Its Harvest Time!

The sweet potato harvesting crew


Ruth harvesting variety 'Carrot C'

Yesterday John and I went out to help with the sweet potato harvest. It is quite a process. First we must record the varieties characteristic (color, shape, vine lengths etc.) and pest/disease resistance. I was in charge of collecting the yield data: the number and weight of marketable, unmarketable tubers, and vine weight.

At the end the farmers who helped us categorize the potatoes were given the harvest to take home (as payment). There was a dispute about who gets how much... it was eventually sorted out by the casual workers (who are paid in cash)who had to divide the potatoes up equally among the farmers. In a place where people often struggle and scrape to get by and often live day to day, they want to grab whatever they can get... its rather sad.

Today we harvested my sweet potato trial. John, Mr. Banda, and myself, along with a number of casual workers (Peter, Benson, and Dennis are the only ones I know by name) were a part of the harvest team. The work went pretty fast, all we had to collect were the numbers and weights of marketable and unmarketable tubers and the vein weights. At the end of the process we let the casual workers divide up the sweet potatoes among themselves (we also took a few home to eat this week). Most Zambians prefer the cream fleshed sweet potatoes but John and I prefer the orange fleshed ones.

On a non-agricultural note: It is not a good time to be getting sick in Zambia. The medical workers are on strike. John called his contact at the Mansa hospital yesterday, because he was wanting to know the situation on distilled water (that is where he has been getting distilled water for his experiments and the equipment that makes the distilled water has been down for the past few weeks). He found out that it will not be possible to get the distilled water because the lab workers are on strike. But, the lab workers are not the only ones on strike- the entire hospital staff, doctors and nurses included are on strike. They are striking because of poor working conditions and pay. They want to motivate the government into action. Sadly this is creating a life and death situation for people who need care. Thankfully John has been feeling much better this week.