Harversting Kamabuta's First Fishpond

On August 19th, Mr. Nshimbi (one of my favorite people in the village and surely one of the hardest workers in the area) harvested his fishpond.  It was not only his first time ever harvesting the pond, but it was also Kamabuta's (my community) first ever fishpond.  You see, Mr. Nshimbi built the first fishpond ever in our area.  

Late last November the pond was completed - after a month's worth of digging - but due to resource restrictions we weren't able to locate and transport fingerlings to the pond until the end of January. 

A net is moved through the pond 4 or 5 times to catch the fish.  Some men hold the net high so the fish can't jump over, while others hold it down, which prevents the fish from swimming under.  Mr. Nshimbi is in the water to my right, wearing a brown shirt and white hat.

About six and half months later he wanted to harvest his pond.  I'm an agriculture volunteer, not a fish farming volunteer (PC/Zambia has four programs: health, education, agriculture, and aquaculture).  So, I called two volunteers that specialize in aquaculture to come help myself and Mr. Nshimbi in navigating the dos and don'ts of harvesting a pond.  Without Tom and Ryan's help it would've been a frustrating process... a big thanks to them.

After the fish have been caught in the net they're moved to the center of the net, then dunked into the water to remove excess mud and other debris.  

The whole process is pretty straight forward.  A net is dragged through the pond four or five times and each time the collected fish are removed and placed into buckets.  They're then sorted by size and cleaned off.

After they're taken from the net they're placed into buckets and sorted into varying sizes.  Once they're sorted they are then washed and cleaned up for the next step.

After the fish have been cleaned off they're weighed and sold by the kilogram to interested buyers from the community.  We started at about 7:30 in the morning with partially draining the pond and about six hours later we were finished - the fish had been caught, bagged, and sold away.

In the end Mr. Nshimbi made about $50 from the harvest.  That doesn't seem incredibly high especially when someone takes into account that he spent six and a half months getting ready for this one day, but for a place where the average person makes around $2 per day they did alright.

After they've been sorted and cleaned they're then placed into plastic bags and weighed out to 1 kilogram per bag.  That's about 2.2 pounds per bag.  Then they're sold for about $5 per bag to the community.

It's also important to consider that this was Mr. Nshimbi's first harvest ever.  Due to that the management leading up to the harvest was a learning process for him.  At times he wasn't as diligent as he could have been with regards to feeding his fish.  I expect he's learned a lot from this first harvest and the next time we harvest in March he'll have an even higher yield of fish. 

Nshimbi looks on with other community members as the fish are being sorted through.  He was hoping for about 90 pounds of fish being caught, but in reality only around 25 were kept for sale.  Although a lower amount then what he wanted he later told me that he was happy with it, because it's a learning process and next time he'll have even more.

Things here take time to happen and a exceptionally managed fish farm won't happen overnight, but I was happy of the accomplishment - he was the first to take the initiative in building the pond, stocking it, managing it, and then harvesting it.  That's a big step he took and it paid off. 

I should also note that because of his pond I've been asked to plan out four other ponds for future construction in the area by other villagers.  His example is spreading amongst the people of the area.