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..