The mighty Zeeeeeeebra
The mighty VICTORIA FALLS
The mighty break and enter babboon
The mighty shaking painting sunset
The mighty moon in the sky oh like a pie sunsetThursday, July 30, 2009
The mighty Photo Catch up
The mighty ZeeeeeeebraThe mighty VICTORIA FALLS The mighty break and enter babboon The mighty shaking painting sunset The mighty moon in the sky oh like a pie sunset
Crazy Times: How I Hate The Internet Here
Well well well...
It's been a while since I have posted something on here. I know that some are wondering if I have died and others have thought that I have stoped. We'll neither of those things have happened (although the death one seems to have been a close one).
Let's just say my abscense has been a combination of a few factors:
-incredibly busy with work
-terrible internet connection here in Kitwe which has limited my photo uploading
-tons of traveling
These things together have limited my time at the computer and time to reflect and get out my thoughts.
Let's start with work.
Why the hell have I been so busy?
Capacity building. That's what I have been trying/doing with my co workers. An easy way of understanding capacity building is to think of it like training/teaching. To help my coworkers in areas where they asked or recognized that they could use some improvement in.
First thing I/We (I use we because everyone was doing this) did was conduct an assessment of my coworkers using something called a "market facilitation self assessment tool". Because my focus area is market facilitation this tool was developed solely to look at factors in market facilitation. Each person was to evalute themselves and then give me back the tool so I could look at the results and try to understand where the weaknesses were.
Think of being a foatball coach and getting your team to do a specific set of drills in order to see where they are all at. Once everyone did all the drills you see where all the low socring happened and make some exercises or trainings based on those weaknesses.
Thats pretty much what I did with my feild staff.
From the results of the assessment tool I came to the following focus areas in which is developed my workshops around:-Trust building with farmers and buyers-Data management for agriculture and reports-Coacing for leadership-Personal and Professional Development
For 2.5 weeks I researched and planned the hell out of these workshops (funny thing is, even up to the night before I was still scrambling to make facilitator notes and prepapre. Bed at 11pm, midnight ish. Up at 5am) which is what really pulled me away from communication in my life.
On top of the research I was doing my office asked me to conduct some market research here in Kitwe. This consisted of going to different restaurants and institutions and collecting data on what they buy in terms of fruits and vegetables, how much and what they pay for them. The goal of this is to develop a database so when the farmers we are working with are able to do farming in a more buisness like manner they can cater to all these markets. I feel like this is interesting but there needs to be a lot of work done with the farmers before this information can be useful.
Round 1
Everything came together on the 28th and 29th (Tuesday and Wenesday) and I had my presentations. Tuesday morning I held the Trust Building with Farmers and Buyers for two hours. During that time we talked about the fundamentals of trust, how do we define trust, how it is built, examples of trust in our lives, trust we have with farmers and buyers right now and tried to develop strategies for trust building in the future.
This session went alright, I had a hard time getting the big picture across altough I did get my major points across: Trust is built from a mutual understanding thus we need to help create a better understanding for farmers and buyers, Trust is built from a proven track record (past events) and Trust takes time to build. Every got a solid understanding of those points but I feel that my co workers did not really get why we were doing it and to be honest I don't know either other than they indicated low scores on trust building capabilities on their assessments.
Lesson learned: Need to target trainings not only to test scores but to voiced demand.
Round 2
Data Management for Agriculture and Reports. This session was a huge fucking hit. What I did was create a bunch of excel exercises within the realm of small scale farming. The goal was to get my coworkers to understand the math functions in excel, I see Chesiba using his calculator after he put data in excel. Little does he know with a few clicks excel does EVERYTHING for you.
Here is an example of a question we did together.
The Savoy hotel buys lots of different fruit every week. Using excel calculate how much it spends on fruit at the end of the month. Assume each week it buys the same amount.
Apples: 59 kg at 2000k/kg
oranges: 43kg at 5000k/kg
bananas: 100kg at 3450k/kg
Funny story: There are 3 people who work in this office. Aggie, Chesiba and Mwakoi. To me each are highly capable and I did not really know where they would be with respect to excel. I pictured them all to be a 4 out of 10. When we started I realized quickly that Chesiba and Mwakoi were a 2 while Aggie was a 8. She was like a child screaming "BOOORRRRIINNNGGG" and took my excerceise page and started doing everything on her own until she had a problem and called me over.
Although everyone was at different levels they all enjoyed this workshop. So much so they want more of these problems to work on because they claim it to be very very very useful. I got to show Aggie how to make graphs for her report and she told me that if she was going to remember for one thing it would be this. I felt pretty awesome after that.
Lesson learned: When making lessons for anything, if you can relate what you are teaching to similar things in that persons' everyday life it will become more accessible.
Round 3:
Wenesday. Day 2 of training.
The first day was a more participatory day. Participatory is used when the lessons require high amounts of participitation from the "students". Today's lessons were more traditional listen and ask some questions.
The mornings' workshop was about Coacing for Leadership not only because it scored low and their was a verbal demand from my coworkers but there are TONS of opportunities for them to use coaching skills in this project (RPI).
EWB has a great coacing handbook which was my main tool for this workshop. I pretty much just tore apart the workbook and made a workshop from it. We covered topics from "what is coaching" to "coaching skills" to "tools and models in coaching". Throughout the sessions we got into som great discussions about how coaching can be used here and how they are already using it but never realized it. It was great. The session ended up running late but that was cool.
Lesson: Sessions run really well when the content you have is great. Good content = Good session.
Round 4: The round that did not happen.
This is what happens when you burn yourself out.
After 3 nights of staying up till midnight and getting up at 5am this was bound to happen.
By the end of lunch I was out of it. Talking in front of a group of people and engaging discussion and exercises takes a whole lot of me. I started off the last workshop called "Personal and Professional Development" which was meant to be an easy going workshop figure my co workers would be tired of hearing me talked got flipped upside down when I was the one who could barely talk let alone make any sense.
I wanted talk about the advantages of personal development and what it means and how you can incorporate it into your work life here. I was going to use the idea of personal development plans to emphasize this and give of an example of how it works. Oh well, there is still 10 days of works left....oh my haha. 10 days is not much.
Lesson: Don't burn yourself out.
Funny I write that because last week in Livingstone I got into a discussion about work and burning oneself out. I was arguing how I would rather be busy all the time then take rests. I feel as if the work culture I have been used to for the past 5 years has always been about working yourself to the bone. I will rest when I am dead. Looking back at all my jobs they all were all composed of long work days (15 hours) 50% of the time. Yet they required very little critical thought, just the act of my body being there was enough. Having a job that requires mental capacity is really different. I would have never thought that thinking burned you out so much.
I still want to work hard and don't really appriciate rest....yet. I am thinking about it more. Espcially when my health is the shits. I find it rather funny how powerless I feel.
Well that was all the work I have done.
What's up next for me?
With 11 days of work remaining I need to get the following done:
-continue work on creating a strong connection with the development group at the university here "Mellenium Development Goals"
-Develop two more days of workshops per the request of my co workers.
-Visit Stravendale farms-Finish the market research here in Kitwe and Ndola
-Develop some sort of Database for the information
Yow...lots of work.
Should be fun.
Well.
Next blog post will be on Livingstone. I will as if I should take a break. Don't want to burn myself out.
Hahaha.
Chyea.
Tony
ps. i realize now at the internet cafe that i did not spell check this. oops.
pps. i have photos to post but the internet here is shit. thus. no photos.
sorry.
It's been a while since I have posted something on here. I know that some are wondering if I have died and others have thought that I have stoped. We'll neither of those things have happened (although the death one seems to have been a close one).
Let's just say my abscense has been a combination of a few factors:
-incredibly busy with work
-terrible internet connection here in Kitwe which has limited my photo uploading
-tons of traveling
These things together have limited my time at the computer and time to reflect and get out my thoughts.
Let's start with work.
Why the hell have I been so busy?
Capacity building. That's what I have been trying/doing with my co workers. An easy way of understanding capacity building is to think of it like training/teaching. To help my coworkers in areas where they asked or recognized that they could use some improvement in.
First thing I/We (I use we because everyone was doing this) did was conduct an assessment of my coworkers using something called a "market facilitation self assessment tool". Because my focus area is market facilitation this tool was developed solely to look at factors in market facilitation. Each person was to evalute themselves and then give me back the tool so I could look at the results and try to understand where the weaknesses were.
Think of being a foatball coach and getting your team to do a specific set of drills in order to see where they are all at. Once everyone did all the drills you see where all the low socring happened and make some exercises or trainings based on those weaknesses.
Thats pretty much what I did with my feild staff.
From the results of the assessment tool I came to the following focus areas in which is developed my workshops around:-Trust building with farmers and buyers-Data management for agriculture and reports-Coacing for leadership-Personal and Professional Development
For 2.5 weeks I researched and planned the hell out of these workshops (funny thing is, even up to the night before I was still scrambling to make facilitator notes and prepapre. Bed at 11pm, midnight ish. Up at 5am) which is what really pulled me away from communication in my life.
On top of the research I was doing my office asked me to conduct some market research here in Kitwe. This consisted of going to different restaurants and institutions and collecting data on what they buy in terms of fruits and vegetables, how much and what they pay for them. The goal of this is to develop a database so when the farmers we are working with are able to do farming in a more buisness like manner they can cater to all these markets. I feel like this is interesting but there needs to be a lot of work done with the farmers before this information can be useful.
Round 1
Everything came together on the 28th and 29th (Tuesday and Wenesday) and I had my presentations. Tuesday morning I held the Trust Building with Farmers and Buyers for two hours. During that time we talked about the fundamentals of trust, how do we define trust, how it is built, examples of trust in our lives, trust we have with farmers and buyers right now and tried to develop strategies for trust building in the future.
This session went alright, I had a hard time getting the big picture across altough I did get my major points across: Trust is built from a mutual understanding thus we need to help create a better understanding for farmers and buyers, Trust is built from a proven track record (past events) and Trust takes time to build. Every got a solid understanding of those points but I feel that my co workers did not really get why we were doing it and to be honest I don't know either other than they indicated low scores on trust building capabilities on their assessments.
Lesson learned: Need to target trainings not only to test scores but to voiced demand.
Round 2
Data Management for Agriculture and Reports. This session was a huge fucking hit. What I did was create a bunch of excel exercises within the realm of small scale farming. The goal was to get my coworkers to understand the math functions in excel, I see Chesiba using his calculator after he put data in excel. Little does he know with a few clicks excel does EVERYTHING for you.
Here is an example of a question we did together.
The Savoy hotel buys lots of different fruit every week. Using excel calculate how much it spends on fruit at the end of the month. Assume each week it buys the same amount.
Apples: 59 kg at 2000k/kg
oranges: 43kg at 5000k/kg
bananas: 100kg at 3450k/kg
Funny story: There are 3 people who work in this office. Aggie, Chesiba and Mwakoi. To me each are highly capable and I did not really know where they would be with respect to excel. I pictured them all to be a 4 out of 10. When we started I realized quickly that Chesiba and Mwakoi were a 2 while Aggie was a 8. She was like a child screaming "BOOORRRRIINNNGGG" and took my excerceise page and started doing everything on her own until she had a problem and called me over.
Although everyone was at different levels they all enjoyed this workshop. So much so they want more of these problems to work on because they claim it to be very very very useful. I got to show Aggie how to make graphs for her report and she told me that if she was going to remember for one thing it would be this. I felt pretty awesome after that.
Lesson learned: When making lessons for anything, if you can relate what you are teaching to similar things in that persons' everyday life it will become more accessible.
Round 3:
Wenesday. Day 2 of training.
The first day was a more participatory day. Participatory is used when the lessons require high amounts of participitation from the "students". Today's lessons were more traditional listen and ask some questions.
The mornings' workshop was about Coacing for Leadership not only because it scored low and their was a verbal demand from my coworkers but there are TONS of opportunities for them to use coaching skills in this project (RPI).
EWB has a great coacing handbook which was my main tool for this workshop. I pretty much just tore apart the workbook and made a workshop from it. We covered topics from "what is coaching" to "coaching skills" to "tools and models in coaching". Throughout the sessions we got into som great discussions about how coaching can be used here and how they are already using it but never realized it. It was great. The session ended up running late but that was cool.
Lesson: Sessions run really well when the content you have is great. Good content = Good session.
Round 4: The round that did not happen.
This is what happens when you burn yourself out.
After 3 nights of staying up till midnight and getting up at 5am this was bound to happen.
By the end of lunch I was out of it. Talking in front of a group of people and engaging discussion and exercises takes a whole lot of me. I started off the last workshop called "Personal and Professional Development" which was meant to be an easy going workshop figure my co workers would be tired of hearing me talked got flipped upside down when I was the one who could barely talk let alone make any sense.
I wanted talk about the advantages of personal development and what it means and how you can incorporate it into your work life here. I was going to use the idea of personal development plans to emphasize this and give of an example of how it works. Oh well, there is still 10 days of works left....oh my haha. 10 days is not much.
Lesson: Don't burn yourself out.
Funny I write that because last week in Livingstone I got into a discussion about work and burning oneself out. I was arguing how I would rather be busy all the time then take rests. I feel as if the work culture I have been used to for the past 5 years has always been about working yourself to the bone. I will rest when I am dead. Looking back at all my jobs they all were all composed of long work days (15 hours) 50% of the time. Yet they required very little critical thought, just the act of my body being there was enough. Having a job that requires mental capacity is really different. I would have never thought that thinking burned you out so much.
I still want to work hard and don't really appriciate rest....yet. I am thinking about it more. Espcially when my health is the shits. I find it rather funny how powerless I feel.
Well that was all the work I have done.
What's up next for me?
With 11 days of work remaining I need to get the following done:
-continue work on creating a strong connection with the development group at the university here "Mellenium Development Goals"
-Develop two more days of workshops per the request of my co workers.
-Visit Stravendale farms-Finish the market research here in Kitwe and Ndola
-Develop some sort of Database for the information
Yow...lots of work.
Should be fun.
Well.
Next blog post will be on Livingstone. I will as if I should take a break. Don't want to burn myself out.
Hahaha.
Chyea.
Tony
ps. i realize now at the internet cafe that i did not spell check this. oops.
pps. i have photos to post but the internet here is shit. thus. no photos.
sorry.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Photo of the day
the network has been a mess here lately.
i haven't stopped.
the internet has.
big update once things get better.
also.
leaving for victoria falls today.
i haven't stopped.
the internet has.
big update once things get better.
also.
leaving for victoria falls today.
It is amazing to think that depending on where you are born dictates the life you will live. If you are born in Zambia, there is a good chance you are going to struggle much more than if you were born in Canada or the United States (whoaa....ok....I know...I know...there is TONS of poverty in both of those countries but the probability of being in that state is much higher in Zambia or Ghana or burkina faso). But what does it mean to struggle? What does it mean to be in poverty?
If a impoverished Zambian where to come to Canada. Shit, if a middle class Zambian where to come to Canada and we compared our lives some would think they are in poverty. I would be hard pressed to find that a Zambian looking at a Canadian in poverty would deem them so.
What if someone came to you one day and said you were living in poverty. They said your living situation was inadequate, that your life could be so much "better". Worse off, what if you thought your life was pretty fucking good. Things were "hard" but you were managing while still having a "good" time.
How would you feel?
I would feel confused.
I used "" around the words good and hard for a reason.
How do you define a good life? What makes it that your life is hard?
Dissect your life. Pull apart the things that make it what it is. Try to outline the good and bad things that make it so. How many of those good things can you remove until it is no longer good.
-Family
-Friends
-Security
-Shelter
-Food
The three bottom things I would deem necessities in order to biologically survive.
But the top two....oh the top two are so much more. Sure you could get by on food, warmth, hide from the snow/rain but without company to hide from those things, to eat that food to share your "troubles" life seems so meaningless. So grey. A void.
But those are the needs that I exert in order to have a good life. I tend to have a lot more "things" in my life (camera, education, books, nice knives to cook with, clothes, music....et). If someone said to me, why don't you throw those things out? I would be hard-pressed to find an answer that could justify to keep them other than my internal greed (want) for these things.
Under pressing circumstances I could get rid of them, but how dire would the situation have to be where I would abandon my camera? Possibly (I feel certain but I don't think I could ever be 100%...feel like shit for saying that) when one of those 5 necessities where threatened.
I don't think there is a definition to a good life.
I don't think there is a definition to a bad one (poverty).
It is relative upon your situation.
I used to think that as humans we are entitles to the same kind of life. I attributed this to materialistic goods, ways of living, methods of interaction with others, resources....et.
But my views are based on the way of life I have been given, how I came into this life.
The way I want my life is not that of which many Zambians do. Some want more. Some want less. How do we work to ensure that people can achieve the "good" life they desire? Can it be done?
I seem to be asking a lot of open ended questions here. That wasn't my intention when I started this. I wanted to get down to how poverty and struggling are very different things for everyone. Kinda lost track......It is so easy to get confused when witting about these things because so many emotions that I don't understand come about me.
The idea of a "good" life baffles me.
I see urban poverty every single day. I watch elder woman beg for money on the side walk. I see them sleep with their hands extended. Blind men being guided around town by children, asking for money. I debate on giving money but am torn on the idea that it just supports this life and that if you hold out they will seek government help.
But is there really government help?
I looked into it and there are 3 government houses here in Zambia for the poorest of the poor who have no one to go. I do not know how these houses operate but from seeing all the poor just in Kitwe I wonder if a bullet to the head is a better solution (wow...this is harsh...sometimes it feels cold to say these things....fuck..it is the truth).
Is it a underlying human condition that some MUST suffer while others survive. Part of our instinct, not all can be equal....there must be a divide. Maybe we unconsciously create this poverty line in order to basque in our "good" life. Would our "good" life be so "good" if everyone had it? No it would not. If everything was sweet, would we know what sweet was? No. We would not appreciate it.
Is poverty our way of making us appreciate our "good" life.
Fuck I hope not.
I seem to be more and more negative or cynical in the past weeks. There are stories of success, there beautiful things I could talk about. But why? My co-worker told me this today "If you gave us the money we would forget that we needed the money from head office and just go about things, it would blind our need, the reason for action". I don't feel compelled to talk about success stories because happiness does not get things done. Anger does. Pure utter rage. That is where I am at.
I am just fucking angry as hell and want to tear the head off something evil.
I use fuck a lot because it perfectly conveys this emotion. I don't intend to use it in a vulgar manner but in a serious and emotionally deranged fashion where it is perfectly acceptable because I don't know any other word in the English language that ascertains so much anger.
Out.
Tony
If a impoverished Zambian where to come to Canada. Shit, if a middle class Zambian where to come to Canada and we compared our lives some would think they are in poverty. I would be hard pressed to find that a Zambian looking at a Canadian in poverty would deem them so.
What if someone came to you one day and said you were living in poverty. They said your living situation was inadequate, that your life could be so much "better". Worse off, what if you thought your life was pretty fucking good. Things were "hard" but you were managing while still having a "good" time.
How would you feel?
I would feel confused.
I used "" around the words good and hard for a reason.
How do you define a good life? What makes it that your life is hard?
Dissect your life. Pull apart the things that make it what it is. Try to outline the good and bad things that make it so. How many of those good things can you remove until it is no longer good.
-Family
-Friends
-Security
-Shelter
-Food
The three bottom things I would deem necessities in order to biologically survive.
But the top two....oh the top two are so much more. Sure you could get by on food, warmth, hide from the snow/rain but without company to hide from those things, to eat that food to share your "troubles" life seems so meaningless. So grey. A void.
But those are the needs that I exert in order to have a good life. I tend to have a lot more "things" in my life (camera, education, books, nice knives to cook with, clothes, music....et). If someone said to me, why don't you throw those things out? I would be hard-pressed to find an answer that could justify to keep them other than my internal greed (want) for these things.
Under pressing circumstances I could get rid of them, but how dire would the situation have to be where I would abandon my camera? Possibly (I feel certain but I don't think I could ever be 100%...feel like shit for saying that) when one of those 5 necessities where threatened.
I don't think there is a definition to a good life.
I don't think there is a definition to a bad one (poverty).
It is relative upon your situation.
I used to think that as humans we are entitles to the same kind of life. I attributed this to materialistic goods, ways of living, methods of interaction with others, resources....et.
But my views are based on the way of life I have been given, how I came into this life.
The way I want my life is not that of which many Zambians do. Some want more. Some want less. How do we work to ensure that people can achieve the "good" life they desire? Can it be done?
I seem to be asking a lot of open ended questions here. That wasn't my intention when I started this. I wanted to get down to how poverty and struggling are very different things for everyone. Kinda lost track......It is so easy to get confused when witting about these things because so many emotions that I don't understand come about me.
The idea of a "good" life baffles me.
I see urban poverty every single day. I watch elder woman beg for money on the side walk. I see them sleep with their hands extended. Blind men being guided around town by children, asking for money. I debate on giving money but am torn on the idea that it just supports this life and that if you hold out they will seek government help.
But is there really government help?
I looked into it and there are 3 government houses here in Zambia for the poorest of the poor who have no one to go. I do not know how these houses operate but from seeing all the poor just in Kitwe I wonder if a bullet to the head is a better solution (wow...this is harsh...sometimes it feels cold to say these things....fuck..it is the truth).
Is it a underlying human condition that some MUST suffer while others survive. Part of our instinct, not all can be equal....there must be a divide. Maybe we unconsciously create this poverty line in order to basque in our "good" life. Would our "good" life be so "good" if everyone had it? No it would not. If everything was sweet, would we know what sweet was? No. We would not appreciate it.
Is poverty our way of making us appreciate our "good" life.
Fuck I hope not.
I seem to be more and more negative or cynical in the past weeks. There are stories of success, there beautiful things I could talk about. But why? My co-worker told me this today "If you gave us the money we would forget that we needed the money from head office and just go about things, it would blind our need, the reason for action". I don't feel compelled to talk about success stories because happiness does not get things done. Anger does. Pure utter rage. That is where I am at.
I am just fucking angry as hell and want to tear the head off something evil.
I use fuck a lot because it perfectly conveys this emotion. I don't intend to use it in a vulgar manner but in a serious and emotionally deranged fashion where it is perfectly acceptable because I don't know any other word in the English language that ascertains so much anger.
Out.
Tony
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Ramblings from a long day
its funny looking at who you are.
this person you never see.
who can never talk back to you.
you only hear that person.
she him or her in pictures.
in video you see and hear them move.
discuss. argue. love.
but you can never directly do that with them.
this emobodiment of oneself.
the solid character of your thinking mind, acting being.
its scary to think that your mind has a body.
it controls something.
it is something but it can never interact with it as another being.
the idea terrifies me.
if i could interact with myself.
i am scared to.
would i be someone i would like?
would we get along.
or would we argue.
maybe we wouldnt even talk.
would we fall in love with each other.
should we not?
are you not looking for the perfect connection when searching for a partner?
or do differences matter. is that what attracts one to another.
the differences in similarities.
similar interestes but not exact.
those differneces create new pathways for conversation.
interaction.
expression.
but if too differnt.
then no realation at all.
no roads to those places were collaboration exsists.
but the assumption is that all beings search for a connection on a mental plane.
there is the possibility that people look for a physical connection only.
keeping the mental plane to themselves.
or to others. where their "lover" is out of the picture.
so where does that leave love?
can love be a physical manifestation? is it a mental/psychological one?
or is it a mixture of both?
can some only express in one way?
and others in both?
are there more ways?
spiritual...
to think that love is a chemical reaction in your brain.
maybe there are those who are addicted to it.
always floating from one partner to another as their love for someone dies over time.
then there are those who find someone and it is always there.
continuously exploding with love in their minds.
there are those who cannot contain it for one person.
but for many.
if not all.
there are those you cannot attain it.
always searching.
wishing.
endlessly.
there are those who dont want it.
but cant help it.
are a victim to it.
some things you just cant hide from.
especially when it is in your head.
funny how when you fall in love it hurts like someone just shot you.
but when you fall out of love it can come in many ways.
as a surprise.
as a shock.
or some just never even realize it.
maybe some dont even know they are in love.
maybe some dont even know what love is.
but then there are different levels of love.
those for your friends.
those for the world.
materialistic goods.
characters in books.
actors.
famous people in history.
music.
art.
animals.
your work.
do they all have the same magnitude?
are they even in the same playing field.
maybe they all play the same game but at different stadiums.
getting together at the same "love pub" at the end of the day to discuss their turmoils.
do we have a finite capability to love.
only 100 units to be spread across your system.
each area having a dynamic demand.
how do you feed all areas.
do you allow some to be cut off.
thinking that others will flourish.
maybe be more patient and they are understanding that time is limited and certain areas should be focused on at certain times.
or is it unlimited and you have infinite capability to love everything as much as the other.
maybe we are all different.
i think if i sat down with myself i would try to talk about this.
see if we feel in love.
or argued over our lover that we would have to share.
i would win.
or would i win.
maybe it would be a tie.
i know i would.
this person you never see.
who can never talk back to you.
you only hear that person.
she him or her in pictures.
in video you see and hear them move.
discuss. argue. love.
but you can never directly do that with them.
this emobodiment of oneself.
the solid character of your thinking mind, acting being.
its scary to think that your mind has a body.
it controls something.
it is something but it can never interact with it as another being.
the idea terrifies me.
if i could interact with myself.
i am scared to.
would i be someone i would like?
would we get along.
or would we argue.
maybe we wouldnt even talk.
would we fall in love with each other.
should we not?
are you not looking for the perfect connection when searching for a partner?
or do differences matter. is that what attracts one to another.
the differences in similarities.
similar interestes but not exact.
those differneces create new pathways for conversation.
interaction.
expression.
but if too differnt.
then no realation at all.
no roads to those places were collaboration exsists.
but the assumption is that all beings search for a connection on a mental plane.
there is the possibility that people look for a physical connection only.
keeping the mental plane to themselves.
or to others. where their "lover" is out of the picture.
so where does that leave love?
can love be a physical manifestation? is it a mental/psychological one?
or is it a mixture of both?
can some only express in one way?
and others in both?
are there more ways?
spiritual...
to think that love is a chemical reaction in your brain.
maybe there are those who are addicted to it.
always floating from one partner to another as their love for someone dies over time.
then there are those who find someone and it is always there.
continuously exploding with love in their minds.
there are those who cannot contain it for one person.
but for many.
if not all.
there are those you cannot attain it.
always searching.
wishing.
endlessly.
there are those who dont want it.
but cant help it.
are a victim to it.
some things you just cant hide from.
especially when it is in your head.
funny how when you fall in love it hurts like someone just shot you.
but when you fall out of love it can come in many ways.
as a surprise.
as a shock.
or some just never even realize it.
maybe some dont even know they are in love.
maybe some dont even know what love is.
but then there are different levels of love.
those for your friends.
those for the world.
materialistic goods.
characters in books.
actors.
famous people in history.
music.
art.
animals.
your work.
do they all have the same magnitude?
are they even in the same playing field.
maybe they all play the same game but at different stadiums.
getting together at the same "love pub" at the end of the day to discuss their turmoils.
do we have a finite capability to love.
only 100 units to be spread across your system.
each area having a dynamic demand.
how do you feed all areas.
do you allow some to be cut off.
thinking that others will flourish.
maybe be more patient and they are understanding that time is limited and certain areas should be focused on at certain times.
or is it unlimited and you have infinite capability to love everything as much as the other.
maybe we are all different.
i think if i sat down with myself i would try to talk about this.
see if we feel in love.
or argued over our lover that we would have to share.
i would win.
or would i win.
maybe it would be a tie.
i know i would.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
le photographe du journee. oui oui.
working together.This family is shelling maize to prepare for sale.
Shelling maize means removing the curnels (I don't know how to spell this).
Once they are removed the are put into bags and sold to millers who then grind the maize and sell it as maize flour to make the staple food Nshima (Ubwali).
Oh Bahhh MAAA
While in the village John told me this:
"God does what the white man cannot"
Frustrating, is it not?
To think that we, me, you, are thought to be above africans, above other people.
Obama was in Ghana this week to speak about democracy in African nations. He spoke about good governance, aid and how the empowerment of the people will bring forth development.
Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it's no longer needed. I want to see Ghanaians not only self-sufficient in food, I want to see you exporting food to other countries and earning money. You can do that.
This is something really powerful but extremly hard to convey. When talking to people in South Downs, the idea of eventually ending Aid would be like ending church.
He ended his speech with the following:
Now that triumph must be won once more, and it must be won by you. (Applause.) And I am particularly speaking to the young people all across Africa and right here in Ghana. In places like Ghana, young people make up over half of the population.
And here is what you must know: The world will be what you make of it. You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people. You can serve in your communities, and harness your energy and education to create new wealth and build new connections to the world. You can conquer disease, and end conflicts, and make change from the bottom up. You can do that. Yes you can -- (applause) -- because in this moment, history is on the move.
But these things can only be done if all of you take responsibility for your future. And it won't be easy. It will take time and effort. There will be suffering and setbacks. But I can promise you this: America will be with you every step of the way -- as a partner, as a friend. (Applause.) Opportunity won't come from any other place, though. It must come from the decisions that all of you make, the things that you do, the hope that you hold in your heart.
These points really hit home to me. The little time I have spent here has made me realize how powerful we are as stakeholders in our country, its decisions and our interconnected future.
"God does what the white man cannot"
Frustrating, is it not?
To think that we, me, you, are thought to be above africans, above other people.
Obama was in Ghana this week to speak about democracy in African nations. He spoke about good governance, aid and how the empowerment of the people will bring forth development.
Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it's no longer needed. I want to see Ghanaians not only self-sufficient in food, I want to see you exporting food to other countries and earning money. You can do that.
This is something really powerful but extremly hard to convey. When talking to people in South Downs, the idea of eventually ending Aid would be like ending church.
He ended his speech with the following:
Now that triumph must be won once more, and it must be won by you. (Applause.) And I am particularly speaking to the young people all across Africa and right here in Ghana. In places like Ghana, young people make up over half of the population.
And here is what you must know: The world will be what you make of it. You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people. You can serve in your communities, and harness your energy and education to create new wealth and build new connections to the world. You can conquer disease, and end conflicts, and make change from the bottom up. You can do that. Yes you can -- (applause) -- because in this moment, history is on the move.
But these things can only be done if all of you take responsibility for your future. And it won't be easy. It will take time and effort. There will be suffering and setbacks. But I can promise you this: America will be with you every step of the way -- as a partner, as a friend. (Applause.) Opportunity won't come from any other place, though. It must come from the decisions that all of you make, the things that you do, the hope that you hold in your heart.
These points really hit home to me. The little time I have spent here has made me realize how powerful we are as stakeholders in our country, its decisions and our interconnected future.
To Rome: I Thank You
I read this today.
Thought it was funny.
We should thank the Romans more.
The enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, engineering, medicine, sports, arts, etc. Much of it is so deeply inbedded that we barely notice our debt to ancient Rome. Consider language, for example. Fewer and fewer people today claim to know Latin - and yet, go back to the first sentence in this paragraph. If we removed all the words drawn directly from Latin, that sentence would read; "The."
Thanks again Rome.
Thought it was funny.
We should thank the Romans more.
The enduring Roman influence is reflected pervasively in contemporary language, literature, legal codes, government, architecture, engineering, medicine, sports, arts, etc. Much of it is so deeply inbedded that we barely notice our debt to ancient Rome. Consider language, for example. Fewer and fewer people today claim to know Latin - and yet, go back to the first sentence in this paragraph. If we removed all the words drawn directly from Latin, that sentence would read; "The."
Thanks again Rome.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
thoughts on watching a chicken die...
This weekend I spent time in South Downs visiting friends and running away from urban life.
I was "getting away from it all".
I'm not very happy admitting that. I don't know why but I do.
anyway.
John, the man (why do I use this term....) of the house (the dude with the giant rat in the photos from a while a go), bought a chicken to celebrate the fact I was staying for the weekend (later I found out people usually buy chickens on their birthdays because of the cost...I was flattered but somewhat ashamed at the same time. I hate the thought of people spending money on me there although they see it as a time of celebration as the "white man" comes to stay....it's the idea of struggling with the thought of not being a burden but at the same time this is a big deal for these people....it is a RARE occasion when a white person sleeps at your house for a few days....it would be if the pope ate at your place...what kind of food would you prepare....even if he said nothing fancy....know what i mean?? hard to make a good call here...im torn). The thing is when you buy a chicken in the village you are buying a CHICKEN, a live-living-breathing-being....not the pink thing you see in the freezer at the grocery store...that's food..not a chicken.
So I got to see for the first time what it means to turn a chicken into food. Not realising how much it would make me think.
I don't know if I would say I was scared because I have caught fish before and have watched them die....but for some reason this time was different. It made me think. Maybe it is the circumstances under which I am living. Maybe I am just getting older. I don't know. I don't seem to know much these days. You would think as you get older you would know more and more but I feel like I am knowing less and less. Maybe that's because I am realise how much more there is to know and how much time is takes to really get it...if you get it....fuck im rambling.....
Back to the chicken.
He just took the chicken. Held the legs with his feet.Pushed back the chicken's neck with one hand.With the knife in the other. He slit it's throat.
I forgot that death is not always instantaneous.It takes time to die just as it took time to come alive.
What do you think that chicken was thinking as everything slowly went dark? Did it even realise what was going on. It must have been wondering something was different because this dude was holding his feet and neck.I wonder if it thought about its life as blood sprayed against the tree and pooled on the ground.Did it even know what blood was?Does it matter....
Made me think about how easy life comes in and out of this world.5 minutes before that chicken got killed it was having a great time eating corn.10 minutes after it was being boiled in hot water to remove its feathers.
Each chicken has two wings.Next time you eat chicken wings at a restaurant count how many you got and divide by 2. That's how many chickens died for that meal.I am not trying to convince you to stop eating meat.I want you to think about life.Think about how fragile it is. How lucky you are.We are.
I don't know what is in store after this life.That chicken might. But I don't.You don't.No one does.So appreciate what you got now.Things might be bad.Things might be good.Everything is circumstantial.
I am happy to be here.I am happy that you are here.That we all are.
Tell someone how much you love them.Especially those whom you don't tell often.You don't know when it might be the last time.
I love you.
Tony
all a man(woman) can build is his/her vision
ps. thanks for making me think elisa.
I was "getting away from it all".
I'm not very happy admitting that. I don't know why but I do.
anyway.
John, the man (why do I use this term....) of the house (the dude with the giant rat in the photos from a while a go), bought a chicken to celebrate the fact I was staying for the weekend (later I found out people usually buy chickens on their birthdays because of the cost...I was flattered but somewhat ashamed at the same time. I hate the thought of people spending money on me there although they see it as a time of celebration as the "white man" comes to stay....it's the idea of struggling with the thought of not being a burden but at the same time this is a big deal for these people....it is a RARE occasion when a white person sleeps at your house for a few days....it would be if the pope ate at your place...what kind of food would you prepare....even if he said nothing fancy....know what i mean?? hard to make a good call here...im torn). The thing is when you buy a chicken in the village you are buying a CHICKEN, a live-living-breathing-being....not the pink thing you see in the freezer at the grocery store...that's food..not a chicken.
So I got to see for the first time what it means to turn a chicken into food. Not realising how much it would make me think.
I don't know if I would say I was scared because I have caught fish before and have watched them die....but for some reason this time was different. It made me think. Maybe it is the circumstances under which I am living. Maybe I am just getting older. I don't know. I don't seem to know much these days. You would think as you get older you would know more and more but I feel like I am knowing less and less. Maybe that's because I am realise how much more there is to know and how much time is takes to really get it...if you get it....fuck im rambling.....
Back to the chicken.
He just took the chicken. Held the legs with his feet.Pushed back the chicken's neck with one hand.With the knife in the other. He slit it's throat.
I forgot that death is not always instantaneous.It takes time to die just as it took time to come alive.
What do you think that chicken was thinking as everything slowly went dark? Did it even realise what was going on. It must have been wondering something was different because this dude was holding his feet and neck.I wonder if it thought about its life as blood sprayed against the tree and pooled on the ground.Did it even know what blood was?Does it matter....
Made me think about how easy life comes in and out of this world.5 minutes before that chicken got killed it was having a great time eating corn.10 minutes after it was being boiled in hot water to remove its feathers.
Each chicken has two wings.Next time you eat chicken wings at a restaurant count how many you got and divide by 2. That's how many chickens died for that meal.I am not trying to convince you to stop eating meat.I want you to think about life.Think about how fragile it is. How lucky you are.We are.
I don't know what is in store after this life.That chicken might. But I don't.You don't.No one does.So appreciate what you got now.Things might be bad.Things might be good.Everything is circumstantial.
I am happy to be here.I am happy that you are here.That we all are.
Tell someone how much you love them.Especially those whom you don't tell often.You don't know when it might be the last time.
I love you.
Tony
all a man(woman) can build is his/her vision
ps. thanks for making me think elisa.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Photos of The Day: Extra Special Edition from South Downs
Kids at play
Plays at Kid
23km of hell to go through
The bike that couldI got the chance the go back to South Downs this weekend and visit my friends. It was a really good time and every second I spend there I see what hard work gets you.
My friends here work for everything they have. That bag is full of rape (a spinach like vegetable) that weighs 125kg (more than me...I recently got weighed at 93kg) and this fellow will be transporting it for 23km up and down a really shitty fucking road.
Makes me appriciate how easy it is to get the thigns I want when I want.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Well well well...
Where do I start?
There have been some words going around that I had malaria for the second time, although I did think this at first it ended up being a bowel infection (which I realized I was spelling bowl in so many emails...) that threw me into a clinic and made me miss 4 days of work. The cause, food poisoning. From where? No clue.
Work has been going well as of lately. I have been able to develop some capacity building session for my co workers, they are planned for the end of the month. Before they can happen I need to conduct an assesment of their strengths and weaknesses in the area of market facilitation. This will enable me to understand what kind of workshops to run, I feel it is important to work on the weaknesses but I will try and do one session to improve on their strengths and see how we can leverage the situation with those.
But that was the week of Canada day, what about the week that passed?
Well this week was holidays for most of Zambia. The Monday and Tuesday were national holidays so there was no work but to top it off my co workers decided to an additional two days for other holiday time (or as they referred to it, american holidays....I still have no clue what that means).
This left me with a whole lot of time to explore the city and visit people that I have been meaning to.
I traveled to two weddings on one Saturday which was great. To my surprise, the weddings here are very similar to those in Canada in regards to the ceremony and reception held. The major difference which makes the weddings wayyyyy better here is the choreographed dancing of the wedding parties into and out of each event. I cannot explain it in words but I have a video to show once I return to Canada. They must spend weeks practicing for this.
I visited the university here to meet with the student union in search of development groups here in Zambia. I was lucky to find a group that just started last year at the university called the Millenium Development Goals group. They are working to promote the MDGs around campus through outreach events. I have set up a formal meeting with them on Tuesday to get more information. So if you read this and have any questions for me to ask them either email me at tony.fedec@gmail.com or post it as a comment below.
In one of the photos below you will see a large group a people, that is my friend Kalaba and her family. I met her when I was in South Downs. She told me that she would be moving back to the city to upgrade her schooling so that she could become a teacher and I promised her that I would go visit her when she did. I had a great time meeting all her neices and nephews as well as her many sisters and mother. The experience really showed me how tied people are here to their families, that they will cram 12 people into a house that we would deem fit for 3 just to get by. They do it and they are happy. This is a great example of love here, how much everyone works for one another.
Ah but these are all the things I have been doing. I have trouble expressing how these things make me feel and I do not think I share those inner feelings enough.
As of lately I have been feeling like shit here. It was troubling me why I was never really content with myself in Kitwe and constantly gloomy on the inside. After some serious reflection and lots of writting and talking I got to the root of my problem. Well there are two problems, I will start will the lesser.
Coming here I romantisized the idea of living in a rural area where I would be doing development work and getting a "true" Zambia experience. When learning that I was coming to a urban area I was disapointed but got over it because I was still going to have a unique and amazing time (which I am). But the thoughts still lingered. After almost two months here I was realizing how much of a "easy" life I have been living. I can eat whatever I want, I can do what I want...nothing really feels inaccessible to me. The food does not make me uncomfortable, things don't seem odd anymore.....I feel like I am at home but not at home.
But maybe I just want to struggle all the time? I don't know but I know that feeling comfortable here sucks for me because I expected to feel uncomfortable throughout the whole journey and I am linking this to how urban and western influenced city life is here. I have decided to try and cut out as many city aspects as possible but it is very difficult when acutally living in the city. It would be like trying to breathe only the oxygen in the air when in reality there is so much more you get without having any control over it.
The other, more depressing realization is my desensitization to street poverty. At first it bothered me and I would give out money from time to time but as time goes on my perception of the poor in streets has been thrown into the background just like the tall buildings and shops around town. I just don't recognize them with any emotion. Fuck that sucks to say.
Seeing kids dig through the trash and bed for money, blind elderly people being escorted around by their grandchildren asking for food, women laying in the street asleep but with their handout hoping that someone with give them cash as they sleep so they can wake up with money for food. It makes me wonder why am I working in agriculture in rural areas when there are so many problems in the city. Farmers in those areas, although they are not going GREAT are doing well. They have food, land and water. Sure it is hard fucking work but at least they have it. These poor people have nothing...NOTHING.
I am not saying I do not see the value in my work but I am dying to know the programs set in place for the urban poor. To me, these are the poorest of the poor. The ones without a roof, never knowing what they will eat next. I better understand (I think I do by seeing it...but I really don't understand the true meaning) the saying to only have the shirt on your back. These people only have that. Some don't.
I have been trying to bring these people out into the front of my view and treat them not as the horizon but as a major focus as a walk through town. But then what? So I notice these people...do I just give them all money? Impossible...This is where I am lost. And it KILLS me. I don't know what to do.
But I plan on finding out more.
I hurts to think that every minute you spend looking for answers and ideas to help those who need it, they are still suffering. It is "comforting" to think that maybe your work will eliviate the pain in the future but it is still not stoping that of which is in the present. You can never cut off the pain immediatley, you can only slow it down and hope it will stop in the future.
You could relate it to physics. When a body is moving it contains energy, to stop it you have to remove that energy. The energy is moved through some medium which lets the energy travel through it at some rate. The higher the rate,the faster the energy can move through it. If the rate was infinite then all the energy could pass through it instantaneously...
Let poverty be this body.The this enegy be the causes to poverty.The medium is the people working to end poverty.The rate is the work that is being done.
Which areas do you focus on to increase the end of poverty. Do you make the medium larger (by adding more people) or do you try and increase the rate (the quality of work being done). It one at a higher order than the other (exponential function) or all they all linear (thus incresing at the same rate...).
I don't know.I would like to find out.
I am really learning that poverty sucks. I hate to use that word as it does not convey the awfullness I feel.
I don't want to leave on a low note but I feel as if there is not other way to because a positive one would just be hding the truth.
I hope you enjoyed the physics lesson.
Much love,
Tony
After looking over this I realize how much I wrote. EEsshh (Zambia term for "whoa").
Where do I start?
There have been some words going around that I had malaria for the second time, although I did think this at first it ended up being a bowel infection (which I realized I was spelling bowl in so many emails...) that threw me into a clinic and made me miss 4 days of work. The cause, food poisoning. From where? No clue.
Work has been going well as of lately. I have been able to develop some capacity building session for my co workers, they are planned for the end of the month. Before they can happen I need to conduct an assesment of their strengths and weaknesses in the area of market facilitation. This will enable me to understand what kind of workshops to run, I feel it is important to work on the weaknesses but I will try and do one session to improve on their strengths and see how we can leverage the situation with those.
But that was the week of Canada day, what about the week that passed?
Well this week was holidays for most of Zambia. The Monday and Tuesday were national holidays so there was no work but to top it off my co workers decided to an additional two days for other holiday time (or as they referred to it, american holidays....I still have no clue what that means).
This left me with a whole lot of time to explore the city and visit people that I have been meaning to.
I traveled to two weddings on one Saturday which was great. To my surprise, the weddings here are very similar to those in Canada in regards to the ceremony and reception held. The major difference which makes the weddings wayyyyy better here is the choreographed dancing of the wedding parties into and out of each event. I cannot explain it in words but I have a video to show once I return to Canada. They must spend weeks practicing for this.
I visited the university here to meet with the student union in search of development groups here in Zambia. I was lucky to find a group that just started last year at the university called the Millenium Development Goals group. They are working to promote the MDGs around campus through outreach events. I have set up a formal meeting with them on Tuesday to get more information. So if you read this and have any questions for me to ask them either email me at tony.fedec@gmail.com or post it as a comment below.
In one of the photos below you will see a large group a people, that is my friend Kalaba and her family. I met her when I was in South Downs. She told me that she would be moving back to the city to upgrade her schooling so that she could become a teacher and I promised her that I would go visit her when she did. I had a great time meeting all her neices and nephews as well as her many sisters and mother. The experience really showed me how tied people are here to their families, that they will cram 12 people into a house that we would deem fit for 3 just to get by. They do it and they are happy. This is a great example of love here, how much everyone works for one another.
Ah but these are all the things I have been doing. I have trouble expressing how these things make me feel and I do not think I share those inner feelings enough.
As of lately I have been feeling like shit here. It was troubling me why I was never really content with myself in Kitwe and constantly gloomy on the inside. After some serious reflection and lots of writting and talking I got to the root of my problem. Well there are two problems, I will start will the lesser.
Coming here I romantisized the idea of living in a rural area where I would be doing development work and getting a "true" Zambia experience. When learning that I was coming to a urban area I was disapointed but got over it because I was still going to have a unique and amazing time (which I am). But the thoughts still lingered. After almost two months here I was realizing how much of a "easy" life I have been living. I can eat whatever I want, I can do what I want...nothing really feels inaccessible to me. The food does not make me uncomfortable, things don't seem odd anymore.....I feel like I am at home but not at home.
But maybe I just want to struggle all the time? I don't know but I know that feeling comfortable here sucks for me because I expected to feel uncomfortable throughout the whole journey and I am linking this to how urban and western influenced city life is here. I have decided to try and cut out as many city aspects as possible but it is very difficult when acutally living in the city. It would be like trying to breathe only the oxygen in the air when in reality there is so much more you get without having any control over it.
The other, more depressing realization is my desensitization to street poverty. At first it bothered me and I would give out money from time to time but as time goes on my perception of the poor in streets has been thrown into the background just like the tall buildings and shops around town. I just don't recognize them with any emotion. Fuck that sucks to say.
Seeing kids dig through the trash and bed for money, blind elderly people being escorted around by their grandchildren asking for food, women laying in the street asleep but with their handout hoping that someone with give them cash as they sleep so they can wake up with money for food. It makes me wonder why am I working in agriculture in rural areas when there are so many problems in the city. Farmers in those areas, although they are not going GREAT are doing well. They have food, land and water. Sure it is hard fucking work but at least they have it. These poor people have nothing...NOTHING.
I am not saying I do not see the value in my work but I am dying to know the programs set in place for the urban poor. To me, these are the poorest of the poor. The ones without a roof, never knowing what they will eat next. I better understand (I think I do by seeing it...but I really don't understand the true meaning) the saying to only have the shirt on your back. These people only have that. Some don't.
I have been trying to bring these people out into the front of my view and treat them not as the horizon but as a major focus as a walk through town. But then what? So I notice these people...do I just give them all money? Impossible...This is where I am lost. And it KILLS me. I don't know what to do.
But I plan on finding out more.
I hurts to think that every minute you spend looking for answers and ideas to help those who need it, they are still suffering. It is "comforting" to think that maybe your work will eliviate the pain in the future but it is still not stoping that of which is in the present. You can never cut off the pain immediatley, you can only slow it down and hope it will stop in the future.
You could relate it to physics. When a body is moving it contains energy, to stop it you have to remove that energy. The energy is moved through some medium which lets the energy travel through it at some rate. The higher the rate,the faster the energy can move through it. If the rate was infinite then all the energy could pass through it instantaneously...
Let poverty be this body.The this enegy be the causes to poverty.The medium is the people working to end poverty.The rate is the work that is being done.
Which areas do you focus on to increase the end of poverty. Do you make the medium larger (by adding more people) or do you try and increase the rate (the quality of work being done). It one at a higher order than the other (exponential function) or all they all linear (thus incresing at the same rate...).
I don't know.I would like to find out.
I am really learning that poverty sucks. I hate to use that word as it does not convey the awfullness I feel.
I don't want to leave on a low note but I feel as if there is not other way to because a positive one would just be hding the truth.
I hope you enjoyed the physics lesson.
Much love,
Tony
After looking over this I realize how much I wrote. EEsshh (Zambia term for "whoa").
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Benefits of Irrigation for Rural Farming
Irrigation is the artificial application of water to land.
Fake rain.
Why is this important here in Zambia?
Well there are two seasons here...the rainny season and the dry season. The dry season is actually dry, there is no rain from May till November (if there was, it would be a shit show...this is not to say it has not happened but the likelyhood is rare and would disturb farming practices all around).
Since there is no rain here and one requires water/rain to produce crops it is then recessary to "import" the water from somewhere. On a rural farm this is either a well/borehole/pond/stream. Without pumps and irrigation systems farmers typically use a plastic bucket to collect the water then distribute it around the farm. Can you imagine going back and forth around 1-2 hectars of land with one bucket watering a thousand heads of cabbage or lettuce..what a long and tedious process.
Irrigation technologies help save time and effort. They also give you time to hunt giant rats to each.
Treddle pumps work by using a similar motion to that of a "stair master"...like walking up stairs, the pump pulls up water from the source and through a tube to be used in a various manner of ways.
The water can be stored into a container to future use, can be pushed through a pipe and hosed around the plants if you have enough tube (and a second person) or it can power a sprinkler system.
So insted of filling a bucket, dragging it around the farm and water each plant the irrigation techonologies allow farmers to treddle their way into efficient production!
I will look through my photos and post some descriptions of different pumps and sprinklers.
Hit me up with any questions.
SSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Fake rain.
Why is this important here in Zambia?
Well there are two seasons here...the rainny season and the dry season. The dry season is actually dry, there is no rain from May till November (if there was, it would be a shit show...this is not to say it has not happened but the likelyhood is rare and would disturb farming practices all around).
Since there is no rain here and one requires water/rain to produce crops it is then recessary to "import" the water from somewhere. On a rural farm this is either a well/borehole/pond/stream. Without pumps and irrigation systems farmers typically use a plastic bucket to collect the water then distribute it around the farm. Can you imagine going back and forth around 1-2 hectars of land with one bucket watering a thousand heads of cabbage or lettuce..what a long and tedious process.
Irrigation technologies help save time and effort. They also give you time to hunt giant rats to each.
Treddle pumps work by using a similar motion to that of a "stair master"...like walking up stairs, the pump pulls up water from the source and through a tube to be used in a various manner of ways.
The water can be stored into a container to future use, can be pushed through a pipe and hosed around the plants if you have enough tube (and a second person) or it can power a sprinkler system.
So insted of filling a bucket, dragging it around the farm and water each plant the irrigation techonologies allow farmers to treddle their way into efficient production!
I will look through my photos and post some descriptions of different pumps and sprinklers.
Hit me up with any questions.
SSSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Monday, July 6, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Malaria - hooha...good god...what is it good for...absolutely nothing...say it again
Malaria sucks because it is different for everyone. for me, when I had it, it really slowed me down and took away all my energy. It also took away my appetite, I did not eat for more than 5 days. Common symptoms of malaria are chills, diarrhoea, fever and pains across your body, locals call it "pain in your bones".
Most people get malaria during the rainy season which is from November to April but it is possible to have it at any time of the year. It is simply a function of your exposure to mosquitoes. People freak out when they here there is more mosquitoes in Canada but no malaria. They don't believe me.
I know a few people with malaria right now. They are bummed but is treatable and not a major threat if you live in town with access to a clinic. If you live in a village it is a different story.
You can take drugs like Malarone but they help protect not prevent. It is around 60-70% effective. People here don't really take the drugs, the are surprised by the fact I take them but then again...I'm white. Everyone uses mosquitoe nets in the rainy season but now during the dry season, there are few to worry about.
It's pretty funny to season people react when there is a mosquitoe in the house, they treat it like a giant flying cancer bomb and they kill it with haste (this is my family anyway...I get a kick out of these daily outbreaks).
PEEAAAAACCCCEEEE
Most people get malaria during the rainy season which is from November to April but it is possible to have it at any time of the year. It is simply a function of your exposure to mosquitoes. People freak out when they here there is more mosquitoes in Canada but no malaria. They don't believe me.
I know a few people with malaria right now. They are bummed but is treatable and not a major threat if you live in town with access to a clinic. If you live in a village it is a different story.
You can take drugs like Malarone but they help protect not prevent. It is around 60-70% effective. People here don't really take the drugs, the are surprised by the fact I take them but then again...I'm white. Everyone uses mosquitoe nets in the rainy season but now during the dry season, there are few to worry about.
It's pretty funny to season people react when there is a mosquitoe in the house, they treat it like a giant flying cancer bomb and they kill it with haste (this is my family anyway...I get a kick out of these daily outbreaks).
PEEAAAAACCCCEEEE
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Picture of the DAYs
I am going to try and keep with this as much as possible.
Let's see how well it goes.
Photo 1:
Let's see how well it goes.
Photo 1:
Ready to die in Hillview Clinic
Sick of the Sciness. Sick of being sick. Sick of Sickining for you. For you All.
This is a edited version of an email to someone but I thought it would be interesting for those following to understand my state of mind right now.
forgive the grammar, swearing....i want to convey actually how i feel.
Let me give you a run down of the past couple days:
Sunday
Travelled to Ndola to meet up with patrick.
I packed up and travelled to visit patrick because he was coming off a malaria run and i wanted to make sure he was doing better. As i caught a shared taxi i was feeling pretty weak but i accounted that towards not eating yet. As the taxi arrived into Ndola (about 35min later) I was feeling pretty dizzy but i managed to meet patrick and we traveled to Bani's pizza at 9am to get veggy burgers which ended up being alright but after i finished mine i was feeling like shitttttttttttt.
We caught a taxi back to his place, before arriving there we stoped at a chemist (pharmacy) and got some malaria treatment because my symptoms were rather similar to those i had a few weeks prior ( i use this word and i think...what the fuck made me say prior...anyway...i feel like some dude with his head up his ass....im going to keep it for fun...but i dont mean it). We get back to his pad and I take some of the drugs thinking that it would be a great idea to combat whatever i had...why not i thought...my symptoms were: chills, fever, pains, weak, dizzy.....ok i did not have chills or fever before but they are classic malaria symptoms. after i take the drugs i pass out for 5 hours. what a great day...
as i wake up i checked my temperature again....38.8...pretty fucking hot....and not the kate middleton kind....
patrick calls me a cab to get back to the bus terminal where i planned to catch a ride back to kitwe. the cab arrives and i can barely talk, im delirious, not making any sense to the cabby he stops talking to me after a few minutes.
we get to the terminal. i pay the guy and i start to walk around this crowded bus terminal which has about 100 mini buses and 300 people yelling different town names which is their way of advertizing their bus direction. i was not in a great mood. i find some guy who is rounding up people for kitwe and i hop on with a burning fever and the perception of a spinning world.
taxis take about 30-40 to get from kitwe to ndola and vice versabusses take about 1-2 hours.
i dont know how long it took because i kept slipping in and out of conciouness (ok, just sleep but i am going to be even more dramatic hahaha). i feel bad for the woman beside me because i looked like i was going to die, i kept moaning, slurring non sense and drooling during my sleep. i have to emphasize how close we are to each other, there is 35 people in a bus that would sit normaly 15 in canada. it is tight.
we arrive just outside of town here my compound is, wuzakili meseshi, and i get dropped off on the opposite side of the highway and about 600m from my house.
challenge number 1)
cross the highway.....usually pretty easy, just wait for a break in traffic then boot it.....delirious (not the eddie murphy kind) and feverish did not help me.(..........oh i forgot to mention this whole time about the diareah....but i took imodium for that so it did not really slow me down but it comes in play later on....) after about two failed attempts to make for a break in the traffic i get through to the other side...easy part was done....
if the remedy i needed was one of diesel and dust i would have been fine....this highway is full of black smoke and dust that makes the air look red. my lungs will never be the same.
challenge number 2)
making it from the highway to my house.usually i can get past the "hecklers" (people who yell things to me in bemba that i have no understanding, they could be nice things or not so nice things....at first i thought it was alright but now its the same people everyday who just keep yelling....i figure a 6 weeks of niceness is good enough....if you want to keep yelling at me after that long i am just going to stop responding...am i being a jerk?) with ease with simple bemba greetings while the drunks i just brush off with a hello. in the state i am in....not so easy.
of course there were the yellers and the nice people too (thankfully) but all i was capable of doing was some sort of a moaning and a hand wave as a slowly staggered towards my house. this walk takes about 4 minutes usually, this time...more than 10...i know what i feels like to be a zombie...i could easily play one as an extra in a movie sometime.
finally making it back to my house i stumble through the gate. greeted by my host mother i mutter, " i have malaria again...." and hop into the house and fall to my bed. i told her i took some malaria medication but she was pissed because i did not go see a doctor...i was thinking "oh well im tough, i have been through this before..pfff"
as i lay on my bed twisting in back pains and moaning from my fever my host mom starts to pray in tounge at 100% volume.....this did not help how i was feeling. i tried having my arms and hissing "shhhh" but it got nowhere...this was something striaght out of a horror movie...i wish i would have recorded this.....anyway the prayer last for 20minutes before she left and i passed out at 6pm.
the rest of the night contained fucked up dreams of white and red noise that appeared as paint splatter against tile. i dont know how i know this in detail but i do. this was a constant dream that last until 8am the next day.
Monday
I wake up at 8am.No fever. Still weak.But no fever.I take another round of the malaria meds and get ready for work. No way am I going to miss even more work.I get dressed and manage to eat some rice that my host mom prepared but i had no appetite (this was the first thing i ate since that veggy burger on sunday morning).
Thankfully i am not as fucked up as i was and getting to the highway to catch a minibus to work was relatively easy.As i get to the office i find no one else has yet to arrive which gave me time to clean the place up a bit and read some wikipedia pages that i downloaded on saturday (did you know the renaissance started in florance?? ok, you took art history you probably did......)
My co workers arrive and i am stoked to work...but they are not....my host mom called them (she is good friends with my boss) and informed them on how sick i was.We had a informal meeting to discuss the events of the week (it is a killer week, the guys from freshpikt are here to explain the contract change to the farmers face to face so i was pretty pissed to miss that)Then I got sent home....fucking bummer.
It was probably the best idea because i got home i feel right back asleep although that did not last too long. I woke up shortly after with strong stomach pains that fluctuated throughout the entire day. This is when I started to call people to ask about clinics and hospitals....i know malaria does not cause stomach pains.....
After finding out a reliable clinic from my friend Marrisa (shes the co founder of the NGO who is building a school 3 hours from here....im glad she had reception then because its been about a month since i last spoke to her and was the last person i could contact that knew anything about international clinics in kitwe) my host mom and i took a taxi to the clinic. Arriving to the clinic i was put through the regular buisness (i supose anyway...also found out my weight...204lbs hahaha im going to be less than 200 by the time i get back) and the then the doctor visited me.
We chit chatted for a bit then he pushed around some areas of my stomach to find the pain he determined it was in my bowels and it was probably a bowel infection and not malaria. soo...taking that malaria medication....bad idea....should have gone to a doctor first....he gives me some details on the drugs and anti biotics i will be taking and then sends me off.
I get set up in a room with bbc worldnews and a IV in my hand.... i swear to god i never want to have another one of those again it was the most uncomfortable experiences in my life....i cant get over the idea of a tube in my hand.
For some reason I feel as if I am not myself when I am writting this. I feel incredibly down right now. Maybe its just the situation i am in......all this time apart is really getting to me. Everyday i miss you more and more. Right now my chest hurts when i think of you. fuck. im down. i just want to come home.
anyway i must continue.
well you know what. that was about it. the rest of the time there was me sitting in a bed. falling in and out of sleep until the anti biotics did their magic and i got better.
i am now at home, another day off. it is wenesday morning as i write this. i hope to go back to work tomrorow. still a little weak, thinner than before thanks to no real food intake since sunday. i hope today will be different. i have a had full of pills to take for the next five days.
but yea.
thats it.
i feel like i ended poorly but maybe thats just the way it goes.
i cant seem to concentrate.
i cant remember what i could have ate that made me sick.i think this is just my body reacting to not being around you for so long. i am starting to fall apart.
forgive the grammar, swearing....i want to convey actually how i feel.
Let me give you a run down of the past couple days:
Sunday
Travelled to Ndola to meet up with patrick.
I packed up and travelled to visit patrick because he was coming off a malaria run and i wanted to make sure he was doing better. As i caught a shared taxi i was feeling pretty weak but i accounted that towards not eating yet. As the taxi arrived into Ndola (about 35min later) I was feeling pretty dizzy but i managed to meet patrick and we traveled to Bani's pizza at 9am to get veggy burgers which ended up being alright but after i finished mine i was feeling like shitttttttttttt.
We caught a taxi back to his place, before arriving there we stoped at a chemist (pharmacy) and got some malaria treatment because my symptoms were rather similar to those i had a few weeks prior ( i use this word and i think...what the fuck made me say prior...anyway...i feel like some dude with his head up his ass....im going to keep it for fun...but i dont mean it). We get back to his pad and I take some of the drugs thinking that it would be a great idea to combat whatever i had...why not i thought...my symptoms were: chills, fever, pains, weak, dizzy.....ok i did not have chills or fever before but they are classic malaria symptoms. after i take the drugs i pass out for 5 hours. what a great day...
as i wake up i checked my temperature again....38.8...pretty fucking hot....and not the kate middleton kind....
patrick calls me a cab to get back to the bus terminal where i planned to catch a ride back to kitwe. the cab arrives and i can barely talk, im delirious, not making any sense to the cabby he stops talking to me after a few minutes.
we get to the terminal. i pay the guy and i start to walk around this crowded bus terminal which has about 100 mini buses and 300 people yelling different town names which is their way of advertizing their bus direction. i was not in a great mood. i find some guy who is rounding up people for kitwe and i hop on with a burning fever and the perception of a spinning world.
taxis take about 30-40 to get from kitwe to ndola and vice versabusses take about 1-2 hours.
i dont know how long it took because i kept slipping in and out of conciouness (ok, just sleep but i am going to be even more dramatic hahaha). i feel bad for the woman beside me because i looked like i was going to die, i kept moaning, slurring non sense and drooling during my sleep. i have to emphasize how close we are to each other, there is 35 people in a bus that would sit normaly 15 in canada. it is tight.
we arrive just outside of town here my compound is, wuzakili meseshi, and i get dropped off on the opposite side of the highway and about 600m from my house.
challenge number 1)
cross the highway.....usually pretty easy, just wait for a break in traffic then boot it.....delirious (not the eddie murphy kind) and feverish did not help me.(..........oh i forgot to mention this whole time about the diareah....but i took imodium for that so it did not really slow me down but it comes in play later on....) after about two failed attempts to make for a break in the traffic i get through to the other side...easy part was done....
if the remedy i needed was one of diesel and dust i would have been fine....this highway is full of black smoke and dust that makes the air look red. my lungs will never be the same.
challenge number 2)
making it from the highway to my house.usually i can get past the "hecklers" (people who yell things to me in bemba that i have no understanding, they could be nice things or not so nice things....at first i thought it was alright but now its the same people everyday who just keep yelling....i figure a 6 weeks of niceness is good enough....if you want to keep yelling at me after that long i am just going to stop responding...am i being a jerk?) with ease with simple bemba greetings while the drunks i just brush off with a hello. in the state i am in....not so easy.
of course there were the yellers and the nice people too (thankfully) but all i was capable of doing was some sort of a moaning and a hand wave as a slowly staggered towards my house. this walk takes about 4 minutes usually, this time...more than 10...i know what i feels like to be a zombie...i could easily play one as an extra in a movie sometime.
finally making it back to my house i stumble through the gate. greeted by my host mother i mutter, " i have malaria again...." and hop into the house and fall to my bed. i told her i took some malaria medication but she was pissed because i did not go see a doctor...i was thinking "oh well im tough, i have been through this before..pfff"
as i lay on my bed twisting in back pains and moaning from my fever my host mom starts to pray in tounge at 100% volume.....this did not help how i was feeling. i tried having my arms and hissing "shhhh" but it got nowhere...this was something striaght out of a horror movie...i wish i would have recorded this.....anyway the prayer last for 20minutes before she left and i passed out at 6pm.
the rest of the night contained fucked up dreams of white and red noise that appeared as paint splatter against tile. i dont know how i know this in detail but i do. this was a constant dream that last until 8am the next day.
Monday
I wake up at 8am.No fever. Still weak.But no fever.I take another round of the malaria meds and get ready for work. No way am I going to miss even more work.I get dressed and manage to eat some rice that my host mom prepared but i had no appetite (this was the first thing i ate since that veggy burger on sunday morning).
Thankfully i am not as fucked up as i was and getting to the highway to catch a minibus to work was relatively easy.As i get to the office i find no one else has yet to arrive which gave me time to clean the place up a bit and read some wikipedia pages that i downloaded on saturday (did you know the renaissance started in florance?? ok, you took art history you probably did......)
My co workers arrive and i am stoked to work...but they are not....my host mom called them (she is good friends with my boss) and informed them on how sick i was.We had a informal meeting to discuss the events of the week (it is a killer week, the guys from freshpikt are here to explain the contract change to the farmers face to face so i was pretty pissed to miss that)Then I got sent home....fucking bummer.
It was probably the best idea because i got home i feel right back asleep although that did not last too long. I woke up shortly after with strong stomach pains that fluctuated throughout the entire day. This is when I started to call people to ask about clinics and hospitals....i know malaria does not cause stomach pains.....
After finding out a reliable clinic from my friend Marrisa (shes the co founder of the NGO who is building a school 3 hours from here....im glad she had reception then because its been about a month since i last spoke to her and was the last person i could contact that knew anything about international clinics in kitwe) my host mom and i took a taxi to the clinic. Arriving to the clinic i was put through the regular buisness (i supose anyway...also found out my weight...204lbs hahaha im going to be less than 200 by the time i get back) and the then the doctor visited me.
We chit chatted for a bit then he pushed around some areas of my stomach to find the pain he determined it was in my bowels and it was probably a bowel infection and not malaria. soo...taking that malaria medication....bad idea....should have gone to a doctor first....he gives me some details on the drugs and anti biotics i will be taking and then sends me off.
I get set up in a room with bbc worldnews and a IV in my hand.... i swear to god i never want to have another one of those again it was the most uncomfortable experiences in my life....i cant get over the idea of a tube in my hand.
For some reason I feel as if I am not myself when I am writting this. I feel incredibly down right now. Maybe its just the situation i am in......all this time apart is really getting to me. Everyday i miss you more and more. Right now my chest hurts when i think of you. fuck. im down. i just want to come home.
anyway i must continue.
well you know what. that was about it. the rest of the time there was me sitting in a bed. falling in and out of sleep until the anti biotics did their magic and i got better.
i am now at home, another day off. it is wenesday morning as i write this. i hope to go back to work tomrorow. still a little weak, thinner than before thanks to no real food intake since sunday. i hope today will be different. i have a had full of pills to take for the next five days.
but yea.
thats it.
i feel like i ended poorly but maybe thats just the way it goes.
i cant seem to concentrate.
i cant remember what i could have ate that made me sick.i think this is just my body reacting to not being around you for so long. i am starting to fall apart.
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