Susan and I.

For these past two weeks I have been building a chicken coop. It all started when a chicken decided she lived in my house. One night she walked in like she owned the place and took residence in my chicken. I didn’t mind that until the next morning, when I discovered a bunch of chicken poop in my kitchen. This was clearly unacceptable, so something had to be done. First, I named her Susan, and second, I decided to build a chicken coop.

Susan, sneaking into the house.

Most of the time when I build things with sticks they wind up kinda low-quality, but given the importance of this project to Susan I decided to make it as high-caliber as I could. The first step was heading off into the forest and gathering supplies, ie, a whole bunch of sticks. This inevitably involves chopping down trees, which I feel terrible about, and to assuage my guilt I donated $50 to Trees for the Future (I’m trying to plant trees myself, but so far with my pollipot tree nursery I am 1/25 in getting the things to sprout).

After I had the necessary sticks, I cleared out a little spot next to my house (had to move some of the sunflowers to do it) and planted the first four poles in the ground. I decided to make the coop 1m x 1.5m, which should be sufficient room for up to 10 chickens, but I’m thinking I’ll get like four. Borrowing some techniques from pond staking, I used my line level to make sure that the floor was nice and level for the chickens.

The basic design of the coop is pretty simple. I just imagined it being a night shelter, so the major piece of “furniture” in the thing is a perch for them to sleep on. That is the pole going across the middle there. One of the most time-consuming portions of the work was stripping the bark off of all the sticks. Parasites and other bugs that bother the chickens can hide in the bark of the wood (along with making it more prone to attack by termites), so it is necessary to strip it all off. That takes time, however. As a side note, I am still sorta consistently amazed that you can get wood from a tree. Like, who’da thunk?

The whole process took me about two weeks off and on, with pretty much daily trips into the forest to gather more sticks (whenever I am gathering sticks for these projects, I always find myself briefly worrying if using dissimilar woods is going to cause corrosion problems down the line). Susan would come by and inspect the work as it was going along. The chickens also really like it when I move dirt around, because it digs up bugs for them to eat.

Once I had the frame of the chicken coop in place, I covered it with a tarp. The tarp was a relatively cheap and available building material, as opposed to getting bamboo from the next village over or finding enough sticks to block the wind and rain. In most of the projects I do using free village-appropriate materials is a priority so they can be used as an example to the farmers I work with. In this project, however, my neighbors already have chicken coops of their own made out of a variety of materials, so they don’t need me to show them how it is done. They use a wide variety of materials, and I’ve seen designs use bamboo, sticks, and grass, and I’ve even seen a few that construct a small brick coop on top of a wooden platform.

After nailing the tarp onto the frame, I covered the tarp with grass. The grass serves mostly to protect the tarp from the sun, and also to make the thing blend into the surroundings a bit more and appeal to my own aesthetic sense. I wish I had been able to cover up the blue tarp a bit better but that would have required more sticks and engineering I was unwilling to implement. The floor of the chicken coop is wire mesh that I had originally intended to use on a rabbit hutch that I’ve never gotten around to building. At the tops of the sides there are also mesh windows. The mesh on the floor is intended to make cleaning the coop easy, and also make it easy to collect chicken manure for use in the ponds or my gardens. The windows at the top, along with the floor, are there to provide adequate ventilation. The door is also mesh, and hangs down from the frame in the front. Once I get chickens, I’ll keep them cooped up at night, and let them roam free during the day. I’ll be providing supplemental feed and making sure they have a consistent source of water. Hopefully if they lay eggs fairly consistently I will have a regular supply of eggs to use in meals and baking.

So that’s my chicken coop. It was a fun project to build and now I guess I’m obligated to get chickens. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Looking up Itimbwe Gorge. Reading this week:

• Ringworld by Larry Niven
• Zambia: The First 50 Years by Andrew Sardanis
• The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven
• The Ringworld Throne by Larry Niven
• Ringworld’s Children by Larry Niven

This week I went to go check out Itimbwe Gorge. Itimbwe Gorge is a bit outside Mbala, down a dirt road that is about 6-7km down the Nakonde road past the turnoff. The gorge is the site of several caves that were used by early man. I found out about Itimbwe Gorge via the very useful site Abercornucopia, and specifically this pdf here. This being Zambia, the caves and the gorge itself is unmarked, but by googling some coordinates and asking around for Itimbwe I was able to find it and bike there. The caves as viewed from the road. Once I made it to the gorge, I found the caves really quickly on the right side as you’re facing downhill, about halfway down the gorge. I actually initially decided these weren’t the caves I was looking for because they didn’t look exactly like the pictures in this pdf. I decided to keep exploring and kept going down the gorge. Abondoned farm buildings. The pool referenced in the first pdf, and the current residents of the valley. At the bottom of the hill I found some of the landmarks referenced in the first pdf (“Notes on Archeological Indications in Abercorn Township and Vicinity”):

The stream formerly running down this gorge now runs underground, surfacing at a small pool near Itimbwe farm house, but water was formerly easily available here and in living European memory the gorge was a favorite haunt of klipspringer and similar small game

The farm buildings were long abandoned, and I figure they must have belonged to white settlers that left sometime after independance in 1965. Continuing my exploration, I went up a path that traverssed the pass between the two points I identified as Malawe Ridge and Kazawa Hill. I turned left and hiked up Malawe Ridge, giving some stunning views of the valley and cliffs. Itimbwe Gorge is on the other side of that ridge. After walking along Malawe Ridge for a bit I descended back into the valley to start heading back up Itimbwe Gorge. The coolest part about living in Mbala is all the history that has happened like right here. Up at Kalambo Falls there is evidence of occupation from 100,000-200,000 years ago, meaning that this region is one of the longest continually inhabited regions on Earth. As I descended into the valley and looked around with little evidence of human habitation (well, minus the trails and evidence of annual burning to keep the vegetation down), I tried to imagine the landscape 1000 millenia ago, teeming with wildlife and inhabited by literal cavemen. This area would have provided everything they needed, from water to game to shelter. It’s worth pausing to realize that agriculture is a realtive newcomer to the region, having been introduced by the Bantu people only 1000-2000 years ago. Pulled from my reveries by the realization I had better find these caves and then start heading home, I went back up Itimbwe Gorge to explore the caves. The first two caves described in the pdf wre the ones I eventually explored, but they only mention occasional habitation. The pdf mentions a third cave “at the foot of a high vertical face nearby” in which there are abundant signs of permanent occupation. I never found that cave, but hiking up to one pot that wasn’t cave did give yet another pretty view. The cave I did find is described as:

In another rather spectacular cavity in which the strata has weathered away horizontally leaving a long, deep cave in the cliffe face (Its floor some ten feet above gound level) quartz chips are present in the earth filled crevices of the floor but the floor is broken and sliping and thus not very suitable for any but occasional occupation.

They of course mean human occupation, because I can confirm the cave is currently occupied by several bats and one large hawk. Judging by the cup I found in there, it still receives occasional human occupation as well. Still, despite it being kinda hard to scramble up the 10 feet, it is easy to imagine taking refuge in the cave, cooking a meal and watching the klipspringer run by. It is pretty amazing to me that all this is within biking distance of Mbala and there’s not even an informational marker saying what this site is. There is so much tourism possibility in Mbala, not to mention the cultural importance of these sites, that just a little development I think could go a long way. In a way that makes it cooler to be able to go out and explore these things, but you wish there were more resources to take care of them properly. After leaving the caves I biked home, running into a rain storm on the way, but overall it was a pretty awesome day.

Reading this week:

• A Matter of Time by Alex Capus (a fictionalized account of the Battle for Lake Tanganyika which, although it isn’t perfectly historically accurate, I highly recommend it because more people should care about central African naval engagements)
• Congo Diary by Che Guevara (I was very sympathetic with the difficulties he faced)

On the Mbala / Abercorn facebook page, people there have been trying to determine the former site of Chief Zombe’s village (the site is run by the same guy who runs Abercornucopia, which is the premier site for Mbala history in the colonial area). The impetus for this is to identify the spot visited by David Livingstone when he was travelling in the area. The primary clues they’re going off of are an excerpt from The Last Journals of David Livingstone, Volume II (available on Project Gutenberg). In Chapter 10, one of the journal entries reads:

Their journey of the 12th and 13th [of November 1872] led them over low ranges of sandstone and hæmatite, and past several strongly stockaded villages. The weather was cloudy and showery – a relief, no doubt, after the burning heat of the last few weeks. They struck the Halochéché [Lucheche] River, a rapid stream fifteen yards wide and thigh deep, on its way to the Lake, and arrived at Zombé’s town, which is built in such a manner that the river runs through it, whilst a stiff palisade surrounds it. He says: It was entirely surrounded by M’toka’s camp, and a constant fight maintained at the point where the ine of stakes was weakened by the river running through. He killed four of the enemy, and then Chitimbwa and Kasonso coming to help him, the siege was raised.

Based on that excerpt, and by looking over Google Maps, the Mbala/Abercorn guys concluded that this spot was the most likely location, but were looking for someone to ground-truth it:

So, since I live in the area, last Sunday I set out on a hike to see if I could find the old site of Chief Zombe’s village. I set out at about 0700 on foot from my hut with water bottles and some bagels in my bag. Having looked over Google Maps myself, the easiest way to get to the spot was first to walk around the coffee plantation in the area, Isanya Estates.

I hiked around the back of the plantation and found a road leading through some small villages and through a valley and over another ridge. After about three hours of walking I reached the end of the road and listened for the river. Heading in that direction, I soon came to the spot identified as the possible location of Zombe’s village. The first picture at the top of the article is the spot identified by the Mbala/Abercorn guys. Although gorgeous, I don’t think it is the spot for the village. The river for this section runs through a rather deep and rather steep gorge that I think probably continues all the way to its eventual outlet at Kituta Bay, site of my SS Good News adventure. I spotted a maize field at the bottom of the gorge, along with some people preparing a pile of logs to make charcoal. However, I don’t think there is enough room for a whole village, and I don’t think it would be a strategic location. At the time, the people were under occasional attack by Arab slave traders (hence the stockade). The Arabs had guns, making the bottom of a poor location strategically.

The area was too steep on my side of the river to descend at that point, so I followed the ridge up-river towards Lake Chila and Mbala. The river continues to run through a series of picturesque valleys like the one above. Although I don’t think any of the valleys would support a village, people are still farming in the area. That added a difficulty to my expedition, because current farming and charcoal making covers up previous signs of habitation indicating the location of a century-and-a-half-old village.

Speaking of maize though, it absolutely stuns me where people will grow maize. Of the above two pictures, the first one is maize growing on a hill that is a lot steeper than the picture makes it look. There is no home nearby, it is at the bottom of a deep gorge, and that steep hill couldn’t be easy to navigate, and yet there is maize there! The second picture depicts maize being grown where someone had previousely made charcoal. I guess that’s a good spot, but so many random spots get maize grown in them. Highway medians, old foundations, random forest clearings, they all have maize.

I continued down the gorge, following for a bit the path of a dry furrow. It’s rainy season, so the furrow isn’t too necessary (hence it being dry), but I like the engineering that goes into these things. The one above was pretty long and would have required a lot of digging to build.

I eventually reached a spot where I couldn’t really continue along the river, so I climbed up the wall of the gorge to find a hut perched right on the edge. The owner was home, so I said hello and asked the way to Mbala. He pointed me to the path, along which I accidentally found his chim. Unlike most, he doesn’t have a hut over it, giving the dude really great views of the valley when he poops. Continuing along the river, first on top of the ridge and then closer to it, I eventually came back to Isanya Estates. The above picture is a furrow the plantation has dug running off the river, but it looks sorta tropical-y and jungle-y, so I took a picture. With the hike over, I hadn’t really identified any likely locations for the village. I do think it is probably closer to modern-day Mbala than they think, but I don’t have an exact spot. The best part of the hike for me was discovering that these were these deep, beautiful valleys near me. My own valley is less steep (probably why they put a village here), so that is how I think of the surrounding landscape, but I am right on the cusp of the Great Rift Valley. The scenery and geography around here is pretty breathtaking and it is good to get out and take a look.

For Christmas, Lily came up to visit my site in the Mbala area. While she was up here, we went to go visit Kalambo Falls. We stayed at the Kalambo Falls Lodge, which is right next to the falls. Getting to the falls is a 40ish km ride from Mbala over a pretty terrible road, but at least it is a very scenic drive so it’s got that going for it. Kalambo Falls Lodge is pretty new and when we stayed there we were the only two people, so that was neat. After arriving at the lodge and unpacking, we walked down to the path to start checking out the falls. We were the only visitors at the time. There is a well-maintained concrete path that takes you to various viewing areas and to the top of the falls. Kalambo Falls is notable for being the highest waterfall in Zambia at about 222m. This is far taller than Victoria Falls, but of course far less wide. Kalambo Falls is also the second highest waterfall in all of Africa, and the 12th highest in the world, so, you know, quite an attraction. Kalambo Falls is on the Kalambo river, and forms the border between Zambia and Tanzania. Lily, overlooking the falls and wondering when I’ll be done. Besides its physical characteristics, Kalambo Falls is known for being an extensive archealogical site, with evidence for habitation at least 200,000 years old. I’ve read on other sites that you can walk to some of these sites, but the guide when I was there didn’t seem to think it was possible. Maybe he was just keeping me away. He did point to a cave at the bottom of the gorge where he said they found artifacts. Even without seeing the ancient man sorta stuff, the site is fantastically beautiful. Most people visit the lodge by hiking up from one of the lodges on the shore of Lake Tang, but since we were staying at the lodge we got to see the site in both the evening and the morning. The falls plunge into a deep gorge lined with mysterious-looking jungle. At the bottom, the Kalambo river winds the last 6km to Lake Tang. Standing on the edge looking down at the birds swooping around gives a massive sense of vertigo. There are some baboons in the area (thankfully a lot more scared of people than the Victoria Falls brand) which we managed to catch a glimpse of. Kalambo Falls is gorgeous and I recommend anyone in the Mbala area do their best to go take a look. There can’t be many more places in the world like it.

One of my sunflower beds, yes I am aware they’re probably too close.

Reading this week:

• Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago

Besides fish farming, I have also taken up gardening. The only real reason for me to garden is to get some street cred. Everyone farms so if you don’t farm it is kinda weird. When I say everybody I mean everybody. You bike through Mbala and people got maize growing in their front yards, and in Lusaka I see it growing in the median in the roads downtown. Everybody farms.

My project started with a permagarden by the side of my house. Permagardens are designed to be high-output and to retain water well. This lets you keep a small, easy to maintain garden next to your house to ensure both food security and a variety of foods to ensure good nutrition. The above picture is with the garden finished but before I planted. The beds are dug extra deep and have a good amount of manure (as fertilizer), ash (for minerals and to balance pH), and charcoal dust (to help the soil retain moisture).

This is the garden a few weeks after I finally planted it. Its contents are a pretty random assortment of whatever seeds I happened to have. In the lower right is velvet bean, and in the lower left I tried to grow peppers, thusfar with no success. The middle has watermelon and then onions & carrots (apparently these are better as companion plantings). The upper left has pigeon pea and the upper right has green ram. The garden is in desperate need of weeding, but I am writing blog posts to procrastinate doing that.

My farm.

The next project was to plant some sunflowers. Sunflowers are good for fish farming because after you press the seeds for oil, you can use the oilcake for fish feed. I had what I thought was a small amount of sunflower seeds, but man a small amount goes a long way. My house is on a little plot of land my host family used the previous year for maize. I started digging sunflower beds and then wouldn’t stop until I was finished with all my seeds. For every two beds of sunflowers, I planted one bed of either green gram or velvet bean to put nitrogen in the soil. This was a lot of work and I insisted on doing it all myself.

I finished the sunflower seeds with a bit of room to spare, so I made six ridges and planted those with orange-fleshed sweet potatoes. After the workshop we planted the roots we received and my host dad did some rapid vine multiplication so we had plenty of vines. I am pretty amazed when seeds work, so this whole vegetative multiplication thing I was wary of. It seems, however, to be working. My only regret now is that I don’t have more room; I managed to get some seeds for orange maize and that would have been cool to have.

Reading this week:

• Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck

No big adventures this week, so I thought I would give an update on the fish ponds; they’re doing well! My host dad has constructed a total of four ponds; three are in the above picture with another one in a higher tier on the left. He’s in the process of building two more, but construction has stopped due to the rainy season. That’ll make a total of six ponds for him, which is a convenient number as you can theoretically harvest every month with a six-month growth cycle. Next to his ponds are two more ponds owned by another farmer. All the ponds have been stocked. The photo above is my host dad stocking one of the ponds. He got involved in an experiment on supplemental feeds. He has been supplied with commercial feed, and also makes his own feed. One pond he’ll provide commercial feed, and the other pond he’ll give the feed he makes. When we harvest we’ll see which fish grew the best. My host dad feeding fish. If I had one criticism of the ponds, it is that they don’t have a very good bloom. With rainy season we are getting more mud and run-off into the ponds, which makes it harder to tell if we have a good bloom and is also not great for the fish. The fish don’t seem to be suffering too much for it so I am not worried, and he’s been good about providing feed so the fish are growing no matter what. My host dad has been doing a lot of work to improve the ponds. He’s in the process of building a fence around the ponds to keep out predators. He always refers to it as “preventing THE predator,” like there is a particular lizard that is his nemesis or as if there is an alien hunter eating his fish. He also invented the above contraption. My host dad fertilizes his ponds with manure, and the usual RAP suggestion is to put the manure in a sack to place in the pond. He has instead made a basket out of mealie meal sacks and suspended it on four sticks. This has the same effect of holding the manure in a certain location, but makes it a lot easier to add manure just by dumping it in the top. I’m looking forward to harvesting these ponds in February or March and seeing how the fish have grown. At that point we’ll have completed all parts of the fish farming cycle, and both my farmers and I will have had hands-on experience with all portions of it. My big hope is that once people see my host dad make money after the fish harvest, everyone will be exited about fish farming and come to me wanting to stake ponds.