My last posting from Choma

A very brief update on the week which is almost over and when it is it will bring my time at Chodort to an end.  I will be leaving Choma on Saturday morning to travel to Livingston and then on to Sesheke in Western Province before returning to Livingstone to catch my flight to Nairobi. I have one night there and will catch an early morning flight to Amsterdam and then on to Edinburgh. I should be home late on Thursday evening, a week to day.

A busy week here trying to get things finalised and in good order before I pack up my laptop for the last time tomorrow evening. I did a presentation to the management team, senior staff from the Carpentry Production Unit and board members from the finance committee on Wednesday morning.  I was able to get across to them my main findings and recommendations and will follow up with a full report in due course. I am sure that I will stay in touch with the folk at Chodort and I have one major piece of work to do that I have really not started on yet. I had set myself the task of preparing a medium term business plan for the production unit but have not really done very much on this while I have been here. It has not been easy to get the financial information on past performance of the unit as the financial records do not categorise the income and expenditure to the level of detail needed to get a clear picture of what goes on.

One of the commercial ventures that the Centre undertakes is to rent residential accommodation. They have been building 2 & 3 bedroom houses for a couple of years and four are now let and another two are nearing completion. The production unit have made the fitted kitchens, hardwood doors and other fixtures and fittings for the housed but have not billed the estate for the whole of 2013. This has resulted in lost revenue to the production unit of in the region of ZMW35,000. The unit has however born all the costs for this work. The 2013 accounts for the Centre show a loss for the production unit of ZMW67,500. If the ZMW35K was taken into account this would reduce the loss to ZMW32,500 and I am use that this can be reduced further if the records for the production unit were properly kept. I have spent some considerable time looking at and advising on financial and stock recording systems. The Principal, Jenny Featherstone is keen to adopt some of the suggestions I have made about better financial and stock control systems. At the end of the day it will be down to the staff following procedures consistently and up to now that is something that they have been able to do for any significant period of time. I do hope that they will be able to turn over a new leaf and maintain the systems that I have suggested they use.

My Last Night In Zambia

I will be on my way home tomorrow with a brief stopover in Nairobi and I should be back in Scotland for a couple of days before Annette and I leave for Perth, Australia. We should be there on Monday of next week.

I am drafting this sitting on the deck of my chalet at Chundukwa River Lodge which is about 20 km out of Livingston on the Sesheke road which is a further 170Km along the T10 (The Nakatindi Highway) The road is named for Princess Nakatindi who was a member of the Lozi Royal Family and the District Governor of Sesheke District when I was teaching at the secondary School at the start of my working life in 1968.  There was no road to speak of when I lived in Sesheke and what road there was became impassable in the rains (Oct-Apr). To get into Livingston from the school we had to drive through three countries and cross back into Zambia on the Victoria Falls Bridge that spans the Zambezi just below the falls. The trip in those days would take half a day allowing for three sets of immigration control.  (A family of Elephant has just approached the river directly across from where I am sitting. There looks to be about 10 or so)

The drive now takes around two hours so I decided I would drive out there to visit the school. I left Livingston on Sunday at around Lunchtime and arrived Mid Afternoon. I drove by the school but did not go in until Monday morning when I introduced myself to the headmaster. As I was waiting to meet him I was able to look at the list of head teachers from the first to the present. My head master was number two on the list. His predecessor was only head for less than a year. Mr. Kopolo, my head was there for two years and left on promotion to a job at the Ministry shortly after I let the school in 1970.  His deputy, Phil Mayland who was deputy during my time, succeeded him. He was head for three years and was the only European head in the history of the school.  I was able to meet several members of staff and was shown around by some Grade 9 pupils who could not believe that I was once a teacher there.  I came away with mixed feelings. The physical structures were showing their age and it was clear that the maintenance budget was very small or non-existent. The pupils and staff on the other hand where as enthusiastic as when I was there. Getting a Secondary education in Zambia is not something that everyone can aspire to. Those that do get a place at secondary school usually grasp the opportunity with both hands and for the most part are a pleasure to teach.

I was also able to drive across the road bridge that links Sesheke with Katima Mulilo, which is the border town between Zambia and Namibia. The bridge is curved and is certainly impressive to look at. When I lived there we crossed the river on a pontoon that operated on demand. If it was on the other side of the river when you wanted to cross it had to make its way to your side of the river which took over half an hour by the time it reached you and another half an hour to take you across the river. The drive across the bridge took a couple of minutes.

This morning I went to visit Tujantane Tongabezi Trust School a couple of Kilometers down the road from here. The school was set up by Vanessa Parker who was a VSO volunteer in Livingston teaching at the Trades Training Institute in Livingston. She met and married her husband who along with a partner established Tongabezi Lodge on the river not far from here. Vanessa set up the school for children of the staff at the lodge. It has grown over the years and is now open to children within walking distance of the school and there is now a long waiting list. Class sizes at the school are 25 compared to up to 80 in Government Primary schools. You can see why it is so popular. The school is financed purely by private donations and receives no Government funding at all.

    

It is time to have my sundowner on the terrace at the lodge and to hope that I can get a Wi-Fi connection to post this. If not then it will go online when I get to Nairobi tomorrow.

With All Best Wishes

M.

P.S

Hoping the Wi-Fi is good in Nairobi, there was a storm this afternoon and the Wi-Fi was knocked out here. So instead of doing the Blog I had my sundowner on the river and went to see those elephants that I mentioned earlier at close quarters. When we got up close there were considerable numbers, maybe 50-60 or so. They had come to the river to cool down and were frolicking and playing in the water much to the annoyance of the hippo close by who were vocalizing they annoyance in no uncertain terms . 

Photographs soon.

News From A Rain Soaked Choma

Another late posting!

The weekend was busy, on Saturday I went on a half day trip to the Kafue Game Park which is the size of Wales. The Dumdumwenze Gate to the park is about a two hour drive from Choma along a mixture of tar and dirt roads. the condition of the dirt road can be described as variable. Most of the road maintenance on the dirt road network in Zambia is done in the dry season (May - November) We are now three months into the rains and they are taking their toll on any road that was not in the best of order at the start of the rains. It is the off season for the game parks, the grass is high and the animals disperse over a much wider area as water supplies throughout the the park are more abundant. It is when there is less water about and when the vegetation is more sparse that the animals concentrate themselves around the more secure water sources and are easier to find. In terms of game viewing the trip was somewhat disappointing but the drive there and back was interesting.

The Park is the size of Wales - I was at the Dumdumwenze Gate

At the Dumdumwenze Gate - The game rangers live in the houses in the background 

There was lots of Baobab trees in the park around the Dumdumwenze Gate, these are strange to look at and are sometimes called upside-down trees as the branches look very much like roots. The trees are very long lived and some are known to be 1,200 years old. The larger ones can store up to 100,000 litres of water in their trunks. They use this to survive through the dry season.

Baobab Tree

I can spend an extra hour in bed on Sunday and look forward to this as I am usually up at 05.30 during the week.  There is no problem here in getting up in the morning. It is light by 06.00 and the temperature is usually between 18 - 20c at that time in the morning. On Sunday I visited a Choma Farmer, Mike Beckett at his dairy,beef and sheep farm. He also grows some tobacco but the farm is primarily livestock. I was in the dairy during the afternoon milking and it reminded me very much of the set up we had at Chambeshi almost 30 years ago. Some things change very slowly in Zambia . Mike keeps Boran cattle in his beef herd, a breed that I know well from my farming days here. His sheep flock number around 2,000 head, a large number by any standards. Mortality is high especially in the rains as it is very difficult to keep on topmof the worm burden that the sheep carry at this time of the year. They require to be dosed at least every three weeks and that can be expensive with the size of the flock that Mike has. farmers in Zambia are also into diversification and his daughter runs the local Spar shop in the town. 

My time at Choma is coming to an end and I am in my second last week here. I have started to draft my final report on the Carpentry production unit and the viability of the venture. The workshop has been very busy since my arrival and there is enough work to keep five men occupied on a full time basis. New customers visit the workshop on almost a daily basis. I do so hope that they will be able to turn a profit and I do not see why this should happen if they tighten up on their management control systems which at the moment are way too lax. 

One of the things I will be recommending is the introduction of quarterly financial reporting using the PSYBT AR3-1 reporting forms. I have set up the templates for the 2014 financial year and am running a workshop tomorrow on how to use the system and  on general financial control.

Until next time..

My Trip to the Copperbelt

Apologies that I did not manage to post to the Blog last week. I was in Kitwe over the weekend. Jenny Featherstone, the principal at Chodort worked in Kitwe for about five years or so before she came to Choma. One of the projects she was involved in was a playgroup for children in one of the townships on the outskirts of the city. It is an area that I know as it is approached along Racecourse Road which also leads to several farm holdings that I know well. The Kitwe racecourse no longer exists and the township has now taken its place. Jenny helped to set up the play group “Play 4 All” about two years ago and she was attending the second anniversary celebrations which were held on the Saturday. Hence her trip to Kitwe. I was more than happy to tag along, as was the Swedish Volunteer Mickey. He had worked at Mindolo Ecumenical Foundation before moving to Choma. We had a full car as far as Lusaka as Jenny gave a lift to a student who was attending his graduation at the University of Zambia. We left Choma at 05.00 and were in Kitwe by 18.30 with a stop for lunch at a restaurant/lodge/conference centre just north of Lusaka. I remember the place as a farm. It is still owned by the same family, the Woodley’s, who have taken advantage of their proximity to the Capital and their position on the main road to the Copperbelt to diversify into tourist related enterprises.

Lusaka - Kitwe, A Six Hour Drive  

Chisonkoni Market, Kitwe

The Edinburgh Hotel, Kitwe

Kitwe is much changed – It now has city status with a population to match. Traffic jams in the centre and on the main approaches are common and finding a parking space is next to impossible. I hired a vehicle so that I could visit a number of old friends who lived out of town. A number of them along Racecourse Road.  My first visit was to Riverain Farm, owned by Craig Wright, the son of old friends Mike and Jill Wright. Mike was our company vet and Jill worked at Border Farmers, a farmer’s co-op that I was involved with when I lived on the Copperbelt. I remember Craig as a young man and as a student at Gatton College in Queensland, Australia; it was here that he learnt the practical skills that have stood him in good stead now that he runs the family farm. His sister Mandy lives in Kitwe and is married with a family. The family home overlooks the Kafue River and the river is home to crocodiles and hippo.

The Kafue from the verandah at Riverain

Crocs large & small frequent the river and can be seen from the verandah 

I also went to visit Joseph Silweya, who I worked with for a number of years. Joseph was the assistant farm manager at Twin Rivers, my first farm on the Copperbelt. He moved with me to Chambeshi and later started his own contracting business, which is still going strong. I was able to go over to Chingola, which was where Annette worked before she gave up full time work when the twins were born. Both the twins and our younger son Oliver were born in the Mine Hospital at Chingola. Seeing it again brought back many memories.

The Town Centre, Chingola

The Mine Hospital, Chingola

I could not be in Kitwe without a visit to the Kitwe Showground and Border Farmers Co-op, old stomping grounds for me. It is pleasing to me to see that both institutions continue much as ever. The annual Copperbelt Show is less focused on Agriculture these days and more on industry. There was an attempt last year to revive the livestock but with limited success. Unfortunately the Equestrian competitions are no more but the Dog Show continues albeit on a smaller scale. I was able to meet with Bill Osborne and his wife Rose, Bill was able to bring me up to date with news of comings and goings. Some of it was sad but mostly it was good news. Bill is now the Chairman of the Board for both the Show Society and Border Farmers.

My final day on the Copperbelt was spent visiting with Mike and Jan Fisher and Cedric Whitamore. Both have properties on the outskirts of Kitwe. Cedric is not in the best of health but the farm continues much as I knew it under the able stewardship of his son Michael.   A number of years ago Cedric set up a primary school to cater for the children of his farm staff. The school is thriving and now has 300+ pupils. 

Cedric 

A classroom at the Primary School set up by Cedric for the children of his farm workers

 Mike and Jan live on the next-door farm to Cedric and their house is on the banks of the Kafue River, which also bounds Riverain further up stream. I was able to sit on the verandah and watch the comings and goings of the local crocodile population.  .

We stopped over for one night on the way back to Choma in Makeni on the outskirts of Lusaka. This gave us the opportunity to visit Mr. Mwango, the Vice Principal of Chodort who was an in-patient at UTH (The University Teaching Hospital) He is waiting for an operation. He was on the list on two separate occasions over the pst couple of weeks and did not get to the theatre either time. He is now back in Choma and will travel up to Lusaka on Monday to try his luck for the third time.

There has been consistent rain in Choma since my return and the days have been overcast and dull. Temperatures have been in the low 20s, which I find very pleasant.

I am now half way through the Challenges Worldwide assignment and my desk is filling up with paper! I have spoken with lots of people and spent time attending staff meetings and observing the activities at the Centre. Although I am specifically charged with looking at the viability of the Carpentry Production Unit the activities and enterprises are so tied up together that I find that I am looking at a wider picture than I first thought.  I must now start to organize my thoughts and the copious notes I have taken into some recommendations that I can make that hopefully will improve the performance of the production unit. I am not going to be around long enough to see if the recommendations I give are acted upon and result in a financially viable carpenters shop.      

Chodort - Week Two

Chordort - Week Two




I started to write this on Saturday evening but I expect that it will be Sunday before I get it posted. The temperatue was in the mid 30s today and it is still over 20 as the sun goes down. The sun sets here are beautiful, but stay out doors for too long in the evening and you are a prime target for the dreaded mosquitoe . I have been very fortunate not to be troubled so far but I have however caught the sun a little. I do try to stay out of the sun in during the hottest part of the day


The working day here starts at 07.30 and officially ends at 17.30. Although it is only a five minute walk from the house to the Centre I tend not to go back to the house at lunchtime. There is a staff room where folk congregate at 10.00 for the morning smoko (Australian for tea break). The staff are most inquisitive and never stop asking me questions with topics ranging from Margaret Thatcher to the independence referendum. Mr Simataa who is from Sesheke asks the most questions and is very interested in the Scottish Independence debate. Sesheke is in Western Province (Barotseland) which before Zambian independence in 1964 had special status as a British Protectorate. The traditional Monarch of Barotseland is the Paramount Chief, called the Litunga meaning 'keeper or guardian of the earth', who is directly descended from the ancient Litunga Mulambwa who ruled at the turn of the nineteenth century and through his grandson, Litunga Lewanika who ruled from 1878–1916, with one break in 1884-5, who restored the traditions of the Lozi. There has been some unrest in the province of recent times with calls for independence. The population of the Province is about the same as Scotland. The politicians seem to be talking to each other and things are quite now in the province, Zambia remains an oasis of tranquility compared to some other countries in this part of the world



I am now well into the work for the Challenges Worldwide assignment and have spent the week meeting and talking to staff members about their roles and what they see as the challenges for Chodort over the next three to five years. I have lots to read as many of the staff have completed the diagnostic review questionnaire that I sent out the Chodort before I arrived in Choma. I have also started to analyse some of the financial records and have prepared some break-even calculations based on the information to hand. Record keeping is something that needs some attention and I will be addressing this in the coming week. Another area that needs some work is in Costing and Pricing of the work undertaken by the production unit. Mr Mwango, the vice principal is responsible for this. Unfortunately he is not in the best of health and during the time I have been here he has been to Lusaka - a five hour drive - twice to visit hospital. He will be away again at the start of next week, returning on the day that I leave for the Copperbelt. Jenny, the principal at Chordort has some meetings in Kitwe and she has kindly offered to take me with her. I will have three days to catch up with the folk that are still around from the time I lived and worked in that part of the country.



Continued Sunday Evening

Just back from a visit to Lake Kariba. This was not planned for today but came about by chance. I was invited to the Boys Brigade Enrolment Service this morning by one of the carpenters at Chodort. He is the Captain of the Brigade based at St. Stephens church which is in the complex at Chodort. It was quite an event with boys as young as 4-5 being enrolled. I was given one of the best seats in the church sitting next to the Bishop. It was at the end of the ceremony that Vincent, the BB captain told Jenny, Chodort Principle that the father of one of the new students had died at Maamba which is very close to Kariba. Jenny offered to take the student to Mamba and so began the trip to Kariba via Maamba. The economy of Maamba is reliant on Maamba Collieries which is the largest coal mining
operation in Zambia. It is 65% owned by a Singapore based holding company and ZCCM has a 35% equity.

The Open Pit at Maamba

The Colliery is located at Maamba town in Sinazongwe district of which is about 350 km from Lusaka and about 100 km from Choma.
It is an open pit mine with reserves of 140 million tonnes of high grade and thermal grade coal, spread over 1070 hectares. Like most large mining operations in Zambia the company is very much involved in the development of the local  infrastructure and community development like construction of roads and bridges and recreational and educational facilities.

After taking the Chodort student to Maamba, as Kariba was so close Jenny offered to take me to Lake Kariba. The road was beginning to show signs of being affected by the rains as most rural roads do that this time of the year. We were fortunate to be in a 4x4 vehicle so although the ride was a little uncomftable we arrived there in one piece and enjoyed our lunch and a cold beer by the lake shore. 

The Road to Lake Kariba

Lake Kariba is the world's largest man made lake and reservoir by volume. It forms part of the border between Zambia and Zimbambwe. The lake was filled between 1958 and 1963 following the completion of the Kariba Dam.

Kariba Dam

Lake Kariba from Space

My First week at Chodort

How time flies, I am writing this on Sunday morning in the kitchen after breakfast of porridge and tropical fruit. I have also spent some time planning a short visit to Sesheke in the Western Province to visit the school that I taught at when I first came to Zambia in 1968.  From what I hear the road from Livingstone to Shesheke is in very good order and the journey will take a little over an hour. When I lived there it was a whole day in the dry season and if it was raining it was better not to attempt the journey on the Zambian side of the border. The road was better traveling through Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe crossing back into Zambia over the road bridge linking Zimbabwe with Zambia at the Victoria Falls.

Students for the vocational courses on offer at Chodort - Carpentry, Tailoring and Computing will start their courses tomorrow – 13 January -   I understand that the courses will fill over the first couple of weeks of this the first of a three  term year. The instructors have been busy preparing their classrooms and their course material over the past few days.

My first week on Campus which is about a five minute walk from where I am staying was spent getting to know people and what they do. I was invited to sit in on all the staff meetings and this was invaluable in giving me an insight into the current issues facing Chodort. I also started to speak with key   individuals in the carpentry production unit and collecting information from them to enable me to appreciate the challenges that are confronting the staff. I had prepared a business diagnostic questionnaire together with a marketing questionnaire and these have been with the staff since before my arrival. I hope I will be able to start reviewing staff responses early next week. Jenny Featherstone, the Principle was here, there and everywhere and spends a great deal of her time on matters that could be dealt with by other members of her team. I hope that I will be able to help her to find more time to devote to strategic planning.

Having the computing instructor available to help me get my laptop and phone working in Zambia has been a godsend. I am not sure that I would have managed without his help. I have Wi-Fi both in the office and back at the house and although the connections are a little slow they do seem to work   most of the time. I have a colour printer and supplies of paper.

I am not sure that Chodort has a landline phone, I have yet to see one. Almost everyone that I have met has one, if not two cell phones (mobiles) and they never seem to turn them off. There does not seem to be any law against using a mobile whilst driving or if there is no one seems to pay any attention to it. 

The roads are very busy in and around Choma and although the main road through the town – The Livingstone to Lusaka road – is in good repair the side roads are far from it. Most are not paved and deteriorate during the rains. I have not yet driven a vehicle  but have been both a front and back seat passenger  in some rather bumpy journeys.

On Saturday afternoon I was invited to the Macha Malaria Instutute which is situated at the Macha Hospital which is about 70km from Choma along a largely unpaved road. It took about an hour and a half to get there and I was able to meet Dr. Phil Thuma, the Director who I believe is a world authority on Malaria.  

The Malaria Institute at Macha (MIAM) is a joint collaborative effort - to develop a center of excellence in rural Zambia that will carry out state-of-the-art malaria research - including molecular biology, entomology, epidemiology and clinical studies.

The partners involved in this   are the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg  School of Public Health; Macha Malaria Research Institute (MMRI), which is a US-based non profit organization; Macha Mission Hospital   and the Zambian government through its Ministry of Health.

The vision they have   is that some day malaria will no longer cause such a heavy burden of suffering and death in children living in this part of Africa. Dr. Thuma told me that the incidence of malaria in the Macha area has been reduced by 90%.

I have started to read The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver a tale set in the Belgian Congo of 1959. It is the story on one family’s tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in post colonial Africa.

The book awaits – more next week.