We are sharing with you a series of travel logs written by ARI staff member Steven, who visited Africa in August.

On the 7th day, they started their journey to Kitwe in northern Zambia.
On the way, they stopped at a farm college, where graduates are actively working.
They met people who continue to teach / learn with ingenuity even without electricity.
Don’t miss Steven’s wonderful food report, which is sure to grab your stomach as usual!
Let’s get started on our trip to Africa!

【An African journey to visit ARI graduates, Day7】

North to Kitwe
Today we set out for Kitwe in the Copperbelt Province, stopping to meet ARI graduates along the way, and of course in Kitwe.
Can you guess why it is called the Copperbelt? If you are having trouble, don’t worry, explanations are forthcoming.
With a long drive in front of us, we set our departure time for 5:00 AM and succeeded in getting on the road by 5:30.

Chipembi College of Agriculture
Our first visit on this journey northward was Chipembi Farm College.
Around 9:30 we rolled through the entrance lane lined with Mango trees and there was Lydia Chibwe (2015 ARI Graduate) waiting to see us. Lydia is the vice-principal of the school and has served here a number of years, but, sorry, I didn’t get that exact number. Another ARI graduate, Paul Samba, also worked here for a long time, starting as a lecturer and eventually becoming the principal. We will meet Paul later on in Kitwe.
As you can see in the sign, it is officially the Chipembi College of Agriculture, established by the United Church of Zambia. Its first intake of just six students was in 1964. Currently they have 161 students, 80 women and 81 men, and of those, five are with disabilities. Following the college’s inclusivity policy, those five students are fully integrated into the regular curriculum.
Students pay tuition and when they complete the course they will receive a certificate in general agriculture. All of them live in on-campus housing and are responsible for cooking their own meals, often preparing mealy meal, a kind of corn flour mentioned earlier.

We spent the morning walking around the 10-hectare farm, talking with Lydia and the farm manager, Namasumo.
As you would expect, the college provides training in livestock and horticulture, but our first stop was a bakery. Normally, there would be wonderful smells coming from the ovens and beautiful loaves of white bread and rose buns filling up the tray racks, but… Yes, the electricity problem has come again. Since the power can go off at any time, they can’t bake. This affects not only the curriculum, but also the ability to bring income to the school through bread sales.
Next, we visited the workshop and met the guy who goes around fixing everything. Where would any school be without THAT guy? He also gives lessons on small machine repair.

We then headed to the poultry pens where they raise layers and broilers. During the brooding period, the responsible students stay day and night for ten days in the pens to watch over the chicks. The mattresses set up in one room attested to that.
On the way to the piggery, we passed a grove of eucalyptus trees from which they pick the leaves to make medicine that is especially good for coughs. The pigs were few in number due to an outbreak of African Swine Fever. Interestingly, a few survived. In most cases, when an ASF is detected, all the pigs in that pen are disposed of as quickly as possible to stop it from spreading to other pens or other farms. Hearing that some survived on their own made me wonder if the current practice is stopping pigs from developing natural resistance to this sickness. Disease also hit their cattle, reducing the number from 70 to 20. At ARI precautions against livestock illnesses are part of our daily routine and thus, part of what the participants learn. But no system is perfect, and risk of livestock disease is always a challenge to farmers. The rabbits at the college, however, are doing great – multiplying like rabbits! All the livestock feed is produced on site from sunflower and soybean cake, and corn bran.

Making hay while the sun shines
We came upon a group of students making hay bales. The atmosphere was cheerful because they had all just finished their exams.
Their low-tech method was ingenious. First, they cut the grass with a scythe. Then they dig a square hole and lay twine across the bottom, ensuring the twine extends all the way out of the hole. Next the grass is thrown in and stamped hard to make compact cubes of hay. Then they lift it out with the twine and tie it tightly. Voila, you have a bale of hay even if you don’t have a baling machine or electricity! But woe to anyone who forgets to put the twine in first. That bale isn’t going to come out!

I was impressed by the way they teach composting and vegetable gardening. The compost is divided into heaps and a group of 5 to 10 students manages each pile, following the steps needed to turn it into nutritious soil. These piles were not bokashi, like we use at ARI, but Lydia said they also teach how to make bokashi. The student vegetable gardens are done a little differently. Rather than working in groups, each student is given one row, and in that row, they plant several crops, like tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, and more. The student has to handle everything on their own, from land preparation to harvest and they are graded on their performance – crop spacing, growth rate, plant health, etc. The students compare and compete with each other and just by looking at the plants, you can see who is doing well and who is struggling. Namasumo (the farm manager) pointed out that the best row belonged to one of the female students!!

Kai and I were puzzled at the site of a row of wooden stands alongside one garden. Namasumo explained that buckets of water would soon be placed on them and connected with hoses to create a simple drip system. Just beyond this were several fishponds, including a new one the students had dug last week. The ponds are lined with plastic and the fish food is purchased and supplemented with vegetable waste.

The farm is not organic, but Lydia is moving it in that direction. The onions and carrots are grown without chemicals, and they are experimenting with other vegetables too. The visit wrapped up with drinks and cookies in the conference room. Three hours was too short, but we had to keep moving. Kitwe was still a long way off.

The groovy road north
We set out from Chipembi around 1:00 PM which was much later than scheduled, but the schedule itself was not all that realistic. We were back on the Great North Road, or Groovy Road, as I have dubbed it, because heavy trucks have imprinted wheel ruts along long stretches. These are truly dangerous as they make it difficult to control your vehicle. More than once, John has inadvertently swerved out of our narrow lane.
The trucks are carrying any sort of goods across Zambia and even on into Tanzania and the DRC. But the most prolific hauling in this area is copper from the vast mines. Here is the reason this region is called the Copper Belt. Along the way, one encounters several toll booths and police checkpoints. At one booth, Judy inquired where the money was going, since the road was so bad. I’m sure the attendant gets these kinds of complaints all the time. But he did point out that a whole new road was in the process of being built alongside the current road. We knew this to be absolutely true, because we could see it, in various stages of development, along the entire route we were traveling. Soon the narrow two-lane road would become a four-lane divided highway.
At one of the checkpoints, John pulled around the cars waiting ahead of him. He didn’t realize it was a checkpoint, as it is often the case that cars are just stopped for some reason or other. On seeing the policeman, he snuck back in the line, but this did not impress the cop who angrily accused him of being “the fast and the furious.” John with his soft and humble nature defused the situation quickly.

For lunch we stopped at one of the most amazing places, called Fringilla. Everything meat could be found there, in big juicy portions. It is all raised in the surrounding farm, so fresh and scrumptious. This certainly is a meat country! Kai and I had homemade sausage and the Nyondos had beef stew! The specialty of the house, though, is meat pies, and when they say meat pies, they mean MEAT pies! I can still taste them.
 John knew the founder of the restaurant long ago, as he was a member of the church John was pastoring in the area. Unfortunately, he passed away last year.

After a few more hours on the groovy road, we stopped for the night in a clean and comfortable lodge in Mposhi Kapiri called Ma 22. Good lodges are serious about security and the entire complex was walled in so you and your car, truck, motorbike, or whatever your transport is can be under the hotel’s 24- hour protection.


Written by Steven Cutting (Graduate Outreach Coordinator)
Travelling with Kai Shinoda (Admissions and Recruitment Coordinator)



Click here to read the series of articles

Vol.0 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Prologue】

Vol.1 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 1-2】 

Vol.2 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 3】

Vol.3 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 4】

Vol.4 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 5】

Vol.5 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 6】

Vol.6 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 7】<== Now, you’re here

Vol.7 【The African journey to visit ARI graduates Day 8】To Be Continued …