Where the Devil is Tyler???

Greetings to everyone who checks my blog. I am sorry for the delay in posting anything. But here I am now… so let’s get started.

For those who don’t know where I am…

I am based in Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone is the tourist capital of Zambia, and was established after Dr. David Livingstone “discovered” Victoria Falls [a.k.a. the local people showed him]. Victoria Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and is absolutely breathtaking. Livingstone is 10km away and I can see the mist from here.

I am working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives [the Zambian government] on a project to rehabilitate dams. About 8 years ago, as part of another program, a number of villages applied for the construction of earth dams. Anyone who doesn’t know what an earth dam is… well it is exactly what it sounds. They pile a big mound of earth into an embankment across a river/stream and then you create a level spillway off to the side at a certain level so that when the water level gets too high, the water flows out over the spillway and does not overtop your dam [which would be very bad]. It is a bit more complicated than that as there are soil mechanics involved… but that is the basic idea. I had just finished reading a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry” which was all about how humanity is messing up the water cycle by diverting rivers into dams and for irrigation and rivers are no longer reaching the ocean. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” scares the hell out of me, but I can’t say with certainty that it is scarier than “When the Rivers Run Dry”. Pick it up, it’s a good read. Why am I mentioning it out of nowhere like this? Because it made me feel like a total jerk being as I am working on dams! But the end of the book is rather hopeful [optimism that is long overdue, before you get to that point you are convinced it’s the apocalypse because the author is so unrelenting] and talks about a bunch of things that are happening around the world, often going back to old traditions, which are really working. One of these things is rain water harvesting. And fortunately that is exactly what my project is. The streams that have been dammed are annual streams [they only flow in the rain season]. So instead of all that water being lost in a quick rush to the Zambezi and over Vic Falls, a small lake is formed. Farmers have water for their gardens, crops, and livestock. Also, the sitting body of water recharges the water table so boreholes near the dam don’t dry up! Very exciting. I wouldn’t be surprised if boreholes that had dried up before the dam are now working again [but I can’t substantiate that claim]. So I am building dams right…? Actually no. The dams are already built, as I said, about 8 years ago. But unfortunately earth is not very durable [especially when you throw water in the mix] and consequently the dams need maintenance. The catchment area needs to be undisturbed so it does erode and silt up the dam. The embankment needs to be protected from animals and people walking on it, and trees putting holes through it. My project is based around this problem… no one was doing any maintenance. So what I will be doing, as a continuation of Nick Jimenez’ Junior Fellow placement last year, is work with the Technical Service Branch [TSB] of MACO to mobilize communities to maintain their earth dams. Nick and the TSB developed a methodology and produced a rough copy of a manual detailing that methodology during his placement. There was no previous methodology for a participatory mobilization of communities with regard to Earth Dams, so aside from actually mobilizing the communities, the another aspect of the project is to refine the manual. This is all be conducted in the Kazungula/Livingstone Disctrict around Livingstone.