more pics from the muzuma homestead

My host father and I in the family maize (corn) garden

My first host mother cooking nshima

The family in the kitchen

Pounding maize

Host brother Musapara. He's adorable and always smiles!

My first host mother and neighbour Agnes Chisamu

One of my host parent's grandchildren mesmerized by light-coloured skin

My second host mother (my host-father's second wife)

My host mother and her eldest daughter Moddie

A view of my hut during rainy season

The entrance to my hut

Outside my hut during rainy season

My host brother, Crispen, outside a goat habitat he built for the family

my new home in pemba for the next 3 months

Sorry for the lack of posts the past few weeks. I moved into an area where electricity is infrequent, nevertheless internet access.

So I finally moved into my new home in the really really small town of Pemba, Zambia. Instead of living in town-centre (which consists of 5 buildings), I decided to move in with a family in a village 5 km away. I'll be living in Pemba until the end of December.

The family I moved in with is the Muzuma family. Silas Muzuma, 73, is a smallholder farmer who has 2 wives, 21 children, lots and lots and lots of grandchildren. Though all don't currently live with him, it is still a very big household and lots of commotion all day long. Not only is there an abundance of children, but also lots of goats, chickens, turkies, dogs, and cows running around all over the place.

The family is extremely welcoming, the food is absolutely amazing, and I even have my own little hut (in pictures below). I've been able to practice and improve the speaking of the local language of Chitonga. Though one thing I need to work on is how to interact with children. I'm not so good with kids... but I'm working on it!

Not only is Silas Muzuma the head of his household, he is also the village headmaster. He is the go-to person in the community for domestic disputes and conflicts. On top of that he is an active and model farmer within the community who holds many leadership roles within the many farmer groups (formed by the many NGO's, like IDE). Farming is not just a job, it's a lifestyle. It requires many hours, physical work, business accument, and lots and lots of patience. For someone who is 73 (who decided to become a farmer after retirement), Silas is in tip top mental and physical shape. He literally NEVER stops working. He is one of the strongest people I've ever met! He's been a round for a while and is very knowledgeable. I have the fortunate opportunity to have nice conversations with Mr. Muzuma everyday after dinner about culture, traditions, the struggles of farming, different coping mechanisms, family, and life growing up under British colonial rule. So far it's been a great living with the family. I would like to send special thank you to Willard, the IDE field staff whom I'm currently working with, for introducing me to the Muzuma family.

In terms of work, I bike everyday approximately 5 km to and from the office and the village. Though very hot, sometimes going up to 40-degrees Celcius, it's a great workout. I'll have another post about my work so far with IDE.

My little hut

My room inside my little hut

My room inside my little hut




5 of my many host brothers and sisters inside my hut


Lloyd, 19, is one of my many host brothers. He's about to graduate from high school. He wants to go to medical school in the near future.

My host brother George playing with the digital camera. Another host brother, Mainza, is in the background

From inside my hut - a chicken!


The Muzuma household land. The little house next to my hut is where Mr. Muzuma's eldest daughter and her sons live.



Inside the bathing area



The bathing area

My host brothers helping to build me my own bathing area outside my hut

My host grandmother cooking a chicken (coincidentally on Canadian thanksgiving morning)

My host grandmother cooking a chicken (coincidentally on Canadian thanksgiving morning)

My host brother Caleb at the local Pemba High School

The Muzuma family main house (with the senior wife)

The Muzuma family room

The Muzuma family room (with jugs of water and pans of maize)

The Muzuma family kitchen

A few of the many houses in the Muzuma family land

My favourite Southern Province drink called "cibwantu" or direct translation is "sweet beer" (non-alcoholic of course). It's basically made of maize (corn), water, and sugar. Super refreshing on hot days

on the move to southern province

In-country training has ended and it's time for me to start my placement and move out of Lusaka. For the next three months, I'll be in a small town called Pemba, approximately 3 hours car/bus ride south of Lusaka on the way to Livingstone.

Pemba is a small town with a population of approximately 4000 in the Choma District of the Southern Province of Zambia. Amongst its 4000 inhabitants, approximately 90% are farming households that live in villages, some of which are over an hour drive away from the main road.

In terms of living and accomodations, I decided to continue to push myself outside of my comfort zone by living in a small village for the next three months with a family. I will be commuting from the village to the field office (along the main
road) every morning.

For work, I will be partnered for 3 months with the Pemba field office of IDE (International Development Enterprises).
IDE is an international NGO that aims to increase the income of smallholder farmers across the world via supply chain creation and mangaement of low-cost irrigation technologies and value chain implementation to ensure relationships and players across the chain are well-functioning to serve smallholders (e.g. accessible output markets and support services). IDE is currently in its 3rd of 4 years in the RPI Project (Rural Prosperity Initiative) through funding primarily by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The RPI project focuses on 6 components:

• micro-irrigation technology (i.e. treadle pumps and low-drip systems)+ supply chain management
• farmer capacity building in horticulture production (e.g. demonstration plots)
• connecting farmers to agricultural inputs (e.g. fertilizers, seeds, etc..)
• connecting farmers to financing, primarily micro-credit
• marketing: linking farmers to output markets
• gender relations workshops

Each field office, has a only a handful of field staff (ranges from 1 to 3). Each field office has to tackle approximately 5000 farmers and focus on all 6 areas of focus. The insufficient amount and satifactory quality of resources (field staff numbers, capacity, time, contradicting priorities and money) brings about challenges for IDE-Zambia to fulfill their goals.

Production numbers are up in Pemba. IDE has successfully helped farmers in the area increase their production yields of vegetables; however, the main crux of the problem in Pemba remains this: 90% of the population are small holderfarmers and are all producing, thus creating a surplus in supply; but there is a lack of demand and market opportunities for these farmers to sell their produce resulting in extremely low prices. The lack of focus on marketing by the IDE-Zambia head office and IDE International has created a mismatch between realities in the field and program focus. Here is where EWB comes in.

Thuslasy B., my coach and EWB AVC staff, has been working with the IDE-Zambia and all of its field offices over the past year to develop and improve field staff capacity to perform market facilitation (What does it mean to be an effective Market
Facilitator?). I will be using the next 3 months to complement Thulasy's national-level work at one field office by

• continuing to monitor field staff capacity (work already done by EWB) and effectiveness to facilitate quality market linkages, and to
• improve quality of service provided to farmers with respect to production and output marketing. This may include setting up a monitoring and evaluation system for farmer demonstration plots. The next three months may also include helping to strengthen the depth of discussion and the effectiveness of communication, progress-monitoring, and decision making /implementation procedure within existing farmer market committees.

But primarily, I am paired up IDE for 3 months (instead of 1 year) in order to LEARN LEARN LEARN about field level realities of field offices and farmer livelihoods in rural areas. This will prep first-year staff members, like myself, with on-the-ground knowledge before moving up to do more high-level development work. Come January, I will be placed with a head office of another organization (NGO or private sector), most likely back in Lusaka, to work more with management level capacity building projects and initiatives.

So my dear family and friends, starting this Monday I will have very limited and infrequent internet access. If you need to contact me, please give me a call on my cell phone.

"zimpact" in zimbabwe: hyperinflation & its worthless currency

Zambia is a landlocked country with 5 other nations surrounding it. The one to its southeast is none other than the "Democratic"(term used lightly) Republic of Zimbabwe. Does Robert Mugabe ring a bell? Mugabe has been the nation's president for over 30 years. Over the past two decades, his administration has been marked by corruption and violence. In the 2008 election, opposition leader (and now the Prime Minister through power sharing) clearly won the Presidency, but through violence and intimidation, Mugabe managed to hold on with a power sharing agreement with Morgan Tzangirai.

Other than Mugabe, Zimbabwe has been known all over the world for having to purchase a loaf of bread with piles and piles of bills. In the early 2000's, Zimbabwe started to experience some economic woes and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe responded by massively increasing its supply of money in order to fund public services (without properly accounting for it). How severe was the inflation, you ask? With the world in recession, the Zimbabwean dollar dropped even more in 2008 to ZW$1o trillion = $1 USD. It got to a point where they were close to running out paper to print money. Let's take a look at the numbers below (official inflation rates):

Zimbabwe Average Inflation Rates

• 2004: 132.75%
• 2005: 585.84%
• 2006: 1,281.11%
• 2007: 66,212.3%
• 2008: 231,150,888.87%

Can you imagine? Over 2 hunder million % inflation. Zimbabwians literally needed to bring in cash in wheel barrels in order to purchase simple groceries and household goods. The Reserve Bank responded four different times by literally changing the currency by dropping a certain amount of zeros.

Below is a snapshot of prices in July, 2008:

• An egg: ZW$50 billion
• A loaf of bread: ZW$100 billion
• War veteran monthly pension: ZW$150 billion

Cheques are only accepted at retailers if the customer writes double the amount. By the time the cheque is cleared, the cost would have already gone up. It became so bad that bills needed to have expiry dates after a certain time before they are devalued.

An expired Zimbabwe ZM$500,000 bill given to me by a coworker

After the coalition government was sworn in last year, the Zimbabwian government decided to suspend the Zimbabwe dollar and to begin using foreign currency, mostly the US dollar. This was a good decisions as improvements started to appear. Household goods, like maize meal, bread, cooking oil, matches and toilet paper, have began reappearing on grocery stores shelves. The average basket of goods for a poor family dropped approximately 4% in August, 2009.

How has this affected Zambia. With the on slaught of factories and businesses closing in Zim due to the poor economy, people started losing jobs and putting people already in poverty, deeper and deeper into the hole. There was a large migration of Zimbabwian refugees into Zambia, South Africa, and other neighbouring southern African nations as a result. With little to no capital as refugees, they are reduced to selling petty goods on urban streets.

Now that is what I call ZIMPACT!

Despite the hyper-inflation and Mugabe, I would still like to visit Zim sometime before I leave.

village stay in rural zambia (sept 14 – 19)

As part of my in-country training, I had the fortunate opportunity to stay in a rural village with a traditional African family for one week. I stayed in a village 45 minutes from the town of Kalomo (4 hours south of Lusaka) called Siaamambwa.

The farmer that I had the fortunate opportunity stayed with was named Tangson Sialanga. Tangson has 2 wives, 8 children, 1 child he inherited from a cousin, and 1 granddaughter. On top of taking care of his 12 member household, Tangson works very hard on his farm and plays many leadership roles inside the community.

Tangson is considered a lead farmer. He volunteers his time on many committees to help other less fortunate farmers: lead farmer for CARE, executive member of the village HEIFER project (donor cattle distribution), chair person for the Home Care Project, and just a recognized overall leader in the community whom people turn to for advice. Tangson has also worked closely with other EWB volunteers, Thulasy B. and Jon Beale, in the past through CARE.

Beneath the leadership and status, Tangson still struggles and faces the many constraints typical smallholder farmers do all over sub-Saharan Africa. Tangson and many farmers around the area work very hard to take care of their cattle (and other animals), grow maize (corn), vegetables (like tomatoes, green beans, sweet potato, rape) but face many obstacles with their agricultural operations to sustain a decent livelihood:

• Lack of sustainable access to agricultural inputs (seeds, fertilizer, agricultural technology)
• Lack of productivity-increasing agricultural technology for production (cultivation equipment, low-cost irrigation technologies e.g. treadle pumps)
• Lack of access to natural resources (e.g. bodies of water for irrigation)
• Lack of market information to determine demand and prices for different crops
• Lack of transportation to deliver crops and thus face losses
• Lack of connection to external markets
• Continued dependency on donors
• Exploitation by middleman purchasers
• Some more vulnerable farmers lack food security

Despite these challenges, the community remains happy and optimistic. A big pillar for rural farming communities are their abundance and wealth of social capital. Reliance on relationships with other community members is critical to their livelihoods during good and tough times (e.g. droughts). When they lack output markets, they rely on each other’s generosity, sense of community and kinship for support.

After living in the urban centre of Lusaka for 2 weeks, this past week in the “bushes” was an amazing learning experience. Below are some photos documenting my experience:

Me with the Sialanga children

A neighbours home

Village elders making craft baskets. Unfortunately there is market for them to sell these amazing works of art.

Me in a field of lettuce

The two nurses from the local health clinic

Big shift in mindset from social capital relaitonships to strictly business relationships (NO CREDIT!!!!)

The latrine (toilet). Not every home in villages have latrines. Hygiene and sanitation are big issues in rural Africa.

Me in a field of maize.

Neighbours in their fertile field of maize

Being greeted by students of Ikumbi basic school

Being served nshima while visiting some neigbours


My room

Spending an afternoon with the family

The Sialanga home

The Sialanga home

Me with a maize grinder

My host father Tangson facilitatinging a HEIFER meeting (determining which villagers will receive donor cattle)

Dancing with the villagers to celebrate HEIFER donating cattle

Neighbours field of vegetables and banana trees

Making chibwantu (corn juice) with the family

Pumping water from a borehole

Cooking nshima with one of my two host mothers Nancy

My host sister Sorai giving her daughter, Souda, a bath

Me pouring "chibwantu" (corn juice) for the village headmaster

Me with my host family before dinner

Saying goodbye to the Sialanga family

Saiying goodbye to Tangson