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Published: March 22nd 2006
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Where your used clothes wind up...
A Vanier Cup fan at the Vila Ulongue market. We’ve come to a stop because there is a river crossing the road. Will we have to turn back, I think to myself. I look inquiringly at Edson. He turns to me, who has only been in Mozambique for 4 days, with a worried look on his face. “The problem is that there is a small concrete bridge in the river,” he says. The rains have been generous this year so most rivers are at their highest levels in decades, and in this case, the river is higher than the bridge. So he puts the car in gear and we inch forward into the brown and mucky river. Visions of the truck tipping over into the river or water flooding in rush through my mind. My knuckles turn white as I grip my bag in fear for what seems like hundredth time today. After what seemed like an eternity, the car pulls up onto the opposite bank and wide grin spreads across Edson’s face. I ask him if this is all part of a normal day for him. He nods.
Edson and I have been visiting paprika farmers in the northern Mozambican province of Tete, near the Malawi border. It
Simon and a House Destroyed by War
My co-worker, Simon Banda, and a house with bullet holes from the Mozambican civil war from the late 1970's to the early 1990's. It was especially brutal in central Mozambique. has been raining all day which has made our travels on the backroads of Mozambique challenging to say the least. At one point, we were essentially traveling up a rushing stream complete with boulders in the pouring rain. Further on, there is a broken down truck preventing traffic from passing. Edson gets out to see what the problem is. The other vehicle is not starting but the drivers asks if we could perhaps pull it to help coax it back to life. A rope which consists of several smaller fragments knotted together is produced and our vehicles are tied together. Edson begins to back up slowly. The rope breaks on the first try and knotted once again. The second try is successful and the engine roars to life. But still nobody can pass because there is another truck ahead of us. It has the greatest load and it only has 2 wheel drive, a very dangerous combination during the rainy season in Africa. The red mud is thick, heavy and very slippery. The truck is so heavy because it’s market day so many vehicles are loaded down with cargo and people destined for the market. Every time the truck lurches
Paprika
Dried paprika ready for grading. forward, the back end swerves in the opposite direction. Passengers and passers-by help keep the vehicle moving in a straight path. Everybody in the vicinity is involved. Such cooperation is an impressive sight. The roads are so bad that people have no alternative but to depend on eachother.
Paprika in Africa
Edson works for Cheetah Paprika, a privately owned Dutch company that focuses on paprika exports. Cheetah provides farmers with the necessary farming inputs such as seed, fertilizer and pesticides on credit and the farmers have a guaranteed buyer, but not a guaranteed price. It’s difficult for small holder farmers to produce Grade A quality paprika that makes paprika farming very lucrative. Commercial farmers can consistently produce high quality paprika because they have access to mechanized farming implements and have lots of hired labor. Small holder farmer are much more vulnerable to elements. Too much or too little rain, pests (such as locusts), weeds and disease can dramatically change the quality of a crop. If a farmer cannot meet the rigorous grading standards, the farmer goes into debt because they cannot pay back the cost of the seed and herbicides.
Although the Cheetah extension officers
Visiting a Paprika farm in Tete Province, Mozambique
Most of Tete Province is very hilly, much like the foothills in Alberta. It's simply a spectacular region. It's especially green because it's the end of the rainy season. who implement the program in the field encourage farmers to use herbicides preventatively, many farmers don’t trust that these expensive chemicals are needed when there is no apparent problem. If it’s not broken, why fix it, right? But paprika is susceptible to so many diseases that most crops eventually succumb to something and the farmer needs to shell out more money to stop the spread of the disease than he would have needed to prevent it. Trust building becomes so important in development work.
Paprika is a very controversial crop in this part of the world. It is a high value crop, so some people feel it should be promoted more aggressively. But there is no local market for paprika. All of the paprika is exported to foreign markets in Europe and South Africa which have high food quality standards. Some would argue that it is best to promote vegetable crops to be sold locally if a farmer is close to markets. Time will tell how successful paprika will be.
Deforestation
Northern Mozambique was once covered by trees, now the countryside is only dotted by trees. Trees are used for building structures, transformed into coal for cooking
The Zambian Side of Victoria Falls
The widest waterfall in the world, over 2 km in length. Vic Falls put Niagara Falls to shame, especially in the rainy season. and burned to make bricks for housing or to heat a house. Malawi, to the north, has is a tiny country with a population of 12 million people. The high population density means that Malawi is almost completely deforested and now Mozambique’s trees are being used to supply Malawi’s needs. Vila Ulongue is also on one of the main transportation routes to Maputo (the capital of Mozambique) and South Africa. Truck drivers can buy charcoal in the north and sell it for 4 times the price in the south.
Sadly there are few reforestation initiatives. The largest tobacco company, Mozambique Leaf Tobacco (MLT), does plant trees, but there are no local initiatives (either by government- or civil-lead) in progress. Without trees, the temperate climate in the region will likely be altered, making it less favorable for farming. Erosion is also major concern for farmers.
NGO politics
There’s a reason why I haven’t said much about my project - IDE is no longer involved in the Chinyanja Triangle initiative. I arrived in Vila Ulongue on a Tuesday and we found out on Friday that USAID had cut IDE’s funding for all activities related to the Chinyanja triangle and that another NGO would be taking over.
While disappointing (and bewildering), this funding cut didn’t come as a surprise. The funding was declined for a variety of reasons, and my understanding is that most (if not all) were political. The treadle pump is great piece of technology and IDE has the capacity to deliver a program but there was conflict between the USAID officials and the management of IDE.
I was posted in Mozambique to help set up the irrigation program with my co-worker, Simon Banda, while we waited for the funding to be approved. Unfortunately, that approval never came.
So that leaves where I am now, waiting and wondering what comes next. My colleagues at EWB are looking for another partner organization - one with very stable funding! In the meantime, I’ve been visiting the field with Edson from Cheetah and with Richard and Ken from ICRAF (International Center for Research in Agro-Forestry). I’ve also started Chichewa lessons. I have two teachers: Akazi wa Kauwa in the mornings and Mr. Phiri in the evenings. Chichewa is challenging to say the least! Portuguese (Mozambique was a Portuguese colony) is much more manageable but less useful because only 40% of Mozambicans are able to use Portuguese.
I’m hopeful that I’ll know what I’m doing by next week. In the meantime, I’m visiting friends and family in Zimbabwe. More to come on Zimbabwe next week.
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