Connecting with Seeds of Hope in Ndola

We were moving early and after a stop in Kapiri we drove North to Ndola to connect with Jerry at Seeds of Hope. It is about 150 km and took nearly two hours - although the two-lane highway is in good shape there is a lot of traffic on it - particularly trucks and busses - as this is the main access route to the Zambian copper mines and on into the Congo. Ndola is one of several copper mining centers and is in fact the second largest city in Zambia after Lusaka. We managed to find our way okay and connect with Jerry and their Zambian manager, Francis Feruka, who took us to their base - a house in one of the suburbs. They started off by showing us their bio-sand filter manufacturing operation and demonstrated one of the filters in operation - an amazingly simple and highly effective piece of technology. We then had a very lengthy and informative discussion about wells and all the related issues and problems that we had been encountering, gleaning a lot from their experiences in that area. Unfortunately their drilling rig - built and donated by a Canadian from Victoria Island - was away in the field (near Lusaka) drilling a well so we were not able to see it; although there were photos of it. They also shared with us about their work in hygiene training, drip irrigation, HIV/AIDS counseling and general evangelism so it was good to connect on many of the same aspects that we will be dealing with in our project area; and likely that we can continue to work closely with them as we get fully operational. After a late lunch we headed back to the farm having had a great day's experience. (On the way up, and going back, we saw locals standing on the side of the road holding up 3-4ft sticks with a long piece of string attached to one end and on the other end of the string a rodent tied to the string by it's back feet - still alive and wriggling ! The rodents were moles which are a delicacy for eating - and a pest in the crops anyway - so the people catch them to sell to passers-by !!)