Institute to see whether they would have time to give me a tour of the farm but they were busy today so I set up another meeting time for next Monday. Then I went to the Chadiza Boarding High School where I met with the head master. This currently looks like my most promising avenue of getting internet into Chadiza and they also have a machine shop that I would like to develop a program around renewable energy. I have a meeting set up for Friday morning to get a tour of the facilities. Then I went to the market, had lunch and called the PC headquarters again. They said a vehicle would be coming Thursday which was somewhat of a good thing as it would be somewhat of a tight schedule if they were coming Friday although it would have been great if they had said it was on its way today. After lunch I met with the ALINET guy but he still hadn’t gotten the necessary CD’s. My lunch resting somewhat hard on my stomach and making me sleepy I updated my journal. I then check email, went to the Post Office and the package I’ve been expecting for over a month still was not there, and then I headed back home.

Today was more of the same; hopefully we gave some good ideas

Today was more of the same; hopefully we gave some good ideas as to how to go about implementing several projects that had been identified as key. Tomorrow I will go back to Chadiza without my cycle (I thought until about noon today that it was in transit to Chipata but the vehicle supposedly wasn’t fit to ride the 500km there so it will probably be another two weeks till I get it now. Frustrating to no end.

In Chipata for a workshop in evaluating the LIFE program

Last week was a somewhat slow week as I was adjusting to being back at site and reconnecting to people I had been working with previously.
Two Sundays ago I went to my garden to see how my plants had faired since I had been away to find the little pit that I had been getting my water from was dry. Most of my plants that had been there two weeks previously were still alive though.
On Monday I met with one of the few women in my village that speaks English and we organized a meeting to see what projects Dovu village would be interested in getting underway. I also went for a walk and met the head teacher at a local basic school and we agreed to meet Tuesday as well.
However Tuesday there was a funeral so the headman and the majority of the village members were gone. I did talk to one person who worked on health education about what issues he thought should be addressed and what my areas of specialty were.
On Wednesday I planted a bunch of things in pots but didn’t do much else.
Then on Thursday I went to the BOMA. There I saw the closest volunteer in my program who was presenting a proposal to the district entrepreneurs organization about getting trash cans for the BOMA because people just through their trash wherever they feel like. They thought it was a really good idea and I found them to be people that would be good to work with. It seems you meet the best counterparts you can work with by chance. I then met with the district education resource officer who said that as it was getting near finals for this semester, no one would be able to address the internet proposal and that it would make sense to try a NGO or the local business association. I was walking out of that office to try to find one of the leaders of a local NGO (AllyNet) that I had met with when he showed up on his bike. He said that they had just gotten a computer and wanted me to set it up but it was getting late in the day so I couldn’t do it then.
Friday was going to be cleaning day because the mice had been driving me crazy at night but I didn’t know what they had been eating as everything was in containers. As I went to move one of the big zipper bags I found I had been chewed through and they had plenty to gorge on. It took four or five hours but I got the “pantry room” part of my hut clean and everything that the mice could possibly chew through is now suspended with twine from the sealing.
Saturday, my APCD, PCVL and someone from Washington were coming to meet with me and the other Chadiza LIFE volunteer for part of an assessment of the LIFE program and I thought to bring my new cycle. My cycle was not included in the things that came (some plants, a bunch of seeds and a 5L jug plus the three people). The meeting went alright and I had thought that they would be spending the night; however they said they needed to leave to go back and prepare for a workshop on Monday and Tuesday (of which I was also not aware of). After sharing some nshima with my family they left with whether I would attend the meeting still up in the air. I didn’t have any rides set up and I wanted to meet with the person who had just gotten the computer on Monday so I was fairly sure I wasn’t going to go. However I called my closed volunteer to see how they were getting there and he said that he didn’t have a ride yet but that he was going to see whether his neighbor who has a vehicle that he uses as a taxi sometimes could bring us. The volunteer was going to call me back, but service around my village is spotty at best so I never heard back from him.
On Sunday I through some things together just in case the taxi did show up and then spent the day as usual. It was getting to mid-afternoon and I had figured that the volunteer had found other transport so was just about to go to the garden when the taxi shows up. I quickly get my stuff together and we head to Chipata.
Today we had sessions addressing the findings from the meetings the person from Washington with the volunteers, then we spent the rest of the day addressing the issues the volunteers had found with our government forestry counterparts.
Tomorrow I believe will be more of the same.
Oh, I also have a cold and it’s hot.

Well, I’m now in Chipata

2008-09-12
Well, I’m now in Chipata, took the bus back early this morning enroot to Chadiza. Hopefully everything growing that I started is still growing and is ripe with vegetables. Next week I hope to meet with some teachers at the closes school to me and plant a bunch more vegetables because I don’t foresee my needing to be out of site for longer then a couple of days until late November (thanksgiving/provincial meeting) when the rain is beginning to come. On Wednesday someone from Washington and my APCD are coming to assess the LIFE program and deliver my new cycle. Hopefully they’ve made all the modifications necessary. Alright, hope to keep bloging via cell.

Successfully uploaded 1021 photos

Successfully uploaded 1021 photos, you can see them by going to http://otherrealm.org and download them by clicking on the little link down at the bottom right hand corner ( ). Going back to Chipata tomorrow and Chadiza pa Friday by bus because I guess I’ve been out of site too long but hopefully the cycle will be rideable. It is coming up on Wednesday when the LIFE program assessment person from Washington and our APCD come. I’m definitely ready to go back to site; I just wish I could make sure the cycle was exactly what I want it to be.

Well we now have Wi-Fi at the PCZ headquarters

2008-09-09
Well we now have Wi-Fi at the PCZ headquarters although the speed is not as good as the old LAN-line one that can only be accessed on the government computers and therefore cannot be used to upload. Anyway, this means that I have a way to upload all my photos to my website the only question is whether I can get them all uploaded by the time I leave. Hopefully I can.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARA!!!

I’m still in Lusaka – now the estimated completion date is Wednesday. I’m ready to go back to my village just about now. I think what I’m going to do is make a photo album website like the one I made of my photos in the states ( http://otherrealm.org/ ), then, time permitting when I go back to Chipata I will go to the Wi-Fi place and upload them there. I think I can get the total size down to under 100mb although the photos won’t be print quality. I think I will take some more pictures of my banja and try to have them printed at a photo place in Chipata or maybe there might be a place in the Chadiza BOMA and maybe also try to go into the “city” part of Lusaka and take some pictures to contrast it to the village live. In response to who cut my hair, it was a now COS’ed (Close Of Serviced) RAP (Rural Aquaculture Project) volunteer did it. She was a veteran hair cutter apparently she had cut 25+ peoples hair during her time in Zambia. While stuck here in Lusaka I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Volunteer lounge on the internet or chatting with other volunteers in other provinces. Although there is a wider range of produce in the Lusaka markets, the price is four to five times more then even in Chipata and it is cheaper to buy at the local grocery store. Fortunately that store is owned by Zambians so I don’t feel quite as bad as buying from Shopright which is a South African chain that sells throughout Sub Saharan Africa. Alright, all for now, have to go email my sister and wish her a happy birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARA!!!

Well I will be in Lusaka for about a week

2008 09 02
Well I will be in Lusaka for about a week while the cargo-trike is being created. Being in Lusaka feels like I am in a different country from the village. Lusaka is kind of like Hartford would have been like in the 1990’s if it didn’t have any environmental regulations on vehicles. Whereas the village is kind of like the US in the frontier towns of the 1800’s (save for prevalence of cell phones, radio and plastic bags/bottles). Lusaka actually has sky scrapers and strip malls. I will try to take some pictures of the city this week so that it can be contrasted. We went to the machine shop around 830 and came up with a rough idea of how to convert the one speed very heavy cargo trike into something comfortably rideable on roads unpaved and sandy with steep hills. Ideally I wanted to convert it into a recumbent cycle however that required buying some more parts, which required going back to the PC headquarters to try to get the funds to go and purchase the parts. This took until lunch time and it seemed that the funs would not really be available because PC was facing a budget crunch (like every government office except for the military) so we would have to go after lunch. In the mean time I talked to some volunteers who were headed back from a vacation in Malawi. I also found that a bunch of “junk” that had been piled up since I had been here was going to be trashed or worse burned. Most of the “junk” however could have been used in schools (most of it was chairs that had a few problems with them but could be fixed very easily) or other places in need of resources. I asked, or more pleaded with a number of PC admin people however they all seemed to think it would be too much of a hassle and they had been sitting there for six months and they needed to go and that transporting them. I thought, surely in those months a volunteer could have found a place that was in need of some chairs and a vehicle that was not loaded to max to bring them but the truck had already left but anyway. I wish Sub Saharan Africa had the infrastructure to transport things using methods other then petrol but as first world countries do not, it’s a fantasy in the near future. Had lunch from the cook at the headquarters then met for a while with the APCD. At about 1500 I went back to the shop and we did a little reworking of the plan. Unfortunately we won’t be able to begin work until Thursday because Wednesday the 3rd is the day of Mwanawasa’s burial and is a national holiday so pretty much all business and a lot of roads will be closed. Got back and spent the rest of the evening on the internet.