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.
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.
