Planting For The Future

I'm a big fan of planting trees.  Out of one small seeds comes something large and worthwhile: a tree.  And that tree can provide services for people like shade, food, and nitrogen-fixation among other for years and years, even decades.  Yet, poverty and intensive use of forest resources are causing deforestation on a wide-scale here in Zambia.  And, unfortunately, trees aren't being put back in place of those cut.  There is a lot of deforestation, but minimal reforestation.  It's a serious problem with long-term impacts.

At my house I continuously have trees in a tree nursery.  The children help me fill the pots, I water them, then together we plant the trees.  I've found that naming trees after individual children gives a sense of ownership and excitement to the kids, which I hope will lead to better sense of how caring about their local forest resources and the environment as a whole.

In my community we're trying to alleviate some of these issues by planting our own trees. With some help from the village's kids, we've been busy planting trees, trees, and more trees.  I plant all kinds of trees: some that live a long time (red mahogany and other local species), some that can be used for food (mangoes, guavas, moringas), some that improve soil fertility (msangu, tephrosia, and pigeon pea), and some that just look nice (jacaranda and flamboyant).  Trees serve a variety of purposes, so I've aimed to plant a wide-array of them.

Anything can be used in a tree nursery to hold seedlings, even Pop-Tarts boxes from the United States.  Although black plastic bags, provided by the Forestry Department, work the best.

I think that part of the issue with replanting projects is that it takes a lot of planning ahead and looking to the future in order to be successful, and neither of things can be simply taught.  Instead, they take years of education and behavior change to really develop.  So, we're chipping away at old notions that the forests are infinite and looking at them as valuable, truly invaluable, and finite resources worth careful management. 

It hasn't been easy though and I've had to try a lot of different techniques.  Some worked a little bit, some failed badly, and none have been overwhelming successes - except one.  That would be working with kids.  Kids love to help me with projects and there is no other project that I want more help with than planting trees.  

Darius, seen here, is posing with a msangu tree that I helped him plant in his maize field.  Msangu is one of the best trees an African farmer can plant for improving and maintaining their soil's fertility.  After ten years of growth the tree will produce enough Nitrogen fertilizer that they'll no longer have to use more expensive synthetic fertilizers.

To me, planting trees is also a kind of legacy project at some level.  I know that if I help a farmer plant trees that benefit their lives then they'll be able to look at the tree and remember that I was there, but more importantly what I taught: trees are just as necessary as clean water and air - without them we would have a far less worthwhile life.  It sounds narcissistic, I admit this, but I do think that as a volunteer I have to think along these lines to a certain extent by using what influence I have to create an interest and desire to use what is taught / what is learned to benefit the future.  

Planting a tree isn't planting for tomorrow or even the week after... it's planting for the long-term future and the long-term well-being of a community.  It isn't an easy concept to pass on, but it is absolutely important.

Here a field of cotton has been intercropped with msangu trees.  The cotton is gaining the benefit of nitrogen-fixation courtesy of the msangu trees.  Systems of integrating trees into agricultural and normal, everyday living systems is key to reducing deforestation and improving people's lives in a meaningful way.  Not doing so is the same as offering no solution.

My boss at Peace Corps loves to say, "The best time to plant a tree was ten years ago, the second best time is today."  I take that to heart and will keep on planting for the future.

Zambia's Hunger Season

While eating locally grown food in the United States is a trendy idea, it’s strictly of necessity in Zambia.

These girls spent about 25 minutes collecting mangoes, then only a few minutes eating them.    Without mangoes the hunger season would be far worse on the locals, as this time of the year sees a huge decrease in available foods.

Typically, there are no grocery stores with aisles of food. Instead people eat what they grow themselves or what can be bought or bartered for from neighbors.

As part of a personal challenge I took it upon myself to go on a strictly village diet for the month of November. I decided that I would only eat foods found in the local community and only foods that a local would have access to. That means no cookies and treats that the local shops sometimes carry — due to the price.

This woman, Matilda, farms her few acres of land to provide for her family of 5.

Also, no food bought in one of the provincial capital’s markets and, certainly, no food — mainly candy — that had been sent to me from friends and family in the U.S. I’d spend the month eating as they do and staring every single night at the popcorn on my counter.

Unfortunately, I didn’t consider what the month of November is like.

Not only is it incredibly hot (it’s the end of the hottest, driest time of the year and just before the seasonal rains), but November is also at the heart of “the hunger season,” which will last until February. This is the time when a community’s preparedness to fight hunger is put to the test.

This woman, Beauty, has two sons and herself to farm enough food for in order to avoid food shortages. 

Having enough food to meet a person’s dietary needs is called food security. And when a community’s food supplies are pressed it can be problematic because droughts, poor management, and even worse luck can cause widespread food shortages in Africa.

While in the hunger season people’s gardens are just finishing up and their field crops have not grown enough to harvest, so they rely on dwindling family food reserves. These sometimes run out and when that happens there are few options remaining.

During my experiment, my main sources of food consisted of beans, rice, tomatoes, onions, cabbage, some greens, peanuts, mangoes and the occasional bites of fish or chicken.

It didn’t seem too bad for the first few days, but after eating rice and beans for five straight days, I started to get a little wary of it.

This man, Eston, is in the second year of gardening for income and food production.   He's more blessed than most in that he doesn't have to provide for an entire family with his single garden - he only has to look out for himself.  

Midway through the challenge I started to simply skip meals because I didn’t feel like eating. I’ve always been a person who loves eating, but eating the same thing didn’t keep me interested.

My experiment wasn’t without its limitations.

All the people that live in my village make their living from growing field crops and tending gardens. I don’t do either. I had to buy all my food and for me it wasn’t a problem to spend a dollar on five onions and another on tomatoes.

But a local mother may not be able to afford nearly an entire day’s earning on a few onions, let alone tomatoes. So she relies on her garden and field to produce. If it doesn’t, then the family goes hungry.

One thing I discovered during my month-long trial was that the mango tree plays a vital role in my community’s food security. With home food reserves failing, mangoes are a main source of food and nutrition in bridging the gap between meals. Kids come home from school and immediately climb into the trees to fetch mangoes.

This girl is the daughter of my village's headman.  Everyday she goes with her friends to collect and chow down on mangoes to supplement their food intake.

After some time they come down, collect the mangoes they’ve dropped, and set out to eat them. Without the mango tree and its fruit, hunger season would be infinitely more difficult and I wouldn’t have recognized this as clearly if I wasn’t trying this experiment.

In the end, like many aspects of my Peace Corps service, I never fully experienced hunger season and all that this time of year brings.

Only a few times was I really hungry and I only ran out of food completely in the last week, when locally available foods became scarce (then I went to the mango trees).

I experienced the lack of dietary options that many go through, but how can I really say that counts for anything like true hunger? I can’t.

It was a good experience not only in that I tested my ability to say no to eating that popcorn, but also that I tried to walk a mile in the locals’ shoes — even if only for a month.

Learning a New Language Is Tricky, Tricky

Mwaiyai mwane! In the local lan­guage of Kaonde that means, “Wel­come!”

Unlike English, I’ve not had 27 years of attempted master­ing of this language, so you’ll understand if I admit to being a novice, although fumbling is more like it, in regards to my communication abilities.

Kaonde is a small language as far as languages go — only about 250,000 people speak it as their mother tongue —and al­though it is one of Zambia’s main recognized languages, it’s just one of 73 languages spoken in the country.
Deriving from the Bantu family of languages (like Swahi­li), it is constructed in a com­pletely different manner than English. For instance, to say, “I am home” is “Nji pa nzubo.” Where “N” is the subject prefix, “ji” is the verb stem, “pa” is the locator, and “nzubo” is home. It’s all very difficult to say the least.

However, the construction isn’t the hardest part for me — it’s the memorization of words and how they’re used. The Eng­lish language, according to Ox­ford English Dictionary, has more than 615,000 words, of which some 200,000 are in com­mon use. That means we have lots of words to describe things, nearly perfectly. And if we want to spice it up then there are al­ways synonyms.

My issue with Kaonde is that one word describes so much, so context is hugely important.

For example, the word “ki­chi” means tree, branch, stick and limb. Although they’re all similar, they’re also very differ­ent. It’s possible that in asking for a stick, someone could bring you a large branch, or even a log.

Then there is the word “ku­nya,” which means to defecate. It’s one slight n-sound away from “kuya,” which means to go. That’s a mistake you don’t want to make in passing conver­sation.

All this leads me to some­thing important that I’ve learned while here in the Peace Corps – that I’m really glad I’m an English speaker because English seems depressingly hard to figure out, let alone mas­ter.

If I think Kaonde is hard be­cause of its simplicity and lack of words, then English is ex­ceedingly more difficult be­cause of its complexity and vastness of vocabulary.

This realization of how diffi­cult my own language is has giv­en me infinite respect for the Zambians that I live and work with. It’s common to find some­one who is fluent in three or four languages with an additional understanding of another three or four. And there are some that know in excess of10 total. I can’t even imagine.

I’ve been in many meetings where I count three or more lan­guages being interchanged throughout the discussion, without any delay. The human brain’s recognition capability is amazing.

At times my language skills don’t bother me as much as maybe they should because I use my inability to communi­cate as a defense. For instance, if someone asks me to do some­thing that I have no desire to do (like kill a goat), then I just pre­tend I don’t know what’s being asked.

Other times I really wish I could give as thorough an an­swer as I’d like. For example, I’ve tried numerous times to ex­plain constellations in the night sky to people in the local lan­guage and fall far short.

It’s one thing I look forward to about my return to the United States: lots of English speakers. I’ll be able to let jokes and pop culture references fly.

However, when I do manage to crack a joke in my broken Kaonde it gets a far better re­sponse than anything I could say back home. That’s because the locals appreciate my efforts far more than I do.

Last night I told my village’s headman, in English, “You know I could live here five more years and never get the hang of Kaonde.”

And in Kaonde he responded, “Mugeseka.” At least you try.