It's impossible to think that Mumbai could' of escaped the 2008 terrorist attack psychologically unscathed. Let me tell you, security can be tight. A lot of Internet cafes demand photo ids, I had to bribe the bell-boy just to get me a illegal sim card , and there's cops every where milling about. A lot of people have personal memories the attack, and the neighborhood I've been sleeping in, Colaba, was terror attack ground zero.

This is the Taj. It's story is that it was build by a rich Indian merchant as sort of a "fuck you" to the British Imperialist, because at the time no Indian was legally admitted to 5-star hotels in Bombay. Anyways it, along with the Victoria Train Terminal was the focus of the attacks which came by dingies on the water. You can barely see the cupola to the right which is completely renovated after the terrorist atomized the last one. I met the guy who imported all the fittings for the new cupola (all from Germany) and he paid my bill of two beers and this sizzler:

...and it was good!

Check points and armored carriers give security forces a presence at every street corner of the affected neighborhoods.

At one point some of the bad guys ran to this place which is an up-scale kind of place with it's outrageous western-style prices.

Walking up and down up and down. I know it doesn't really sound stimulating but so far no one has given a tough time. I've had a couple of girls ask me to buy them rice. No money, no money, buy rice, for my family, no money." I don't get what they scam is. Can you not buy rice with money? At any rate I kind of imagined a time-square type situation, with ass to check, to jowl and what not but it's really not that bad. It is true that from time to time things get clogged, but it's never violent and uncomfortable. Beggars aren't too bad and let me say this coming from Zambia, here I am ABSOLUTELY ANONYMOUS. A white foreigner attempting to enter a slum area of Lusaka, he'd get mobbed. Here nothing, I am ignored. The only people who don't ignore me are hash dealers. Literally every 10 minutes of walking someone tries to sell me hash. I must think about changing my wardrobe, eh?

So enough boring words:

Look at all the pretty flowers, and you know that these are NOT for tourist. Garlands are worn on special dates, like weddings, but more daily use is for temples. I really like the Hindu idea of temples. Decorations you just throw up and forget about them unless you're staring right at them. A shrine needs upkeep: fresh flowers everyday, candles, incense. Yesterday I even say this special dripping thing that let go a continuous stream of fresh milk on fresh garlands... milk is special to Hindus, and of course, if you couldn't tell, colors. (Green=peace, blue=manly strength, yellow=knowledge, and so on)

A third of Mumbai population live in slums like these. Apparently since "Slumdog Millionaire," a movie I have not see, westerns come to gawk at the misery. I hate to promote a negative stereotype, but you know it's real, and it's teeming millions we're talking about here. I shall write more about this later.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hiking the Muslim/Urdu quarter which was pretty amazing. It's really fits the cliche of a bustling Eastern market place. It's great because every kilometer of Mumbai brings you to a completely different atmosphere... always very stimulating.

So my problem is that I can't stick to a game plan. Yesterday I was *supposed* to go see the Silent Towers and this building Antilia. The Silent Towers were build by the Parsis, a people from Iran (Parsis sounds like Persians) who came to Mumbai long ago. Unlike Iranians these guys still follow the old old was of Zoroaster/ Zarathustra... a religion that gave Jews, Muslims, and Christians their concept of Pure Good (God) in conflict with Pure Evil (Satan). Iranians today, although Shiites, still have a fire-jumping holiday that goes back thousands of year, and that the Mullahs hate... but good fun is good fun, right? Anyways, here in Mumbai these Parsis for a small but very rich and tightly nit group, and they built these Silent Towers. I'm not too sad to miss them because I'm told it's hard to get close, but what's really fascinating is that Parsis don't bury their dead... what do they do? They throw them up on the roofs of these towers exposed and let them putrify. Can you imagine getting past the health inspector in America with that one?

Antilia on the other end of the spectrum is the most posh fancy personal residence in the world. 60 stories high, a real sky scrapper, but only 30 floors on account of huge vaulted ceilings. It's close to these Towers of Silence, cost billions and has only 4 residents. Imagine.

So yeah, I went out to find these things but got distracted and ended up walking very far away, but you know this place is great because I don't regret it for a second. Go with the flow, that's what I say.

and on a lighter note I give you this:

a goat perched on a motorcycle, and why not. I lived and breathed goats for the past two years and they are not very common here, even in the slums. There much bigger then Zambian goats and the he-goats have these football-sized testicles that hang down separately, and no bleating. Perhaps the Indians have beat the bleat out of these guys.

This is how people in some villages get water, dig a hole close to a river and it will fill up. It's not at all that great but it's got to be better then drinking it straight.

She had to walk about 2 kilometers to get here. So yeah water is an issue, but that's the whole world is it not?? They say that by 2050 most people will live in areas that are water stressed. A lot of futurist predict "water wars". Of course Zambia's availability of the stuff is not the issue. It's all there, the water, but they are just missing infrastructure and stuff. unlike, say, California. There there's just not enough.

I'd like to describe this place, but how to do so without sounding like a canned cliched introduction in a Lonely Planet? I could describe the demographics, the weather, and so on, but all this is readily available on Wikipedia. What can I do to add value? Turns out not much, but that's okay. I'm not shooting for a Pulitzer here. I'm just putting in my "take" and you can 'take' it for what it's worth.

I'd like to start with the chow. Now I'm no foodie but even a clueless clod like me knows a good thing when it is thrown into your face. Of course there's no such thing as Indian cuisine except to describe a very broad category. I've been told there's 9 or so full-fledged cuisines here, and I'm wondering why there's no representative on Iron Chef. Every sit down restaurant has it's own particular options and the menu changes as the day proceeds. Behold

This eatery was a big questionable in terms of cleanliness, but never you mind. Remember: authenticity! This is mutton biryani and it was totaly decent. It sets you back $1.00 for what you on the plate and in the bowl.

Simple chicken curry. Less then $1

This is muli paratha, and I think it's Punjabi. You see it's like a pizza in appearance, but really it's it's own thing. Stuffed with lentils. That thing in the back was nothing more then deep fried dough and they called it pakwan. Pakwan is not essential. Less then $1

If you budget is really causing hardship may I suggest you get you food from the side of the road. Yes no sit down, a little awkward but it's all pretty good. The white objects are rice-things and the samosas are stuffed with potatoes and cilantro. Everything is, of course, spiced. Each item puts you back 15 cents and three will fill you up.

The best thing about India is the broadband internet access. I have SO many video taken over the years, but no way of sharing them with all of you out there and this has been a source of much consternation for myself. I was storing them on my 160 GB Toshiba drive which was already beginning to show signs of malfunction. Electronics really seem to give out fast here. If the drive went down it would be two years of documentation evaporated. Now safely in a very wired country I can upload video to my hearts delight. Unfortunately it takes a while load on you tube so you'll get'em piecemeal.

This here is a dancing call boy. His job is to find people to take a taxi and gets paid a little commission each time. This is not a very exciting career, but I once remember a whole crowd of these guys erupting into spontaneous cheering when I chose their bus over another one. Notice those ridiculous clothes. Most taxi drivers dress like this: which is to say like weird American art

students.

This is pretty enertaining. Not at all sure what's all about. the big football-looking dude in the background is Abe another volunteer who was on his second peace corps contract Zambia (4 years! Ulp!)

In the Lusaka airport I got what might be described as a minor panic attack... or really a better description would be a well of emotions that I get at those special transition moment in life. This is normal, I'm told, and soon as the plane was airborn I experienced a sincere desire to leap from my; what a thrilling moment. This despite Zambia's last attempt to "bum" me out.

The day of the flight I had awoken with just enough money in my pocket to hire a taxi to the airport. (Zam PCVs will know then I had about 150,000 kwatcha) I had one other minor mission and that was to ship all of my souvir type things back to the states so as not to incumber my person as traipse the globe. Turns out it was going to be a lot cheaper then I had planned (advice to zam pcvs: go to the post office and say you want to ship it on the big boat)... 270,000 kwatcha ($54) for 7 kilos, as opposed to sending it normal, about $140. when the clerk quotes me the lower price I think: rockin'; I say: okay hold that thought while I run to the ATM and get some cash from my American account. Unfortunately when I give the machine a whirl it tells me the transaction cannot be made, insufficient blah, blah, blah (travel tip: get a visa card. Mastercard is, I assure you, not everywhere you want to be.) This is scary because my flight was taking off in 3 hours, and if this card is defective then how will I survive India? Sleep in the airport? Hitch a ride to the US. Embassy to make an international phone call?

Needless to say all's well. My account was fine, it was just Zambia's shitty uplink to the world, and I bought a new digital camera in Dubai, and all those 7 kgs I wanted to ship home was packed gingerly away in my check in luggage, and no worse for it. I am now in Bombay with super fast internet and 5 cent samosas (which besides being decidedly cheaper are bigger, and tastier then Zambia samosas), but more on that in another post. Air experience was, as per SOP, a total drag. It took six goddamn air ports (Lusaka, Addis, Kuwait, Bahrain, Dubai, Mumbai) and no flight long enough to let me sleep. I did sit next to someone who actually eats faster then me, which was a first, and those moving sidewalks are food, as if you were a 8 foot man in full stride. Oh, and the airline food was not too shabby. I'm beggining to learn that orientals just demand more from their food then we do, a whole world of foodies.

Other thoughts: Is there such a thing as a 'good' or 'bad' pilot? I mean, it's not like they're dog-fighting. Everything is completely automatic... if something reaches a certain parameter you flip a switch. It's all in the regulations.

An epitaph: RIP Ozark multitool, you were a good tool. Unlike my leatherman you never got stolen, probably because you were purchased from Walmart for $10, a most people thought you were a worthless piece of shit. But you made 5 years, and you did it all: Cut chicken wire, slaughter pigs, and pull nails, wrecking... And because you were cheap they made you extra bulky allowing your bodice to double up as a bludgeoning. I am so sorry that I absent mindly threw you in my carry on bag, and a little disturbed that Lusaka allowed me to board a jumbojet with you and it was only in Addis Abba that you were spotted and taken out of my life forever. You will be sorely missed.

Lusaka, by the standards of most African capitals, is quite puny. A mere 1 million strong, and that million is spread paper thin by low density sprawl. But it's not at all too shabby once you get a sense of direction and learn how to get around in mini-buses... although there are always problems, like when your mini bus breaks down going uphill on a bridge. Then everyone has to disgorge themselves from the rust-bucket in the middle of some frantic traffic.

As far as "things to do" opinions differ. "There is nothing to do here but drink," says a snappily dressed professional woman aged 41, who I met at the Broad Backpackers Lodge. And maybe she's right, but you could do a lot worse, I think. English is widely spoken here by the elites, so you can chat it up with about anyone if you go out to disco-friday. There you will see jocund men with blackberries and sweater vest and there you will see big women yukking it up on ladies night Wednesdays . Last night I saw a Lexus.

But you never know who you'll meet. Just the other day at a Chines owned hotel I met a Colonel in the People's Liberation Army. After talking for 10 minutes (he had been singing some very bad karaoke, drinking seahorse whiskey and was sweating profusely) he left for sleeping but not before telling me to keep drinking at the bar and to but everything on his tab. He was happy, I think, that I showed him my Reservist military ID. A chip off the old block! If this is what Chines -American unilateralism looks like, I like it!

2 days remain, Bombay, get ready.

So now I'm here to take up blogging again. I dug it the first go round but when my cell phone internet thingee got snagged, I says to myself 'what's the point?' It's said that a blog is more or less a "broadcast" like radio, and if you can't update it habitually, then people get annoyed and decide you're a punk and to hell with you. so I quit, but now I'm back, at least for a while, so isn't that great? Lately I've been getting a lot of question from all quarters and they all ask the same kind of things: what's up? Or whatcha doing? Or how you doing? Or even the occasional 'how da hell you doing you crazy bastard?' These are fair questions I'd like to take this opportunity to maybe outline some of my going-ons in the past year. You can forgive me if I rhapsodize: I've had this reoccurring impulse to grab people off the street and tell them EVERYTHING. This impulse is duly suppressed and if you really know your Freud you know that no impulse ought to be hidden and crushed forever. If you don't let it out you become "symptomatic" which is to say a raving lunatic and you are despised and pitied by all. So like all good things this blog is a release, a release of everything, imagination run amok. So what can I say? Africa. Scary land teeming with unwashed masses, violence, poverty, misery, et cetera. A lot of not very nice words or concepts emerge in a free association exercise on that word. But this result I think, I hope, is exaggerated. Zambia has some of the cleanest air in the world, and some of the cleanest people. It's true. I know it's pretty mundane thing to say, but it sticks in my mind. When thinking 'poor peasant farmer' we image what? The filth, the back breaking work, the illiteracy, the human rights violations and all of that is there, but it never got to me like that. The human mind can and does adjust to all circumstances, and for the people I've lived with for these years, this toiling is never shocking, how could it be? It's just life, and life is hard, and you know it's hard for EVERYBODY. The difference in wealth was always trick to reconcile. You can image how sweet and juicy all the many possessions, gear, and other miscellany could seem to a boy who literally has nothing but the taters on his back. All these vast and wholesome riches! But to a rich westerner it may all look a little pitable: my battered frying pan, my rat-chewed shirt, my $20 cell phone. People would come begging for work, $5 a day! You might feel a little 'ruling class' paying someone like that, but they were thrilled to get it. I don't want to go on too long, just want to get this blog rolling. Expect frequent updates as I traverse India and beyond.

I am pieced together with tinsel and foam; I drink black water so that I might be fortified. I stand for strong coffee and decency and rectitude.

It’s been well over a month since I’ve put anything down here. I do feel that there’s a basic Ricky Ricardo “whole lot of ‘splainin’” that I got to get into. I’ve been using this very blog as an excuse for not writing loved ones. I might say something along the lines of “I’ll explain everything in my blog,” or “oh hey, I’d tell you everything, but why waste space? Just read my blog!” Anyone who’s tried to do anything of the sort has been met with the same sorry scuttle butt. I read somewhere somehow that blogs were to be treated as ‘broadcast’, ie. not posting to your blog for weeks on end was akin to radio station that broadcast dead air for a year. Who wants to listen to dead air? Sorry for real. No updates, no insight, no hope. Were I called to account by the shareholders they might revolt and suspend my pay package. they might even be in a lynching kind of mood.

In brief January was a wicked and vile draught. I was injured; in ruin… my plants and my prospects languished under the sunny inferno, one boiling eye of rage. But this is typical po-mo whining. Self pity, let me tell yall, IS THE WORST. Besides, a draught to me is a frustrating annoyance. To a sustenance farmer it’s a calamity… I can’t help but marvel at how much more together the peasants have their shit over myself. Faced with disaster and ruin, they shrug, smile, laugh and move on. I proceed to pull my hair by the roots. There’s a lot to admire there. Fortunately February came to the rescue like manna from the heavens come, rain now, tomorrow, tout le monde, praise be to gawd! Pack yer tools Lucifer: there will be no famine this year.

I’d put more, and indeed there’s more. For example I went to a headman funeral a few weeks back. This guy was a sonofabitch. His own (extensive) progeny wanted the guy dead. I figured stroke. I mean, he was in his 60’s and now paralyzed in half. What else could it be? Well the regular folk put it down to magiks and voodoo and other candy cauldron hokum. They paid a witch doctor to ward off the evil eye, what they’d call nyanga. The result was a predictable non factor. Why say sonofabitch? To give an idea, the guy was so vindictive towards the world at large that instead of preserving what wealth he had for his family (his kids, his multitude of wives, et cetera) which was not in bank accounts, but rather in cattle, instead of passing it on in a graceful and dignified descent the old man starts slaughtering the cattle one after another. He is slaughtering what money he’s got, eating the meat now in real time; all this to prevent his (presumably hostile) family from getting a chuck. All out of spite! I can’t help but be impressed: the man’s a true misanthrope in the classical sense.

At any rate the thing was fast. Every woman in town showed up and “wailed” which was just play acting. Oh and the kicker? They had transported his corpse 18 km away to the hospital, to the cooler, while they awaited the arrival of his many kids from the capital Lusaka. This is unorthodox. Most times the body’s in the ground with in 24 hours, but the guy was a headman and could apparently splurge on amenities like keeping his own body cool in death. Well I’ll be damned if the truck moving his earthly remains back to the village on the funeral day itself didn’t break down. Are we surprised? The upshot: I could smell the body through the coffin, 20 feet away, through the crowd, through rain. The man was ripe.

I had my camera, but didn’t take pictures for I had no permission. In our culture, chez nous, taking pictures and video of a funeral procession might be considered disrespectful, tackless and rude. I kept the electronics sheathed: better off not risking offence. Turns out though that not only was I allowed to take photos, but a not a few of the villagers were dismayed that I had not… I think that secretly they might of even been outraged.

Looks like internet here, ie regular blog updates, is kaput. My laptop’s software is in meltdown. The walls have caved (Microsoft XP of course!), margins called, the vanguard in retreat. The result is a much harsher and Spartan update regime… possibly as infrequent as once a month. I know, you my loyal readers, demand not this weak chamomile tea, these watery stuffs. You want blood and rum! God bless and peace be upon you. We will get through this! Be good, be calm and above all, KNOW HOPE!

Internet can be a problem out here. Surely leapfrogging in technology, to this point, has left me astonished. Here I am, regular schlub, out in the bush, tapping into the wireless cloud, feeding the monkey, doing what a regular schlub does best: whine, scratch genitals, leer... and yet I am on the information superhighway. It defies logic. So when my internet antenna gets stole'd (swiped! ganked! lifted!) I was naturally bummed. Still am, now that I think about it, but I am not still without options. For one thing, the price of this artifice has been downsized from 1.2 million kwatcha ($220) to about K400,000 ($72). Big difference(why the price shift? Lack of demand driving prices south I'd wager) , affordable. Maybe I could just go to Zain and buy a replacement. No big deal, I have the $$$.

But this is a global recession, and there are other options besides impulse replacement purchase. We must stick to a budget. Remember, I'm currently allotted no more then roughly $300 a month living stipend, so any extra cost comes out of that ever diminishing pile of personal savings. Tred lightly, I sez to myself. I mean, internets, and blogs, and 1's and 0's are fun and all, but is it worth drawing down my reserves? Two words: global downturn. Another two words plus one: soft job market. Imagine me coming back to the states, hat in hand, looking for charity. The humiliation, the shame! Better to keep my expenses in check. Who needs the internet anyways?

So, I've not been posting these past weeks, this past new year, and with good reason. I am now sitting in the capital, Lulu land(for administrative ditherings), and am using their oh so sweet internet satellite uplink (VSAT!); even Youtube works here. But my return to the bush looms, and I am torn.

I am only here posting here now to keep yall on the insider track of my escapades. This is not a blog about my weeny travails, or my bank accounts. It's about sustainability goddamn it, but just know that keeping this thing going is %100 contingent on either buying a new device, or recovering my old one. It seems lame and petty, but out here these things take on new shades of consequence. If I can't pull it together then postings here will slow to a dribble with updates coming in no more then monthly. I hope I can sort this mess out, but if not, well at least YOU know why.

Returned to my site: grim fuggin scene. Before my vacation to the beach, I mean, right as I was leaving, I caught a couple goats munching away on my maize. Exasperating, bummer, appalling! But what can a fella do? Chase the bums out, but this is no long term solution. I fiddled with the fence, tacked on some more bamboo, and well, I left my site with little hope of finding any corn when I got back. The good news is that the maize, although heavily browsed, is alive. All is not lost, but it is still discouraging. The worst of it are these accursed weeds. Natural weeds are hearty, immune to disease, immune to animals, seed quickly, and drought resistant. Crop plants have none of this. Shit, it's almost enough to make me go for GM crops. If they can just cross the fecundity of these weeds with the nutrition of crop plants... I mean, I'm just saying.

The kapinga are the worst as they creep rapidly across the ground, and in a mere 10 days have completely overgrown my soya plants, which I had just planted. It seems that rain really picked up after I left. My timing on this vacation idea could not of been worse and I am ruing the day I left! Rue I say!

I think I can bounce back, but it will be some serious work. The steps are thus: 1)weed, weed weed: crops don't stand a prayer if you can't even find them in the weed patch. I may have to hire some women to help 2)plant live fence: the rains are here to stay, so I can go ahead and plant sisal and jatropha along my fence. 3)uhhh, well, we'll deal with step 3 when we get there.

On a brighter note, I have chicks... I did have time to day to really check out my chickens and see if all 16 of the buggers hatched, but I say at least6-10 of them scurrying about with mother. The chickens have for the most part learned to escape the chicken run. Holes in the old chicken wire has been their main route. I could fix them, but for now it's okay. The chickens come out and keep me company when I weed, which is good for me. They know that I am unearthing some epicurean grubs out there, grubs that are good for them... and in turn the grubs give them a more complete and balanced diet, which makes them healthier and fatter; good for me.

Now think about the dark and foreboding bush that extends for thousands of miles in the bowels of this darkest of continents. Imagine maybe disease and mayhem, war, and poverty, and you've got the vision that most Americans might conjure were they to think about this place. But now imagine snorkling, sailing and fresh fish; all this on waters as clear and blue as the desert sky. Imagine a guest house that goes for about $12 a night for a room. Imagine Carlsburg "special" beers at the beach bar with 5.7% alc content and a cost of 75 cents. Imagine locals so laid back and helpful that it's hard to not love them. This is the Africa I got a whiff of this past week on lake Malawi. The lake is gorgeous, the air is cool and breezy, and as I say, it was cheap cheap cheap. Cheaper then my district capital in Zambia. There are plenty of foreign owned reseraunts and hotels (if the place looks fancy, you can bet your bippies that there's a fat German back there keeping the books).... hotels as palatial and bamboo laden as you can imagine. Really lovely.

The whole trip, including travel, was about $200. I was there at this place Cape McClear for 6 days, which was too long, got a little bored. Getting there is the toughest part and there's no way to access money, or use a credit card: cash only. That's a problem, but other then that it was grand.Sunset cruise. BYOB, these guys cost the 5 of us about $25, but we could go where ever we wanted and swim and explore all the little beaches for about 4 hours. They took us to look a these giant eagles with a wing span on at least 2 meters.

Fresh fish, nothing frozen here. When snorkeling the boat crew whipped up a fantastic meal of fresh fish and other dishes.

Fishermen go out at night in these traditional dug out canoes to hunt. The lamps are just too neat. They also have a few planked boats out there, like below.

This is the bay we snorkled in. Lots of tropical fish with blazing painted flesh.

Things are progressing here at an even clip. I am currently embattled with these weeds as I attempt to plant the rest of my crop. See, I've been waiting to plant sunflower and soya beans. The manual says to plant these seeds after the first heavy rain between 1 and 15 December. What's been tough for me to take has been that there hasn't been any heavy rain for two weeks, until yesterday that it. So for two weeks I've been dillying around the yard trying to assert my authority on these ferocious weeds. I suppose I should expect as much. The land I'm digging on has been fallow for maybe 10 years. That's ten years of weed plants going to seed... droping thousands of seeds at each cycle. What's worse it that the land it burnt off each season, so the forest has a tough time reestablishing the ecosystem. You're left with weedy and acidic soil with high erosion. So I shouldn't be surprized that this first season is a trial. Next season will be better.

At any rate all the main crop seeds are in. Now I can concentrate on the garden, tree nursury, and of course the chickens. You know that I've already got 16 eggs with one big fat hen that's broody; that is to say, it doesn't do anything all day but sit on eggs. So everything seems to be coming together. Which is good, because next week I'm off to the sunny beaches of Malawi.

PicturesZambians are learning to project intense gazes at an early age.

A band of youths passing a cup of beer round.

Tyson Banda in his role as witch doctor. That little doll channels protective magiks over your land, you could say that it wards off spells. Unfortunately it's use can lead to crippling side effects, literally cripple you. This ceremony is to heal a headman who has been paralysied on one side of his body due to his use of this artiface. (a stroke, imho, seems more likely).

Some grand, just 'ain't it grand' kind of developments regarding my endeavors, but I don't like to bog people down in my work related nigglings, ALL the time. Let us sit back and enjoy the irresistible horror of entomophagy, or insect eating. Yes, it's true, I've finally bit the bullet and snarfed the most successful and enduring of animal groups, the bug. From a sustainability perspective there is really nothing better. These creatures proliferate everywhere, with a proponderence of these beasties lurking beneath every rock, skulking and creeping away behind every bush. They are loaded with protien, and the taste... well, there needs to be some work done there, but other then that a fine meal.

These are termites, you scoop them up with your corn porrage and down they go. Their bodies are such that no oil is nessesary, they plump when you cook em.

These are those things that make a shit ton of noise in the bush; they are quite loud. We have our own variations in the States. I saw one land on an old man's pant leg. I thought it polite to point out that you, sir, have a bug on your knee. He responds, oh so serenely, "oh yes! He LOVES me!" and with that he yoinks the think, plucks the wings and down the hatch. They taste like an off beat variation of popcorn.

Some discouraging news I'm afraid... a heard of goats surreptitiously broke into my field and gorged themselves on my maize shoots. I was in my hut, taking a break from weeding when they silently climbed through the bamboo construction. I would of been totally ignorant if some tiny children hadn't alerted me to this crime. Most displeasing! The fence, whose charge is to look after the field, has always concerned me, it never look quite the impregnable fortress that so wanted, but I said 'hey, keeps the cows out, and there aren't too many goats, and it looks adequate.' Besides, I was planning on planting a live fence of sisal and jatropha as soon as I was done planting my main crop. So this new development changes everything.

I've put out an offer for the equivalent of $40 to have some locals chop up a bunch of bamboo and nail it on all the holes big enough for goats to get through; a three man, three day job. Considering it cost $80 to build the thing (the headman said I double over paid) that's a pretty penny. But labor is scarce since everyone is out planting their fields, but the fence as is is intolerable. It has also motivated me to move up my live fence project. See below.

So porous: you can see where goats might be able to get in. Turns out they have NO problem slipping in and out. Those spiky plants at the bottom are sisal i just put in last night. When full grown they are impenetrable.

Just to add to the Kafkaesque milieu, this is the guy who jumped in bed with me last night whilst I was reading. I freaked out, naturally (what the hell is this thing anyway???) but was not bit and pursued the beast and slain it. I thought it might be a scorpion at first, the way it moved with it's front arms extended in the air, as if running through the streets shouting "hallelujah, praise the lord!" But as you can see, clearly not a scorpion.

I really am digging the pace of work here in a developing village. I can never trust my true feelings about this place because I am not really living the authentic village experience, ie I am NOT living in poverty. Yes, I live a little squalid, and I reek of B.O. or manure , my whole place is a bit manically arranged (I manage a laundry pile next to a stack of plates and condiments), but hey, I wake up whenever I want, I do whatever I please, I work when I NEED to work, not when someone else needs me to work. Also, in an ag society things seem to slow down. Weeks instead of days, days instead of hours. Thing about our 9-5 jobs is that it's not really hard wired into our body chemistry. Wake up exactly at the same time every day? Then again, aren't we as humans the most trainable of all animals? Our big brains and crazy imaginations allow our behavior to swerve from Upstanding Citizen to Deranged Lulu.

Since I am not able to watch movies out here I often catch my self daydreaming about movies I've *seen*, it's weird, the whole movie gets considered, every scene, every performance. Tonight I'm "watching" Burn After Reading.

Slow and steady descent into hobodom: This is a picture I took after a little time in the field. It was a special "self portrait" feature on the camera, presumably for lonely singles putting their profile picture up on dating websites.

So the rains continue... hasn't exactly cooled off yet... now it's just hot and watery. Maize is up, as you can see below, and today i put in sunflower and soya beans. If i have time and don't procrastinate too long on the internet I may have time to plant lentils, and potatoes.

Here we sey the maize after 10 days and a little weeding. So far so good. I've broadcast sunhemp seeds in between rows. When sunhemp grows up it suppresses weeds, fixes nitrogen and you can feed some parts of it to animals.

Chicken tractor. Observe the color of the ground inside the chicken run: brown. Outside green. That's cause chickens scratch and peck at the soil all day long and it doesn't take much time for them to convert a tough patch into rich soil. I will allow them into the garden and field under controlled condictions, to improve their nutrition and to suppress pest and weeds.

So in a previous post I believe I may have mentioned something about a riotous verdure. Well that riot of green has taken liberties all over my field, to devastating effect. I do have corn sprouting, with a germination rate I can live with, however, the weeds are so intense that I can barely distinguish friend from foe. Worse still, many of the weeds bare a striking resemblance to sprouting maize. The only thing that allows me positively id the crop are it's neat row arrangement. What's happened here, I believe is what is known as a “nitrogen flush.” The first heavy rains release a whole store of rich nitrogen in a form that plants can use. That's why it's important to plant your crop at the right moment, to take advantage of this phenomenon... but you know, double edged sword and all that. What's good for maize is good for kapinga, the most fearsome and deep rooted of weeds. Another tool of nature that will stymie my efforts are the deep and resilient root system of the trees that were felled to make way for my fields. What happens it that after a tree is chopped it's roots die back a little bit, but ultimately remain in tact. New branches of the tree are fast to grow since the root system, and all the water and nutrients that they bring, is still there, sized to fit a big tree they have little difficulty in providing for it's resurgent shoots. This is only observed in some tree species and can be useful to man in some instances. For example, you can plant a lucenae, a legume nitrogen fixing species, and it will grow tall. Then you chop it down, releasing a flush of nitrogen and giving you poles for fire wood, construction, what have you. In no time at all a whole new tree is reestablished, ready made for further use. This technique is known as coppicing. At any rate, pray for me: I have a whole mess of weeding ahead of me.

These are lucenae trees that are being managed with coppicing. You can see where they were cut to size not too long ago. This is in Chipata.

This is my field before the rains. Those little green bushes are trees that have been cut back. They are green and growing even though it hasn't rained in 5 months. Their roots run down deep all the way to the water table.

Another lull in blog activity, it is true. This time the excuse is simple: the monetary scene was constrained. Without money I cannot buy 'talk time', which are little cards which allow you to add cell minutes a bit at a time, in increments as low as $1. Well that's all done now, and good news, the rains have come. Praise be... it is most satisfying to stand back and watch land that was only a short time ago parched, and sun scorched break out into a riot of green verdure. The insects din loudly, and even little frogs and toads are making merry after a rough dry season under whatever rock they've been silently comatose.

But really, what matters here is the crops, the maize and cow pea, pigeon pea, sunflower, red sun hemp and soya beans. You may never of heard of some of these esoteric plants, but you will, if you keep an eye on this here blog. There is also a green house and garden in the cards, and now with a little petty cash distending my back pocket I can replace all the chickens that perished in the great wave of avian flu that swept these lands with devastating results.

The two things that are required, no exceptions, to action are 1) money, and 2)water, and I've got neither. I've basically run out of the cash that the PC deposits into my Barkley's bank account every three months. It's not a lot and amounts to maybe $200 USD per month, but to someone who lives in a mud hut, well it's a small fortune. Anyway, I've spent it on construction materials and labor primarily, but that's all at an end now... now I'm just waiting for the rain. I have about 250 or so more pot holes to dig, but I see no reason to continue digging until the rain comes. For one thing, I've already have all the potholes for maize dug. Maize is sowed into the earth after the first heavey rains after 15 November, TODAY. The other crops, soy beans and sun flower, don't get planted until December, so no rush. Also, my hands can't take it anymore. Breaking into this earth when it's baked dried, is like mining ore. The skin on my hands is good; nice hard callouses. It's the lignens, and tendons that get me. Ever time I bring my hoe onto this hard pan, I'm convinced that 50% of the shock goes into my hands. The worst is waking up to morning stiffness... it's painful, and I've even noticed my fingers twitching when not in use.

I am standing by my contention that the human body responds to stress, so this is a natural and much needed lesson to my body... but at the same time I see no reason to push my luck. Time is on my side. Oh, I hear thunder... can rain be far behind?

Oh: I've not been posting much this month. Late hot dry season doldrums. I think I am fast track, however, to "pulling it together"...

I have to admit that the rampage at Fort Hood surprised me a bit. After reading Mark Ames Going Postal, it was hard not to buy the argument: work place killings didn't take place much before the 80's when "going postal" was coined. Ames attributes this development as a reaction to an ever increasing levels of dehumanization in the work place. Shooters were often at the bottom of the workplace pecking order, subject to abuse from tyrannical bosses. Another leg of his theory is that American living had become so bleak and amoral that it was easy for a disturbed man, or even woman, to fall into complete isolation, allowing their internal world to develope into a state of lonely rage. Think of that guy who killed three women at the Pittsburg health club. Now this guy was NOT insane, but he was profoundly lonely. He claimed, and I see no reason why we should not believe him, that he hadn't been laid since 1991 and he hadn't had a girlfriend since the early 80's. A world given to prozak, television, world of warcraft, and extreme cool ranch flavored doritios... it does seem pretty daunting.

But Hasan wasn't on the bottom... he was a major; he outranked 95% of everyone on that base. How could he be bullied? Apparently the shooting came on a day he was to deploy... I suppose being forced to deploy when you really really don't want to can be stressful, but the man was a psychologist for chrissake.

As far as miserable isolation inherant in the landscape, I can say that living and working at Fort Hood for 18 months didn't exactly fill me with a sense of well being. The base itself is a sprawling cement moonscape, the kind of design that only a general could love. Blank and nondescript barracks, monsterous warehouses, vast parking lagoons to hold the thousands of mustangs, SUVs, and monster trucks that soldiers and civillians drove onto base everyday... not to mention the seemingly limitless cement glaciers that was home to thousands of HMMWVs, trucks, generators, and hundreds of tanks. The base had it's own rail yard and airport to boot. The only lanscaping was the occasional tree and the ubiquitous sheets of obsessively maintained grass.

It was hopeless, but it was a base after all; it's only purpose to hold, maintain and deploy troops and their equipment. Pure utilitarian, which is fine.

Killeen, the city next it, however, has no such excuse. Killeen is split into two sections from my viewpoint. The shit kicking "old" part of town, crammed tight with tatoo parlors, pawn shops, barbers, body shops, and methheads, had ramshackle homes that could easily be mistaken for third world. The newer part represented everything that is wrong and ugly about American cities and the developers that spawn them. Congested traffic, big box stores for miles, no sidewalks, no communities. The winding divisions of track housing, the horror!

So maybe Ames is on to something. He wrote a very nifty article about the massacre, which is filled with insight here. The strength of Ames writting is usually that he does the homework that MSM refuses. MQ:

For starters, Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas — where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee, George Hennard Jr., crashed his pickup into a popular cafeteria, pulled out two handguns (Hasan also used two handguns), and murdered 23 people before taking his own life. The day before the massacre, Hennard was eating a hamburger in a local restaurant watching the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and, according to the manager, “When an interview with Anita Hill came on, he just went off. He started screaming, ‘You dumb bitch! You bastards opened the door for all the women!’” So yesterday’s Fort Hood shooting isn’t the worst or most deranged mass-killing in Killeen’s history — not by a longshot. The mainstream media is enabling the screaming about the Muslim traitors in our midst, but Hasan killed far fewer Americans than the white, racist George Hennard. And they were bested by the federal government in nearby Waco Texas, in 1993, when federal forces slaughtered some 75 men, women and children in the Branch Davidian compound.

So Sunday I went to a football game, the big championship for the region. Not a lot to it, the home team, unfortunately, did not emerge victorious... but they still got a ball and new jersies, but alas, no cash. Football, which I am still trying to get into, is, as we know, the most popular sport in human history. I think the cheapness of equipment is one of the most attractive features... baseball on the other hand requires a ball, and mitts, and bats, and come to think of it, these villagers have all the supplies they need to get make that stuff and get a game going. Bringing baseball to Zambia, now THAT'S developement. Unfortunately whenever I talk about baseball they say, "ah yes! Cricket! We know of this. We find this sport to be most dubious (yes they say 'dubious')" Damn British ruined it, because they're right, cricket IS boring, and the two sports, with their strong associations, will forever blot out the Zambian mind to America's most noble of inventions. Oh well; didja see that the Indians damn near lost 100 games this year? Shameful!

The goalie for the losing team after the game... they lost 0-2

When I tried to get a picture of the fans after the game a full scale riot broke out. These childeren just love having their picture snapped.

Nutrition here in the hut is forever in my mind's eye; the little gerbil in his wheel in my head runs furiously with his beady eyes transfixed on the the wall mounted television. What's on? Food, that's what! And why? Have I become a "foodie" as those of us obsessed with enjoying and experimenting with all the variegated tastes and pleasures that feeding can bring? No, sadly not. Although arugula is fine enough, I will never cringe if it's price should double, nay, triple.

What is going on here is just good old eating better for better living; and I NEED better living! My biggest concern is with water and electrolytes, with the heat sweltering to what I imagine to be over 100 degrees by noon. Too much salt, not enough water or vice versa can strike you down proper... but also protein, and carbs, ect. I find that if I don't get enough salty carbs the night before a day of 35 km biking, I will wonk, losing energy, veins popping as my legs anaerobically contract as I ascend a hillside. Or hoeing for hours... takes planning! Coffee, and I hate to say it, gives me nothing here in terms of energy. What would really give a boost is testosterone treatment: Sullivan wrote a pretty spiffy article on that route here.

I, of course, have lots of options... being rich and all. A villager must contend with what they can grow or what they can buy from money from stuff they grew. That's why I'm pushing gardening... folks focus too much on carbs, and not enough on a balanced diet... you can see the signs in the occasional distended belly.

There's plenty of options for good eating here. My favorite and most empowering dish is a modified soya gumbo. Rice, chili peppers, lentils, soya chunks, a little vinegar. My neighbors have started bringing me food twice daily. I still have a time with village cuisine. They pair a bland tasting scoop of corn porridge with a salty vegetable relish. Village meat is usually very tough... tough lives, tough animals, tough meat I guess. I am going to ask that they stop: 1) I am one more mouth to feed... also the mother, Frieda, spends plenty of time schlepping it over to my hut, and 2) I miss cooking more for myself. It's relaxing, even if it ain't gourmet. But note: Zambia hospitality is par excellence.

This hunk of meat was procured locally. The cow, which villagers almost never kill lest they have to, died choking on a plastic bag, I have not clue as to how THAT happened. Anyway, the proper way to cook this is to boil it for 40 minutes then fry it in oil. I did not this know this and used chicken wire to try to Texas BBQ it... the results were most unsatisfactory :(

Another day, another slog. Pig broke into my run again and was even able to escape unharmed. I paid a bunch of women to cut out the weeds in my field, but there's still a lot of terraforming to get done. Oh, yeah, and it rained, not a lot, but a good sign. I have collected all the grass I need to rethatch my hut, and I may have located a yenga press, which is a heavy piece of hand operated equipment used to press oil out of seeds. Most big oil seed growers just take their stuffs to a oil press shop in the boma, which uses gasoline fired machinery to extract the precious oil. You can get over 10 liters of oil from 38kg of sunflower seed... very profitable, so I wonder why even screw around with maize? Just grow oil and sell it. Oh, so my point was that Jatropha seed is quite toxic and the mill guys won't contaminate their machine with jatropha, so you need to find a separate press.

I wish I had some funny stories to report, but things are just keeping on.

So, as I've been saying the toughness of villagers never ceases to amaze me. Whether it's their seemingly immunity against the sun, women carrying 100 lbs of water on their heads, or the kevlar hands, villagers show their power. I remember in the Army, an organization that enforces exercise and encourages physical fitness,all the old timers had bad backs... 15 years of road marches and modern man is finished, but a villager starts their training young and the work more consistent, more daily. At any rate, there's this neat article about how wimpy us moderns are here. Money quote:

"The human body is very plastic and it responds to stress. We have lost 40 percent of the shafts of our long bones because we have much less of a muscular load placed upon them these days.

"We are simply not exposed to the same loads or challenges that people were in the ancient past and even in the recent past so our bodies haven't developed. Even the level of training that we do, our elite athletes, doesn't come close to replicating that.

Roman soldiers ran almost 40 miles a day with half their weight in equipment on their backs? Holy shit!

I finally caught the little piggy that's been busting into my chicken run and eating food and water. Detestable little monsters, they are. So i notice a hole in the fence... this alerted me to the thing inside, blissfully munching away on some corn bran. Incensed I block the hole and move around front to the entrance. You see, these pigs are burrowing animals. They methodologically use their snout to push out a hole big enough for them to squeeze through. Takes some time though, time you don't have when you are being chased by a big white man. So I was quickly able to seize piggy, at which time the following dialogue is purported to have taken place:

Piggy: WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! WEEEEEEEEE!

Me: You stupid little bastard! I hate you! (shakes pig vigorously)

Piggy: Wah! Wrgggggghhh!

So this pig, I'm guessing, is the same one whose's been breaking in since the beginning. I mean these pigs are crafty, cunning, sly, they REMEMBER (like velociraptors), so I gave him a going away present he would not soon forget; I tossed the swine, with some vigor, over the 2 meter fence onto the garden bed. Lucky for him the ground was soft, but still, it was a solid blow... i haven't had any break in since, that was 2 days ago.

This morning I purchased 4 ox cart full of manure. One thing they got plenty of here is manure and straw, two key ingredients to good compost. Ideally you'd load your pile with all sorts of exotic stuff like seaweed, and blood meal, ya know, to make sure that your plants get plenty of boron or something, but for our purposes I should be able to make enough here for both the garden and the field.

Why compost? Why not just manure? Compost is the fast tract to the creation of humus, which is essential to a healthy soil... that smell of the forest floor is humus. Humus holds 5 times it's weight in water, so it's good for water retention, also, as a very slow rotting material, it slowly and naturally releases nutrients and ions that your plants crave, over time. Also a requirement for a good loamy soil structure.

Other reasons, is that it increases biotic diversity and activity. A good healthy soil should have somewhere around %12 organic matter for good yields... if it drops too low, like say 3% on average in Iowa, your only option is to apply artificial fertilizers, which derails microbe activity, so next year you have to add more fertilizer, and what a death spiral, especially in Africa where fertilizers are big bucks. Soil fertility and organic matter is soil CAPITAL. You build it up, put in a little investment, and your productivity will increase over time. Add useful perennials, like trees, to trap water and prevent soil erosion and you are on your way to a virtually free approach to increasing yields, healthier plants, and less work in the long run.

I've never done this much composting before. The trick is to get the right balance of nutrients. The big ones are nitrogen, which dried cow manure is loaded in, potassium which you will find in high concentration in ash, and finally phosphorous, which is hard to find most of the time but is in abundance in chicken manure, which I don't have as of now... I already composted it in a smaller pile. So should I wait until I get some, or just move ahead... I'm thinking moving ahead. We can worry about that later. I had the guys toss the stuff in this pit that used to be my gazebo before it blew over. I was thinking it'd be good for keeping out the pigs, but won't it just flood when the rains come. These Zambians like to move fast.

So this time of the year is the most stressful for the animals. No water, no grasses to eat. Even insects go crazy. Bees swarm the watering hole, one of the few sources of moisture, and ants ate a bunch of dirt out of my tree nursery: I had watered them and they we getting at that water. Perhaps most annoying are the pigs, which have proven to be quite the adversaries. They burrow under my chicken wire to get at my chickens' water and food, the buggers! Not only that but they keep rummaging through my compost materals. Don't believe me? Look at what this rat did to my glass jar to get to the rice within. That's glass! A small rat must of come equipped with a rat crowbar. I'd expect this from Cleveland rats, but Zambia? This is a picture of my tree nursery. Beneath it is a new compost pile, it has a straw grass roof to protect the seedling from the punishing sun, and that black line is a little experiment with low tech drip irrigation. Controlling water, and not wasting a drop is of paramount importance. These are the potholes that I am digging to plant my main crops: corn, sunflower, and soya, with an undergrowth of cow pea to suppress weeds. And speaking of weeds, some of these ones you see here are doosies, even after they've been scorched by fire. I did a little research in my zambian weed guide and discovered that the flat ones are called oxgrass. The little bushes with tendrils reaching out is called couch grass, known to locals as kapinga.

Chicken update: Another chicken has come down with AFV I think, which disproves what my zambian helper was telling me... he said that the flu season was over. This, and a few other gaffes, has led me to question the advice of traditional village knowledge. I think that managing chickens in an improved free range means controlling their movements, and this is completely different then tradition chicken rearing. I must tread lightly and keep my ag manuals close to my chest.

I remember way back when at Lincoln elementary school a group assignment where we watched some tv program (news depth?) and then had to answer questions. The subject was modern society or something and questions were about bridges and highways and airports and what not and it seemed that the correct answer to every question was "shipping and transportation." Why do we have airports, cars, trains, and so on. Well maybe there was a point in there because transportation and shipping are so important to everything we do that it kind of boggles the mind to think about.

I suppose it's easy not to think about in the states. Food comes from the grocery store, right? Salad shooters are crafted in wal-mart. But here in poor Zambia, transportation is factored into every decisions you make in your life. If you want to send your kids to high (secondary) school, you will probably send them off to live at the school, because 25 km is too far to bike there and back everyday. If you want to sell your produce you have to think about how to bring it to market. Most likely you will strap it to your bike and away you go. So for all you folks living in Portland and big cities like Chicago and are obsessed with their bikes, Zambia is what life might look like if we didn't choose to peddle everywhere but were required. This had big implications for retailing and wholesaling alike. The upshot of all of this means that the stuff in the city is expensive but surprisingly cheaper then the less big cities. Flour, which is grown in South Africa, gets cheaper by the Kg the more important the city. Unfortunately the flip side is that all things produced in the village, like food, timber, and of course labor, are dirt dirt cheap in the village. If only those things could be brought to Lusaka they'd fetch a pretty penny. I remember reading somewhere that the cost of everything in Africa is 75% more expensive because of bad roads/ safety standards, ect. I cannot attest to that here.

This picture shows a new spin on an old idea. That bed and axle belongs to a datsun, which is Nissan i think.

This is a typical bike setup for a trip from my district capital. Inside that very strong bag is my backpack with a mattock head, you see the bananas, and the plant is a young peach tree. Sometimes the bike gets way overloaded. Zambians will over load their bikes... put 150 kilos of maize or something (which is 3 giant bags) and ride the bikes down hill and walk them up.

Farming by hand is not all the fun everyone on tv is making it out to be. First off, nobody in the developed world farms by hand; they garden. While gardening is essential to any farming system, mainly for proper nutrition, and while it's true that gardening can bring in a sizable chunk (if not the lion's share) of your family's calorie intack (think of those victory gardens in England), home gardens are much to small on their own to create wealth... So you farm, and to do that by hand you need a good hoe. Don't think of those cute little things you get at the garden store, think this:

Now you'd be hard pressed to find a hoe this heavy and sharp in the US. This thing, when leveraged up, cuts through tilled soil like but. Unfortunately my soil is not tilled, in fact it's infected with weeds, compacted and all round unpleasant to think about. Behold:

This is what the field looks like *after* I put in 2.5 hours of weeding and pot hole digging this morning. By 9 o'clock the sun is high in the sky bearing down on you like... um, like the IRS. Bad simile. Oh well, i can always hire cheap female labor to help me if I get behind schedule, which I sort of already am. They call such jobs 'piece work' and they are in high demand, money being so scarce.

This is my system pretty much thus far. As a permaculture set up I am looking to build relationships between all the actors on stage... everything should support at least one other thing. So we have chickens. They will give me meat and eggs, but they will also scratch and fertilizer the land. Manuer in the chicken house can be stored and is one of the very few sources of useable phospherous available (cow manuer, for example is bereft of the mighty P). The water tank is primarily for dry season irrigation but can be used for the chickens. The greenhouse will produce food but also biomass for the chickens to eat. The fences provide boundaries for the animals, but also can be used to support twining species, like passion fruit. You get the idea, right? all these things are located close to each other, and if possible, as in my case, close to the home. The field will be planted with crops for demo purposes and seed multiplication, but also as a protective heaven for lots of useful trees. A large swale will be dug outside the fence to capture rain for increased absortion.

On a sadder note, 6 of my 10 chickens have died of avian flu virus. Crazy, huh? It's not just a scary headline on the internet; there's some major underreported chicken suffering going on in the world. And if you're worried about me contracting the human version, don't. I am eqipped with the state of the art anti-flu medicine, tamiflu. don't know how it works, but if I take it I'm cured. My birds weren't so lucky, but this is a learning experience. In fact I wanted to learn about all the problems directly before advising other farmers, so all in all a teachable moment. Still four left.

would you believe it, i actually found some lye, or sodium hydroxide, or as they call it these parts, caustic soda. It was costly, or mucho dinero, or as they say in these parts dula kwambili. It is extremely toxic, and if you've seen Fight Club, you know what I am talking about. You can add it to oil and you end up with soap, and biodiesil as a result. The soap is what interest me here. If I can get it to work is step one. Then there's the cost analysis. It came in at about $2.50 per kg, which doesnt seem like much, but if you can't get a signigant margin over that it won't be worth your time to make it. In addition you have to find a market for it. Finally, it being such a dangerous substance, i would want to make absolutely sure that soap can be manufactured in the village safely. So, as with my field, and my chickens, I am sticking to the stradegy of doing it myself first and then, with the knowledge and confidence that comes with it, teach others. The oil I'd like to use is jatropha seed. There's plenty of it around here, and I plan on planting a live fence of the stuff around my field. It's very easy to propigate and it's oil has a high glycerine content which makes it an excellent soap oil. In addition, after pressing the stuff you can use the left over cake as a excellent fertilizer. Finally I hope to get some biodiesil as a by product. The future of petrol sources in this planet earth are hitting it's limits and biodiesil might be a good thing to learn about. You can use it as if it were real diesil, ie pour it into any diesil engine and it will run. Diesil can also be used for heating, but it is dirty.

All chickens were recovered, I am up to 10 now... i am afraid to get more. If each hen produces 10 chicks, how many is that? 80! This is getting into animal hoarding territory. I have to be careful. Already the rooms are filling up with manure... I can't imagine the amount of food they'll eat and crap they'll produce. One hen has already contracted a disease where it barely moves, save to constantly bob it's head. My groundskeeper tells me that it will not die, but I am not so sure. I gave it to him to keep away from my chickens. The good news is that in about a week I can let them outside into my fenced chicken run. This will let them scratch and eat stones for their gizzards. Also I'll be able to let'em into the garden and my field under controlled conditions, so they'll have plenty of room in due time.

I was planning to go to Chipata in a few days to file a report and pick up the following: pushbroom, 25Kg of lime, a scale- the kind you hang up and attach things to the bottom, more chicken wire, and maybe a mattock. I wanted it to break the hard pan in my field but I've found that my chakka hoe is working quite good. The only bottleneck now are my soft hands. I would include a graphic picture of all the open sores on my hands, but decency forbids! I really hope they heal and toughen up soon, it's the only thing holding me back now from just going out and putting in 6 hour days of hoeing.

My water tank is about done curing. I hope that it cured correctly and that no cracks evolve. I installed a gate-valve faucet and a cement basin so you can gravity feed your watering can.

All that's left now is to get a tree nursery going... build a greenhouse, and build perches for my chickens. Right now they're just laying on the cement, which is not good for them and parasites. The lime will also help with parasites.

Further observations regarding these birds: if you don't give them dirt to scratch or a place to perch, they will resent you. Their resentment will foment into a full bodied revolution if you don't comply with their demand. I am bringing in chicken union busters.

Here's the main gaggle as of this morning. Three little hens, and one adolescent cock. I three them a harmonica so they can properly lament their bondage.

This guy I bought last night for $2.00, but this morning I determined she was sick, so I put her in the isolation tank. Those streaks up the walls are termite paths. Those things everything.

This is Michael, pretty much my best friend. He is 62, and knows a lot of Grand Funk Railroad and Rolling Stones lyrics. He brought me two chickens while I was reading a book, he says "look at you man, back here IDLING while I am out getting you chickens. I took one whiff of his breath from about a meter away and my riposte came easy, "Michael, you are disgustingly drunk. Go home and get your shine box!"

Biff bang, I have chicken. Two cocks, and five hens, plus I've put in the money to grab another 5 hens. So I take these birds and I lock them in one of the three rooms in my chicken shack. What I'm being told is that it will take a few days of captivity before they 'learn' to consider the place home. After that they can run around in the chicken run I built outside... to scratch, get sunshine, whatever. I am thinking I also need some sort of structure where that perch comfortably at night. You see gang, this is where all the hard work pays off.

Observations: chickens are dumb. Unlike pigs, which are cunning and loaded with personality, chickens really seem vacant. The rooster will stare at you sideways giving you this look with his one accusing eye that says "what did you just say to me, huh?" in a fighting kind of way. Good news is that I am about 100 times bigger then the thing, so I says back, "you heard me!" Also, the pecking order is real, and it's established by, well, pecking. The bird at the bottom of my pecking order is a little brown wretch I call Honey. She get's snipped at constantly from the others. I will feed her special vitamins to make her grow large... then she will get her revenge.

Update: all 7 chickens escaped. I was able to snatch of three smaller ones outright, and I seized one of the cocks as it was perched on my dish drying rack. One cock and two hens remain at large as of this writing. The sun has set and they will probably be devoured by dawn. Most unwelcome!

Allow me a moment to comment on the scurrilous activity of the insects here in the hot season. There's an odd uniformity in the busy animals of insects and other arthropods, predetermined, like little chitin clad Calvinist, they fatalistically labor away at their hives, swarms, and nest and what have you. I enter my outhouse and I am met with a deafening cacophony of insect bruit. 'he said, she said' kind of nonsense. Consider though: a wasp in the US is a considerate fellow; smallish, and skittish. Here, the garishly painted beast are nothing short of bullies, and the sound of their flying reminds one unpleasantly of model airplanes... So when I go into the out house I am faced with a Luftwaffe blitz of dive bombing wasp. That's their airforce! Even worse are the dexterous and girthy spiders which flounce back and forth mere inches from my head; the calvary. Back in my hut the infantry, scandalous battalions of ants, are hard at work dissembling my furniture into neat piles of dust. Joint operations at work here.

So the point is that during the “dry hot” season these little beasties will work tirelessly to make my life miserable. Good news is that it will ebb on the onset of rains, or so I hope. Oh yeah, and termites are also a real bitch.

It was my thinking, that a little exercise and work would get me going ine going in the right direction out here. The truth is that I need to condition my soft body to the arduous labor that is subsistence farming. I mean, saying half an acre might not sound like a lot, but when the dirt is hard as cement from cattle compaction, it can be a daunting task, especially to the uninitiated like myself. So out I go to water my water tank since the cement needs to cure for 3 days, and then I branished my hoe to the area of my land that will be my garden. I am not lying to you when I say I developed no less then five blisters on my hands after maybe just 45 minutes of work. Blisters are good if they don't tear and turn into a scabbing wound... why? Because blisters are the fast track way to get calouses, and calouses are the key to tough hands, like Zambians have. So today I get 5 blisters. Tommorow, maybe a few more. Before you know it I'll have rocks in my hands and thunder in my soul.

One of my favorite movies of all time is Zorba the Greek. It's about a hopelessly romantic writer who goes to Crete to mine for coal and he meets this guy Zorba who he makes his foreman. Zorba is played by Anthony Quinn, who is half Irish, half Mexican, but makes a hell of a Greek. So I'm reading the book and it is most instructive. Here's this guy Zorba, a little deranged but overall a heart of gold. He looks at the world with new eyes everyday. He denies himself nothing and he is contemptuous of the narrator's bookishness (he is writing a book about Buddhism). The book's plot is really not important, the real meat and potatoes lies in the philosophical considerations. In that way the book reminds me of Hesse's Steppenwolfe.

It's hard for me not to draw some parallels to my own experience here. Like Zorba I live in a hut, like Zorba I cook with a brazier. Like Zorba I am surrounded by very provincial type individuals. That's what I'm saying Kurt! If you spend years living in a bronze age village you better extract some sort of enlightenment out of the deal. But alas, I am no Zorba. While he denies himself nothing, and as he gives himself the world and heavens to chew on, I am left stymied, constrained, and occasionally despondent. My problem, I'm convinced, is not enough hard manual labor. Zorba picks up his pick axe every day and goes to the coal mine to spot veins of lignite. What am I doing but getting fat on words, and wrangling my hands? Hard work is not only a virtue, it is our ancient inheritance as human beings... the sweet succors of life are dead without it.

I tell ya, there ain't no beauty in this world when it comes to money. I've been hiring crews of men to build my stuff these past 2 weeks and let me tell you, i find it to be rather stressful. Oh, and it's not the work that's the issue. that's the easy part. i have months before the first rains, time is on my side to completing these things... it's the social economic aspect that keeps me groaning at night. I mean, for one thing, I am certainly overpaying for labor here. The reason involves my own sense of money, and my desire to do the least amount of haggling which runs adverse to my character. I mean, if i get my fence build for 80 dollars do I really care about haggling over the last 10 dollars of that? I spoke with my headman today, and we surveyed the new fence. He asked how much I paid, i says "400 pin" or about $80. he says "too much, this is a 200 pin job."

It's not a big deal at all from a monetary perspective. I cringe with shame when I think about some of the stupid shit I've blown money on, things I didn't even have fun buying... i've blown even more money on ill advised stock investments. So am I going to give myself an anerism over a few lousy bucks?

I should be worried! Because the evil mechanations of village life are specious at best. I mean, villagers are so damn clannish! If you over pay for anything expect an unwashed horde of folks congregating in front of your house bickering over your meager wages. It's true that money here, in a land that is replete with strong and willing backs but bereft of real solid liquid cash, is beyond valuable. It's a drought, a dearth even of funds.... Imagine if a guy came to your town, or housing association, or apartment complex, and offered $500 for every piece of silverware you brought him... and worse he only deals with the first person he happens to meet. If you were broke enough you might be not just a little bit peeved when your loutish neighbor beats you to the punch and makes away with a $20,000 sale. You might be a little jealous... a little angry. Now imagine if your kids were going hungry... you're neighbor has no kids, he was just in the right place at the right time... yet he gets a big payday while you're left to suck it.

This is the world I'm living in, and it's rather stressful. I'll be glad when the whole mess is finished, so help me god!

Okay so it's finished, my glorious fence surrounding my glorious half lima demo plot.

It might be hard to see... the sun always bleaches out my photos, it's so bright here! But the first 30 cm or so towards the bottom is bamboo and it's followed by three strands of barbed wire. The bamboo is to keep out pigs and chickens, the wire is for cow and people. I had to block off a foot path that women use to collect water, so I cut out a new one for them... they'll have a front seat view of my plot every day. How's that for branding?

This here is the water tank. When it's done it will be covered in plaster, which will require a week or so of 'curing' meaning that it needs to stay moist to avoid cracks. You see the chicken house next to it... it has a corrugated metal roof that will catch the rain. I will build some gutters (somehow) that will slough the rain into this tank. When full the tank will hold over 4000 liters.This is a cow that attempted to enter my field but was bounced at the door. The fence works!

So I'm on my way back from Katete and what do I find milling about by the school? Three glorious donkeys, of course. This is after I saw a group of about 4 full grown Zambian men getting schlepped around Katete in a donkey cart pulled by a very solemn donkey. Two significant donkey sightings in one day. It is truly a sign from god! So back at the school I see these three beautiful female donkeys, which we might call “jennies.” I read in my manual that donkeys need salt, and it just so happened that I had three choice salt diamonds in my front pocket. The heat here can really throw your electrolytes out of balance, so I keep the salt in case I get sun struck. So the beast approaches to see what is on offer and the verdict was clear: whatever you're selling, I ain't buying. That's the donkey to me. I mean, salt doesn't really smell like anything, so as far as the thing was concerned I was offering her a few unappetizing pebbles. So it's settled, never again shall I be caught flat footed in the presence of such a magnificent animal, at least not without proper tribute. From this day forward I will be armed with a small bag of maize meal at all times. The next time we meet donkey, you will know me, and you will love me.

My god, I'll tell you what, meetings here are more like marathons... all day events. But I've got to put in my time if I am to hold the golden fleece of success withing my grip. Construction of my little demo is moving along nicely, although I'll be glad when it's over. I don't really feel comfortable in monetary based relationships, but they are nessesary if I am to get any of this stuff done. After construction is complete I am back to consulting only.

This here is going to be my chicken run. The tree provides shade, which chickens like, apparently.

I had a big fat sow decide that next to my house was a great place to land her progeny... I will prepare these morsels in a peanut sauce with a basil garnish.

My gazebo blow over while I was in Lusaka. Bummer right? Well maybe we can make lemonade. The termite rotted logs can be tossed into the chicken run. The termite dirt will help further enrich the soil, and the chickens can enjoy a hearty protein feast of termites. The straw can be used to start fires, and in the meantime there's a litter of kittens growing in that mound. If I am lucky they will grow into fierce mousers. Which reminds me, this morning I was rummaging through my tool shed looking for nails when I found a big rat living beneath a bag of bran getting fat on MY DIME! I took shovel to hand and I'll be damned if I didn't bisect the vermin in one deft blow. My powers are growing!

Okay, so I am finally here for good. No more community integration, no more training, just me gazing into the maw of the beast. So here's my confession: I have no idea what I'm doing. Really. I mean, I have all the book smarts, what I lack in brain knowledge I have in a book or a computer file somewhere. But nothing changes the fact that I have no practical experience in field cultivation. If I am not 100% on top of my shit things could turn south sooner rather then later. So what am getting into? Well this is my field before tilling:

Pretty bleak I'd say. This field may be worse then it even looks since it's been continually scorched for years; it's soil is hard as rock in the dry season, and it is weed infested. I should point out that this field is directly in my back yard. This is great because it will be easy to look after and weed; also it is next to my chicken house, which means low transportation cost for manure if and when my poultry production gets into gear. The other consideration, and this is where I am most pleased with the locale, is visibility. In terms of my catchment I live near the Chikhombe basic school: this is a meeting place for farmers groups, also the government ag officer lives next door. Also the clinic for my entire catchment is less then a kilometer from my field. This is a natural node for all sorts of meetings, ag shows, and small mini markets. In terms of immediate village, the field is marked by a stunning baobab tree and is at the intersection of three villages: Kabale, Yobe, and my village Chiwanga. There's a tuck shop run by my counterpart Joseph very close and finally this field is in the way of a bush path that many women traverse everyday to fetch water from the borehole. In terms of visibility I'm quite pleased.

So why doesn't everybody just build their fields next door? The biggest problem is animals: goats, sheep, cattle, chickens, and pigs all free range near the big village clusters. This means fencing if you expect anything to get done. I have hired a crew of 4 guys to throw up the fence... this is labor intensive and it's hard to justify if you don't grow your crops more intensively. I can afford to do it and as an extension agent putting up a demo plot, it's justified, but for your average peasant it may not work out. Also, if everybody farmed closer to their house how would that impact land usage around the villages? More crowded I supposed, and who wants to be Bangladesh-kind of crowded when you are gifted with so much land?

Regardless, this is the path I have chosen... the fence should be up no later then 19 September. I need to dig pot holes for my crops between then and the first rains in November. The field will not be entirely planted with crops. 1/3 of it will be an improved velvet bean fallow (more on that later) and also I plan on including several agro forestry species in the design. Finally, always thinking of the future, I will take the time to plant a jatropha live fence. This is done by taking cuttings (sticks) and just jamming them in the ground in a row around the field when the rains come, each cutting 30 or so cm from the next. In 3-4 years these will grow into trees that will lock arms in an impenatrable wall of seed bearing jatropha trees.

Just a few more pictures from the Chewa ceremony. I wanted to put down some more stuff, but there's a flurry of activity at my site that I'd rather write about, so please feast your eyes in the interim.

Is this man live blogging? Web 2.0 baby!

This man is about 30 feet in the air.

I knew that child soldiers were a problem in Africa, but this is ridiculous.

There was a strong police/ military presence at the ceremony on account of 3 heads of states being present, but imagine my pleasant surprise to see an American in uniform. This is Lieutenant Colonel West of the US Air Force, and he works in the US embessy in Lusaka as a military attache.

My lappy is not happy, cause it's battery is suffering, so in the meantime enjoy these pics of the ceremony, more latter.

I think this is supposed to by Yoko Ono, what do you think?

He is using his magiks to tame the dangerous cobra snakes. Yes those are cobras and they are alive.

Everybody wants to get a look at all the dancers, not to mention a few VIPs

Scary

Tomorrow I am off to the big Chewa ceremony. People from all over Zambia will be in attendance, not to mention folks from across the borders. The presidents of Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia should make an appearance, since Chewa culture spans international borders. Zambian president Rupia Banda is himself a Chewa. They are a people that came lands far away... they say South Africa. Apparently they were escaping Shaka Zulu's war machine. At any rate, these Chewas like to dance a lot. Gule they call it, and practitioners are Nyow, or secret society. I hope to get a lot of pictures in between guarding my wallet and paying double price for everything... don't tell me Zambians don't know about supply and demand.

Before I ship off however, I wanted to take the time to report a most peculiar dish that is considered quite the delicacy: rat. Yes, rat. Every year around this time little children go rat hunting. They dig holes in the fields and fill them with water. Next they torch the whole thing. Finally they go and collect their bounty which is eaten with nsima, their maize staple food.Can we see the pride here? Remember that these are field mice and are not as riddled with disease as their city dwelling brothern.This boy's name is "Doesnt Matter" and he is most skilled at mouse hunting. He will sell one of these dudes for 200 kwacha, or 5 centsDon't believe if I'd actually eat the thing? Behold!

I've arrived in Chikombe at long last. I brought 500 meters of barbed wire, 50 meters of chicken wire, 200 sq meters of clear plastic, and almost half a ton of chicken feed. Total cost was over a million kwacha or 200 USD. Not bad if everything goes according to plan... I should be able to make the money back... also, about 100,000 kwacha for a taxi to drive me around and get it to my village. That's something like $20 for 2.5 hours of taxi service. Try getting that deal in the states.

Sunflower is a growth industry here. Cooking oil is a key ingrediant to any Zambian household, so why pay top dollar for it when you can grow the seed yourself and take it to these guys for pressing. I don't have the number immediately available, but rest assured that sunflower is more profitble then corn. What most farmers don't know is that the 'cake' or the solid leftovers after oil extraction makes an excellent feed for livestock providing a excellent source of protein, even if it does look like tire shavings.

But sunflower cake alone does not make for ideal feed. There is also ngaga, or the remains after milling up maize meal. This is mostly carbs, but even chickens need carbs. The woman on the right runs the mill.

I pulled into my village after two weeks leave, and about 15 young boys unloaded the car to my storage shed in about 10 seconds, no questions asked. These are my people.

This man is an expert at manipulating bamboo, which is a remarkable material. Grows fast, sturdy, and lovely to look at. I bought two 'displays' as seen above for about $3 each.

Here's a couple of pictures of Chipata, the provincial capital of Eastern. I actually love this city, with it's protective mountain backdrop and it's chaotic markets. There's a lot to see here, even if some parts are a little low rent. I much prefer the engaged humanity of this place to the barren and souless suburban sprawl that stains much of the American hinterland. You have to think on your feet lest you get your pocket picked or your body flattened by a taxi... everyone drives waaay to fast, and if you hear a car a coming you are well advised to beat it as fast as your legs can carry you.

Many many shops, so how come I can't buy some lousy UV stabilized clear plastic for my greenhouse? I did, however, get a good deal on 50 meters of chicken wire.

As with most Zambian locales death is never far, but profitable for those who hawk coffins.

Grim scene:Can you imagine a guy selling tombstones like this in the states?

Hey gang. Been a good while since I've managed to update this here blog on account of in service training, a 10 day tryst back to Lulu land, Lusaka. Since I try to keep this blog clean of all the odd end leavings about the peace corps itself (not to mention other volunteers) I haven't had much to say these past days. However, were I to try to judge the experience based it's fun factor alone I'd give it a solid 8.4 out of 10, which ain't too shabby. Training included the construction of a bio-intensive perma-garden which was a real treat. I took a two week permaculture course in Iowa back in old 2007, and one of the reasons I came to Africa was my ardent desire to put into practice what I'd learned, especial here were improved agriculture design translates into improved nutrition. So here's the idea. Take your typical villager farmer type dude; give him a hoe, some seed, land, maybe a wife and kids. Stir gently for 4 months and just watch the corn grow. Problem is he might not have what it takes to feed his family for the off season in it's entirety (also note that his wife(s) will do a significant bulk of the labor, maybe the majority, and she'll be the first to go without chow). Worse still, even if he gets enough maize that's no guarantee that he'll have a enough variety to ensure proper nutrition. That's a huge risk to your health and will erase years of life expectancy, especially for the under 5 crowd and the HIV positive. What can be done?Permaculture is first and foremost a * design * system. It looks at your assets like soil fertility (I like saying soil capital) water, wind, animals , plants, buildings and asks: what is the most efficient and sustainable expenditure of these precious things. Furthermore, there is a strong emphasis on sustainability. Sustainability is one of those annoying buzzwords that seems to create more confusion then anything else. In fact, skilled practitioners of the craft will often point out that they aren't looking to sustain their productivity but rather to improve and extend it. Perennial species of plants, to include trees, are favored. Continued improvement of your soil nutrient stocks, rain catchment, and long term planning are also crucial. The scale of permaculture is entirely up to the farmer, but it's recommended that you start small and work your way up. In theory you could design your entire system around permaculture: house, orchid, garden, grazing lands, water throughput, staple and cash crop fields. That's enough of a primer for now. I've been told that these post are way too long and boring, which is fair enough. It's probably enough to say that I have a permaculture design for my site that hope to incorporate as many design concepts as I can cram into it, to include: Rain catchment and storage tank, one half a lima (1/3 an acre) of conservation farming, 100 or so chickens, a donkey or two, and as many trees as possible. This is quite a bit and my number one concern is biting off more than I can chew. Good news is that in the village you're never alone and you can always get by with a little help from your friends. The other aspect of training involved a 2 day workshop with selected counterparts from the village. Each volunteer designated a villager, or government worker, or anybody that they thought was equipped to work in tandem on their program. I chose a certain Joseph Phiri who I am thrilled to work with. He is a successful farmer and businessman, saving his cash and investing in a small tuck shop in my village where he sells groceries, candles, talk time (cell phone minutes), you name it. Most impressive is that he heads a quite large group devoted to education, health and development. He is industrious, studious, and I've never seen him drink. That's my boy. At any rate I was thrilled to have him with me in training and we laid down the opening salvo to what portends to be a productive relationship.

This is my counter part in his hotel room. I chose a man who is composed, dignified, and unflappable. Would you expect anything less?

Behind the campus where we stayed and trained was a charming little neighborhood, but it was not without it's sketch elements.

Technical manual writer cum PCV trainer Henry (left) now writes knowledge into the minds of American do gooders. This pic says it all: the man radiates a quality of goodwill and magnanimous decency that enriches all who fall into his orbit.