Today was the last night of the camping. The day started from a farm tour. Kakwenya came to us: he works at the farm, so he was our guide for this event. We got an opportunitiy to learn a lot about wildlife of Zambia while we walked towards the fields. There is huge variety of birds and mammals in this area becuase of warm climate. Snakes such as house snakes, puff awgers, cobras, mambas and pythons live in the local forests, but not a lot of people encounter them.
The first field we got to was for growing soybeans. They are not sold. They are used to feed the cattle on the farm. Another field had a corn growing on it. There are two types of corn: yellow and white. Yellow has a higher protein content, but does not taste very good, so it is used to feed the animals. White contains less protein and tastes better, therefore people prefer to eat it. The gene combiation of the plant sometimes is altered. I was suprised to hear that in Zambia, like in the US, there is debate over whether to grow genetically changed crop. People are concerned that herbicide resistant plants would overgrow and damage the ecosystem and other plants.
Corn on one field is sold to people for consumption. Growing that type of crop has some challenges. It has to be gathered by hands because machines break the seeds. Another problem is the monkeys. They come during day from the trees and steal the corn. Some people try to prevent them from taking the corn, but it does not really help. Then it is taken for shedding. Somtimes maize rots in the field, so people have to remove bad kernels. Also kernels are separated by size in the special machine. What we have seen made us realize how much work is done to produce this type of food in Zambia, where technolgy is not very advanced and a lot have to be done by hands.
After we visited the pigery and went back to campsite. It took us 3 and a half hours to get to the Livingstone. We dropped off out luggage at the lodge and went to the cafe for dinner.
