Just a quickie to thank you all for your welcome, your help and your hard work over the past 8 weeks. It’s made my first experience working in Zambia really interesting and rewarding. I’ll take a lot away, not least an infinitely improved understanding of ice hockey, the incredible (in the truest sense of the word) male to female ratio of native Zambians and the bus network of Eastern Province.
I’m sure that the e-voucher product and more MTZ has a lot of success ahead.
Best
Tom
(Just a footnote to explain some of this.
1 - I've been working with a lot of Canadians who originally came to Africa through Engineers without Borders, so occassionally I've played some hockey. A number of them have been glued to the Stanley Cup over the past few weeks and were dissappointed to see Vancouver lose- no riots on Josef Mwilwa Road though, as yet.
2 - Zambia has some urban legends, one of which is that women outnumber men 6 to 1. The CIA factbook would seem to put the figure at 1 to 1, so who's right? I think it all depends on your view on polygamy...Another legend is that the famous independence statue here, depicting a man breaking out of chains, rather than being a metaphor, captures a real feat of strength that actually happened. Apparently the man is still alive and is owed 5% of Zambian National Income which was promised to him by the first President.
Katete's a pretty small place and I've only been there twice this trip, so to give you a bit more of an insight the blog featured here on the St Francis hospital website is worth reading.
If you can't be bothered to click the link, I've copied a great contribution by Dr Donnelly on Zambian names below:
"What’s in a name?
Posted by Cormac Donnelly at 7.36pm
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Surnames are pretty boring here in Eastern Zambia. Much like most people on Achill Island having either Gallagher or Kilbane as their surname, here well over half of the patients have either Banda (which in English means plain) or Phiri (meaning hill or mountain) for their surname. The remainder comprise a scattering of Zulu’s, Tembo’s, Sakala’s or Mbewe’s. In fact when I see a patient with an unfamiliar surname I usually enquire and find that they are originally from a different part of the country.
Perhaps as a means of making it easier for people to identify themselves and keep numbers of John Banda’s or Mary Phiri’s Limited people here are extremely imaginative when it comes to forenames. Some of these names parents seem to pick in the hope that their children will grow up well, to be Good people, Innocent of any faults, live a Happy life, be Smart and do well in school, to be Humble and Decent.
Some I feel are pretty bad choices. I know being overweight here is a sign of affluence but I struggle to understand how anyone could call their daughter Fatness, or Vast for that matter. I think parents should love all their children just the Same no matter what Size they are. To many parents the arrival of a child is seen as a Gift, a Beauty something Precious. And while it’s good to spread the Love, Lovemore sounds like a chick from a James Bond movie.
Maybe parents pick names in the hope that they are Lucky. Calling your child Fertiliser may lead to a good harvest. Perhaps rather than a child they would have preferred the arrival of a new pair of Shoes or a Table. It’s difficult to put together the Chain of events that leads some choices though such as Tennis or Lightmaka or Butterfly or Dynamo to Note just some.
Sometimes the names bear Witness to the child’s arrival into this world. A boy delivered after a difficult labour is not let forget the fact for the rest of his life and often gets named Mabvuto (trouble). Some mothers are thankful for a Nice and Easy labour though.
I hope it is Obvious to the reader that all words in italics are actual names of patients I have come across here working as a Doctor. Goodbye."
It’s 10 days until my last day of work with MTZ before I start to do some travelling and thoughts have been largely occupied by what I can leave behind.
Whilst presenting to farmers two weeks ago I realised that while it’s a great experience, presenting to the farmers of Eastern province once or twice probably won’t have much of a lasting effect when it comes to taking the project forward in the future. This is one of the bigger criticisms of outside intervention for development in Zambia and in Africa – that well meaning people come, do the job and then leave a big vacuum when they go home. Cue one of my least favourite phrases, “Capacity Building” (second only to “Sensitization”, which is apparently what I’ve been doing to farmers in the East.)
Quite a lot’s happened in 8 weeks.
We have 10 retailers signed up to offering farmers some sort of discount for vouchers, including the Zambian Educational Publishing House, who see this as an opportunity to improve educational attainment in rural areas where spending on school materials has traditionally been much lower than in Lusaka. We might have had more - one small agro-retailer’s wife felt that we were Satanists. There’s no way back from there really.
We have 10,000 marketing flyers ready to farmers to advertise this and a number of retailers, cotton buyers and farmers are familiar with the idea.
With some luck and even more enthusiasm, people might even accept some vouchers. One farmer told us he would like to sell us an ox for some.
Now I’m actively trying to do as little as possible independently. It feels a bit odd, but I don’t want phone calls from irate shopkeepers when I’m watching leopards in South Luangwa. And more importantly, the staff who come from Eastern province and the staff I’ve been working with here have a better grasp of what’s needed anyway.
So it’s not me designing next week’s training programme and it probably won’t be me who gets on the bus to Chipata next to rustle up some more interest and help with a radio advert. If it works out I won’t be able to take credit for any of that.
'Fresh' back from a second field trip to the Eastern Province having presented the voucher proposition to (nonplussed?) farmers with the help of an interpreter. 9 hours on the bus has allowed some time for reflection...
Over an Nshima dinner on Wednesday the conversation got around to discovering the 'real' Africa. It was suggested to me that I needed to live in a typical rural house with no electricity, no water and a pit latrine to really do so, (I should add that urban Zambian Chris wasn't too impressed by this lifestyle.) I've been living in Zambia for 5 weeks, but in Lusaka primarily, with two weeks or so spent in rural areas. As I've previously mentioned, my home there is very secure , and it's pretty comfortable inside. Likewise, even staying at a terrible motel in Katete affords me electricity, (although the sockets buzz concerningly) and a bath (water intermittent.)
After entertaining thoughts of a masochistic last 3 weeks of work here spent operating out of a remote village I realised that I probably won't experience first hand some African realities if I'm going to get the work experience I'm here for. Someone else reminded me that doing things because you think you ought to do them ususally doesn't work out. Nevertheless there are some realities that I have come into contact with directly or indirectly.
The first is how much people are paid. I'm hiring people at the moment to drive the voucher project in the East and have discovered that a wage of $10 (£6 or ZMK50,000) a day is a decent salary here. This took some time for me to digest and I had to lobby for some sort of bonus system before I could settle my conscience. To put this in context, a casual labourer can earn as little as ZMK150,000 a month. I'll let you do the maths. For a bit more context - sometimes Ferraris are spotted in Lusaka.
Reality number 2 is simply that this place is huge and getting to places in person would be difficult even if you drove a Ferrari. Added to this the spectrum of languages, confidence levels, formal skill levels and simply the settings for events can vary hugely. Yesterday I informally interviewed 4 people on the doorstep of my motel room - I had dragged chairs from the room outside. One of the people I spoke to had an Accountancy qualification, whilst another had left school with the bare minimum. With limited access to the internet, supporting this team, 8/9 hours away, will be an incredible challenge.
Final reality is that whether you're experiencing a very simple life in rural Zambia or trying to conduct business of some sort, if you're an outsider like me you know it's probably only for a set period. It's real, but only for a bit. That's unavoidable, and I'm not sure what I'll make of that until I get back.
PS - A correction from my first post. Many of the 2 million people of Lusaka are living in the compounds, which are shanty districts.
We left Lusaka at about half past ten in the morning and arrived at Chimfunshi at quarter to seven, after the Rapture. The last 20 km were the most exciting, negotiating a dirt track in the dark that led to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, 8ft grass on either side and owls (or insert your own animal here) watching in the trees. Breaking down out here isn’t an option.
The little clearing and campsite was very welcome, in particular the burning barbeque or bri as everyone seems to call them here. After pitching the tent, opening the beers and meeting some Primatologists and Philosophers (Chimp philosophy: “I wanna be like you-hoo-hoo”??) the journey didn’t seem so bad. I discovered that the night sky is as bright and as clear as everyone says it is out in the bush.
Chimfunshi is the world’s largest chimpanzee orphanage in the very North of Zambia. Most of the 120 chimps are refugees from all over the world - Cindy, for example had come from Italian family who had giving up looking after her as a pet. Some have had pretty rough treatment. There’s also a hippo called Billy – more on her later.
When we arrived early in the morning we were greeted by Mrs, whose family have been looking after chimps for more than 30 years. We were given blue jump suits and we put crisps, biscuits and powdered milk in our pockets before climbing through a small hole in the wall into the enclosure.
Sims, Didi, Dominic, Cindy, Carla and 5 month old Kitten rushed out to greet us, rummaging in our pockets for their breakfast. Dominic, who turned out to be as troublesome as most 4 year olds, immediately jumped onto my head, almost making me fall over.
Cliched I guess, but it was like taking some people for a walk. The chimps misbehaved in a very human way with 4 year old Dominic deliberately winding up Didi and Sims by swinging on the trees and kicking them. Highlights: (1) Meeting a 5 month old baby chimp and his mother and seeing them behave just as humans would and (2) trying to teach Cindy how a zip worked on an anthill in the jungle.
When we got back to the orphanage, Billy the Hippo was lying comfortably under a tree. Frankly it’s impossible to imagine that an animal that wide and that rotund, with such short legs is biggest threat the animal kingdom has for a human being in Africa. Nevertheless, with that being the fact, it was disconcerting to be within 15 feet of her.
Billy was found under her dead mother’s body after she had been shot by poachers and was then raised at the orphanage, who discovered six months later that she was a girl. Since then she has acted as a guard hippo, being very protective of her adoptive parents when drunkards have appeared and has occasionally left to visit local wild hippos, but has always come back. She has a biography – “Billy the Hippo” – of which I am now a proud owner.
At work I have spent a lot of time on the telephone trying to agree the terms of the savings voucher for farmers. This has led to a couple of interesting meetings at the Soviet sounding Industrial Area of Lusaka.
It’s about as picturesque as it sounds. A maze of un-named undulating dirt tracks littered with car carcasses link up scrap yards, breweries and a Parmalat. Most of the traffic is from enormous trucks and brave taxis with soon to be broken suspensions. Finding a particular office is nearly impossible and for that reason I was almost an hour late for my meetings at Battery Express, Zambian Educational Publishing and Export Fertilisers. (It didn’t help that I thought that the former place was actually called “Patrick’s Place.”)
At the publishers I met some Zambian civil servants from the Education department and discovered that Zambia has Permanent Secretaries too. Whilst the building itself was dilapidated, the boardroom table was regal. To the table’s credit, by the end of the meeting it was pretty much agreed that vouchers for discounted school books would help to solve poor attainment in rural areas. Excellent.
The week’s exhausting conversations made me very glad of the opportunity to get out into the outskirts of Lusaka on Saturday to join the HASH House Harriers. HASH is a running (and drinking) club that seems to be a relic of ex-pat life. Everyone is given an odd pseudonym after attending a few times – this week “Bo Peep” was christened. We ran around a farm, watched by nonplussed Zebras and Donkeys, occasionally stopping to relocate the trail – part of the fun is apparently to attempt to throw you off track. When the run finishes there is a strange sunset ceremony where rugby club esque drinking songs are sung and various indiscretions punished with beer related fines. If this sounds strange, the reality was possibly a bit stranger.
Two days of intensive meeting with 16 of Eastern Province's most entrepreneurial retailers over. The Righteous 5am bus has delivered me to Lusaka. So what did I learn?
Firstly, that going to alone without Alex and Kenan would have been pretty much impossible. They, like all the other Zambians I've met to date, bent over backwards to help me out.
Shops in Katete and Chipata are painted concrete rectangles with painted on signs, set about 10 meters of orange dust and gravel away from the road. Some are treasure troves of pots and pans, toasted sandwich makers and watering cans, hand labelled with prices. Others contain very little at all, perhaps a big stack of fertiliser or a few pots of chemicals and seeds.
The people who own the shops fall largely into two categories; (a) quiet men, teens or early twenties, understandably tentative at diminishing their seemingly already tiny margins (they often had seemingly very little stock) and (b) assertive, bearded, second generation Zambian chaps of Indian origin who seemed established and successful.
My pitch seemed to go down relatively well and most seemed keen to be involved in the voucher scheme. I'll call them back on Thursday, which given my language barrier could be tricky. If this was a task on the Apprentice I might have been fired for not pushing hard enough for the deal by now, but somehow that didn't seem right in rural Zambia.
I visited a School to ask whether the voucher could also be used to cover fees and the idea received a relatively warm reception. The inner playground was piled high well yellow sweetcorn drying out in the sun - surely the kids get sick of eating that after a couple of weeks? Still, the well dressed children at the school seemed better off than those I saw rolling tyres barefoot down a rocky hill in one part of Chipata. I still can't work out why, but it seemed pretty purposeful. Maybe it was for the buses.
My own culinary experience was a bit better as I had my first taste of nshima, Zambians' staple dish. It's a white, 'stodgy' (is that a word? if so is that how it's spelt?) rice-like oatmeal and it comes with chicken, pumpkin leaves and various gravies. You eat with your hands, which for me turned into a bit of a shambolic mess on my plate but it was welcome after trooping around shop after shop.
Catching a bus at 5am on a Sunday morning is not my idea of fun. Neither is sitting 5 per aisle or having gospel music powered down at me almost unabated for the duration of a 6 and a half hour trip. I say almost because occasionally the television would switch to a bizaare scene where a man appeared to be being attacked by an invisible deity in the middle of the bush.
The bus was insanely driven for good measure, but the wild open spaces, small thatched houses and great green forests of the Great East Road are beautiful. In the little town of Katete where I arrived, there are more cyclists than cars, so they get right of way.
My job for MTZL is to prove the concept that Zambian cotton farmers could potentially be paid using a voucher system rather than cash. Vouchers linked to farmers would be more secure for our client, who spend a lot of money insuring and physically protecting cash and should also enable us to harness the collective buying power of farmers so that they are offered discounts when they use them.
The objective for my first trip to Zambia's Eastern Province is to negotiate with Agricultural and other retailers to offer discounts if Cotton farmers accept vouchers for their cotton rather than cash. I'm also on the look out for staff to help with the electronic voucher transactions when they start.
Not easy, especially suffering from mild gospel bus trauma.
Kenan and Alex, two people who are key this work have sorted me out with a room and some food. Over chicken and mashed potatoes I thought about Kenan's suggestion of a Farmer focus group - very Civil Service.
My last few days has been in a number of ways similar to being at home. I wake up earlier than I'd like and I go to work. I come home, send some emails and maybe read. On the weekends I play football and do some grocery shopping and then watch some football on TV.
And there the similarities end. My new living arrangement is somewhat like a castle. It's behind the double padlocked iron gates and locked doors of a house within a 'compound' behind a wall and a 'guarded' gate, (the guard is not of the 'active guarding' school.) Perhaps surprisingly (surprising that I got this far) on Friday evening I found myself locked in the lounge - as a final precaution my new house mates had locked the internal doors. It was a new experience to be locked in to a part of my own house until 2 in the morning.
On Thursday I spent some time with colleagues negotiating a ludicrously high interest loan from a Micro Finance business in the middle of big, dusty, crowded Soweto market. This place has the dubious honour of the following description in my guide book, "notorious for robbery and pickpockets, if in a car, wind windows up and lock doors." I'm still planning my work here, but essentially I'll be proving the concept of paying cotton farmers with vouchers rather than cash; increasing security, reducing costs and hopefully increasing their buying power.
On the weekend I had the privelege of demonstrating my footballing prowess alongside some locals at the local Polo fields, where I hear Prince Harry's Zambian girlfriend can be found, (no further references to British Royalty will be made in this blog, but needless to say there was some interest in a wedding this week too.) On Sunday, Aaron Ramsey demonstrated how it's really done and gave me an excuse to describe where Wales was to amassed Arsenal and Manchester United Fans. Pretty passionate support here for both teams. One fan, who I named "Rooney" almost broke a table in anger.
The highlight came today however as I ventured slightly out of Lusaka city centre on the road for Kafue with some new friends. The best description I have for the farm we visited is 'shady' but after travelling along a track past discarded trucks, trailers and diggers you find yourself presented with a pinkish house with a back garden set against the backdrop of the bush, complete with Zebra, Buffalo and Impala.
Amongst the plastic dark green furniture in the back garden were two white Lion cubs. Beautiful. There are only 300 of these left in the World and I got to pat numbers 301 and 302. Needless to say I'm very pleased about this. There was one other Lion who was 9 months old in an enclosure and snacking on a chicken. Needless to say he was not so pattable.
The fabulous day ended with Ethiopian food and dicussion of cows and termites' contribution to global warming as well as the Crocodile that crashed a Congolese plane and the lady who, expecting to rescue a puppy from certain death in China, asked to buy it, which the retailer misunderstood...
A small note to end on place names that I have enjoyed so far: Wonga,(like the .com), and current no.1 Kalingalinga.
I have arrived, and as expected, Lusaka is nothing like I expected. The first thing you notice is that Lusaka doesn't really feel much like a city. There's much more space so every building is single storey and is usually surrounded by bush, trees, gardens or plain scrubland. I have no idea where the 2 million people are hiding. It's also very hot.
I met Peter Manda at the airport and threw my rucksack into the back of his pick up before heading on a short journey along the straight road to Lusaka, cyclists balancing tomatoes and children either side of the carriageway. My lodge was on an untarmaced road, but had a lovely courtyard and garden. Not that I paid much attention - as soon as I saw a bed I crashed for a couple of hours.
I spent a very chilled afternoon and evening having a few beers in a couple of lodges and gardens in Lusaka with Peter and his friends and was entertained by tales about the various ways they had heard people had come to a premature demise at the hands of pythons, lions and buffalo. Particularly 'interesting' is the story of the python than jumped on the South African bus driver as he was relieving himself by the side of the road. Apparently these stories swept under the carpet as much as possible so as not to deter visitors...Following a quick sweep for snakes I enjoyed a pretty comfortable first night in the Executive Lodge.
The next day I met some of my new colleagues at Mobile Transactions, who I caught in the middle of an office move. Their main business is the transfer of money across the country using the mobile phone network and a network of agents. I spent the afternoon at their Green Kiosk in central Lusaka watching people make payments. The one time I tried to help out it pretty much seemed to go wrong immediately, to the obvious slight concern of the customers. I'd describe the work as hot and fragrant. The kiosk is opposite the tallest building in Zambia and therefore, if this is possible, the most derelict. It's a high rise office block from the 70s (I think) but was never finished - a relic, Hans (my new boss) informs me, of when the copper price was high and times were good in Zambia, before the price crashed.
The Chinese economy's demand for copper is however bringing new investment back into the country, so things seem to be on the up again. I spent the evening at an excellent Chinese restaurant which has a sign on the wall selling 'prospecting rights.' Not sure what that means but it sounds enterprising.
