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.
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