Oh? The Sunshine!

Time In Agriculture

2009-08-11T23:45:00.000-07:00

So I have been wrapped in chains with work and have had no time to reflect and make any blog posts for a while. This is my last week and I am doing two more rounds of presentations. The topics include: Personal Development - What it means to me, Goal Setting - How it can benifit you at work and within yourself and Agriculture Value Chains - A Big Picture Session.

I am scrambling around writting reports, having meetings with the MDGs and being on tv. It has been wild. I have so many stories to tell.

I have included something I wrote a while back that I never really polished up. Maybe you can forgive me anway.

Cheers,

Tony

agriculture in zambia: a perspective on rural farming in the copperbelt area

From what I have seen farming generally works this way: you grow maize (corn) and if you don't you are a sucker.

Everybody in Zambia grows maize because it is the thing to do, it would be as if you did not breathe in Canada. If you don't grow maize there is something wrong going on or you are crazy. Because maize is the main ingredient in the staple food, Nshima, there is a ever lasting high demand for it.

You will get money when you grow maize, this is garunteed. The question is how much and this all depends on the goverment. Since 11 million people live off maize (they eat Nshima here eat least once a day....most eat it twice...some 3 times) the government has stepped in to regulate the price of maize so it is fair for both sides. They do this by setting a price for the maize for which is must be sold at, the intention is that farmers get a good price to balance out the cost and makes enough money for the rest of the year....in a perfect situation the farmer would grow only maize and live off the profit for the rest of the year...but the system dosen't work that way....but should it really....i don't know.

The governemnt sets the price of the maize through an advisor/representative of the farmers across Zambia. How this person is elected I don't know, I have been unable to find out but it seems that this is a very important position and it would be necessary to chose one who is for the farmers....no? Well from what I understand, this is not really the case. The person currently in charge of advising on the price is not a farmer but a middleman who buys maize in order to process it. This person is part of the national milling industry who buys from thousands of farmers to process the maize into a product which is then bought by the pubic (and funny enough farmers themselves).

Why does this bother me?

Well I see it as a conflict of interest. This person represents the biggest buyer of maize in the country, why would he or she fight for higher prices for the farmers? In the profit scheme of things a buyer always wants to get the LOWEST price in order to maximize profit thus regardless of any promised good intentions there is always the doubt that this person has his/her hand in boths pots.

Right now farmers get K65,000 per 25kg (15$ canadian per bag) but is this a fair price for the farmers. Most say it is not, they wish for something above K70,000.
So what do you do when you don't get enough money from your stapple crop....
Grow other products!

This is were IDE comes in.

Maize is grown only in the rainny season (Nov-April) because of the large farmering areas used and the high water requirements for production, it is not impossible to grow during the dry season but because of the high water content you would need to be irrigating so offten it not be profitable.

Thus during the dry season farmers grow a variety (kinda...) of vegetables in order to make extra cash and food for their famalies. They typically grow cabbage, tomatoes, rape and onion...but there are many who grow bananas and oranges but you need lots of water and some sort of advanced irrigation technology (Zambian level) for those.

Right now most farmers are growing vegetables during the dry season as it has become a necessity in order to survive. From what I have experienced the farmers do it for extra money and for food (substinance), most do it for substinance. IDE (and the government from what I understand) is promoting the idea of farming as a buisness, thus catering to growing to make cash and not just to eat. This requires that farmers understand the bigger picture of farming in Zambia, especially at the marketing level.

When treating farming as a buisness, the idea of just growing cabbage, tomatoes, rape and so on needs to be changed because if everyone grew the same thing the market would be flooded and there would be low prices all around (imagine the supply and demand curves....high supply leads to low demand...leads to low price...need to find equilibrium....how?).

(Rural) Farmers usually sell to their nearest market as it is close. These people don't have trucks to carry their good so they transport them by foot (can you imagine carrying 50kgs of cabbage for 25km...they do it) or by bicycle...they do that too. Farmers usually opt to sell their products at a lower price because other markets are too far and the investment in a renting a truck is worrysome (sketchy driver, scared to get the same low price at another market...).

Transport is expensive because the roads suck. Straight up. If there were roads like the ones in back country canada here, things would be SOOOOO different...but there is not. The roads make things slow, they destroy trucks quickly and they make some places inaccessible because of the size and shape of the road.

There is a development theory which states the idea that if they just built roads in rural areas/countries development would solve itself....being here really makes me think about that...i really wonder about it sometimes...

Back to growing for a moment.

Since during the dry season it does not rain (not once from May-Oct) there needs to be a way to water your garden/farm. Most people do this by bucket (can you imagine watering one or two hectars with a plastic bucket...you also need to fill it up....you are walking back and forth alot...for a long time) which is exhausting and time consuming. This is the reason irrigation equipment is so great because vit reduces the back breaking labour of extracting and mobilizing the water throughout the farm, it also gives you time to relax and umm.....farm more? hahaha...free time here is still wierd to me...maybe they goto church more...I don't know....once irrigation is settled maybe we can start building libraries in rural areas to take up the time of farmers who don't have much else to do. wow, wouldn't that be great?!!? build libraries for rural people, start inpiring learning by reading....this is another conversation..

I am sure my thoughts have changed but this is my perspective at the end of June.

The mighty Photo Catch up

2009-07-30T22:48:00.000-07:00

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 sunset

Crazy Times: How I Hate The Internet Here

2009-07-30T03:52:00.000-07:00

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.

photos.

2009-07-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

Photo of the day

2009-07-21T05:23:00.001-07:00

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.

2009-07-21T05:15:00.000-07:00

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

The Ramblings from a long day

2009-07-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

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.

la fotografía del día

2009-07-16T23:25:00.000-07:00

kitwe, goodmorning

le photographe du journee. oui oui.

2009-07-15T07:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

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.

To Rome: I Thank You

2009-07-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

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.

thoughts on watching a chicken die...

2009-07-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Photos of The Day: Extra Special Edition from South Downs

2009-07-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

Kids at play

Plays at Kid

23km of hell to go through

The bike that could

I 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.

POTD

2009-07-10T01:09:00.001-07:00

your move

2009-07-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

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").

Photo of the DAY!

2009-07-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Kalaba (far top left) and her family

Photo Of the Dayz

2009-07-08T01:22:00.000-07:00

just walking away

PHOTO OF THE DAY

2009-07-08T01:16:00.000-07:00

The tire that almost made us not us

Benefits of Irrigation for Rural Farming

2009-07-08T01:10:00.000-07:00

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

PHOTO OF THE DAYYYY

2009-07-06T01:19:00.000-07:00

Banda. The Manda.

(in grey, in the middle, the presdient of Zambia)

OphoT fO Het Dya

2009-07-06T01:13:00.000-07:00

waiting for the panda. mr banda.

Photo of the Days

2009-07-06T01:05:00.000-07:00

night time high way criss cross

Photo of the DAYs

2009-07-03T04:47:00.001-07:00

something deep

Photo of the DAYYY: DOS

2009-07-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

swing me right round, baby, right round.....

Malaria - hooha...good god...what is it good for...absolutely nothing...say it again

2009-07-02T05:52:00.000-07:00

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

Picture of the DAYs

2009-07-01T03:09:00.001-07:00

I am going to try and keep with this as much as possible.

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.

2009-07-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

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.

Satan's Lair

2009-06-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

So I have been struggling to write this blog post.I can't seem to put everything together. There has been so much that has happened in the last two weeks or so.I feel more motivated right now about work, I have a better understanding of what I am doing but why do I feel this way?

I guess I should look back at what I have been doing in the last few weeks
-Struggles with work ----- lack of understanding of what my job is, how do I fit in
-Village stay ----- I lived with a family in a rural village called South Downs where I get to see first hand what small holder farming life is like (what an experience, I wish I could live there for a long time)
-The Malawian retreat adventure spectacular!!!
-The return to work

Ah. Before I start I just want to say thanks to Mike, Rose, Andrew and Matthew for the birthday wishes and card. I just got it the other day when I returned from Malawi. It was really great!

So I have explained my struggles with work before but I will remunerate them quickly for those who are just getting caught up here:
-overwhelmed with expectations. my co-workers could not stress enough how high their expectations were for me, although they never did explain they. the expectations were just high. have you ever experienced this?
-felt as if I was filling in gaps instead of capacity building (gap filling is doing work for others here whereas capacity building is assessing looking for challenges my co workers face and help them develop skills so they can solve the problem on their own......although sometimes...as in my office....a challenge is not having enough time or too much work, thus gap filling is capacity building time.....solution: time machine or somehow give everyone powers like the Flash....but then they could abuse it....fuck im rambling. need to stop swearing too..)(...would I abuse the powers of the Flash if I had them...depends on my morals I suppose....r-a-m-b-l-I-n-g)
-although I understood the Rural Prosperity Initiative from a project standpoint I was having a hard time understanding the long term effects (and short term ones also).

I left the office on June 9th to stay in South Downs until June 13th were I there returned to Kitwe for a day to wash my clothes, eat some greasy food and mars bars and pack to leave for a nearby town of Ndola. I was visiting our satellite office there to get a better understand of how big our area is and the challenges Mwakoi faces (the field officer there).

While I was in Ndola I stay with my fellow JF and good friend Patrick from U of Calgary, he is working with biosand filters which are being promoted by an NGO called Seeds of Hope International Programs....SHIP (he is a follower of mine, you should check out his blog....it is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy better than this one).

Working with Mwakoi gave me the chance to see how marketing of farming products goes down, I never got to see this before. I had this giant image in my head that you need a suit and a speech prepared...nope. We walked into a bunch of hotels, asked the the purchasing manager, showed him/her the beans, the exec chef came in, smelt them, asked for a sample, asked for a price and then said they would call us back. Pretty easy, I feel as if I could do it now.
The main reason we were doing this was because the agreement that was arranged with Freshpikt (remember the beans, low prices being given after a higher price was contracted) was fucked to shit (agin with the swearing anthony....) so IDE is side selling the beans to hotels, government institutions (hospitals, universitys, schools) in order to get the price of 1 USD (K5000) instead of 0.73 USD. So far, so good. All the places were down with the price of K5000. Horrah! More money for rural farmers! Now we just have to wait if they want to buy the beans and if so, how many kilos are we walking about here (hopefully a billion kilos which = $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$)

This was a great experience to see how an NGO can really help out the farmers but the plan is not to always be doing this. Our program is for 3-4 years, we wont be here forever. What happens when we are gone....it is important not to do the work but to facilitate relationships between the farmers and buyers themselves. I see this being a major struggle right now but hopefully next year when/if they grow beans they can go sell them without us.
A major component of this is to help farmers identify new markets that they can sell to. There are many hospitals, restaurants, schools that are willing to buy fresh produce but there is no connection between the buyer and seller. This is were we come in, think of us like a matchmaker. We dont want to be the person that carries the lover letter to the cute boy/girl across the room, we just want to be the person who whispers into your ear who has a crush on you...then its up to you what you do.

I guess that leads into sometime very interesting we talked about at retreat during the IDE meetings which is IDE's development philosophy : When farmers are given the right information needed (whether it be for agriculture techniques, marketing information, gender equality...etc) they will use the information to maximise their benefit (it is not worded exactly like this I just made it a little more clearer here..I hope I did anyway). This goes back to the person telling you someone in your class has a crush on you...just because you know, that does not mean you are going to do it (ok ok ok... I know this is really different, you get not income benefits from dating someone...or do you?? how rich are they?...anyway..."benefits" aside...im rambling damn it). How do you teach others to make the right decision for themselves. What do you think about this? I would love to hear some feedback. I have yet to come up with an answer but it has been plaguing me for a few days now.

Since I am talking about retreat now, I guess I should keep doing so. No?

Retreat was set in Senga Bay, Malawi (check it out on Google Maps, it is the most beautiful place I have ever been too. I will post pictures soon as I stop feeling bad for spending so much time there while my position should be about development work and not stunning beauty..anyway...rambling) where all 13 JF and about 7 long term volunteers got together to talk about:

-challenges that each of us are facing-our impact plans-development talk-getting caught up with EWB news and values-communication strategies
(haha. one of my talks in the challenges was about how I write my blog. I am never happy with it, I tend to ramble and put too much info. i said I would try and stop....well look at this post...shit)
I won't really get into the EWB news and values or challenges since I have talked about it a lot (work wise anyway...maybe I will talk about personal challenges...if thats what I could call them...). I have already talked about IDE's development theory, so we'll see where that goes. I feel lost here, hold on. My thoughts are fading.

Ok.Back on track.

Personal challenges.

One of the things I have been struggling a lot with but I have never vocalised it (keyboarded it) was my lack of satisfaction with the way I am communicating with experience with others and my self reflection. I have been having a hard time pulling myself from the moment of any situation and looking back on what is going on in the bigger picture. I feel like a tourist all the time, maybe that feeling won't go away but it is a shitty feeling. I am trying to to my best at integrating with people and work but I can't stop feeling like an outsider. Maybe this is a common feeling, I should ask around. I as if when I talk about my experience it is about what I am doing and not really what I am feeling during that time. This is the reason I have yet to talk about my village stay, I do not know how to convey it to everyone. I don't know how I feel.
I had some good ideas given to me on how I can convey my experiences in a different way. I will be trying them out over time to see what happens. Maybe you will notice, maybe you wont.
Our impact planning sessions were designed to help us set course in order to maximise our impact in 5 areas:

-project-office-personal-community-chapter/in Canada

Some of these are easy than others. Some are very difficult. Some just won't happen ( I keep telling myself not to talk like this but it's not work...or maybe it just takes time)
My two biggest focuses will be (and have been) my office and chapter/Canada. This blog is for Canada, I have also been planning some interesting learning sessions for members of UoG as well as some ideas for explaining the challenges rural farmers face everyday. As for my office I was given some great guidance and realisation about how I was going at things in the wrong way and I feel as if things are back on track (although I now have about 10X more work to do...but I love it, I just wish I could do it with you).

Other than those sessions we had a lot of fun. The place had a bar tab than you could run for your whole stay....I had the biggest bill...anyway..it was good to get together with people and celebrate. The experience made me realise how I get alot of reflection done by talking out my problems and solving them through conversation. I need to human wall to bounce ideas back and fourth (maybe I am just used to this because of all the group work we do in design classes at UoG and the working partnership I have developed with a rather excellent friend).

I will post pictures soon. I need to.This place is fantastic.

So how am I doing now that I am back?

Well I feel really pushed because I have some awesome objectives that are pretty fucking tangible (not just...oh hey do some capacity building...well they still are that...maybe I just understand better how to approach the situation) and I have an awesome drive to get work done now that I know what this program is all about (I am sorry I have not elaborated on this yet....ah South Downs...how you changed me in such a great way...maybe not a change but defiantly an appreciation for hard work and rural farming...).

I have tons of work to get done but I guess that means time will get by faster and we can be rocking and rolling the dance floor again.

This coming week is going to be hectic but a whole lotta fun.-Going to the field on Monday with some people from Freshpikt (the bean dudes) so that they can explain to the farmers why they changed the price on them-Tues and Wens are office days to work on a proposal for our final report/tool that we need to develop ( I will explain more about it once I get feedback)-Thursday traveling to Ndola to visit some farmers and talk to my co worker about personal development and capacity building (I will also be doing this here in Kitwe but I don't know when yet...this week sometime...I just need to get times from them)

Well.This has been a book.

I am sure there are blank spots.Ask me some questions and I will do better at responding to them.

Much love to you all.

Tony

Oh the things I miss

2009-06-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

things i miss:

-having not to worry if this water i am drinking is going to make me sick.
-crunchy, fresh vegetables-walking around late at night without worrying about the people around me. i hate being howled at once the sun is down.
-cheerios and milk-"clean" air. walking down the highway to work or being on a motorbike as a giant bus passes by and pours 5 gallons of black smoke down your throat is about 5 packs of cigarettes, i have the math....i can prove it (no i cant)-never having to worry about power fluctuations-lack of swimming...i miss this huge
-you

things i love or that have slowly grown on me:

-african time. i hate it and love it. i tend be to rather punctual person (maranger...shut up....5 minutes is still all i need) but when i have to be somewhere i can usually show up 30min late only to find the other party is not there yet. everyone is zambia loves the idea of african/zambian time
-the "public" transport system here is off the hook. people own these busses that run everywhere as long as the sun is shinning. all you have to do is stick your hand out and get picked up. i will take a video and post it on here when i return to canada.
-bani's (fucking) pizza. patrick and I will be posting more on this in the future.
-the heat

just a shout out to any one doing research or reading lots of papers in PDF format. If you find anything interesting (anything at all) I would love to read it. I have decided to come to the office everyday (even weekends) as it is easy toget work done here and I tend to take breaks to read. So I would love to read anything that you think is rock and roll.

I have also discovered a great way of learning new things without the use of the internet (well I still use the net but I dont have it at work). I hit up random things on wikipedia (world war 2, roman empire, michael jackson...) and download the page to my key. It is an awesome way to keep up with new learning.

Somethings I have been interested in from the books I have been reading:
-Game Theory
-Philosopher Karl Popper
-Programs in Planning and Policy-
Levithan

oh.i also got invited to a wedding on july 4th.
INDEPENDANCE WEDDING WITH WILL SMITH!!!haha. but seriously.wedding time. alright.
I guess this was more about me and less about my placement.

Cheers,
Tony

sad day

2009-06-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

hey everone.
i just got back from malawi two days ago. still trying to process everything that went through me - village stay, massive traveling, jf retreat. expect a solid post soon.

i just found out michael jackson is dead.
i wish i had a copy of thriller to console me right now.

i will miss you mj.
we all will.

overdue photo update. time works backwards here, you go from bottom to top. yeyeey

2009-06-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

Sunset at the end of a long day in Ndola, our motorcycle broke right before this thankfully my co-worker fixed it with copper wire...ahh Zambia.

Some local fisherwomen

The spoils of a long afternoon fishing

Catching up with some local fisherwomen in Ndola

Down by the dam in Ndola

There be crocodiles in these waters

Maize farm outside of Ndola, right now its not maize season thus the reason why things look so barren.

Pineapple farmer explaining to me how he sells these puppies when they are ready. There is a farmer down the road who acts as a middle man with a South African company. This man pays the farmer K5000 for each pineapple (about 1USD).

Wait wait wait....pineapples don't grow on trees...

My village host family, our final dinner together. We had quite the feast, both John and his brother got their wives to prepare supper without telling one another so when it came time to eat they were surprised to find this out. Luckily we combined both meals into one and feasted (yet this was not as easy not well received as it sounds).

John and I being escorted through the field by a local farmer

The soon to be married couple showing us their rape and cabbage farm.

Rape and Cabbage galore. You eat and grow and sell this stuff until you have nothing else to do. There are benefits to this, people will buy it but at the same time because everyone grows this you get a pretty low price for it considering all the work that goes into it. This is why diversification is really important.

Soon to be married. House is already built, they are just waiting to tie the knot in August so they can share it together.

Puppies. What else can I really say.

Ah the wild fields of rape. Picking this is a chore, you tear the leaves off the vine then bunch a handful togther (this is about 15 plants of so of leaves). The amount you see here would take about 6 hours alone and would fetch less than K150000 (30USD).

This building has a story. In the 1950's before Zambia was Zambia it was called Northern Rhoedisia which was under British rule. There was a doctor who owned the farm which this building is apart of, when he retired he was allowed to capture those who aimlessly wander the bush and brought them here. He would feed them and take care of them while at the same time he was extracting their blood to export. This ended quickly when Independance came into play, the Zambian goverment did not renew his buisness permit.

The son of a farmer who takes care of the cattle. These cattle were given to dozens of farmers in South Downs by IFA (I don't know what it stands for). The agreement was that the farmers would rasie the cattle and then sell them to the market after a few years. Once sold they were allowed to keep the profit and the only thing they were required do in return is to pay 10% of the initial value of the baby calves (about K250000, 50$ USD).

Walking through the feilds with John. Showing me the ropes.

When you don't got irrigation equipment such as treddle pumps or rope and washer you gotta use a bucket. Ya, tons of work.

Farmer using a watering cane to feed all the rape. So much rape it is wild.

Walking by a nursary of green peppers.

Nursaries gallor. Everything from green peppers to onions. Diversification baby!

A rural farmer and his family in South Downs.

The finished product of rat. Oh wow tasty it was....
That is Shima on the left, one eats that with every meal here. Your day has not happend if you have not consumed mass amounts of this food.

Oh it's me. On top of the watch tower. How lovely.

View of the main road in South Downs, this is were all the magic happens. This is the site of the currently shut down clinic. It shut down due to the only nurse working being scared off by witch craft. From what I am told it is a serious problem here.

Meeting grounds for many meetings including IDE and ministry of Agriculture ones. The one being held this day was about the new Fertilizer Support Program which allocates subsidized fertilizer to farmers. The agenda for the meeting was the facilitation of a community lead board to oversee the distribution for South Downs.

WINDMILL!!

View of the South Downs/Zambian landspace from atop the watchtower. I should have taken a photo of the tower.

Jesus.

Cleaning the rat after cutting it up.

Rat getting ready for some cutting up.

Skinning the old rat. Who needs fur anyways.

John's son Effrem.

Close up of lunch. I couldn't wait. Yes I could have.

John is such a nice guy, be bought a special lunch for me.

Harvesting rape. This was about 2.5 hours of work with 6 people. We got 89 bundles which is about k120000 ($25 USD).

This is the waterline that runs up to the storage tank at Felix's farm. He uses it to water his garden thanks to gravity.

Diesel pump. It is used to pump surface water up to a storage tank. This storage tank powers a drip irrigation system to save time and effort on the farm.

Zambian floodplain.

Felix's wife (I forget her name). She is a great rolemodel for the community, she knows how to diversify and understand the aspects of risk and planning of new crops for markets. There is a lot to be learned from her.

Oh so much rape. It never ends.

I takes 4 guys to water a banatree.

So these guys sit around all day and watch the pool fill up. When they saw that I had a camera that got really excited, photos like this make me smile.

The person who owns this farm has invested a lot of money into. He has about 4 hectars of banana trees, 1 hectar of oranges plus tons of mangos. He has a pumping system that uses a giant diesel generator to pump water from 3 boreholes into this pool. The water is then used to a drip irrigation system for the bananas.

I never got this mans name but he sure loved being shirtless and green bananas.

Two of the workers at a banada plantation near South Downs. John took me here to see a really different farm that was not a rural one.

This man brought me up a hill to see all the banana trees. Had this strange feeling the whole time I was there that this place did not fit well with everyone else in South Downs. I later learned that the person who owned this place was a wealthy guy in town who hires these men to take care of the place during the week.

Bananas!!!!

Some clouds and baby banana trees on our way to a plantation with John.

Some of John's kids. This was the first time they really came close to me. People in the village, especially children were scared of me for the first few days. By the end most shook my hand...some hesitantly.

John and Ester's family. They took care of me for a week. I learned so much about rural life from them.

Kids! I wish I recalled all their names. There was not much interaction between me and these kids as they did not know english and were hella scared of me. Regardless, they were lovely.

You could see the moon until 10am.

Ngossa stealing my hat.

I use Paul as a way to work out.

I don't know why I put this. But it is for you.

These kids really keep me grounded here. Ngossa is the bomb. She wants to be a nurse.

She has way better hair than me.

My house in Kitwe. The township is called Wuzakeli Meseshi

Ngossa

Estella and Ngossa

Rope and Washer Pump fun time.

Aggie (my boss at IDE) giving some detailed instructions on how to use the pump.

This is a rope and washer pump. It works with well..rope and washers. They run through a tube and capture water between each section of washers and carry it up, once above it throws it out the tube. This pump works really well because it can get water as deep as 50m and it really easy to use.

Instalation of a pump.

Festus explaining the differences in pumps and how each one works.

Tubes going down the borehole!

There is a crowd. Energy is in the air at this irrigation training session.

This lady recived a river pump show she can use it on her farm to demonstrate to others how effective it can be. She was chosen because she has strong leadership skills, she is a single mother and a great farmer.

Treddle pumping action!

Priming the pump

Riding in the back of a truck on the highway with all the irrigation equipment.

Irrigation training and showing off the treddle pump. Can you see all the cabbage. This pump is hooked up to a river but it can also used in a borehole as we will see above.

Oh the cabbage. Everyone grows cabbage here. It is rather delicious when fried in a pan with oil.

ah ha! the long await. new post. but there will be delay.

2009-06-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Back!In a flash.
BOOM!
ok.
So it has been a few days since I last posted anything. I have gotten a little sloppy, I am sorry.
Let me up date what has happended to me in the last week.
-got malaria-did not eat for about 5 days-realized i am getting super duper skinny-got better-went back to work on Thursday and Friday we had awesome irrigation training sessions-learned a whole lot about irrigation and have planned an awesome activity about irrigation for back in canada with the chapter-weekend hit, life slowed down again. started to realize how lonely life is here-church again on sunday, starting to get used to the things that go on there. feel little bit better about it.
So the last few days I have been hurting to have real connections or conversations here. I feel very lonely at times and although my family and kate talk on a somewhat regular basis I can't help but feel alone due to the lack of human interactions. It gets hard at times when you don't really have serious conversations because of language barries, lack of understanding, intimidation (thus leading to people not really talking to you but just answering your questions, I feel as if I am interrogating people 80% of the time when I really just want to talk) or some people just make friendships in order to get your money then stop talking to you (this has happened twice, its a bummer. people have befriended me only to end up asking for money which i do out of sympathy. then our friendship suddenly stops, no calls, no more hangouts, i feel pretty pissed. i will not be lending out anymore money, fuck that).
Anyway thats my biggest shock right now.
Other than lack of interactions with friends here (I have good connections with others, mom/dad/julia, madavine, katy, sk8..thank you all for keeping me company when i really need you. it helps alot) things are going well. I am starting to get a better understanding of work. I spoke with my boss about the problems I was having with work which then lead to a awesome discussion about marketing where I get some really good details on what I can be working on. This has lead me to look into working with the buyer's side of marketing and creating a stronger relationship with a giant farm here called Stravendale.
Stravendale acts like a middle man who buys produce from rural farmers and then re sells it to large markets. This farm is really great because they WANT to help small scale farmers by doing all sorts of great things for them such as free transportation, training and input for exotic produce (here lettuce is exotic) and very good prices. Stravendale does not impose any restrictions on them (they even pay when they get the produce, unlike most other large middlemen who pay 14 days later) but the only thing they ask for large quantites so that it makes it worth doing all these things for them. This is were the struggle is coming in because farmers have not been able to produce exactly what Stravendale needs. But this is not a dead end, there are options such as group bulking, where many farmers get together that have grown the same crop and sell it together to the farmer. All they have to do it coordinate they grow scheduales (is it that easy? we will see).
I have learned all this only from my boss and their previous experience with the farm. I am going to meet with the ministry of agriculture and the farm in the coming weeks to get a better understanding of their side of the story (and then hopefully speak to the farmers who participated before but where unsuccessful in the eyes of Stravendale to get their side too). I hope in the next months that I will be able to forge a better connection and get some farmers hooked up with these guys again.
But today is a big day too! I am leaving for a village stay and shall not return until Sunday or so. I will be in a place called South Downs where I will experience the cabbage harvest! I have no clue what to expect and I am kinda nervous but hell, why not, this is what this whole summer is all about. Getting nervous and seeing/doing new things.
I will post again soon my friends. Along with many overdue and far dates photos.Promise.
Love you all,
Take care.
Tony.
(i couldnt have gotten this far without you)

sum of a few weeks.

2009-06-02T06:06:00.000-07:00

so I am here in bed getting rest because I understand that this is the best remedy for malaria. well I better make good use of it, so get ready for a long blog post.
so I have been working for about a week know with IDE here in Kitwe. So far it has been a blast, I have meet some incredible farmers who have done really well for themselves thanks to IDE and their own hard work. Examples of this are Mr. Chunda (who you can see pulling water from a well using a yellow bucket in the photos below) who has lived at the farm for more than 19 years. He moved to this farm in 1990 when he quit his job as a mechanic in town. Along with his wife and kids ( I don't know how many had then but he has 15 with the same from wife spanning from 1983 to 2006....what a woman) they moved to this farm to grow maize and live a different life. Since he has moved he has suffered a day and has always been fortunate to have enough food for his family and enough money to send his kids through school (he is doing pretty well right now, the photo with him and 6 kids along with a lady in white was taken in the school house he build. The lady is a teacher who visits to teach the children everyday). Mr. Chunda has been involved with IDE since they started in Kitwe about 10 months ago, he has taken part in the sugar beans project which worked really well since sugar beans can be planted along side maize without any additional inputs or stresses. Harvest for these beans was about a month ago and all the beans should be sent out to the buyer in the next few weeks. Mr. Chunda figures that he will be able to buy a treadle pump (imagine a treadle-mill that pumped water as you exercised) that will be able to bring up that water from the well (goodbye yellow bucket!!!) thus giving him more time to do other things around the farm (I can already see the 16th child on the way...). Next year he plans to do the sugar bean project again and maybe he will gain enough profit to buy a drip irrigation system (think of the hoses we use around our houses that have holes in them and they mist out water, there is your drip irrigation system!!).
But let me tell you, this sugar bean project is not all awesome. There have been some struggles.First off, price negotiations have been hell. The farmers were promises a price back when they got the seeds from the distributor (which was pretty dumb, I don't see how you can promise a price for a product in a market 9 months from now...bad business...) but now that the market has changed (cough cough global recession...fluctuation in the American dollar...falling copper prices) the farmers are getting less than they were promised. Although they are still getting a good amount of money (most will make profit) it is the principle of an agreement here. There have been worries of some farmers selling their products to other markets to try and gain a better price but I have heard no further news on this. Another major factor was the planting date. When planting a crop it is important to understand how much water it needs to grow...not enough and your crop wont grow...too much and it will spoil (that is the gist of it..there is more details but I will leave that for you to look up). This year was much wetter than predicted, IDE was informing farmers to plant at a certain time but thankfully they did not listen and planted later. All this is tied to global warming and climate change, it is important to realise that as it gets hotter in some places other places will get wetter and although more water is good sometimes, like anything else too much of something is bad.
Hmmm...what else can I talk to you about.Ah. Why not IDE.Chyea.
Ok so IDE's big project in Zambia right now is called the Rural Prosperity Initiative (I might have called it poverty before...I was wrong...my bad) and it has 6 main focuses.
1)Irrigation - the supply and training of irrigation practices and equipment. It is important to understand that when you seel something like a pump to a rural farmer they must be able to understand it, fix it/know where to get it fixed and buy components for it. A supply chain is incredibly valuable. Imagine if you bought a new car but you could never get it fixed in your town and would have to drive it 6 hours away to get it fixed (hahah my dad has told me this story a million times about buying a German car....why would I buy a car that I would have to get fixed in Toronto...you taught me so much...never knew it would apply to irrigation..I bet you did not either)
2)Credit - MONEY!!!! another way to say it is an access to money. In Canada we can get a loan for anything from anyone (pretty much). Dosen't work like that here. Many people struggle to start something up here because they cant get the cash (although they might have every other resource available). One reason (a big deal in South Downs, a village which I visited on my second day...photos to come...stories too) for loan denial is the lack of collateral....oh but tony, they have land they can back against....wrong!!!!! In these places most farmers do not own the land they live on, the government does. Some farmers that I spoke to explained to me that their major barrier to great success (all our versions of success are different, for these guys it was to move from only growing maize, vegs...ect to herding cattle and animals too) was the lack of the ability to invest. The banks would not allow them a loan because they did not hold the title deed to the land they have been living on (although most of the farmers have lived on it their whole life). So IDE works with farmers to give them a better understanding of credit systems in order to open bank accounts, create farming budgets, understand input costs and profit margins (glad I took intro micro econ).
3)Access to inputs - Inputs...sweet sweet inputs. This includes everything that goes into growing your crop such as seeds, fertiliser, pesticides (not all organic here but the movement is growing...what are your opinions on org vs non org) etc....IDE works with farmers to work them up with distributors as well as help those who are interested to become their own input dealer to work with the community and the big shot while gaining a commission for their work.
4)Gender - Dude. We are all the same! Ok but how does this really work on the farm and in rural villages. IDE provides training sessions with farming groups to help better understand different roles in the farming household and community. They do so by group presentation and workshops where the farmers will work together to see how much time each gender spends performing certain tasks around the house and farm. They will assess the accessibility to capital, land, education, tools and demonstrate where (if there are any) things can be changed to make the living situation more efficient. They also stress the importance of understanding that development must occur in both genders, there have been instances where farms have been doing well and thought to been developing until the male of the house passes on and the wife is left with no knowledge of any practices. This is pretty shitty, they are emphasising the importance of everyone. I can saw from the one training session I have been to it was awesome. Everyone was involved and people seem really stoked on what they were learning (everyone spoke in bemba so I was lost).
5)Capacity Building - This one is all about building the capacity of the farmers in the field. Unfortunately this is the one training session I am least familiar with so the details I can provide are minimal with respect to IDE in specific. I realise that I just turned the words around on my first sentence but I do not want to say some things that are not true. You could see that all of these sessions as capacity builders, I do know that there are training sessions for capacity building in general but I lack the definition. When I get more exposure I will talk about it, until then think of capacity building as expanding your possibilities to be able to do. Sorry.
6)Marketing - Ah marketing. Ok so this is where I am focusing so I should know alot. I hope so. Marketing with respect to IDE's work is about connections between the farmers and the buyers (and everything in between). From growing the crop, to understanding what is to be grown (the supply and demand of the market...for example, if many farmers were to grow only tomatoes and sell to one market only the price would be low because the market would only be selling tomatoes and bargaining would occur resulting in the farmer achieving a low price. If farmers could better understand what is in the market and when they could diversify their crops and have lower quantities of different crops while getting higher prices...instead of joe, sue and mark all selling tomatoes; joe could sell tomatoes, sue could sell cucumbers and mark apples...ok this is really generic but if think you get the idea...also the important of who can grow what and who knows how to grow what comes into play....things can get complicated...but thats makes life here interesting and rather challenging), understanding of supplying the market over time and not all at once (do not grow all your crops at one but rather stagger them so you can a constant supply again reducing flooding...this is not always the case...it would depending on the situation at hand but it is a practices technique that is taught to farmers), finding transportation links between the farmer and the market because the roads here are not what they are like in Canada. the roads here are a serious barrier for farming, you could live 20km from the market but it could take you the whole day because the roads are so bad and your bike (or truck..if you are fortunate enough) must really take its time. Helping to find reliable and cost effective links between farmers and transport important. Other aspects include finding new markets for farmers to sell to, strengthening bonds between current markets, creating access to important information that farmers can use (current prices from surrounding markets, various costs of transport, seasonal trends in market supply and demand)..the list goes on. I hope this paints a small picture of marketing for rural farmers.

My job with IDEMarket Linkages
I am to work with the Kitwe team to help develop their market linkages section of the program. So far things are going a little slow, I am trying to get a hold of how the office works and what the current market situation is. Over the next few months I would like to make a positive impact for the office so that market linkages work better for the farmers and the team. I am still gathering information about rural farming, challenges faced from day to day and what is needed. One major wall I am facing is getting to understand what the current situation is because although the team is highly effective (from what I can tell, they are half way to their goal of 3500 farmers reached in 3 years after only 10months) but they lack the physical information that can be transmitted (no market info anywhere...from what I can tell...I might have to dig deeper). So right now I am about to start a sit down process with each of the members to understand the following:-What are the current struggles that farmers are having with markets-If the office was not so overwhelmed, where would the marketing section be at?-What do marketing results look like (in your eyes) for farmers? for IDE?-What are some long term goals with respect to market linkages.
So that about it for everything I have been doing up to date. I hope to get all these interviews done this week in between irrigation training sessions but this malaria has slow me down. I am getting stressed because I am realising how little time I have here and how many other things are going on. But I will stay positive and keep moving...I am learning so much. I hope you are too.
Upcoming things here for me.-next week I will be staying in South Downs for a week to see what harvesting is like. From moving the cabbage from the farm to the market, I am pretty stoked.-From the 17th to the 23rd or so I will be in transit then in Malawi and then back form the JF retreat where we will all meet up and organdie our action plans for impact-Sometime in July there will be a IDE training session for the whole country. Some 35+ will be in attendance.-Our office might be traveling to Livingstone to see how the IDE office works their and the connection with the infamous Sun Hotel.
Until next time.

Much love

wouldnt be a trip to africa without.....

2009-06-01T03:01:00.000-07:00

dun
dun
dun....

MALARIA!!!!

thats right folks.
your's truly is in the malaria zone!!!
will he survive??
will the crazy dreams be the end??
will he eat food again?
or avoid another nasty disareha mess.
WILL HE LEARN TO SPELL!!!!

these answers and more next time on
this blog.

much love.

i am fine.
i get meds.
but i love suspense.

haha.
but i do have malaria.
mom, i am ok.

mail me to the end of the universe. or mail me pieces of cake. post yours and i will mail you cake. ;)

2009-05-30T02:00:00.000-07:00

chyea

international development enterprises

re: tony fedec

10 kantanta road

kitwe, zambia (africa haha)

this is going to work because i think mail is better there than at home

cant wait to get some mmmmaaaaiiilllzzz

PHOTO MOTO AGAIN!!!!!!

2009-05-28T10:07:00.000-07:00

more soon..

this post is unfinished.

much love to you all.

extra to you. you know who.

captions tomorrow.

along with more.

cheers.

tony

Tiny update...new internet cafe...things are going better

2009-05-27T06:18:00.000-07:00

This was from an email within our IDE team of JF's. It encompass alot of things that I have been doing. I took out some sensitive details..please pardon that.

YOYOYOYOO!!!!

Today was day one for me (Tuesday the 26th). I arrived here on friday and met with my counterpart and we talked for a while but the rest of the team was out in the field (more on that below). SO she droped me after her friends place where I would be staying. This house I am staying at is really great, my family is awesome and they have welcomed me with open arms. There have been somethings I have had to get used to such as their religion (or most people in Zambia according to the ones who i spoke to) as my mum is a religous leader in our community so daily (very daily ) prayer is a must. I live with two kids, a 17 year old teenager their mum plus her brother which is father to one of the children. There is also another man who lives here who is renting a room, his name is Anthony and is a rad dude. We have become solid friends. But life is not perfect. Some members of the family have been asking me for money a little to easily and it has been very hard to say no...i also feel like one of them has been taking the liberty of going through my things (like finding an old cell phone burried in my stuff then asking if they could have it...its broken so i said yes but i am rather disapointed that this is happening...at the same time i understand that they see me as a rich person and these things dont mean much to me....glad pre dep talked about these things before leaving...) and their religion is very intense, i have been to church (we went for 10+ years from what I can remember) and it was nothing like this. I have never been so scared in my life. Other than that I feel like I could be pushing my comfort zone more...but I dont know how..I have tried so much and things are going really well...I have really connected with this family and have gained my role in it...and I have slowly started gaining responsibility in this household..I am looking forward for the moment when I am not a guest but a true member (hopefully this happens).

Anyway, to IDE!

Well my office is composed of three staff.
-Aggie the team leader, she has a diploma in agriculture/forrestry
-Chiseba the Kitwe office dude - he is in charge of all activities in Kitwe (although there are not many farmers in Kitwe but outsdie of it)
-Mwakoi the Ndola leader who takes care of all activites in the Ndola region. He is also the Irrigation technology guru.

From being in the office one day here are my observations:
-this team is ultra indepedent, they only meet once every two weeks to discuss their projects in between those times no one really sees each other but does their own thing. We had a team meeting today (thankfuly) which made me understand how good this team works...I am going to have a hard time finding my impact (although this was day one) or maybe not. I don't know but I am so impressed with the high functionality of this team. I showed they my terms of reference so we could all be on the same page on what I was there to do in order to plan accordingly. They were excited to know I would be working specifically on market linkages which seemed to be something they are really stressing about, they then informed they had VERY HIGH expectations of me...so i better perform.

As our meeting ended they asked me to create an action plan for myself and have in done in 30min...something I could work on for the whole summer but they wanted me to create a project for myslef on the first day....that through me off. Anyway after wondering what the hell I was going to be making I came up with the idea of having a market information database that could be accessible by the staff, zone and group leaders as well as their promoters (do they breakdown their regions in this way for you guys too??). They seemed to be interested but as I presented I also stressed the need for me to spend some serious time understanding the environment I am working in and how they work and what I can help with. They agreed and so everything was cool. I was also informed that their previous marketing student was still in town and that I could draw much knowledge from her so that I was not blind. One of their major faults right now is they have tons of market info...in their heads and not physically accessible...which means for the next few weeks I will be slowly extracting data from the three teams leads and the past student when she is avaiable.

In short:
-My team is super functional and independant
-They know what they are doing
-They expect a lot for me, so I have quite the challenge ahead.
-There is much information within the office but it needs to be extracted and made accessible
-Right now I feel as if the office could benefit for a buisness student more than an engineer but who cares...i will learn.

As for the XXXX situation:
As you all may know by now the price was set at XXXX which is about XXXX is the dollar does not dip or the kwacha does not get any better (my office thinks the kwacha is on the rise for now which is not very good). They are not stoked on the fact they have to go and tell all their farmers the contract was re-neged and they would be get XXX less than they were promised (they too were under the impression that it would be XXX). I am going to the feild tomrorow to visit some farmers and assess their quality and quantity of beans with Chiseba.

I would re type my mind/body/heart but its on my blog. I worked on it today. Over all my body is wierd..still getting used to all this food, i need to exercise more. Mind is ok but I feel guilty at points..I feel like I should push my comfort zone more but I do not know how...i will call mark in a few days and discuss...i would consider moving but i have made such strong connections with this family and my boss assured me this a very true and honest zambian/kitwe life experience. heart is mixed, i am feeling good and down at the same time..i hope to get in a good groove soon, maybe once work really kicks in. kitwe is great but not very rural, maybe i set my expectations too high for a rural experience and need to be realistic about how living works where i am.

hope you are all very well. i miss you all much.

take care and much love,

tony

thats all folks.
more to come.
photos soon i promise.

ah and mom. if you want to post on here you must create a google account. it is very easy.
just goto gmail.com and go from there. it will change your life.

round 2 of heart/body/mind....see what i mean the internet hates blogspot. might just hate me. I AM A VIRUSSSSSS. no. i am not.

2009-05-26T07:57:00.000-07:00

so how am i doing heart/body/mind? Body: It has its ups and downs. right now is it good because i am full, i dont get very many "big" meals but i had a huge chicken shwarma today. oh yea, being vegetarian here is impossile....i am dying to get healthy food in me. some places dont have water for sale...coke and fanta (which is like orange pop...they have it at some places in canada). i feel weak about 60% of the time but i have been excersing and doing yoga 2 times a day. ah this is were i have a favor to ask you. could you send me some yoga flows from the internet...google is really slow here and it takes forever to search. its not even that i dont have the money to do it (i do, money i am good) but time is hard to come by or access to internet...i never know when i will have a reliable amount. i have not built up the courage to run around my 'hood yet. soon i hope. still trying to fit in...the scariest part is the ground...its so uneven that if i am not looking on the ground i will break my neck...its unexplainable...i will take photos...overall i am really trying to keep my health on top.
Mind: I am either bored or overwhelmed. Well 80% i am in those catagories. The other 20% i am uncertain. Today for example is my first day at work...we had a planning meeting for 3.5 hours then my boss was like "tony, go sit in the corner over there and make an action plan for the summer about your position....." well i did that and i came up with some random ideas (i let her know that) but i also explained for a real action plan to be made i need some time to understand the environment i am working in, how they are working, their strengths and their weaknesses. my one idea we went with (and surprisingly they need this i was told) was an information database for all their market information. they have tons of infomation about their surrounding regions and their markets (this office has awesome potential but they also use about 80%, they are very very effective and good at what they do) but they lack the recrod keeping and orginization. i have no physical information to gather, i have to interview and pry information for each of my three co workers. so this was an example overwhelming bored times are when no one is home and i am there alone or everyone is talking in bemba and forget that i am there...thats hard sometimes. i really feel alone at those points. i am getting some bemba down but im kinda slow. i think tonight i will update my bemba guide. i keep my mind going with solitaire, i am so happy i brought cards... what i good idea. ah now favor number two...could you (not right away, whenever you have time) find me some instructions and rules for one players card games...i love solitaire but im starting to get bored. i hate to do this but im a little desparate.
Heart: Ah...the hardest one to define. its flutters...i have been feeling like i am not pushing myself enough lately and i need to do so. but at the same time i am really comfortable talking to strangers or being alone in the markets or cities. so i am at a loss. i was told that it would be very difficult for me to find a rural experience in this town, i think that is what is getting to me. i feel guilty because i am in a house with power and i have my own room...but i dont know what else to do. i am learning the customs ( i think ) and i am gaining a true kitwe experience ( i hope..people tell me so ). i have been participating in church, family activites, conversations about life here...seeing local markets....but i still feel down in the heart area...i feel like i am cheating somehow. so i will be pushing myself more and more. although i have to admit i have still avoided the latrine experience..contrary to popular belief there are many flush toilets and i have been using those....latrines scare me due to the increased chance of spiders.

this was an exerpt from something. please forget the questions but i did not want to alter the utter (moo!) truth.

heat/body/mind (the internet here hates blogspot...)

2009-05-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

photo moto (had to, just because)....the rooster wins.

2009-05-20T23:33:00.000-07:00

As we get smaller.

chyea.

Ooooo..the festivities

The last supper

Tough as nails - Annette

The market down by the river in Lilongwe

How to vote in Malawi

Lilongwe night lights

Touchdown in Africa

Airplane lights to Malawi

So this is it.
I am leaving for Kitwe this morning and will be arriving there tomorrow afternnon-ish. The rooster won, we never caught it although I got an audio clip to share. Keep your ears peeled.

photos....the rooster must die

2009-05-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

airplanes in amsterdam

breakfast in amsterdam airport. klassan is off da hook.

chillin with persons in pearson

JFs of DDDOOOOOOMMMMM

Alfred the man.

Let's talk about I.M.P.A.C.T and possibly Sogruhm

Moustache = Big Man

left to write : Deg, Andrew, Annalise, Rob, Vicky

so there are some photos of pre dep and departure. next set will be of malawi and zambia. keep your oranges ripe.

also....the rooster MUST be stoped.

Damn Rooster...

2009-05-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

Well here I am...finally in Zambia.
It took a 14 hour bus ride from Lilongwe, Malawi to Lusaka, Zambia but what a ride it was. I never expected the rolling hills or the forests that we saw. Although 70+ people on a grehound-like bus gets really hot really fast. There was a point where it got so full th e bus pulled over and people started to get kicked off...this lasted for about 20 minutes it also led to someone yelling "Do us no evil, Do us no evil".

But, after all that, we got here to Lusaka. This place is wild, I never dreamed it to be so industrialized. There are highways and cars everywhere, and a handfull of 10+ story buildings.

The first day we were here we got to meet all the people at the IDE headquaters and had a meeting about where IDE is and what is going on for the summer. One of the major projects that is going on right now with IDE is the bean project. The project is an aggrement with a bean distributor who has provided farmers with essential inputs for growing beans througout the season, once harvested the beans are then sold back to the distributor at a set price. Harvest is just ending and IDE is connecting the farmers with the distrivutor for transportation of the harvest. There is also encouragement for the farmers to bulk up their beans together in order to save on transportation costs, IDE is also facilitating this.

On top of the bean project my focus will be on market facilitation projects. Which means I will be aiding my office in helping rural farmers by creating links between them and local markets in Kitwe. I am sure this sounds a little abstract so one example of this last year was a JF worked with a high scale hotel and their buyers to create agrrements for fresh procude that was grown in advance for the hotel. Every two weeks the buyers would visit the farmers to collect the vegetables they ordered and bring it back to the hotel to serve. This type of connection gave frequent income for over 60 farmers but this is only one type of linkage...there are many others that are possible. I can't wait to get out there.

As for the damn rooster....we are staying at a hostel. For some reason they have a rooster there....and for some reason it does not bother them that it yells at every hourly intervale. I woke up this morning just sitting there in front of our porch...i think it smiled at me, knowing how much sleep it took away from me. I might have to make some rooster soup soon.

Anywho!
I am about to enter day 1 of 2 for the ID market facilitation meeting.
Chyea!

Tony

another update

2009-05-18T03:10:00.000-07:00

hey hey
my laptop is about to die.
quick things.

i am well.
kinda broke my laptop but there is everlasting hope.
i think about you all the time. i really do.
southern africa is beaitful
please post your adress and you will get post cards.
100%
my email is tony.fedec@gmai.com

more formal post to come.

the stars here are breathtaking.

expect more soon.

love,
tony

Update from the sky

2009-05-18T03:07:00.000-07:00

from toronto to amsterdam
amsterdam to niarobi
now niarobi to lilongwe
what a day....
we have been traveling for almost 30 hours
but im feeling pretty fine.

it was quite a surprise to find out that KLM offers free "drinks" on their planes.
there is no doubt that i took full advantage of this.
its been a rather hazzy adventure.

right now we are a couple thousand feet up in the air and the city lights of niarobi just fades away
next stop is lilongwe, malawi were we will be for the next 3 days getting in country training and information.
our plane will land at 1am where we will be graciously greeted by melissa leafas our junior fellow support staff and collen duncan a long term overseas volunteer.

the mash of hours have gone by in such an odd pace i do not know how i feel anymore.
am i tired? sorta
am i rested? ya..sorta
am i full? oh yes. i cannot belive the ammount of air plane food i have consumed.

airplane meals - 4
air plane drinks - 8
airplane movies - 3...all pretty terrible

back to malawi..
once the malawi experience has come to an end half of us are off to zambia.
from lilongwe (the city where we fly into) to lusaka (capital of zambia) it is a 12 hour mini bus ride! whoo hoo.
but it does not stop there.
from lusaka to kitwe, where i will be working it is a 5 hour mini bus ride again.
i am really going to have to plan my bathroom breaks.

i am pretty stoked to get on the ground.
keep an eye out for some photos in the next few posts.

much love,

tony

airport scents

2009-05-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

ah..
the smell of leaving.
i cannot remember the last time i felt like this.
everything is slowly fading away for me.
soon this canadian paradise will be fading too.
but there is new things ahead.
a new land.
a new climate.
a new home...
it would be an understatement to say im nervous.
but im nervous in a pretty good way.
i know that i am in good hands and that there are some great opportunities in store for me in Zambia.
i know that my loved ones got my back.
the friends i have made this week are here/there for me.

its hard sometimes to leave something so good but i know that this is what i want.
i know that i will be happy. that there is so much to be learned.
no more textbooks for a few months. its all about experiences.

what kind of experiences?
well let's start with what i know of...
my job.

i am working with Internation development enterprises (IDE) in Kitwe, Zambia.
IDE's work focuses on water technologies for rural farmers. More specifically treddle pumps and drip irrigation systems.

The project I am working on is called the Rural Poverty Initiative. The project's focus is all about getting rural farmers to make more money. The main idea is to grow more produce and sell it to surrounding markets. So for the last 3 years IDE has worked on getting farmers to grow more produce and now that things have settled the other part beings, getting that extra produce to the market.

I will be working with the IDE office on market linkages. My main priority is to help build the capacity of the feild staff there so that they can be even more9 effecive than what they already are. Thanks to my extensive job experience with 5 other orginizations I will be able to use my diverse experience to give different perspectives for their office.

But this is still a lot of paper terms. I am not exactly sure what all this will turn into but I promise to keep this blog up to date.

Hit me with some comments.

Much love to you all.

Time to fly.

The start

2009-05-06T22:34:00.001-07:00

Well well well...
So here it is. Pre-Departure training.
I am finally here.

I left Guelph today at 4pm. Made my way to Toronto.
Downtown Toronto. The EWB intern house in a pretty solid little area.
After claiming a bed we all gathered and waited for the group to arrive.
Not too much went down today other than some logistical info and house rules and politics.
Tomorrow is going to be the first big day, we have our health session along with one on one guidance then we are heading out to a dinner event. should be interesting.

i know this is a little monotonous right now but things are going to gear up soon.

much love.

i should post my job description shortly....maybe tomorrow.
it is exciting.
agriculture value chains.
oh baby ;)

2009-04-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

Yooo yoo!!

So I just found out yesterday I am heading to Kitwe, Zambia to work with International Development Enterprises (IDE) to work with Agricultural Value Chains.

This is a short post right now as I am probably the only person reading this as of now.

I will make a format, bigger post once some papers and exams have wrapped up.

Until then,

Much love.

Tony

2009-03-22T17:12:00.000-07:00

check check.
the internet has a new intruder.
//enter the experience.