Stephen Martin: Writing from Sesheke, Western Zambia

SCIAF's Africa Project Officer writes from Sesheke in Western Zambia.

I left Livingstone early in the morning, heading West along the newly surfaced road that links Zambia with Namibia. It’s the end of the rainy season and everywhere is green and lush. I was heading for the village of Maondo (approximately 170km West of Livingstone) to meet some of the people who have been helped by the SCIAF funded project. The project seeks to enable those who lost everything in the recent famine to restart their farming activities and to lessen their vulnerability to future droughts.

After two hours driving we turned off the tarred road and headed down a dusty dirt track. Within minutes we came to a halt. Instead of a grassy plain to cross we faced a lake of flood water. Small boys played at the waters edge. The village was only 10 minutes drive away but now it is totally inaccessible.

The village had selected 40 people to receive sweet-potato vines to plant and now we feared that they would be submerged and lost. This years food insecurity is likely to be as bad as last years despite all the efforts of the community and field workers.

We left the lake surrounding Maondo and headed further west, crossing the beautiful new bridge at Sesheke that connects Zambia to Namibia and then headed North on the dirt road that runs parallel with the Zambezi river. An hour later we stopped at Shinamainya village to meet with some of the farmers who have been trying out new ways of farming. We visited Mrs Sitamekho Mukumtuta’s field to see the maize that she has grown using soil moisture conservation pits. She proudly showed us her stand of maize and said that she feels confident that she has enough food to feed her family for the coming year.

I asked her what difference the project had made and she replied “in the past we often had to sell our belongings just to buy enough food to get us through the year, but now by using these new techniques we can grow enough food to eat. This means we can keep our clothes and not have to sell them.”

I also met Joseph Kamutwalibala who showed me his crop of dwarf sorghum that ensures that even if the rains fail he will be able to feed his family. It is an uphill task to get farmers who are used to growing and eating maize to switch back to the crop their grandfathers used to plant. But in this area of sandy soils and erratic rainfall drought resistant maize really is a life saver. Hopefully Joseph’s beautiful sorghum field will inspire others to begin to grow more of this drought resistant crop.

Stephen Martin,
Africa Project Officer,
March 12th 2007

(all photographs by Stephen Martin)