ZAMBIA – NORTH WESTERN PROVINCE – CHIZELA/MUFUMBWE
ON THE ROAD: I stayed overnight in another Mission Hostel listening to a terrific storm overnight. At the airport I collected a pre-ordered hire car for the 300 mile journey on to Chizera. As there is now a tar road right up through NW Province I had ordered a 2 wheel drive saloon. On collection I was told, unfortunately they had no saloon available and would I mind a 4 x 4 pick up for the same price. In view of the heavy rain I did not mind at all! Another little ‘accidental happening’ which helped me on the way. Various delays kept me from setting off until lunchtime. I found my way through the copperbelt towns, Ndola, Kitwe and Chingola along the only bit of good dual carriageway I encountered, but very busy. Again I noticed so many people and houses all along the previously sparsely populated country. In many places, copper mining, past and present had left a devastated landscape, with no attempt at restoration – just grab the copper and go it seems.
Quite a decent tarred road led on north where only muddy gravel roads existed previously. I reached SOLWEZI without incident apart from a village where two huge ore lorries, obviously meeting head on at speed had jackknifed. One had run right off the road the other was on its side with the back trailer completely upside down right across the road. Fortunately my substitute 4x4 could just drive through the bush round it! Solwezi, the provincial centre, previously a dirty little one-horse town now seems to go on forever. I stopped and had a meal in quite a reasonable restaurant, filled up with diesel and bought myself a new hat in a huge open market. By this time it was getting towards evening and clouds were building up again. As I did not want to be on the road at night in the rain, I phoned my host to say I would stop overnight and carry on at first light. Mobile phones, what a blessing!
AN UNPLANNED RENDEZ-VOUS: About 20 miles beyond Solwezi was an old Mission Station where I knew there was accommodation of some sort, so headed there. I had a contact with a Send a Cow Ranching project in the area but had decided to give it a miss as I had no idea exactly where it was. I turned down the road to the Mission which was in a bad state and was passing the local school when I misjudged a large puddle, dropped into a mud hole and got stuck. Immediately I was surrounded by a crowd of teenage boys. When they managed to pick themselves off the floor from laughing, they soon pushed me out. When I asked for the |Mission, one of them took me on to the old bungalows to a Man who turned out to be Chifita Beevan the Director of the Ranching Scheme. He fixed me up with a meal and accommodation and we had a good talk about the Ranching Centre. This is officially an “Archive Project” of Heifer International (H I is the American equivalent of Send a Cow and they co-operate together in many areas). This means it had become self sufficient and independently running without outside input. However morale was at a low ebb as they had run into disease problems which they could not deal with and had been unable to distribute any cattle in the last year. The Director, was very pleased to see me and I promised to pass on information about their needs to Send a Cow/HI to see if they could get advice and perhaps more training.
THE LONGEST MILE: At daybreak I set off again on the last lap to Chizela, almost 39 years since I left. This time though I flew along a fine tarmac road. One by one I passed remembered landmarks until at last signs for Mufumbwe started to appear. CHIZELA is now a new District Centre (Boma) and is renamed MUFUMBWE after the local river to avoid tribal/ethnic overtones. As elsewhere there was hugely increased settlement and numbers of people about. At last I passed a sign to Chief Chizela’s Palace and soon the village centre. It was almost unrecognizable with many shops, businesses, bars, several churches, Government buildings and so many houses! The first time we arrived there was only a small post office, one shop (mostly closed) and a road depot. We passed through before we realized that was IT and had to turn round and go back! After a brief tour I found the road to the Mission, now Chizela Bible College. This was more like old times with huge muddy potholes. Once the village Pastor’s wife met a lion on this road and frightened him away by ringing her bicycle bell. Now there are houses and fields along most of the 4 kilometers. Where there used to be scattered subsistence gardens there were now large fields of healthy crops. The best field I was told, was worked by the local prison inmates. I don’t recall there being any crime let alone a prison!
PAYING OUR RESPECTS: At length I reached the College Campus. At first sight, much of it was recognizable though many of the old buildings looked tired. When I saw round further, they had developed a lot of buildings on new ground suitable for modern needs with fewer colonial overtones. The Principal, Clement Masabule met me and we had a very welcome breakfast. He was a quiet but extremely impressive man with a winning way with everyone he met. He took me to report to the Police and local authorities to explain my appearance and he showed me round the whole Township. We were to meet Chief Chizela IX but met his rather splendid wife out shopping(!) and learnt that he was away for some days. However we went to his palace and met wife number two and some of his family. I had brought some prints of some old slides and I presented them with a picture of Chief Chizela VIII in his robes, taken on Independence Day in 1969. They were very pleased with that and also some old letters from him that I had kept. The ‘Palace’ hardly lived up to its name as it was the only building I saw which looked entirely unchanged since I left!
BACK TO BASE: We then visited Kakikasa Farm, the camp that we built for our base and for crop demonstrations, animal rearing etc. It was good to see many of the buildings we put up still in use as it has continued life as a Farmer Training Centre to the present day. Morale seemed rather low among the staff as recent austerity has led to budget cuts. There are plans for it to be revamped on a more commercial basis – sounds familiar somehow. The staff I met were knowledgeable and eager to develop further. One method we introduced was the Cinva Ram – a machine which made good bricks with compressed soil and a small amount of cement. It was pleasing to see that they were as sound as the day they were laid, some had even been recycled for new buildings.
In our time we introduced soya beans and sunflowers to the area and they are now being widely grown. We also introduced improved goats and cattle successfully by injecting them against tsete fly disease. Now the tsetse is eradicated in the area and goats and oxen are common. Another thing we were asked to do was to get a grinding mill. We set the first one up and now I noticed several busy working in the village . The sound of grain pounding morning and night is not heard any more and the big mortars are seen thrown down behind the huts, slowly being eaten by termites. What a release from hours of hard labour each day that must be for every woman and girl.
CHANGE AND DEVELOPMENT: Other modernization has come. Most of the windlass wells are now disused and clean piped water is available at standpipes,with concrete clothes-washing areas adjacent. Power lines bring electricity from 6am to midnight. Television is common and mobile phones available to buy or use in kiosks. The tar road brings more traffic for passing trade and a market for local products. Whereas food aid used to be brought into the area, a huge government warehouse now stores locally grown maize for export to the copperbelt and beyond. A new hospital augments the former rural health centre and a brand new school building is just open although it hardly keeps up with the increased numbers of children.
Discussing the developments in the country that evening, my host Clement remarked that the DROP THE DEBT campaign had had an enormous effect on Zambia. Release from their crippling debt burden had released money which had been used for unprecedented infrastructure development, with new schools and hospitals. Many new roads had been built and power supplies improved with a national grid being formed to run power all over the country. Now the copper price was higher, many old mines were being re-commissioned and new ones opened. Zambia was now the 3rd fastest-growing economy in Africa. Food production had greatly improved and with better management the country could be self-sufficient in a few years.
BIBLE COLLEGE; FOOD FOR BODY AND SOUL; The next day I attended chapel with the Bible College students and was asked to give a talk about my time in Zambia and my journey of life and faith. The chapel was built in memory of the son of one of a missionary couple I knew whose fifteen year old son was taken by a crocodile. For some, Zambia’s development has had a heavy cost.
Later, I went round the college farm with Benson the farm foreman. He seemed a very competent man, very much the farmer, striding about in his gumboots. The farm was much enlarged and improved from the subsistence plots that the students had formerly. They were growing a good variety of crops, practicing crop rotation and making good use of manures. Some years ago they built a dam across a nearby stream to make a good sized pond where they were growing fish and irrigating rice paddies. Several staff had poultry and some had pigs. Unlike our time when we had to haul poultry food from the copperbelt, they were using crop residues to make their own animal feeds. T hey had a tractor for heavy cultivations. This needed some repairs but they had plans to buy a bigger one then use it for contracting out to generate more income. Also they hoped to buy a larger oil press which would be more efficient and could be hired out.
They invited me to lunch and it was good to see that everything on the table (except the salt) was produced locally. Rice, potatoes, green vegetables, chicken fried in sunflower oil, mangos from the orchard and sweet water from their own well.
Clement was far sighted and pragmatic as he had an agricultural background and business experience before entering the ministry. He hoped to expand agricultural training with life skills and management training at the college so that students could become self supporting pastors and help their church members to improve their health and incomes. He was very interested to hear about the work of Send a Cow and about the Apprenticeship scheme I had seen in Zimbabwe. He hoped to make the College more viable by enrolling more students and was applying for Government Accreditation and Recognition as an Examining school to make it more attractive.
PASSING ON THE GIFTS OF DEVELOPMENT: In the afternoon we went to the west end of Chief Chizela’s area to Matushi and Kashima where we used to support Famer’s Co-operative Societies. Again I had pictures of some Members and the village 40 years ago. We managed to find one very aged couple whose name I remembered – German Sazoza and his wife. They were very pleased to see us once we got through to them that it was Mr William! There were four generations of the family present. Their son took us all round the old cooperative farm – now settled with many new houses and pointed out where we had had a clinic for our nurse, a co-operative store, ladies poultry club etc. The road had been completed up here only recently and there was less traffic. Development had not come to the same extent as in the District centre but they had a new farm, an enlarged school, a permanent clinic and clean water supplied by boreholes and pumps. I felt it was a very suitable place for the Send a Cow model to be introduced.
The next day was spent partly catching up with e mails and planning my next move. I also attended one of Clement’s lectures on the Africa world view and how it related to Christianity and the Church. We had a very interesting discussion with the students about how witchcraft and belief in spirits affected them and how to resist pressure from traditional spiritual leaders.
Then we visited our project area to the west, called Kikongwe. The people here had formerly been the least co-operative with us and each other! The area was least developed. On arrival we found one school greatly enlarged with a striking mural on the wall and another new school with, as usual crowds of children. A mobile drilling rig was installing a new borehole outside for a permanent water pump as we watched. We were told the Co-operative farm had moved to a new area where the soil was better. I was surprised to hear that they had a charismatic Chairman who had led them to winning a National award for the best Co-operatives last year. We visited the new farming village. Surprisingly it was in high bush about two kilometers from the village centre. We eventually found them and they seemed in high spirits, very determined to make a success of their new farm. They had no livestock, very poor houses, and it was easy to imagine that their diet was not good. They were very interested to hear of Send a Cow and requested help to establish draught animals for ploughing and goats for meat and milk.
In another area, Shukwe, Principal Clements wife, Lydia was involved with a women’s group. She was helping them to set up sewing work, and baking cakes and banana bread to generate income. This also seemed like a suitable nucleus group for the send a cow model.
HOPE FOR THE FUTURE: I had supper with another of the Bible College lecturers and his wife. He had spent two years on a parish placement in Sheffield working with youth groups. They were about to have their first child. I felt happy for the future of the College and Church with such talented leaders emerging.
In general I was much heartened by all I saw in the area where I had spent 3 years of my young life. The country has had many problems, the struggles in Rhodesia and South Africa, which had a stranglehold on Zambia’s economy and later, the troubles in Zimbabwe. The collapse of the copper price, inefficiency and corruption led to crippling debts. It spite of all this, the country has made great strides. Life is improving for most people and with the will to work their way up using grass roots training and support, and with continued investment in infrastructure, economic take off is possible.
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