Posted: August 27

Springtime in Zambia

(Lusaka) After a relaxed Sunday breakfast with the five Jesuits from the Luwisha community here in the capital of Zambia, I have a pause before going over to the student Mass on the campus of the national university across the street. I can’t find the right metaphor to describe the last four days doing on-the-spot research for the pilot program of digital learning centers. “Trying to drink from a fire hose” comes to mind as one metaphor, but it’s not quite right. The people here are not intense in the way that metaphor implies, but the steady flow of new information does take my breath away. (Woops, the metaphors are starting to mix already.) Suffice it to say that this city is very rich in resources in one way. Certainly the church is extremely active with lots of talented people focusing energy on a variety of problems. And they like the idea of networking their efforts to extend their reach and expand their own support base.

Friday morning we drove out the dusty road beyond the airport to the Kasisi Agricultural Training Center, where my old friend from New Orleans, Fr. Roland Lesseps, works in the field of sustainable agriculture. He is like a walking encyclopedia as he takes you through the trees which are his speciality. He has been researching the useful properties of various kinds of trees, whether for fuel, protein enrichment of cattle feed or natural pest control. If farmers adopt the methods that he and Paul Desmerais SJ, the Jesuit who heads the center, they don’t have to use scarce cash resources for fertilizer and other inputs and they can sell their produce at a higher price because it is organically grown.

KATC is a marvelous place, but its reach is limited to district farmers who can come to the center to attend its five-day courses. Zambia is about the size of Texas, so that leaves lots of people beyond their reach, even though the center does broadcast programs over the local radio station. The project I am involved in wants to create an “intranet” of content providers--such as KATC—and community telecenters where people can access that information as well as tap into the world-wide resources available online. Of course, that means using the new technology of communication, including internet, satellites and computer networks; even more it means using new teaching methods and changing mindsets to get people thinking that they easily can work together even though they are physically quite far away .

And since this blog often seems like a weather report, I must add that we are enjoying the cool nights of late “winter” here. It got up into the 90s yesterday, but the air is dry. It is a nice break from August in Rome. The trees are just starting to leaf out at the start of a new cycle of growth. I hope that this is the right metaphor for the project here as well.