Community vs. Capitalism

Coming to Zambia I was a sound socialist. This was my thinking. The rich should help the poor, because they can and because those that have more, have more responsibility. That poor people that were lazy were not poor because they were lazy, but were simply lazy and poor, just like lazy people that are rich aren’t rich because they’re lazy, but are just both. Now I’m not going to say my world has been turned on its head, but I will give an example.
I spoke to a couple good farmers (villagers farming by hand though) who volunteered their time to teach others to be better farmers. When I asked them why, they said that if they taught other people to grow more food, they would stop asking them for food. This makes sense, but the weight of this didn’t actually land on me until recently. These people don’t simply give away food, they give away the chance for themselves to buy cattle to plough more acres and grow more food, they give away their ability to afford fertilizer, they give away their children’s ability to attend school. Because of these beggars, who are legitimate, others at stuck in a cycle of poverty and can’t pull themselves up, and then help others. As far as I can tell, if everyone is poor, it’s really hard to get a foothold up.
This awesome culture of helping each other and always being there for each other that impressed my socks off when I first got here, could it actually be part of why people stay poor?? Should people just fend for themselves and then at least someone will be able to escape this poverty trap? Is capitalism the answer and was I wrong about this whole “give to the needy, if someone asks for something give to them without expecting repayment”?
I’ll give another example. There are people who earn ZMK1,000,000/year ($215), and then there is the hotel I’m stayed at in Lusaka that costs $280/night. There are weekend conferences in Lusaka for Zambians that cost ZMK 3,000,000 (ZMK4600=$1). People drive SUV’s in a country with $1.73/L gas. One tank of gas costs half a years wage for some people!!! I don’t think just taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people is a solution, but holy crap, something here doesn’t sit right with me.

The endangered and illusive “Income generation”

I was thinking about income generating opportunities, but I’m not sure if it really exists. Does income generation exist or is there just income re-distribution? An example is “Cotton Made in Africa”. Does that just steal profits from cotton farmers in India or China? Side note, Cotton farmers here suck in comparison to cotton farmers in China and India, well maybe the farmers don’t suck, but the yields suck, and they are capable of getting much higher yields, even double.

If you try to start an income generating activity in a village where people don’t have any spare cash, where is the opportunity to make money? If 1 poor person grows tomatoes and sells them to another poor person, how does that generate income? You have to look outside the village. If you try to start income generation in a country that doesn’t have much spare cash, do you have to look to exporting to other countries and if so, is it not just income redistribution then? I guess what I’m asking is if you closed all the borders to a poor community or country, could they generate income on their own? I have no idea. I understand things by seeing examples, so I tried to think about how developed countries have developed, and it seems like it has been more of an income taking venture than generating one, but I’m no expert, so I’d love to see an example of how a developed country developed without taking from someone else’s capital. I look at countries in the Americas, where the original inhabitants were killed by disease and Europeans and a huge amount of fertile land and new crop and animal species were inherited. Then to top it off, slaves were taken from Africa and forced to generate income for owners. I look at Britain, which controlled the oceans and thus trade, and made a fortune basically as a middle man.

These are my understandings, but I could be wrong about any or all of them and would like to know.

I just don’t understand what a completely developed world would look like? Would we in Canada still be able to buy t-shirts for $8 and bananas shipped from Ecuador for $0.6/kg? Is the reason we have developed because we have stolen from and ridden so many other groups of people to the top? I guess another question is, “what would Canada look like without developing countries?” I don’t have a clue. If Zambia is to develop, is it possible to do that without bringing down another country, developed or not, like Canada or India.

In Zambia, people speak English. What I mean is they use the same words we use, however they don’t always have the same meaning. Ex. I’m reading a report on a crop which reads:

Dec.	Good
Jan	Poor
Feb	Better
March	At least

I asked “What does ‘At least’ actually mean?” To which someone replied

“It means it’s better than okay, but not very okay”.

I laughed in my head, because of course, there is no such thing as “very okay” in Canadian English, it’s like saying “very sort of!” I explained all this and my friend said “OH!!! That makes sense, because we were watching BBC news and they said ‘At least 200,000 people died in the Haiti earthquake’. (which translates to ‘it wasn’t that bad, thankfully only 200,000 people died’) We were saying that 200,000 people is a lot and the news lady should acknowledge that and say that 200,000 is a lot and not at least!”

A quote from my favourite comedian, Demetri Martin:

“Sort of is such a fluff word. It has no meaning, it doesn’t add anything to a sentence, it doesn’t change the meaning at all… Unless you say it at the end of very definite things, like :

“It’s a boy!”

Or, “You're going to live”

Background on me and my placement

I arrived in Toronto for pre-departure training at the end of January and touched down in Lusaka international airport in Zambia on March 3. I am on my first placement, living in Katete, Eastern Province with my wife. She is an awesome nurse working at an awesome local hospital. I am working with a mobile finance company and a cotton company, both private, for profit companies, not NGO's.

The mobile finance company is basically an online bank account, but with MUCH cheaper fees than a regular bank and you can access it through your mobile phone. They also do money transfers like Western Union, but again, at a much cheaper rate. They have agents, who are often stores that are agents as well, not solely agents, in most cities in Zambia that you can go to do to deposit, withdraw and send money.

The cotton company does out grower programs (they give seeds and fertilizer on loan at the start of the year and then buy back the cotton at the end of the year and deduct the loan from their payments when they buy. Buying cotton is very competitive, the main competition here being Cargill (I think it's the largest private company in the world, look it up).

Last week we just started buying cotton. The payment system in complicated and costly. Long story short, within a few days of buying the cotton they drive a vehicle with lots of cash with a paper list of farmers that should get money and then give the farmers all their money in cash, which the farmers then spend and stash in their house. The hope is that (and this is a pilot program) some farmers will be paid onto their new mobile accounts the day their cotton is sold, saving the cotton company time, money and confusion all the while saving the farmer time and giving them a bank account.

My role is collecting info so that we can set this up so that it can succeed, as well as "capture learning" (figure out what mistakes were made so that next year it's better), and do some gap filling, capacity building, learn the local language Chewa (CHAY-wa), the small task of understanding rural Zambian culture, make friends, support my wife, capture learning for EWB, blah blah blah.

Funny story, Steph and I went for dinner with 2 bwanas (bosses) from the cotton company and the next day a guy from work said "Who was your friend last night? He came to dinner with you". I was confused, "do you mean one of the bosses?"

"No the other one, I don't know his name, but he came with you"
me "No idea who you're talking about"
After about 2 really awkward minutes of this, I realized the "he" was Steph, my wife, or Steve as she's better known here.

Steve and I along with 5 other white women, including a 6ft. tall blond Norwegian (quite a sight to see us all together) hiked the big hill overlooking our tiny town. From the top we saw what at first appeared to be fairies, just like tinkerbell, then after some more sightings we thought they might just be beautiful locusts, they looked like 5 inch grasshoppers with big bright wings. The wings were a mix of blue, yellow, orange, purple and red, with nice little circles. REALLY beautiful. We ended up deciding they must be fairies.

Cotton subsidies

I was going to say "Things are frustrating here." but decided that it would be more accurate if I just said "Life is frustrating". I could probably start every post like this. This time, the reason I’m frustrated is for two reasons.

1. Farmers here want more money, but they want it the (semi) easy way. They way they want money is with higher prices for their crops. So they just ask why the cotton company doesn’t give a higher price for cotton, or why they don’t give bonus’. They turn a deaf ear when you start talking about global cotton prices or the value of the kwacha and just reply "I don't care. I just need more money to live". This is pretty normal. I’ve heard countless farmers in Canada complain about the price of feed, beef, grain. But you can’t just ask the buyer to give you more money, that’s too easy, you have to be creative. What the cotton company offers is a YIELD program, each letter stands for something, but it’s basically a program that teaches it’s farmers better practices so they can have higher yields. Here, it is more realistic to double yields than it is to double the buying price. Yields here average 700kgs/hectare, but good farming can yield 1400kg/ha. I’ve heard of farmers getting anywhere from 200-1700kg/ha, so yields vary widely and it's not just because of weather.

2. The second thing I’m frustrated about is farming subsidies…Correct me if I’m wrong, but American cotton farmers get an average of $80,000/person per year in subsidies!!!! That is the yearly income of 200 peasant farmers here! Try explaining that to farmers here. "The reason the cotton company doesn’t give a high price for cotton to you isn’t because they don’t want to, but there are farmers getting so much money from the government in other parts of the world that they can afford to sell their crops for such low prices, and you have to compete with them because cotton is a globally traded commodity".

So, farmers that are reading this, or anyone else. What do you think about farm subsidies? Should we cut them? Why shouldn’t we?

The drive home

I went to a field day in Msoro and was expecting it to be just like any other field day. Leave here around 10am, couple hours in the field, have lunch and be back around 3 or 4 pm. I should have known it would be different when 15 people got into a 3 passenger mini truck which was already partly loaded with cotton supplies…The drive was 2hours and 45 minutes one way. The “road” which started as a bumpy dirt road, degraded into what in Canada would be considered an “unmaintained hiking trail”. It was wickedly eroded in places, the elephant grass nearly closed the road and there was a constant danger of being hit by low hanging branches or falling out of the back of our sardine packed truck box. Regardless, we arrived with only stiff joints. Realizing that once we arrived, we were only half way because we had to return, I was prepared for more of the same. What I was not prepared for was rain!


The journey home started with an hour walk because our driver was still distributing picking sacks for the farmers. Once he got us we all packed into the truck we set off. After a while the thunder started and then the rain, tropical rain. We pulled over at the local office and waited for about 45 minutes for the rain to stop, which it didn’t, so we put all our phones and money and bags in the cab and started off again. At least this time we put some old bags of cotton in the back to sit on so we could be comfortable. I thought if I just get wet, it won’t be that bad, I was right, if I just get wet. The problem you see is with elephant grass, it’s about 8 ft. tall and when it gets wet it leans…onto the road. So as I sat in the back of the truck, driving 30-40km/hr, raining, soaking wet elephant grass was slapping me in the face, dropping whatever insects it had on me. At that point I thought, if this is all it is, then I’ll be just okay. I put my arm in front of my face to block the grass and just lay there laughing. I told everyone it would be a great memory of Africa for me that I won’t forget. The other men in the truck said “We’re sitting here suffering and you’re laughing making memories!” and for the rest of the ride home that was the case. After about 2 hours the rain stopped and the sky cleared and the stars were so bright, that it ended up being a nice ride. Oh did I mention we saw some park rangers bringing a dead hippo to the chief so that he could distribute it? Well we did. See the picture below.


It was pretty neat. There is so much myth and wives tales. They said that before you eat hippo you must put the blood on your hand and then let it sit for 5 minutes. After you remove the blood if your hand remains red, you are not worthy to eat the hippo. After some digging I found out the red that remains is a rash, and apparently some people are allergic, so it’s actually an allergy test! We were about 30 km from South Luangwa National Park. One of the top game parks on the continent! Look it up. There was an old park ranger in the truck telling stories about pretty much everything, what animals are used for what witchcraft, what prices you can get for them, how to catch them, and all sorts of other interesting stuff. The way people talk is quite funny, they will mix Chewa (the local language) and English, so you could hear “And of course you take the meat and (continues in chewa)”.

So at the end of the day, the ride home was awesome, I arrived soaking wet, freezing, happy, and was alright with the insects. But…During the night…I woke up scratching and itching. In the morning, well, have a look at the picture.


The following night the itching was so intense that Steph was up with me for hours trying to stop me from scratching my skin off. I was asking her to just take her needle and stab me with it if I couldn’t scratch. Anyways, it’s about a week later and I’m mostly healed up, but it was a tough week. This is a self diagnosis, so remember that, but steph has a book on tropical medicine that she keeps next to the bed. She tells me it’s to keep the mosquito net away from the edge of the bed, but I think it’s actually there to give me nightmares. Reading about parasitic worms and how they travel through the blood and lungs and up your throat and back down to get swallowed! BLAH! So, I diagnosed myself with Chiggers. The book had stuff of lice and mites and chiggers, and I think it was them, plus it’s a fun word to say. Chiggers are the larvae of mites that go to the end of grass and wait for passing mammals. Then they bite and fall off or are washed off. Oh and I have worms for sure now, because I was swimming in Cape McClear or Monkey Bay, which is the schisto (I think that’s what they’re called) worm capital of Lake Malawi. They’re the worms transmitted by snails, and there were lots of snails. Also there was good stuff about the lake, bueatiful water, beaches and cichlids (I think that’s what they’re called, beautiful bright tropical fish in Lake Malawi).

I never know how to end this, and it kind of degraded from single story to listing what parasites I think I have, but either way, I hope it’s interesting.
Oh, I forgot. Something funny about Zambians. They can’t say Steph’s name, and they freely interchange he and she. So I have heard “Your wife, his name is Steve?” to which I reply, “Yes, her name is Steph” which doesn’t clear the issue up one bit!
Zambians also freely interchange R and L so I heard that they have “Lobots” in Chipata, so I asked again and thought I heard “Rowboats”, so I asked again and thought I heard “Robots”. Which of these do you think is the correct answer? It’s Robots. So then I was looking for these ‘robots’ which were near “clossloads” (=crossroads). It turns out that they call traffic lights robots!

Here are a few more pictures: our bedroom, kitchen and home...so take a look!

Another update

Hello again everyone!

Thank you so much for the replies, it's nice to get even a one sentence reply! This is about our first week in Zambia, it took me longer to write this, so you're getting this a little late. I hope you all had a great Easter!

Steph and I spend a week staying with families in a village. It was… AWESOME. Actually, it was just intense. I don’t want to sound cliché saying that staying in a rural African village was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life and every person there is the best person I’ve ever met. That being said, it really was a wonderful week. Lusaka has lots of great things, 99.99% of people are great and just want to meet you and be your friend, but it’s also noisy, dirty, smelly and some people are trying to steal from you (I got pick pocketed for the first time, only about $15 though). So to go from that to a small village was nice. You probably could drop money on the ground there and people would collect it and walk 10km to give it to you, then cook you food and try to serve it to you while you sat in the best chair. I’m hardly exaggerating. We went to church on Sunday and then entire 1.5hr service was translated to English solely for the two of us. We were brought to the front and sat in chairs off to the side and asked to stand and say some words to the congregation. At home they would give us the best chair in the nicest spot to sit, bring water, give HUGE quantities of food and do pretty much everything for you unless you really insisted on helping out.

Steph and I stayed separately with two families in a village. People there are from the Tonga tribe. It is near Pemba, 3 hours southeast of Lusaka. It’s a village in a loose sense, it’s not a close collaboration of houses, but rather an area, that has houses and about 200 people. There are families spread out evenly over maybe a 14sq. km area (I’m guessing) and as far as I could understand, the sparse population just continues throughout Zambia. The family I stayed with was a 73 year old man, named Silas Muzuma, he is the village head man. He has two wives and many dependants (about 30 people are his household). He has a Sr. wife and a Jr. wife, and they rank accordingly in family affairs. He is the capstone to the lives of so many people. The mother of his Sr. wife lives there, some of his children, their children, his nephews, and other extended family. An example is that his wife’s nephew died so he brought the wife and child of that man to live with him. There were 2 little boys about 2 years old. One would giggle and want me to chase him, so I did, but the other little boy was with him and ran away crying in Tonga “The white man, he wants to beat me!” It took me all week to convince them that I didn’t want to hurt them...

There were about 7 houses in a 150m x 150m area that comprise his household. He has had 3 wives, 1 died. Of those 3 wives he has had 30 children, 20 have survived so far. Their houses are built with brick and have a tin roof and dirt floor (the nicest houses in the village). When he was a boy he said they just had stick houses with mud between the cracks in the sticks and grass thatched roofs and people wore animal skin clothes. He said back then the roofs had to be strong because sometimes lions would jump on the roof and try to get in, but if you put strong sticks, while the lion was separating the sticks, you could stab it through the cracks! There is no electricity there, and the drinking water comes from a borehole about 500m away.

It is beautiful there. At night the stars are so amazingly bright, there is even a spot that is a cloud of stars, it just looks like dust. One of my favourite things to do was to go outside at night and watch the stars. The temperature was ideal, perfectly comfortable and there were zero mosquitoes. Wherever there aren’t houses it is either “bush”( wild area with trees and bushes) or crops.

Most crops were on plots about 1 acre in size or less. They grew peanuts, corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, varieties of beans, oranges, mangoes, guavas, okra, lemons, squash, sweet potatoes, cassava. Until recently most people only grew corn, but NGO’s have been promoting crop diversification as a means of adding stability to farms. The main problems to growing more now are that farmers need capital and knowledge. The two families that Steph and I stayed with were model farmers who voluntarily teach other farmers proper techniques. Aside from production is the much more important challenge of access to markets. They are being taught to treat farming as a business, not a way of life (i.e. you don’t just grow food to eat and give away to hungry relatives, but measure the inputs and outpouts and sell your crop as a product), but if you can’t sell your product, it’s not much of a business. I don’t know how they will overcome this.

The main purpose for this week long visit was to develop a friendship with rural smallholder farmers (farmers with small farms 2-8 hectares) and understand their lives and some of the challenges they face. It was an easy purpose. People were so kind to us, and always wanted to chat, give food and shake hands, or hold hands (today I went for a 5 minute walk holding hands with another man, it’s common here, even interlocking fingers!).

Here are some wonderful and funny things people do here. Men hold hands. People freely interchange he and she “Steph asked me, well he told me, to bring you here”. People asked if steph and I were from the same tribe in Canada. I was asked if I took a plane of bus here from Canada. Women will breastfeed at any time, even while working in the fields without slowing down(the babies are tied to their backs or sides with cloth). People dress so well, suits and all, bathe often and really take care of themselves. People laugh and are genuinely kind. Even during a meeting people are laughing as they explain things. People care about family and will always help each other, always.

Quick disclaimer: I am making generalizations based on the things I have seen so far and realize that, so I ask that you accept them as generalized observations at this point and nothing more. People are people, some are lazy, some work hard, some are smart and kind, some are not, some are funny, some are hilarious, just like anywhere else.

I was trying to understand poverty and what it meant for these people. They are well fed (I ate so much more than I thought possible), there is clean drinking water 500m away, they all seemed quite happy, the children played, ran and laughed nearly all day, there is a secondary school 500m away and there was a clinic that had free medication. I asked Mr. Muzuma what he wanted. Electricity? Yes. tv? Yes. Car? Yes. Computer? Yes. I explained that in Canada, when people get those things, they aren’t any happier, they just want the next thing better, bigger tv, newer nicer car, bigger house, etc. Mr. Muzuma answered me very honestly. He said “Yes, it is true. The bible says you can never satisfy the heart. Me, when I married my first wife, I was happy, but after some time I saw another woman and thought that I would be happier if I married her, and was then no longer happier with my current wife. Then I married the other woman and soon wanted another, but said ‘no, you will never be satisfied.’ So it is true, the heart cannot be satisfied, but there is a basic level of living that is required for human beings so that you are not living like animals.”

I agree.

Although many things are good, many are bad, and his family is better off than others. Many do go hungry, there is even a season called “the hunger season” and people may eat only one meal a day or even one every few days. I guess I will take this space to write about some of the bad things now. Life is a lot of work, especially for the women. I really mean that. No one could work harder than they do. There is a long way to go in gender equality. That’s the politically correct way to put it, but suffice to say that life isn’t fair. I’ll leave it there for now. Everything is done by hand, all the farming, fetching water, laundry, everything is people powered. The high school is understaffed, as is the clinic, which doesn’t have any doctors, just one nurse. Even if you are really smart and do well in school, many many people can’t afford school fees (about $800/year for university and less for secondary). School is free until gr.7 so many people just make it that far, or finish high school but can’t afford university. The farther you get away from the road, the worse everything gets. People die. Lots of people die. On Friday the sister of the man Steph stayed with died during childbirth. The morning we left I awoke to screaming and crying, I now understand the term wailing, because our neighbor family 200m away lost their 2 year old boy during the night, probably to an easily preventable illness. After our families said their goodbyes they went to attend his funeral, and we took a luxury bus back to Lusaka.

So I agree, that there is a minimum standard of living that is required, which includes physical things like food, shelter, medical care, but also opportunities, like to go to school, university, and at least have a shot at the career you want to have. There are some interesting things about the rural Zambians I’ve met. (I’m going to make some big generalizations but it’s what I’m thinking now so I’m going to share it). They are innocent of so many things that we in the developed world are guilty of. They are so humble and willing to learn. They are not lazy, materialistic, or proud. Their government has not invaded and oppressed another country or group of people. They do not have trade regulations that keep countries poor. They have not destroyed the global environment. They are generous. They have not turned a blind eye to the poor or lavished themselves with ridiculous luxuries. Why? Are they just better people than we are at the core? I don’t think so. People are people. I think they are like this largely because of their situation. I just hope that as their situation changes, they remain the same in all these great ways.

Ben

p.s. My Zambia name, given by trail and error, is Benson Tembo. That's the most common response I get when I say Ben Campbell

Zambia...

Hello everyone!

Things are going well here. We are in Katete, which is a small town (maybe 1 square km area) about 55km from Mozambique, and 80 from Malawi. It is a nice area, up on a plateau, nearly the same elevation as home. It is fairly flat with rocky hills jutting up randomly. Steph is working at St.Francis Mission Hospital ( www.saintfrancishospital.net). Apparently it is quite a nice hospital, but is still African, so very full and could use more funds.

My work is a little less straight forward. I am in Africa working for Engineers Without Borders (EWB). They don't do their own projects, but partner with existing organizations. I am partnered with a mobile finance company (a private company), which receives support from PROFIT (an NGO), which is a branch of USAID (a global donor). A cotton company (a private company) has shares in the mobile finance company, and has asked it to conduct research over 3 months on farmer money usage. I will be working on a team of 6 people. 2 Zambians from PROFIT, 2 Zambians from the mobile finance company and another Muzungu (non-african) who used to work for EWB, but now works for the finance company. I'm still trying to figure it out.

The simple version is:
There is a massive cotton company. Right now, they pay the cotton farmers in cash. An armoured vehicle drives with AK-47's to villages and gives out that cash. The mobile finance company allows people to have a bank account on their cell phone, so instead of trucks, guns and cash, the cotton company can pay the farmers over cellphones and the farmers can go to town and withdraw cash from the mobile finance company agent.

I will spend the next 3 months visiting villages and finding out if this would be helpful to farmers, why or why not, how could it be made better, how do they use cash now, etc.

So far I have visited 4 villages. It's pretty interesting. So many stereotypical things already. When I got to a village, a crowd of 10-20 kids forms and follows us around in interest, but really young ones run crying in fear of 'the white man'. Most people don't speak english (I'm learning Chichewa), they live in brick and sometimes plaster huts with either grass or sheet tin roofs. I was given a chicken and pumpkin as a present yesterday. We will eat it tonight. People are what we could call "poor" for the most part, living on less than a dollar a day. Men get married young, women very young and have children early. I met a 20 year old girl with a 4 year old son and one woman said she was married when she was either 13 or 14. People are very kind and humble and polite, except when drunk. Alcoholism seems to be a problem for a minority here. The idea of competition between individual venders in town is often absent. For example, last night, there were 5 women on the side of the road selling peanuts. They all sold 1 cup for 12cents. Each person was selling exactly the same product, at exactly the same price as the other 4 people sitting directly beside them. We eat Nsima every day. Nsima is pounded dried corn, then you add water and boil until it is a little thicker than mashed potatoes, it's quite similar to overcooked porridge. You eat it with your hands and a 'relish', which could be a meat stew, cooked beans, cooked pumpkin leaves, etc. It is the staple food, meaning that people eat it not just everyday, but for every meal everyday. Plain Nsima but with extra water in the morning. Nsima for lunch, nsima for dinner, everyday. It is very filling and fun to eat as well as tasty! It is so common here people can't understand that we don't eat it in Canada. People ask me what the staple food is in Canada. I used to say wheat, but now answer that there is no staple food in Canada, because we have completely different food pretty much every day. Plus if I start naming foods we eat, like pizza, pasta, burgers, salad I just get blank looks.

Oh, a funny note, I'm still training myself not to ask "OR" questions, like "Do you walk or ride a bike?" because I always get the same answer..."yes". Even if I repeat the question with emphasis on the or "Do you walk....OR....ride a bike", "yes".

I can't over emphasize how kind and gentle people in the villages are. The other EWB volunteers all talk about how they love the village and when I first went to one, I couldn't figure it out, latrines are gross and smelly, the food isn't exceptional, it's very basic living and people are often sick. But I think I am starting to figure it out now. Village people love to talk to you and share, they don't want your money, just company, they love to laugh and talk about Zambia and Canada, teach Chichewa, share food with you, and did I mention laugh!? The will clap their hands and laugh, shake your hand and laugh, I even had a 75 year old woman grab both my hands and just shake them laughing! Also, it's nice being out of a city or town and having fresh air, bright stars and quiet (except for animals).

So, after saying all of that. Steph is doing very well. I am doing well. I am excited to spend the next 3 months out in the villages making friends, picking cotton, harvesting corn and peanuts and learning. There is so much to learn.

Well that's all for now I guess. I kind of rambled on, but nobody's forcing you to read this!

Also, a note on birds of prey. I have seen 3 so far. One hawk about the size of an osprey, which apparently "bites chickens". Another hawk about the size of a red tail that was a beautiful hoverer, nicer than a rough legged hawk. And finally, in town, a grey one about the size of a merlin. I don't know if it was a falcon or more like a coopers hawk, I only saw it briefly from the back.

Lots of love, Ben and Steph

p.s. Another funny note. Coming from Canada I thought that WWE wrestle mania, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson were just for red necks, but apparently they're also for Zambians!