One month in Zambia

It is another lovely day here in Mansa, with the sunshine bright and a slight breeze to keep things cool. This morning I was busy collecting sweet potato cuttings and then re-planting them in a field for multiplication purposes. The process is a fairly simple one. First you go to a place where there are establish plants (for the purpose of having parent material in which to create new varieties), you cut the veins into about 15cm in length, you note from what parent they are from and tie them into a bundle (we collected 30 cuttings per parent). Then you drive out into the bush where a field has been cleared for planting and ridges have been made (this is all done with hoes). Ridges are about 0.5 m in height and 1 meter apart. You then take a stick an poke a hole on the top of the ridge 15cm apart (10 per ridge) and then you stick 3/4th of the vine you cut into the hole and press the soil around it. That is all-you have planted the sweet potato! The environment will take care of the rest.

We also scoped out some cassava fields and met some workers who were weeding. The weed pressure is great, because they have not weeded yet this year and many weeds have already gone to seed. I told them about our saying "one year seeding, seven years weeding"... the weed control needs to be done much sooner to prevent so many from going to seed and building up the weed seed bank. There was a discussion that took place between the researchers and the workers, the workers said the weeds were too many they could not complete 20 ridges per person per day (the agreed upon work-load). They told me there is always this tension the between employer who wants the worker to do more and the employee who wants to do less for more return. The workers here are sometimes paid in food, such as, so much of an area of cassava harvest, other times they are paid cash. I am not sure how this all works out yet.

I have not yet learned the division of labor. Sometimes the researchers do not do the work such as the cutting and planting etc. but sometimes they do help out. I try to do what I can, so I can learn. Most of the people hired to do weeding and planting at the research station are men, because they do more work. Hopefully I can pull my own weight and be helpful- no matter what the task. There is also some sort of cultural hierarchy of respect, most scientist are referred to as "Mr. so and so" whereas in the states we refer to everyone by their first name (except maybe department heads), this has been difficult for me to remember to do because many people's last names are foreign to me- making them hard to remember. John and I just go by our first names.

You all might be interested in know that John wears pants here in Zambia (at least during the week). This is so funny to me because in the US it will be snowing and he will have mesh-shorts and sandles on! Now it is boots and long pants! Another funny thing is our toilet seat. So, back at Jenn's house we managed to break the toilet seat, not big deal, we just go to the store and get a new one. So, in the process of setting up the house here in Zambia we bought 2 toilet seats, because the one was broken before we moved in. Little did we know that these cheap plastic seats perpetually break... we now nearly have a solid duct-tape toilet seat because it has broken in so many places! The duct tape now allows for some flexibility so hopefully we can keep it mostly intact for the rest of our time here!

This is a big week for us. On the 12th it will mark our 1 year engagement, 4 month wedding anniversary, 1 month in Zambia, and Abe Lincoln's birthday! So much to celebrate in one day! Love you all much! Grace and peace!