"Good things come to those who wait... and you WILL wait!"
Dear FF&B (Family, Friends, and Blog-heads!),
It's funny how every 4-8 days turns into a full month. But like Teen Wolf (or more accurately - Late-20s Wolf), I seem to deliver on the full moon. Many developments have happened over these past four weeks, but the biggest is the dreaded "scope creep" of working at a non-profit. (Note: "scope creep" is much like an old bottle of Heinz ketchup, annoying slow and thick!)
My original project: put together a pilot distribution of fuel-efficient cookstoves in the Eastern Province of Zambia (should include components of sourcing, distribution, demonstrations, efficiency testing, education, marketing, and research into financing for a scaled-up project). Pretty large scope as it is, right?
My revised project: figure out how to stop charcoal producers along the road to the Eastern Province by providing a feasible business mechanism for alternative income-generating activities. (Oh yeah! And distribute cookstoves on the side....)
OK. Perhaps an over-exaggeration. It's actually fascinating to be working on the supply side in addition to the demand for fuel. The truly exciting part is that about a week and a half ago I got to go out into the field to talk to these producers to learn about their business. We thought that there would be some extremely large producers we could work with directly. But in reality, all across the countryside are individual families that will spend 3-8 months to make just 12-40 bags of charcoal. Then they can either sell it to roadside retailers, or to these wholesalers that show up at dark to buy the whole load and transport it back to sell in Lusaka. And that one mound's worth of charcoal can sustain them for half a year or more. (Or at least, they make it last that long.)
The good thing is that COMACO (my NGO) already works with providing rural communities with alternative sustainable income-generating activities. So we have hope that we can help the current producers find other ways to make money and either reduce their production or give it up altogether. The bad news is that these wholesalers will just find different folks to make their charcoal for them. They are really hard to locate to - they have no specified place of business and transport by dark because most of the charcoal business is illegal. At the very least, though, we hope to make it harder for them and to teach the producers how to use better practices such as selective cutting (instead of clear-cutting or slash-and-burn techniques that devastate the soil past recovery).
Perhaps that's enough on the project for now... but I will leave you with a nerdy supply chain diagram:
Well, perhaps I can filch some pictures from my colleague of the widespread devastation or folks we met on our field research.... but any additional ruminations, celebrations, or general malarkey will have to wait until next time!
Safe Journeys,
-Stan
Dear FF&B (Family, Friends, and Blog-heads!),
It's funny how every 4-8 days turns into a full month. But like Teen Wolf (or more accurately - Late-20s Wolf), I seem to deliver on the full moon. Many developments have happened over these past four weeks, but the biggest is the dreaded "scope creep" of working at a non-profit. (Note: "scope creep" is much like an old bottle of Heinz ketchup, annoying slow and thick!)
My original project: put together a pilot distribution of fuel-efficient cookstoves in the Eastern Province of Zambia (should include components of sourcing, distribution, demonstrations, efficiency testing, education, marketing, and research into financing for a scaled-up project). Pretty large scope as it is, right?
My revised project: figure out how to stop charcoal producers along the road to the Eastern Province by providing a feasible business mechanism for alternative income-generating activities. (Oh yeah! And distribute cookstoves on the side....)
OK. Perhaps an over-exaggeration. It's actually fascinating to be working on the supply side in addition to the demand for fuel. The truly exciting part is that about a week and a half ago I got to go out into the field to talk to these producers to learn about their business. We thought that there would be some extremely large producers we could work with directly. But in reality, all across the countryside are individual families that will spend 3-8 months to make just 12-40 bags of charcoal. Then they can either sell it to roadside retailers, or to these wholesalers that show up at dark to buy the whole load and transport it back to sell in Lusaka. And that one mound's worth of charcoal can sustain them for half a year or more. (Or at least, they make it last that long.)
The good thing is that COMACO (my NGO) already works with providing rural communities with alternative sustainable income-generating activities. So we have hope that we can help the current producers find other ways to make money and either reduce their production or give it up altogether. The bad news is that these wholesalers will just find different folks to make their charcoal for them. They are really hard to locate to - they have no specified place of business and transport by dark because most of the charcoal business is illegal. At the very least, though, we hope to make it harder for them and to teach the producers how to use better practices such as selective cutting (instead of clear-cutting or slash-and-burn techniques that devastate the soil past recovery).
Perhaps that's enough on the project for now... but I will leave you with a nerdy supply chain diagram:
Well, perhaps I can filch some pictures from my colleague of the widespread devastation or folks we met on our field research.... but any additional ruminations, celebrations, or general malarkey will have to wait until next time!
Safe Journeys,
-Stan
P.S. For those who like graphical representations, here is a GPS map my colleague put together of the larger field stops...
It may not look like much... but it could look more like this map I received for another project!
