"National Disaster"

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Three days ago, the President of Zambia, Levy Mwanawasa declared that the country is officially in the midst of a national disaster due to the severe hunger problem. Reports are stating that almost 2 million Zambians (out of a total of 11.5 million) are going to be short of food this year and the main culprit behind the hunger situation was drought. Being the good little global citizens that you are, many of you have been sending me emails asking me questions about what it is like on the ground during this “disaster” situation so I thought I would share a few things as seen though my eyes.

Choma

The most easily seen evidence of the disaster situation in my town of Choma is that I have now been without proper water systems for over 4 weeks now. Because of the drought during the last rainy season, the dams that usually are full and provide all the inhabitants of my town with water have gone dry. Now, you can imagine the strife and panic that would happen in Canada if the water was even cut for a few days in a city, but here in Choma, people just adapt. There are a few boreholes located around the town and people just line up very early in the morning with their plastic buckets and wheelbarrows. I am extremely lucky here as one of the few boreholes is located right by my house so I don’t have to carry the water very far. However, many of my friends end up having to line up for hours in the morning and then carry the water for 2-3 km everyday. I am always constantly amazed at the endurance, perseverance and patience that most people here have and how little they complain when they have to do these things.

There is also other evidence of the worsening situation here. Because most farmers were unable to harvest their crops this past season, they weren’t able to sell anything and therefore earn any money to buy the necessary things needed for their families (ie. food, medicines, school fees). Therefore, due to such a short supply, prices of food and other goods have over doubled while the most vulnerable people don’t have nearly enough money to pay for them. Business here is really slow and therefore many shops are forced to close, again eliminating even more peoples incomes. The once bustling food markets and stalls that used to be selling all sorts of vegetables, small dried fish and fried maize doughnuts are thinning out and fewer and fewer people can be seen walking around the town. When walking through the poorer compound areas on the outskirts of the town, you come across person after person just sitting….because there is nothing really that they can do……..except wait…….It seems odd to me because in my mind, the word disaster puts images of noise, of panic, of chaos. But here in Choma, it’s just silence.

Rural Areas - Derrick Munchimba

I spend a lot of my time also in the rural village areas as well and to better illustrate a typical situation there, I’ve written a little about one of the farmers of whom I’ve been working with.

Derrick Munchimba was one of the first farmers that I met here when I arrived in Choma. He had purchased a treadle pump on loan from my organization a year earlier when there was still an office operating here. But due to the office closing right after he purchased the pump, there has been no one here to collect his repayment of the loan. So one of my first tasks when I arrived here was to find all the farmers who had outstanding loans and collect them. I was super keen to prove my capabilities to my NGO when I arrived here so I was determined to be firm and recover all the money owing to the office. Derrick was the first farmer I was going to visit, so up I hopped on my motorbike and puttered my out to find his farm with my co-worker Joshua. Along the way, Joshua grabbed my shoulder and told me stop. Coincidently, Derrick huffing and puffing away, riding his bicycle the other way into town with a little girl balancing on the back. He was fairly young looking, probably somewhere in his early thirties and you could see he was obviously a strong farmer by his muscular build and rough dirty hands. As with most Zambian farmers, he was extremely friendly and welcoming and was very excited to talk with us. But as compared to some of the other farmers I had already dealt with, I could tell there was something bothering him as his face looked a bit panicked and his eyes quite distracted. Derrick explained to us that his daughter had caught a bad case of malaria and he needed to take her to the clinic for immediate treatment. However, he didn’t have enough money to pay for the treatment so first he had to take some of the cabbage he was growing to the market to sell to earn enough money to pay for her medicines. I looked over to his bike where this frail, limp little girl sat in a motionless daze………my heart wrenched up and easy enough to say, I didn’t bring up the debt that he owed and instead offered any help we could. But Derrick is a humble man and said that he would be ok so we just let him continue on his way.

A few days later I wanted to see how Derricks daughter was doing so I ventured out to Derricks farm to again, struggling in my mind what to do about the debt as I was getting pressure from our head office to collect it. I showed up early in the morning and found Derrick and his family already hard at work in his garden. I was amazed at what I found. In front of me lay this huge plot of beautiful soils and there was Derrick, on top of the treadle pump, stepping up, down, up, down away. Connected to the pump was this intricate network of hoses that were all connected to poles and at the outlet of every hose was an upside down plastic bottle with holes in it. Completely on his own initiative, Derrick had built an irrigation sprinkler system. I knew at that moment that he had potential. Derrick welcomed me with a huge smile and explained that he had been able to sell enough cabbage to buy medicines for his daughter and she was recovering back in their home.

I would say that Derricks household is a fairly typical Tongan household. Living within his household, Derrick has two wives, 8 children, 6 orphaned nieces and nephews, 2 other orphans, a brother and his wife, one of his wives sisters and then Derricks mother and father. A total of 24!

To learn more about the Tongan culture including polygamy and witchcraft, I’ve written up a few of my insights into the very interesting and complicated Tongan culture.

Polygamy, Witchcraft and Jump Over the Stick

I spoke with Derrick for a while and after understanding how he needed to pay for school fees for ALL of the children living under him. Once again, my wussy soft heart didn’t have the heart to ask him to payback the loan (you can scratch of debt collector on the future career paths for David list). However, after seeing how energetic, innovative and driven Derrick was to improve his families lives, I got an idea that I would try and work with him. I decided that I would try and work with him to become a lead farmer in his area so that other farmers in the area could see the huge benefits of properly using a treadle pump in an integrated farming system could be. This way, not only would we be helping to improve his families livelihood and those farmers around him, but he would be able to earn enough money to pay me back the loan he owed and I would save some face in my NGO.

So over my time here, my coworkers and myself have been working consistently with Derrick and his family. The first thing we did was to gather many of the other farmers in the Impangwe area together and hold trainings on using treadle pumps, maintaining them, setting up proper garden plots, where to access seeds for gardening and how to find markets to sell their produce. After that, we’ve been following up on Derrick to make sure things have been going smoothly and helping him deal with any problems.

After a few months things were going really amazing for Derrick. Before getting a treadle pump, Derrick was only farming around a 1 lima area (250 square meters). But now, after using the treadle pump and all the training we had done with him, he had increased the area by almost 8 times and was now working on almost 2 hectares (2000 square meters).
Derrick had a beautiful plot and many farmers from the surrounding area would come to him to inquire about the pump and the various farming practices he was using.

A highlight for me was during one of the trainings where we were laying out an easier way for him to water his vegetables. I was using a hoe to make a water channel and he was standing there correcting my technique (as is almost always the case when I try and help out). All of a sudden, his body perked right up, a huge smile grew on his face and you could see a bright spark in his eyes. He said “Moonga (my Tongan name), as of today, I am no longer a farmer, but instead, I am a manager!” I think that before this moment, although he had seen some commercial farmers and how successful they were, he never imagined himself being able to be one of those farmers who actually made money farming. He thought it just wasn’t within the realm of what someone like him, a subsistence farmer could ever do. But now, he had finally realized the idea of using farming as a business and that with the right vision and training, the possibilities were endless.

So things were going really well for Derrick and we regularly showed him off to visitors of how a treadle pump can be an entry point for helping to reduce poverty in farmers. But that was all before the effects of the drought. See, working here to promote irrigation and using treadle pumps works fairly well for many farmers, but that is only assuming you have water to irrigate with. But when the dams dry up, the rivers stop flowing and the wells empty out, there really isn’t much use for a treadle pump. So when I went to visit Derrick just over a month ago and found that his stream had completely run dry, I almost cried. All of his recently planted vegetables had been perfectly laid out and were just starting to grow. He had told me how he was going to use the money from this batch to invest in building a new hut to house more of his children in. But instead of a rich, green, lush, field of veggies, lie a wilted, parched limp graveyard. I didn’t know what to say. As if I was now apart of the field, my throat completely dried out and I was speechless. I finally mustered up a pathetic plee, asking Derrick what he was going to do, knowing full well what the answer would be. Helplessly, he shrugged and said “nothing”.

Now fortunately, Derrick has some ways of coping with the shock of drought. He owns a number of cattle that he uses as a means of capital to store his money and can sell them for money to buy food with in emergency times like this. He also harvested a small but decent crop last year and was probably going to be able to feed his family for at least a few of the upcoming months depending on how many other dependents would come under his umbrella of support in future. But taking a simple walk to visit and talk to most of his neighbors you could tell they weren’t so lucky. Without water to grow their vegetables or assets that they could sell, none of us are sure how they are going to eat this year.

A Bit of Hope

Now, the last few days have brought a glimmer of hope. The very first rains of the year have fallen which was a welcomed relief from the scathing heat we’ve been enduring for the past few months. The water still hasn’t returned as any rain now gets swallowed up in an instant by the thirst starved soil. We’re all still waiting for the first big rain so that everybody can start planting their fields, but with the dark storm clouds building we know it isn’t all that far away.

The coming of the rains has seemed to give people a bit of a psychological boost as we know water will again be back again and the cycle of growth and renewal will once again restart. However, this mental boost is somewhat deceiving. See, the rains are only a signal that it is time to plant, but it won’t be for another 3-4 months from now until the food that these farmers have planted will be grown and ready to harvest. This means that all of these families that are currently salvaging their last grains of maize and limiting their families to one meal a day aren’t going to have enough food and must consider other options.

It makes me think a lot about how “disasters” are presented to us back in Canada. I know in my mind that I get images of panic, of constant helplessness, of urgency. But that is hardly the case here. Instead, things are quiet, slow and silent. This type of disaster is harder to see on the surface and therefore harder to portray back home on a 30 second news clip. There has been a huge cry from most of Southern Africa this past year to raise $410 million MORE dollars from the donor community to help the over 12 million people that they say will starve this year if nothing else is done.

Personally, I internally struggle with these debates. As you’ve read about in my other blogs, sometimes I get so upset at the amount of handouts and food aid people here receive from the western world which often times creates a huge disincentive for them to work and many farmers become lazy.

Sometimes maybe I understand why on TV they prefer to show the images of starving children, of panic, of distress. Because then it creates that sense of urgency and guilt in people back home to actually do something. Within many of the social circles I’m involved in, there is also a strong outcry about all the TV commercials and infomercials that depict Africa as being completely occupied with malnourished babies and helpless people. People say it doesn’t depict the reality of the situation on the ground and it takes away from the dignity of Africans. But the reason this technique is used by certain organizations is because it makes people sitting at home eating their dinner in front of the TV feel guilty so they pick up the phone and make a donation. Usually they also know that they aren’t properly depicting reality. But sometimes like now, there is a real problem and it seems that trying to get people to act and donate out of seeking justice and equality just doesn’t provide enough money to help properly deal with the situation so they take the guilt trip route instead. But I still don’t feel its right as so many people find ways of coping through these situations. As usual with things here, the argument is complex and the proper solution is finding a fine balance somewhere in between.

I’m sorry that I haven’t painted the brightest of pictures through this story. It is also not my intention to try and depict all people here as being desperate because that really isn’t the case. These people have an enormous endurance for survival and many times they find means that enable them to do so. More importantly, I find that most of the people here, no matter what their current situation, maintain a positive and friendly attitude. Whenever I go to visit them, no matter how much I resist or try to explain that it isn’t necessary, they always welcome me into their homes, serve me with food and chibwantu and always with a giant smile.

If you are interested in helping out, I still personally feel that donations to organizations who share the same values as you do is the best investment for your money. As you all know, I personally recommend Engineers Without Borders as being the best use of your money as I feel we leverage our donors dollars in the most effective way that has the most positive impact on people here in a sustainable way. And since it’s the Christmas season, EWB has put out a set of Christmas cards in order to raise money for sending more volunteers like myself overseas. Depicted on one of the cards is a picture of pretty ol’ me working with Derrick and the Impangwe farmers group. If you’re interested in supporting EWB, you can check out the following link where you buy a pack and also purchase a 2006 calendar (of which I think I’m also in).

Engineers Without Borders Holiday Cards

If you are feeling more generous this holiday season, you can make a pledge on the same site to help support EWB and the many people around Zambia and the rest of the world that we are working in partnership with.

Thanks for reading.

Moonga

=^)

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Photos

DROUGHT!
The Sichaza family overlooking their barren field due to the draught this past year

Me and Derrick
Two sharp lookin fellas

Derek's Kids
Make sure you check out my other entry with these guys playing the infamous "Jump over the stick" game

No Rain
With the rains finishing early this year, many farmers didn't even get a chance to harvest a thing

Watering!
Derrick's entire family is involved in the irrigation of their garden

Working with the farmers group
Together we discuss how the treadle pump works

Still Hope!
Despite the lack of food, Zambians are some of the friendliest people

Making Poverty History
Ok, so I know this photo is a bit cheesy because it is infront of a Baobob tree and my ring is called a Baobob ring, but I saw the opportunity and I had to take it.