Today, June 30tht, LearnServe Zambia Group 1 heads to Monze, about 3 hours south of Lusaka, to visit and stay with a rural farm community. The next four nights will be spent there and two nights after that will be spent at Livingstone, where Victoria Falls is located. We won’t be blogging on our trip, as will have very if no internet access. We will however try to update Twitter – as the cell phone reception allows.
I watered the new fruits trees – mango and lemon – before helping with tonight’s cookout. I bought a handmade axe from Mr. Banda, our night watchman. The new trees were placed next to the ones purchased two days ago, four oranges and four avacados, and the new axe was placed next to the tools also bought two days ago – one pick ax, two shovels and three hoes. Over the last two days we started buying tools, trees, seeds, and fence for a garden project at a rural school on a farm two and a half hours south of Lusaka.
They need durable items. Things that won’t break, or that when they break – like a hoe handle – can be replaced easily from local, inexpensive materials. The trees and the seeds are to help supplement the student’s and teacher’s food supply as well as to produce items that can be sold to support the school. Fruit trees can’t be bought in Monze. Tools, like these, are expensive and must be shipped from Lusaka – at added cost. All totaled, the cost of installing a garden of 20 feet by 40 feet exceeds the average annual income of nearly two people. In addition to a new, fenced garden, each student will have a tree to give to the farm school.
We called Mr. Muwetwe, the schools’ head teacher, when we were back in the States to find out what they needed – a garden, lemon trees, and fence – and what they had – one and a half shovels and two broken hammers. To get these items in Lusaka – too heavy to bring in our luggage – we relied upon our driver, Joseph, to help us find nurseries with fruit trees and pick out items at the hardware store downtown. Unexpectedly, our night watchman, Mr. Banda, let me know he was a blacksmith and that he made axes. When we left the States, we did not know how or where would get these supplies, but here, our mission to give back and help engage in sustainable development opened doors that we could not have opened by ourselves. Joseph, our driver and a Lusaka resident, himself has gone back to plant trees in his village and understands what Monze needs. Mr. Banda, watching us unload tools bought from the store, came to us and let us know what he could make. Mr. Muwetwe, who we can’t always understand well on the phone, guided us to what his community needs. A vision, a van, a driver, and some incomplete knowledge of what is needed is a powerful combination of elements – elements that alone are inadequate without local knowledge, input, and collaboration.
Things unfold here as they need to, often as they ought to. Precise plans escape us. Relationships carry us through. Risking a conversation, accepting that we will engage in transactions where the exchange or price is unknown is necessary. And somehow we get to the end we desire, we accomplish the task we set out achieve. Understanding this – the need for local knowledge, input, and responsibility – is the key to understanding the success (or failure) of sustainable development. Without it, we would be utterly unprepared to help bring the rights tools needed to build – but more importantly – let the community sustain its own garden.
Alan Hunt, Co-leader LSZ1
Alan is an agricultural policy consultant in Washington, DC.