Countries by the Numbers

Currently I am vacationing in South Africa for Christmas and am having a fantastic time exploring Cape Town with many other MCC workers.  During my journey to South Africa I passed through the very interesting country of Botswana.  I found that very interesting comparisons exist between the three countries of Zambia, Botswana and South Africa.  So I will share these comparisons.

Zambia:

Population = 13.5 million
Land Area = 750 000 sq km
GDP per capita = $1 400 (US)
Major Products = Copper, Corn, Livestock
Major Ethnic Groups =  Bemba, Tonga, Chewa, Lozi

Comments = A country blessed with good land and lots of rain to support the population, the majority of which are subsistence farmers.  Canadian mining companies have dominate the Copperbelt province for many years although their reputation has not always been in high standards.  For better or for worse, foreign NGOs continue to prop up the country financially.

Botswana:

Population = 2.0 million
Land Area = 580 000 sq km
GDP per capita = $12 700 (US)
Major Products = Cattle, Diamonds, Sorghum
Major Ethnic Groups =  Setswana, Kalanga, Indigenous Groups (Bushmen)

Comments = A country dominated by the Kalahari desert means that water is always in short supply so lush green lawns are nonexistent.  However the country has prospered under previous responsible governments that tightly managed the diamond industry in the country.  Elephants are quite frequently seen grazing next to the road when driving through the country.

South Africa:

Population = 49.1 million
Land Area = 1 220 000 sq km
GDP per capita = $10 300 (US)
Major Products = Mining (world's largest producer of platinum, gold, chromium), Corn, Wine
Major Ethnic Groups = black African 79%, white 9.6%, coloured 8.9%, Indian/Asian 2.5%
(These are politically correct terms in South Africa)

Comments = A country that looks very similar to North America immediately upon entry.  However the country is still very divided along racial lines 16 years after the end of apartheid.  However it is one of the only African countries where the colonizers and African tribes made an effort to peacefully live together after the end of colonial rule.  The country is covered with green mountains making for many spectacular natural sights.

*All of the numbers are from CIA World Factbook
*The comments are from my observations and from conversations I have had with different people.

Victoria Falls at the End of the Dry Season Pt. 2

The classic view of Africa is the safari adventure so when not swimming next to the falls we took a day trip to Botswana to take in the classic Africa.   I have heard stories that the leader of Botswana is extremely passionate about animals and apparently he uses his army to protect them.  Poachers can be shot on site and even just hitting a wild animal with your car on the road can get you jail time.  So the wildlife parks there are flooded with animals and at the end of the dry season the only place where the animals can get water is at the river.  We took a boat trip along the river and saw cape buffalo and elephants by the hundreds.  Hippos, crocs and antelope were also very abundant.  And there were too many species of bird too count.

Here are some pictures.

Cape Buffalo

Saddlebilled Stork

Hippo with a Croc

Elephants Cross the River

Kudus

Elephants with 500 Pound Baby

Swimming Next to Victoria Falls

There was a ledge about 5cm under water and 1 meter from the edge of the falls that kept us from going over.

First Rains

After 7 months of pure uninhibited sunshine all of that heat accumulated into the biggest thunderstorm in my memory.  We were cooking lunch that afternoon when the clouds rolled into the village.  They made a flashy show of it too with their lightning and they boastfully howled out with thunder and and wind.  When the rains came pounding down the tin roof of our house made muted every other sound in the air.  The show was spectacular but it was the wind that did us in.  The strongest wind in 6 years was around us and after ten minutes it stole the tin roof off of our kitchen.   The rain came pouring in and the house was soaked.  After the storm passed the house was a mess, almost everything was soaked.  It was a very humbling experience.

The next day the builders came to fix the roof,  we washed and dried everything in the house and threw out everything we couldn't salvage or we didn't need.  That night we were tired but slept well under our fixed roof. Three days after the storm the house was even cleaner than before the storm because the storm forced us to throw out all of the junk that accumulates in any home over the years. Five days later we finally, after two months, got our battery to hold charge from the solar panel on the roof so we could charge our cell phones and have light at night.  Seven days later I moved into my brand new office at school.  So in Eight months time I may look back on the time when the rains came in as the time when I started living life in style in Zambia.

It has rained five times since the first rains each time more gentle then the last.  But the rains are still very heavy, with more than an inch falling in 20 minutes.  Everything has turned from brown to green and everyone is busy in the fields planting the food they will eat all of next year.  They let me plow with a team of two cows for 4 minutes but it requires some practice.  Otherwise the next few week for me will be occupied with multicrop seeding of maize(corn) with sugar cane, maize with potatoes, peanuts and a whole assortment of vegetables.  There's plenty of land to go around here so there should be enough land to feed the extra North American at the table. 

Independence Day

On October 24 Zambia celebrates its freedom from the white people who controlled the former Northern Rodesia which happened in 1964.  For the people of Mboole they were very happy to include me, the only white person in the village, in their celebrations.  The celebration for me took on two parts, the soccer games and the school’s Independence Day celebration.

The soccer games are a day long event where everyone goes and watches soccer games all day long.  I practice with one soccer team but they weren’t able to register me in time so I can only play friendly games.  So I just tagged along to watch.  Because it was day long event our team made some gela for lunch which is just ground corn meal cooked and mixed with milk.  Four guys just squat around a dish and eat away, it was interesting taste experience.  Because I had been in town the day before I told my team I would buy them a treat for after the game.  So I got them some bread and peanut butter.  Now please allow me to defend this choice of mine.  The people who live out in the villages maybe have bread once a year, for Christmas or Easter maybe and bread is without a doubt a real luxury item here.  So they all eagerly downed their one slice of bread.  After all was said and done I packed up the little bit of remaining peanut butter and went home.  At home my host mother said that a few of the other guys on our team had walked by earlier. They were talking excitedly about how the white guy had got them some bread.  The one said “Yeah and there was this brown stuff to put on top”.  Which I found strange because everyone in the village grows their own peanuts and they eat peanuts all the time but peanut butter is only found (but found abundantly) in the towns and the cities.

The school’s Independence Day celebration was very interesting but very stressful.  In the days before Independence Day the school collects about 50 cents from as many students as can afford it (this was my job to collect money and write down the crazy Tonga names like Chilileko Chuulabantu).  Then on the Independence Day there is traditional singing and dancing then for those that paid the school cooks a full course meal (consisting of Nshima, cooked cabbage and goat or chicken meat).  My grade 8 class insisted tat I join in the traditional dance, so they dragged me out there and the whole school roared with laughter from the from the moment I busted my first dance move.  Also may I say that cooking for 300 people on wooden fires is very stressful but very satisfying when finished.

Grade 8 Girls Preform on Independence Day

a more melo preformace 

May I just put in one request to all the physicists.  If they find the Higgs Boson this year someone let me know please.

Victoria Falls at the End of the Dry Season Pt. 1

I live about 3 hours drive from Victoria Falls (1hour $2.00 minibus ride + 2 hour $10.00 big bus ride).  So you can rest assured that there will be a Victoria Falls at the beginning of the End of Dry Season Pt. 2 and a Victoria Falls in the Rainy Season Pt. 1 and 2 to come in due time.  This first adventure took place at the end of September.  I apologize for not writing about it sooner but My internet access where I live is restricted to my hotmail account which I get on my cellphone.  Which is still kind of incredible since there is no electricity or running water at my home yet I check my emails everyday.  But this is getting off track.

The end of the rainy season is when the Zambezi river which flows over the falls is at its lowest.  It hasn't rained here since March but the rains will come in November.  This is the only time of year when they allow white water rafting on the river as the rest of the year it is too dangerous.  As it was we almost died on the first rapid.  This was the first time I had been on water and seen a life jacket as an absolute necessity to survival.  Without the life jacket I would have been at the mercy of the endless supply of whirlpools undertows and 2 meter high rapids that would gladly drag a perso to the bottom of the 50 meter deep river.

The first rapid was the worst.  There were 8 in the boat, one guide and 7 rookies.  We weren't used to paddling and maintaining our balance while moving up and down 2 meters yet (plus there were 2 British guys in our boat who were very hungover from their adventures the night before). Because of where we placed our boats in the river we had to cut across the current on the first rapid.  We started paddling hard but when we hit the first wave half of us fell into the middle of the raft.  We lost all our power and momentum and the current swept us into a wave at the edge of the river which flipped us easily and suddenly the river was speckled with bobbing heads and paddles.  I managed to hold onto the raft and so pulled myself up underneath the flipped raft.  This made my life a lot easier since I wasn't dragged under water and forced to hold my breathe but I was the only one who managed to hold on.  The rest were all saved by their life jackets and the other rafts.  The rest of the rapids were just as crazy but were were used to paddling so we only flipped once more and that was on purpose (kind of) and we all managed to hold onto the boat then.

Rapid Number 1 (400m from the bottom of the falls)

I would recommend this adventure to anyone who is getting bored of riding roller coasters.

As for the falls the pictures will do them justice.

Western Novelties

The western novelties are slowly flowing into Zambia and when I arrived I brought with me one more, UNO.  This amusing and easily learned card game gives players a chance to jokingly barrage their friends with +2,+4 and skip cards but after that they must graciously receive the same punishment in return.  Then of coarse there is the thrilling race to rid yourself of cards which climaxes with the calling of UNO and final for one lucky sole the game ends in a victory dace as the final card is laid.  The effect of this foreign novelty was far greater than I had anticipated and the game spread like a bush fire across the grass plains which haven't received rain since March.  The children from the surrounding homes made sure they stopped by our place every afternoon for a few rounds of the UNO game that itself became an event lasting all afternoon.  But like so many other western novelties their appeal quickly wares out.  I got bored after 2 days the kids lasted 2 weeks and then they asked me to teach them a new game.  The strategy of Janitor proved to difficult to explain through the language barrier and Cheat never caught on.  The really young ones still play UNO from time to time but the game now mostly consists of throwing cards on the floor and then giggling.

I've started playing soccer now instead of UNO.  My village of Mboole has a soccer team called Mboole United that often plays competitive, spectator drawing games against other towns.  I started training with the team this week and they invited me to play a game with them against neighbouring rivals Sikolongo.  The game was on Wednesday and so I made the 10km bike to Sikolongo along a dirt/sandy road with my 8 year old host brother Chipego riding on the back of my bike.  When the whole team got to Sikolongo we found out that the plans had changed and we were supposed to be playing in a town 4 km away.  Well the sun was quickly setting and we realised that there was no way we would be able to make it there and play before the sun went down so we just went home.  At least I got some good exercise and some good looks along the way.

One final note, on the way to type this up I was riding into town on the back to a pickup truck / flat bed truck.  There were about 8 of us in the bed and we all had a fair amount of space to spread out.  All of the sudden we passed a huge farm with 30 farm workers standing outside all wanting transport to town.  We managed to pack 20 of them onto our truck before someone realized that the Police would slap the drivers with a hefty fine if we were caught.  So to prevent us from getting caught on man thought it would be a good idea if everyone started singing a Christian song so the Police would think that we were all going to some church conference and not stop us.  So for 20km on the back of this truck 20 farm workers filled the air with music. The time went quickly.

Worlds Colliding

I have been living with my host family for 1.5 weeks now.  We live in the small village of Mboole about 3km of walking and then 50km by minibus to the town of Choma which is the bustling service centre to all of the surrounding villages.  The family is large by North American standards with 2 parents 2 daughters, 2 sons and a grand daughter all under one roof.  From what I've heard this is a small family by Zambian standards but its certainly not out of the ordinary in that there are lots of little kids around all the time.
Last Saturday I was commissioned by my host parents to make a Canadian dish for them for dinner.   I choose spaghetti.   I figured that because it is by far the meal that i most frequently make for my self so that was enough to make it Canadian.  So anyway off to Choma I went to buy ingredients for my dinner.  Choma is a mixture of open markets selling locally made goods and South African owned shops selling western style brands and products.  Western culture is slowly being transported from South Africa through the trucking veins and arteries and to Choma where it slowly diffuses to the previously untouched surrounding villages.  But to get the ingredients for my Western meal I have to submit to the big South African grocery chain SPAR.  The rest of our meals consists of Nshima (a yellow paste made of corn meal) with chicken, Nshima with cabbage, Nshima with beans and occasionally rice. My family usually makes a weekly trip to Choma for meetings and grocery shopping but they are for the most part able to buy local for their meals.
During the ride home from Choma I look out the window and see some women carrying jugs of water on their heads past mud and straw homes.  As my host mother sends a text message on her cell phone the radio infuses my ears with Western pop songs.  Suddenly Shania Twain comes blaring through the speakers.  My two worlds are colliding.