Zambia day 3 - aka The Neverending Safari
Thursday ended up being a looooong day.
We started out fairly early in Lundazi, a small town north of Chipata in Zambia's eastern province.
Some more pics of Lundazi:
Shot up a little alley in Lundazi, looking towards a small market.
One of the original style of houses from when Lundazi was first settled. It was built a storey off the ground with open space underneath to keep out the lions and other beasts that would roam the streets freely at night. As recently as 20 years ago you still couldn't go out of the house after dark because of the animal risk. Then Lundazi got bigger and the large human presence pushed the animals back
Leaving from the guesthouse in Lundazi we went to the regional office for a project called COMACO. I've fallen in love with the COMACO project. I think it's brilliant. It was started by the Zambia Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and CARE is now buying into and helping expand it. COMACO is a program that combines wildlife conservation with supporting local farmers.
The western boundary of the eastern province is the Luangwa river valley, one of Zambia's richest wild game areas. The region is (or was) teeming with elephants, lions, impalas (no, not the Chevy), buffalo, hippos, crocodiles, warthogs, giraffe, etc. Their numbers were being depleted over the years by poachers. Most of the poachers are simply farmers who are too poor and cannot grow enough food to feed their families. So when times were lean, they'd go snare dinner from the game park. COMACO helps farmers by teaching them more sustainable farming practices and methods for increasing yields, like using compost for fertilizer. COMACO also sets up depots throughout the region where farmers can sell back their produce - mainly rice, maize and ground nuts (peanuts) - at a substantially higher price than the independant merchants who come to the area would offer. So the farmers can produce enough food to feed their families, as well as a surplus to sell. Ex poachers (they refer to them as "transformed hunters") can also get vocational training for skills like carpentry. And the final benefit of the whole thing: the regrowing population of game stock is leading to a return of game tourism to the area which is bringing money into the region, and the program has mechanisms to ensure some of that money goes back to helping the beneficiaries of COMACO. It's just such a perfect, all round, win-win program. I love it.
So our agenda for Thursday was to go visit four of these depots north of lundazi and talk to some of the farmers there. We picked up a third person from the WCS to be our guide. The drives between depots were long. The initial road out of Lundazi was not bad, but after that the roads *really* went downhill.
We first stopped at the farm of one of the COMACO program's real success stories. This farmer had started in a mud and grass hut with a couple of acres of crops. With the profits he had made from participating in COMACO he had quadrupled his rice production, bought his own milling equiment, built a bigger house and started a small general goods shop in it, and had even managed to buy a second hand pickup truck to transport his goods.
From there we headed to the first depot. When we arrived at the depot I found out they'd basically arranged a group interview. They had rounded up a horde of the local farmers for a command performance. They parked me in a chair in front of the farmers like some colonial lord come to interrogate the servants. The farmers wore expressions varying from amused to bored to sullen. It was really awkward. It doesn't help that the Zambians are generally a very shy, softspoken, reserved people. A shy, reserved person interviewing en masse a whole bunch of other shy, reserved people makes for... well... awkwardness. Plus most of the conversation was being done through an interpreter. So from answers that were pretty short to begin with I was getting from the translator really bare-bones generic comments.
The second depot wasn't much better, and I was getting pretty much the same answers as at the first. Fortunately, by the third and fourth depots it had taken us so long to get there because of the roads that we were behind schedule and the farmers had all dispersed. So I could do some more manageable interviews with just the depot managers.
We stayed at the fourth depot for dinner. More nshima and some of the toughest beef I've ever eaten. Dinner was had in the depot courtyard. The sun was already long set and it was pitch black so we ate by the headlight of a small motorcycle that someone brought up and turned on. Fortunately the mosquitos are not that bad this time of year.
Our route through the depots had taken us on a course that looped up, around, and back to Lundazi. From the final depot the choice was either to retrace our steps back along the loop, or keep going on the road in the same direction and complete the loop. Since the distance would be slightly shorer, Petros decided to do the latter.
This was a mistake.
If we had thought the roads were bad up til now we were sadly mistaken. That last stretch was up and down hills on a dirt road that didn't have more than 6 inches of smooth surface in one place ever. The distance was 118 km. It took us four hours. In the dark. Through dense African bush. I'm just surprised we never saw any big animals. Driving on roads like that is *seriously* tiring. Your muscles are permanently clenched to keep you from flopping all over the place like a rag doll.
Arrived back at the Lundazi guest house some time after 11:00 p.m.
Straight to bed.
Some more piccies:
Shot of the village next to one of the depots. Typical village houses - small, one room, round or rectangular, mud walls with a thatched roof.
Along the route there were a number of game warden checkpoints. There'd be a barrier across the road. You'd have to stop while they recorded details about your car, your party, and checked to make sure you weren't carrying any illegal game. They seemed to have a thing about mounting buffalo skulls on posts along these checkpoints. Not sure if it was a warning, or what.
A group of children from the village alongside one of the game checkpoints. They edged out of the village, wtaching warily at first, then began waving and having fun around the truck while we were stopped. They got really excited when I pointed the camera at them.
We started out fairly early in Lundazi, a small town north of Chipata in Zambia's eastern province.
Some more pics of Lundazi:
Shot up a little alley in Lundazi, looking towards a small market.
One of the original style of houses from when Lundazi was first settled. It was built a storey off the ground with open space underneath to keep out the lions and other beasts that would roam the streets freely at night. As recently as 20 years ago you still couldn't go out of the house after dark because of the animal risk. Then Lundazi got bigger and the large human presence pushed the animals back
Leaving from the guesthouse in Lundazi we went to the regional office for a project called COMACO. I've fallen in love with the COMACO project. I think it's brilliant. It was started by the Zambia Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and CARE is now buying into and helping expand it. COMACO is a program that combines wildlife conservation with supporting local farmers.
The western boundary of the eastern province is the Luangwa river valley, one of Zambia's richest wild game areas. The region is (or was) teeming with elephants, lions, impalas (no, not the Chevy), buffalo, hippos, crocodiles, warthogs, giraffe, etc. Their numbers were being depleted over the years by poachers. Most of the poachers are simply farmers who are too poor and cannot grow enough food to feed their families. So when times were lean, they'd go snare dinner from the game park. COMACO helps farmers by teaching them more sustainable farming practices and methods for increasing yields, like using compost for fertilizer. COMACO also sets up depots throughout the region where farmers can sell back their produce - mainly rice, maize and ground nuts (peanuts) - at a substantially higher price than the independant merchants who come to the area would offer. So the farmers can produce enough food to feed their families, as well as a surplus to sell. Ex poachers (they refer to them as "transformed hunters") can also get vocational training for skills like carpentry. And the final benefit of the whole thing: the regrowing population of game stock is leading to a return of game tourism to the area which is bringing money into the region, and the program has mechanisms to ensure some of that money goes back to helping the beneficiaries of COMACO. It's just such a perfect, all round, win-win program. I love it.
So our agenda for Thursday was to go visit four of these depots north of lundazi and talk to some of the farmers there. We picked up a third person from the WCS to be our guide. The drives between depots were long. The initial road out of Lundazi was not bad, but after that the roads *really* went downhill.
We first stopped at the farm of one of the COMACO program's real success stories. This farmer had started in a mud and grass hut with a couple of acres of crops. With the profits he had made from participating in COMACO he had quadrupled his rice production, bought his own milling equiment, built a bigger house and started a small general goods shop in it, and had even managed to buy a second hand pickup truck to transport his goods.
From there we headed to the first depot. When we arrived at the depot I found out they'd basically arranged a group interview. They had rounded up a horde of the local farmers for a command performance. They parked me in a chair in front of the farmers like some colonial lord come to interrogate the servants. The farmers wore expressions varying from amused to bored to sullen. It was really awkward. It doesn't help that the Zambians are generally a very shy, softspoken, reserved people. A shy, reserved person interviewing en masse a whole bunch of other shy, reserved people makes for... well... awkwardness. Plus most of the conversation was being done through an interpreter. So from answers that were pretty short to begin with I was getting from the translator really bare-bones generic comments.
The second depot wasn't much better, and I was getting pretty much the same answers as at the first. Fortunately, by the third and fourth depots it had taken us so long to get there because of the roads that we were behind schedule and the farmers had all dispersed. So I could do some more manageable interviews with just the depot managers.
We stayed at the fourth depot for dinner. More nshima and some of the toughest beef I've ever eaten. Dinner was had in the depot courtyard. The sun was already long set and it was pitch black so we ate by the headlight of a small motorcycle that someone brought up and turned on. Fortunately the mosquitos are not that bad this time of year.
Our route through the depots had taken us on a course that looped up, around, and back to Lundazi. From the final depot the choice was either to retrace our steps back along the loop, or keep going on the road in the same direction and complete the loop. Since the distance would be slightly shorer, Petros decided to do the latter.
This was a mistake.
If we had thought the roads were bad up til now we were sadly mistaken. That last stretch was up and down hills on a dirt road that didn't have more than 6 inches of smooth surface in one place ever. The distance was 118 km. It took us four hours. In the dark. Through dense African bush. I'm just surprised we never saw any big animals. Driving on roads like that is *seriously* tiring. Your muscles are permanently clenched to keep you from flopping all over the place like a rag doll.
Arrived back at the Lundazi guest house some time after 11:00 p.m.
Straight to bed.
Some more piccies:
Shot of the village next to one of the depots. Typical village houses - small, one room, round or rectangular, mud walls with a thatched roof.
Along the route there were a number of game warden checkpoints. There'd be a barrier across the road. You'd have to stop while they recorded details about your car, your party, and checked to make sure you weren't carrying any illegal game. They seemed to have a thing about mounting buffalo skulls on posts along these checkpoints. Not sure if it was a warning, or what.
A group of children from the village alongside one of the game checkpoints. They edged out of the village, wtaching warily at first, then began waving and having fun around the truck while we were stopped. They got really excited when I pointed the camera at them.