Niek in Zambia

boerenleventje

2012-01-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

My mother wanted to know what I eat here.
OK
Maybe I should explain first what most Zambians eat. In principle people eat a thick maize-porridge which is called nshima in this part of the country. It tastes a bit like couscous (not a lot of taste).
I occasionally eat nshima, but not for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. The sauce which comes with the nshima is made of onion and tomato. So the only thing they sell here at the vegetable market is onion and vegetable. I have to drive one hour for the nearest supermarket where they sell any type of vegetable.
Now I'll show some things that I find around Kalomo if I'm searching hard enough, and don't have time or money to go to the far away supermarket.

In the beginning of the rainy season these huge paddo's are emerging from the ground. They are very tasty, only sometimes they are inhabited by little maggots, who apparently like them too. (the one in the picture was donated to the maggots)

This is a very commonly found food in Zambia. It's the Mosi .

Fresh milk. There are a lot of dairy cows in the Kalomo area. This is the Kalomo Milk Center (2min walking from my house). Here they collect milk from small farmers, and sell it. They sometimes sell yogurt. They also sell old milk, which has become sour. This is used in a local recipe which I haven't tried yet, but I'll have to soon, but I don't want to because it sounds disgusting.

Red and white ketchup.

Every morning fresh eggs. Some chickens are really good at laying eggs, others a bit less.

I've been looking around for a cheap way of getting cheese. I made a half an hour trip to a farm called Mukaziwa, to buy a big 2kg dutch cheese. Unfortunately the cheese isn't cheap at all, but at least it tastes alright.

Now that I had a lot of cheese, I needed to make quesadillas. Only I didn't have any tortillas. So I looked up a recipe, and here they are my first home made tortilla wraps:

Now that I had quesadillas, I needed guacamole. At least the avocado tree grows very well in Zambia, but it's hard to find the avocado's. It's extra rewarding if you find them after constantly asking around on the market. In return for the lady that helped me out I showed her how to make guacamole.
This is how you do it.
You chop and mix onion, tomato, chili, salt, coriander leaves and a couple of avocado's together, and you add some yogurt if you have it, and then you add a lot of lemon juice. (The Lemon is another extremely difficult one to find)

onions from vegetable patch hanging in the garden shed

fresh tomatoes from garden

fresh chilis from garden

the finished guacamole

Now some other nice products from our garden:

the herbs section

basil, rosemary, pepper mint, chili's and still looking for more..

This seed will grow into my free lemon supplier, unfortunately in 6 years from now:

pepper from the garden

and bananas, they are almost ready now.. I've been seeing the bananas grow from when they were still babies 6 months ago, so almost don't want to eat them.

New Year in Zimbabwe

2012-01-09T09:08:00.000-08:00

To have an interesting start of twenty twelve I went to Zimbabwe, which is just a two hours drive away from Kalomo where I stay. I heard that a lot of art sold in Zambia actually comes from Zimbabwe. So I went looking for some Zimbabwean wood carvers. Unfortunately I didn't take my camera with me, but fortunately I did bring some evidence of my visit, as Grastiano, one of the wood carvers, taught me how to make a bushman from Zimbabwean Ironwood, probably from the 'Wawra' tree. The wood is called ironwood because it actually sinks in water like a piece of iron.

The wood and tool that I used to make a bushman:

and the bushman himself.

Also I saw the Victoria Falls, or in local language, Shungu Namutitima 'the water smoke that thunders'. I'm very sorry but it is impossible either to describe or to show pictures of that event.(Je had erbij moeten zijn)

helping-the-world architecture and simple thinking

2011-12-11T11:52:00.001-08:00

I'm confused.
I studied architecture and now I'm working for a development organisation in Africa. I learnt in university to make 'different' designs, to stand out, be original, and be 'ecofriendly'. I don't care so much about the cost, or about how a building is actually made.
What I'm learning now is to appreciate the simple way of thinking in a small struggling city in Zambia, where design decisions are made based on how much cash there is in ones hand.

render of school in Thailand by In Situ Studio

The conflict is very clear when I look at this project by In Situ Studio for a school in Thailand. On paper I see an original architectural rendering. To realize it, it would involve complex pre-fabrication, expensive transport and expensive building materials, so I doubt if any government or NGO would want to build this school, let alone a local community.

concrete frame of a school in Ghana by Sabre Trust

exterior of school in Ghana by Sabre Trust

The design of a school with help of Arup and Davis Langdon in Ghana is more promising. This design is in the details, and has already been built by the NGO Sabre Trust. They use a concrete frame filled with cement earth pressed blocks and bamboo, the roof is made of corrugated metal sheets. Also they use coconut fibre mats as sound insulation under the roofing sheets. This is a cool feature as the noise of rain in classrooms with metal sheets can be extremely loud.
Bamboo, earth and coconut sound very eco, but this 3 classroom school costs £71,000. In Zambia for that money the government, or a local NGO can build 10 schools of 3 classrooms each. How important is it to get the stamp ecological on a development project, and what does this eco-friendliness actually mean? How much cement was used for the foundation, the cement-earth bricks and the concrete frame?

community built school in Zambia

interior of community built school in Zambia

Local communities that are too far in the bush to get help from NGO's or governments, build schools out of mud, wood and thatch. They cost £ 0 and 6 weeks of labour by local craftsmen. And they are completely eco-friendly.

It seems that the local design decision making, isn't so bad after all. From now on I will make my design decisions based on the amount of cash in my hands.

Or should I stop working for an NGO, so that locals start building their own eco-friendly buildings again?

http://www.sabretrust.org/
http://www.archdaily.com/191021/

Brick master

2011-12-09T11:54:00.001-08:00

Today I came back from a two day trip to the building site in Lubombo. From our house it is about 45min on the motorbike through the bush.
There Stanley taught me how to lay bricks. I really regret now that I didn't learn real building in 7 years of so called 'building sciences'. I wouldn't even be able to build a shed with a corrugated metal sheet roof. Stanley is a qualified builder and has 3 skilled 'brothers' who assist him. Clampton, Jimmy and John. One of the brothers is the son of the other brothers but from another mother.And actually also from another brother. That's how they explained their relationship to me. Do you get it?
Their father (one brothers grandfather) is from 1921, at an age doubling the life expectancy of an average Zambian. Stanely (that's how it's written Zambia-style) is building a '2onder1kap' or two-in-one house for the teachers at Lubombo. I've done some very small adjustments to the existing design. The mayor difference from the previous design is that we've skipped the outside plastering, and used that money to increase the size of the veranda. After living in an original brick house from 1572 for 7 years I still appreciate the looks of a proper brick facade.

'The Stanely Wall Stop Motion'

'A cameleon which was just sitting there.'

'Stanely the builder'

'Community volunteers bringing water, with a guy running in the background behind a tree'

'Is she gonna lift that bag of cement'

'Community volunteers with the house in the background'

'Clampton and the Cow'

'Stonecrusher with stones and hammer' I don't know why but he looks as if he is afraid someone will hit him with his own hammer.

'Brick Masters with guy behind other guy' Please check the guy who is standing remarkably close behind Clampton, with a very stylish outfit.

is zambia nice? and construction

2011-12-08T10:54:00.000-08:00

Still it's a bit weird to keep a blog, while I'm not travelling,but just working. It's maybe a bit different from working in Nederland. I will continue posting some pictures to show how different it can be to work in a hot country, which is considered as one of the poorest of the world, and an average life expectancy of about 40 years. Also I remember someone said that only losers who don't have a fun time abroad have a blog, because they are bored. Ok you are right, tonight I was bored.
Is Zambia Nice?

Apart from HIV-infected people dying too young, and some other mayor problems, I find that Zambia is rather enjoyable. This is for example the back garden of one of the 'poor' schools.

The kids already have Christmas holiday. And now they are fishing in the lake. This is pretty much like a summer holiday as I remember it, when we went with the Vouwwagen to Sweden. The only difference is that we didn't catch the fish for having a better dinner, and that this lake is not a natural lake in Scandinavia, but a dam, built for collecting water for irrigation. That's also why pre-dam dead trees are sticking out of the water.

Construction
I've been looking around a lot to see the best way to build, considering money and environment. I came across this interesting mud hut, which is a bit bigger than the standard vernacular one. This one goes 9 meters into the air, and serves as a barn for a commercial farmer, completely built using fired clay bricks, and mud plaster. I'm going to start some experiments with new/old building methods in January. I've made contact with the organisation La Voute Nubienne , they are re-introducing an old building technique in Africa. Using a bricked vault, we can reduce transport costs, and material costs of metal sheets and timber (= big cost reduction). Also the indoor climate will improve drastically compared to the currently used method.

Baobap

2011-11-30T14:17:00.001-08:00

Monday I went to visit 7 schools in a very rural area, up to 150 km off the tarmac road. Mr Clive Miyanda, who is Member of Parliament of Zambia (!) was willing to show me his constituency, Mapatizya. It was a good trip, which became even better when I saw the biggest tree I've ever seen in my life. With a diameter of 10 m it may be as old as 2000 years.. source:

It's called mubuyu in Chitonga. And this tree has all kinds of magical powers...

The goats live in nice houses on stelts. The owner of this farm has built himself a cool house plastered with soils of different colours. That's something we rarely see closer to the city, where people rather have a 'modern' house, so they don't care to much about maintaining properly their vernacular houses.

Chitonga

2011-11-17T12:03:00.001-08:00

Hello . I'm in Zambia for just over 2 months and I've started learning some of the local language, which is spoken by the Tonga people. It was very hard to find a proper word list. That's why I'm gonna put some links and my own list here, so that other people that want to learn Chitonga can use it. Luckily most of the people in the Southern Province speak Tonga (= Chitonga), luckily because there are 72 different languages in Zambia, so it's rather OK that I just need to study one. Actually most people do speak English which is the common language to communicate between people from different places within Zambia.
Communication does remain difficult even though people speak English. This week has been a very chaotic week, because a supplier of cement lost every sign of their truck & driver for more than 6 hours, while it was on a one hour drive to the Kasizi project. Maybe he ran into a herd of elephants.

wordlist1

wordlist2

ndakala kulibusi	ik zit in de rook
wakala kulibusi?	Zit je in de rook
manze e likule	the water is far away
musamu	tree	medicine
jisamu	tree
musamu mu paats	big tree
musimbi	girl
musankwa	boy
mwana muntu	black kid
muana /mwana	little kid
dagatala	I'm tired
wagatala?	Are you tired?
Ndime ..	My name is ..
ndiweni?	What's your name?
nda bo telwa	I'm happy
kwamana	it's finished
wamana	are you finished
ndamana	I'm finished
ndamana kulia	I'm finished eating
seka	laugh
kuseka	laughing
useka nzi?	Why are you laughing at me?
Undiseka nzi?	Why are you laughing at me?
Twalumba	thank you
muli buti	how are you
kabotu/ kaboti	fine
muli swilila buti sunu?	how're you feeling today?
Jebo uli mwe nzuma	you are my friend
aba mbakaintu bungu	this is my wife
mugua	white person
musalasia	cleaning
eno	now
ndjijibola	later
chicolo	school
mukwakwa	big road
manze	water
mende	water
ing ifora	rain
zuba	sun
ndalubide	I forget
twalubide	we forget
ziakwana	that's all
zjonse	that's all
tu	we
ndalubide chi tonga	ik vergeet tonga
indianda bukoko bwumbi	ik wil nog een biertje
indianda tocaome bola	i want to play soccer
katuja	let's go
atwinke	let's go
katuja tocaome bola	let's go play soccer
pepe	no
eha, mm, ii , ee	ja
indilayunda shungu
namutitima	I like the Victoria Falls (the waterdamp that thunders)
mulonga	river
dolopo	town
kalomo	small mouth
dju'nza tula inka kudolopo	tomorrow I go into town

Welding

2011-11-16T03:06:00.001-08:00

Today we have been making the last bucket stands. They are going to be put at the toilets and in classrooms in Moonde and Inkumbi, so that the kids can wash their hands, and drink water all the time. Rather awesome jeah.
Another awesome thing is that I can weld now. In anticipation of the reactions: we're still working on improved safety standards.

The bucket stands had to be made very strong, because there's no welding in the rural area, as there's no electricity. No power?!?! What about solar power??

It would be good if a school could have enough power for a water pump, a laptop, charging mobile phones and some lighting, so that students can study at school in the evenings during exam time.
According to Muhanya Solar in Lusaka it costs something like this:

2x 170W Photo Voltaic Cells ZMK 9,000,000.- EUR 1343.-
charge controller ZMK 2,200,000.- EUR 328.-
1500 W sinewave inverter ZMK 3,000,000.- EUR 447.-
2x batteries (exide deep cycle) ZMK 2,500,000.- EUR 373.-
rest ZMK 1,000,000.- EUR 149.-

total ZMK 17,700,000.- EUR 2641.-

I'm wondering if this could be done cheaper, because this is about the cost of an entire classroom.

HIV/AIDS and Education

2011-11-09T13:44:00.000-08:00

Inkumbi and Kinnertone

2011-11-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

Just yesterday I put the first post online to report to you what is going on here. The main thing that African Revival does here in Zambia is build schools. I'll now show a few of the projects that have been finished the last two months.
This is a video of Inkumbi Basic School, which was just finished after I arrived. This school is possibly even deeper in the middle of nowhere than the first school (Mulwazi) that I showed.

Problem
In Zambia teachers are sent to a random part of the country to teach. And they can't much influence where this government gamble will take them. This means that a teacher from the thrilling city of Lusaka where there's plenty of electricity and TV's, can end up in a nice cute village with plenty of chicken and maize, and not so much electricity. And also there might not be a house for him, so that he has to sleep in the classroom.

That's why at some schools we provide housing for the teachers. An example is the project at Kinnertone Community school. Professor is the name of the teacher that lived in a shed of 1x2m. The head teacher Shadreck lived in one half of a classroom. This is not really nice, so together with the community we built a double house, big enough for both families. Here's a small video about the building process, hopefully I'll go back for a visit soon to ask Professor and Shadreck if they enjoy their new homes.

and some pictures:

Mulwazi Borehole

2011-11-06T13:49:00.000-08:00

A lot of people (among them my grandmother who just emailed me) were asking me if I could write a blog. I think people ask because they haven't got a clue what I'm doing in Zambia. I thought it would be a good start to show a map of the area where I'm working. The green logo's of African Revival indicate the schools where we do or have done a project. Our office, which is also our house, is in the centre of the tiny town Kalomo, about 5 hours south of Lusaka; the massive (not) capital of Zambia. Lusaka does have some multi story buildings though, while the first double story house has not been build yet in Kalomo. So challenges enough here for a young architect like myself.

One of the schools we work with is the Mulwazi Basic School. I took a video, to show the donors how happy the school is with the new borehole and water pump. What you don't see in the video is that this school is more than an hour driving on a dirt track from the main road. But that doesn't stop us of course.

and more pictures of Mulwazi:

Building schools in the Kalomo District

2011-09-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'm helping to build schools for these kids, and others :) All schools are in the Kalomo area of Zambia! more pics: http://s1116.photobucket.com/home/AfricanRevivalZambia/index

2011-08-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Aiding by trading..

http://vimeo.com/channels/aidortrade#25545191

Sketchbook moved to Idrio

2011-05-03T15:42:00.001-07:00

my sketchbook has moved to http://idrio.blogspot.com

on this blog I describe my work and life in Zambia.