Our home away from home

Here is a look at our "home away from home". We have a little garden in the back with rape, Chinese cabbage, and carrots. We are also growing sweet potatoes in the front. The soil in the back is better for a garden, it is richer in organic matter. We had to rescue the area from the monster-size pigweeds though! We actually needed to buy a better hoe because the first one we purchased at the market was not well made (sort of like the Walmart version.. what do you expect for $4.00 US?). One of the workers here at the research station made the hoe for us the second time. We bought the head in town for $4 and he fashioned it together (very strong) for $1. It is amazing the difference one dollar makes!

The house itself is a bit large for us, but we only live in the front room and its become quiet cozy. We had our first dinner guest Thursday night. Our friend helped us apply fertilizer to our garden and we invited him to stay for dinner. We had a nice meal and time together. We now have a tea kettle and 4 cups in case we have more visitors. Also, so we can drink something else besides water and the occasional squash we buy at the store. We are enjoying our first home together!

Sampling at Samfya shore

Yesterday John and I went to Samfya to collect water samples and search for snails. Samfya is about an hours drive away, but we headed further north to Lubwe and were afraid the road would be almost impassable. However,to our surprise the road was even better than the tarmac! Thankfully! The Chinese along with the Zambian government have a joint project to repair the road and it seems to be going well.

After a full day of sampling we got some biscuits for lunch and headed to the beach to eat and relax before heading home. Samfya is the main town near Lake Bangweulu, one of two large lakes in Luapula province. The lake is so large that you can be standing on the shore and not even see the other shoreline. It was nice to have a change of scenery and get to see more of the country.

The lake is not developed much, though there seems to be signs and talk of developing it into a tourist spot. Currently people use it for fishing (I believe it is in danger of being over fished) and there are 3 islands on which people live. Two of which have electricity.

It was nice for me to go with John on one of his sampling campaigns and see what he does and how they collect samples and search for snails. One of the hardest parts is locating and deciding where to sample, especially in the Samfya there are so many pools of water, it is one gigantic wetland area.

Today is back to the Lab for John and into the field for me. I am learning how to characterize and rate cassava varieties for various diseases and pests to see which varieties exhibit resistance.

mid-march adventures

This week we cut John's hair! We bought scissor and trimmed as close as we could and then John used a razor on the rest (Ruth touched up the hard to reach places). He looks great and it is much cooler! The only downside is that he has funny tan-lines on his head from wearing a hat... which is much better than a burnt head!

One night we were laying down getting ready to go to bed and we heard a rustling in the corner, it was getting loud so john gave a "HEY!" shout and it stopped for a moment and then started up again! Ruth gave a BIG SCREAM! John got up to investigate... only to discover a frog that was hopping around on the plastic bags! Oh! what a laugh we had at that!

Thursday John went into town and purchased some starter plants (rape and cabbage) we are starting a garden around our house. We also have plans to grow pumpkins, beans, sweet potatoes and carrots! We will have lots of extra that we can give to our neighbors too!

On Friday we went to Anna Marie's Paradise, a local restaurant in Mansa town, for lunch as a special treat with our Finish friends Mari and Maree. We had delicious Bream, which is a large fish with nshima and a relish. John choose to have his with chips (he is not a big fan of nshima). The fish was gutted but the head and bones were all there.

On Saturday Ruth went to the ladies gathering at church where she conducted a pizza-making demonstration. The pizza turned out fantastic despite not having any measuring equipment or real baking sheets! The ladies also made beef stew with nshima and cassava leaves, it was a delicious meal and Ruth learned some traditional dances, how to tie the chitangy, and how to cook their traditional foods on coals. Many people still use coals because the electricity is not reliable. Even though it makes it smokey!

On Sunday between church services we went to the Peace Corps house. We met two fellow Americans and visited and talked with them there. The house is located in Mansa, the capital of Luapula so that all the peace corps folks who are in the area can go there to rest, and get money and supplies they need. They lent us a Bemba language book, but we found out that they have a 2 month orientation where they learn the language for 4 hours a day! I don't think we have that kind of time... but we will learn what we can while we are here. I think the Peace Corps experience is more about the living/cultural experience and their projects are secondary; I think the Fulbright is more about doing the project and the living/cultural experience is a secondary emphasize.

It was such a busy weekend that I didn't have time to clean and we are starting to get an ant issue. So, I spent a couple of hours this morning sweeping, scrubbing and mopping and relocating the ant-delicious food. I guess ants are not such a bad pest, they are little and you know they are after: the sugar. They sure are better than roaches, but I still don't like it when they get into the food and on the table. I am hoping this cleaning will keep them at bay for at least a few weeks.

a week o'work'in

This week John and I have been busy out in the field. Myself applying herbicides and counting/collecting weeds and John collecting water samples and snails. I have reached my goal of collecting 50 weed species for the herbarium! I need a way of preserving them in the humidity here, I know of a lamination service in town and am going to see how expensive that will be. I would like to have a nice way to present the herbarium to the research station and preserve it for their future use.

John found his first parasite shedding snail! At one sight he collected over 400 snails. He has to go into some pretty interesting water bodies, there are leaches that attach to his gum-boots. I wish we had hip-waders for him to use! It has been rainy here, which is good since the rains will end in about a month's time. Thankfully we have had a sunny day today for putting out herbicides.

We are still SLOWLY learning Bemba... I think it is difficult because we are just learning phrases and we have no structure, no idea how to construct sentences! We need to get some help, there is a peace corp house in Mansa-town, so hopefully we can stop in sometime and maybe they have some type of guide-book that could help. Hope you all had a happy St. Patty's day and have a happy start to SPRING!

Herbicides, Caterpillars and Holidays

I am greatly encouraged by the Zamwipes, simple "weed brushes" used for the herbicide testing. Things are working good, despite applying under less than ideal conditions. I think there is potential here and I will be able to get some good information.

John and I have a goal to purchase 1-2 new items of food each week at the market and learn how to cook it. This week we tried the caterpillars. We decided that we do not like caterpillars. Apparently they are very nutritious, but they are an odd texture and made our bellies feel not so good. I was only able to eat about 3 and John stomached about 7 before giving up. We had only cooked 1/2 of the amount we bought so we gave the man who is working at keeping up our yard the remainder. We have been without water this week, the pump was broken and so we have been making do with what we have. Thankfully all is now fixed so we can re-stock our water supply. When you don't have something like water (even when you are use to only having it 3 times a day) you gain a greater appreciation for it! I am thankful for water!

This week contains two special holiday's: International Women's Day and Youth Day. On Monday Ruth went to the Farm Institute for a Women's Day function. All the women from the Agricultural research station and the Farm Institute (Extension branch of Ministry of AG) got together for a meeting. The PACO (provincial agricultural coordinating officer), a women, gave a speech and lead a discussion on HIV/AIDS. There was also a speaker on economic empowerment of women. There is a program for women to access loans to fund businesses, they were telling the women how to access the funds and the regulations. There was also a nice meal of chicken, rice, tomato sauce and cabbage. Coke and boiled groundnuts were also served. A Banacimbusa, a women who is a role model in the community, spoke about family relations and taking care of husbands, especially those with HIV/AIDS. There was a lot of laughing, clapping and some dancing too! Many of the women were dressed in their beautiful chitange material dresses, with lots of bright colors!

For Youth Day, on Thursday, we went to a couples gathering from our church group. We talked about traditional marriages and the customs that are helpful and those that are less than helpful for Christian marriages. Some of the good things from traditional customs are that hospitality is valued, and the importance of looking out for the interest of others (especially women) and community participation in the marriage. Some of the negative influences of traditional culture is the male dominance, relatives influence, an emphasize on sex, the expectation of bearing children, and if ones spouse dies the other partner is believe to have caused the death (especially if it is the husband who dies). John and I learned a lot about the culture and enjoyed the fellowship and a wonderful meal with our brothers and sisters here in Zambia.

As always I am learning much, love and miss you all and think of you often!

Cooking Lessons

These pictures are of some common dishes the people of Zambia enjoy. Mrs. Mary Chiona, the wife of our contact here was kind enough to give us cooking lessons so we could learn what to make from the local foods we find in the market.

Impwa (also known as African Eggplant) is found at the local market and this variety had a bitter aftertaste (they do not all have a bitter taste but we don't know how to tell the difference). We cooked it with onions and tomatoes in a skillet with a little oil. Adding salt to taste. We hope to find the non-bitter variety in the future. I was told that people who have malaria sometimes prefer the bitter variety.

Kepenta are small, dried fish found in the lakes around the province. This specific species was from Lake Mweru (far north/west of Zambia). This fish must be vigorous washed multiple times to get out bits of sand (the fish are laid out on the sandy beaches of the lake shores to dry). After washing you just put them into a skillet with a bit of oil, add some onions, tomatoes, and salt. They have a very fishy taste and odor so John and I prefer to spice them up with pepper, garlic, and lemon.

We ate these two relishes with nshima (the mashed potato looking stuff) which is fine-ground corn meal. The dinner was very filling! We had too much- we ate it for dinner, reheated the impwa for breakfast and had the kapenta with eggs for dinner the next night! We have also enjoyed some raw cassava (there are sweet varieties that do not contain cyanide). Cassava also fills you up really fast and sticks with you. People eat it as a snack with salt (I like to put peanut butter on it- kind of like celery sticks). We also have local sweet potatoes to try.

We are certainly expanding our culinary horizons and are learning about the food here in Zambia. Even though we do still have our 'American tastes'and always welcome pizza, peanut butter, and ice cream!

Fainting, Falls and Twin Fountains Farm

Last week John and I caught a ride with our PLARD (Finnish) friends to Lusaka so John could meet with some folks from an organization called CONTRAST who are doing work on mapping infectious diseases across the continent. After getting a few items in town we got bus tickets to go to Livingston and see Victoria Falls. We were going to be tourists for a couple of days!

The bus ride from Lusaka to Livingston takes about 7 hours. The road is mostly good until Zimba where they are doing repairs so they detour vehicles onto a dirt road. This makes for a bumpy last 2 hours. Arriving into Livingston is a bit disorienting and it was odd to be in a tourist town. We booked a room at Jolly Boys backpackers; the accommodations were excellent with a relaxed atmosphere. we talked with people around and decided to book a white-water rafting excursion down the Zambezi. WOW! what an experience... to get to the launching point you walk down a deep gorge on a wooden latter/stairs. The rapids are intense, but nothing compared to when the water is lower, in October. There were 6 people to a raft plus a guide. We were with 3 other Americans and 1 kiwi (New Zealander). We managed to keep from falling out though a couple of people (John) got tossed about and ended up out of their seats! We stopped at one point and jumped off of a rock ledge into the river (we were actually on the Zimbabwe side to do this)! We were pretty tired after all the paddling and sunshine, but getting to see the river and gorge while you are out in the middle of all of it was just so majestic.

Sunday morning John and I walked to the Maramba BIC congregation meeting house for worship services. We sent greetings from UMC and were received with open arms and great kindness. We sat in on bible study and stayed for services. The congregation is enthusiastic and we were clapping and singing and swaying. All of a sudden the church seemed so very crowded and hot and I closed my eyes... and passed out! John in true hero fashion picked me up and carried me outside. Once outside in the fresh air I came back, they took me to the pastor's office and I rested as John fanned me and got me some water to drink. I felt rather silly. I think I dehydrated myself (from the bus trip and then rafting) and got over-heated in the church building. Once I was feeling better we sat out by the door so that I could have some fresh-air but still hear what was going on. After services we met with the pastor and he gave us some maize to take with us and got us a ride back to the backpackers since I was still a bit weak. I rested and drank plenty of fluids the rest of the afternoon. In the evening we went to see the falls for a few hours- WOW! there is so much water- you get soaked by the spray and see rainbows!

Monday we went back to the falls to spend the day there. We hiked around the Zambian side and down into the boiling pot, where the Zambezi rages. We took a picnic lunch there and then decided to go check out the falls proper and get soaked again. beautiful. How can you describe it? Amazing, wondrous, awe-inspiring. After getting wet we hiked some trails to see the upper Zambezi, before it flows over the falls.

Tuesday we were back on the bus, but before we left we stopped for a brief look into the Livingston museum. They have interesting exhibits on the natural history and culture. I only wish we had more time, but our bus was leaving and we were head to Kalomo to visit Klaus Muller and his farm. Mr. and Mrs. Muller are a German couple who have lived in Zambia for 30 years. They have a farm, called Twin Fountains (because of the two springs on the property). They raise chickens, sheep, goats and cattle and run an AG technical school to train farmers in vegetable production and animal husbandry. Klaus' parents have also moved from Germany to live with them and helped start a Basic School for the children in the area (who had no where to go to school). It was such a blessing to visit with them, hear their experiences and fellowship with them. They fed us amazing home-cooked, farm-raised, delicious meals. We even had chocolate cake and mulberry cobbler! Klaus really knows Zambian agriculture and has a wealth of information on soil types, grazing land holding capacity, and appropriate management for the area. He doesn't beleive in hand-outs and makes his students pay for their schooling. They are required to grow vegetables for their classes but they can also sell them and use the money they make to pay for school. With initiative, motivation and work they can pay for all of their schooling and leave with money in their pockets. Its a good system.

Back in Lusaka we visited with our "family away from home" the Frenches and did a bunch of shopping to get research/herbicide supplies (a hand-pump back-pack sprayer costs about US$76). I also purchased a Zamwipe herbicide tool used by small farmers, it is basically a weed broom and cost a reasonable US$22. I am going to test out these tools up in Mansa. I also learned that 25 acres cost around US$30,000 if anyone is interested in starting a farm over here.

The bus ride from Lusaka to Mansa leaves at 4:00pm and arrives at 4:00am. It is pretty rough going and there is one bathroom stop about half way that leaves much to be desired and you even must pay about $US 0.20 cents to use it. So I don't even want to imagine what it would be like if you did not have to pay. Our home in Mansa was just the same as when we left it and we are happy to be back! Love you all very much, know you are in our hearts and prayers. Only 19 days until spring!