Adventures Abroad

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

City lights

Being the villager that I am, I still woke up at 5 this morning even without the dulcet crows of roosters. I’m in Lusaka once again and there isn’t much to do in the wee hours. Especially when you can’t find a blank quarterly report form. I won’t be home until mid-May. At that point, I’ll only have 6 weeks or so in my village- which is distressing. There is still so much to do. I have to get my roof fixed, find a good home for my dog, spend much more time hanging out with my zamily.

My farmers on the other hand seem to be handling this much better than I. Before I left, I scribbled measurements for 4 farmers and expect to go back to 4 RAP standard ponds ready and waiting for fish. They do keep telling me that they are going to miss my visits. I’m sure I’m very charming when I show up to there houses after a 2 hour bike ride guzzle water, tell them everything looks good and bike back. I do love seeing them ever week, hearing the local gossip and how much they love fish farming. I do have a feeling that if they didn’t expect me to show up regularly at least a few would be more lax with management, but then don’t need me too much anymore. I am working with new farmers too, but they’ve all done their research and talked to their neighbors and have a good idea of what they’re doing. How sustainable.

To encourage this, I am practicing a form of studied neglect, seeing old farmers less and less. New farmers, with first hand experience on neighbor’s ponds, are very quickly becoming old farmers so I seem to have less contact with each individual than I did in the beginning. Now I see most farmers every 2 weeks instead of once a week and some even less. Since I have much more farmers than I did when I first started this isn’t too much of a break. Blah blah blah goats, furrow issues, vigilante justice. So that’s the village.

I’m in town for meetings about training, my close of service conference (means I am in the home stretch) and to finish off my vacation days with a trip to Mozambique. Seafood, diving and laying around on the beach. I’m pretty stoked. I’ll try to put up pictures soon soon.

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