FINCA, Supervisor Recap

It’s been a while since I’ve written about work here. This is due in part to how much things have changed during my last position. From month to month I was either in a new location or a new mindset. Now, in retrospect, it’s much easier to give a coherent recap.

From January until July I continued my training by working in the role of a Credit Supervisor at the branch level. I started in Chawama, one of our newest branches at the time. The branch was a pleasant place to work, though the area was rough during the rainy season. I supervised two different products and enjoyed helping lay the foundation for how operations would be run there in the future. After one month I was transferred to Matero branch where there was an opportunity to cut my teeth on a challenging situation. 

After a series of issues in the past year, most of the staff had been replaced with new hires who had inherited poorly performing portfolios and difficult clients from their predecessors. I took over management of a team of five Loan Officers; one half of the Business Loan cluster. It was a testing situation at first. I struggled to push improvements on all fronts, from the types of clients we were funding, the quality of the analyses being done, the monitoring of clients, and my own people management skills. It took some time, but somewhere in April we started to see progress. My Loan Officers were improving both individually and as a team, and we were starting to make a real dent in the problems we had inherited. By the time I was finishing my term as a supervisor, both my cluster and Matero branch seemed to have turned a corner. The specter of the past was dissipating and the new team was capable, confident and achieving results not seen here in a long time. It gave me a great deal of satisfaction to be part of that transition and to see the staff develop, some even receiving promotions.

So it was with great pleasure that, for my next assignment, I had the opportunity to take over as Branch Manager of the same Matero branch. A promotion for our previous Branch Manager opened up the position at just the right time, and I couldn’t have been happier to continue working with the same team to make this the best branch in FINCA Zambia. My first few weeks in this new role have presented a whole new series of challenges and opportunities, and I’m looking forward to learning and growing here in the months ahead.

(Matero Branch)

Visitors and Bon Voyage

Living here, I always feel very lucky when people come to visit. No one is ever “passing through” Zambia. Actually, you have to go pretty out of your way to get here. So having a friend visit is always a special event, and this month has been full of them. Not long after Jamie left, my college friend Becca, on a family trip in East Africa, came down for a weekend. While the trip was too short, we had plenty of time to catch up during a visit to the Lower Zambezi. The two of us took the relatively short drive down to the river which involved a pontoon crossing and some rough roads that made me glad I replaced the 12 year old tires before we left.

Kiambi, the camp where we stayed, is an oasis perched on a cliff overlooking the confluence of the Zambezi and Kafue rivers. The big lazy river moving deceptively quickly below offered itself as a perfect canvas for the sunset we were just in time to catch. We braved the cold at night with plenty of warm clothes, resisting the urge to bring some coals from the fire into the tent with us. The stars glittered in the chilly darkness,  showing clearly Scorpius and the Big Dipper, which only appear for a short time during the year down here. We were also privy to the uncommon sight of Jupiter, Venus and Mercury in the sky together.

We spent our one full day perfecting the art of relaxation, ending it with a beautiful boat ride on the river for sunset. As dusk was falling we stumbled on a group of elephants playing in the water. Our guide got us right up next to them and it was really something else to watch these huge animals romping like puppies.

Speaking of puppies, our dog is now in what I imagine to be his rebellious adolescent years. His reign as sole house mascot, however, is being eroded by the arrival of two new turkeys. There is a tentative understanding developing between them as they try to assess what threat the other poses.

(Sparta sizing them up)

In the same airport trip I dropped Becca off and picked up Anne, an old Lusaka resident on her third visit back. We were close friends during my first year here so of course there’s plenty of reminiscing to be done when she’s back. It’s been great having her around, and I’m looking forward to a group trip this weekend up to Ndola to watch Chiplopolo play Lesotho for a chance to qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

Of course there has to be a tradeoff to all this fun. This week Zambia said goodbye to an institution. Jes, the ever adventure-ready, master traveler, cook and Frisbee player, brought to a close her almost 4 year relationship with this country. While we will certainly miss her here, I know she can’t ignore when adventure beckons with a chance to bike across Eastern Europe.

(Photo credit: Cheryl R.)

Moonbows and More

This last week I had the pleasure of hosting Jamie, my predecessor in the Princeton in Africa fellowship and the person that introduced me to all things Zambia. After almost two years away he came back for his first visit; what I image was a whirlwind of catching up with friends and the KF students. It was especially cool, and a bit strange, to spend time together with both him and the current fellow Jill. While we’ve shared so many of the same experiences we’ve managed to cultivate our own pretty different perspectives of our time in Zambia.

(3 Generations of PiAf Lusaka)

During Jamie's visit, we had the chance to celebrate the impending parenthood of one of our good friends Chileshe. Our friends Cecile, Claire and Jill put together a very nice, very pink baby shower which mainly consisted of lots of oohing and aahing over tiny clothing. We managed to justify our presence at this decidedly feminine event during baby charades, which was good otherwise they may not have shared their delicious nutella cupcakes with us.

(Chileshe's Baby Shower)

This past weekend we took a short overnight trip to Livingstone. Livingstone is 500 km from Lusaka, that’s 12 hours of driving in two day; not exactly around the corner. Yet, I would easily do it again to see what we did. In the months after the rainy season, when the Zambezi is at its fullest, the spray from the falls reaches high above the gorge. It is onto this dense spray that a full moon will project a ghostly rainbow stretching across the falls. It was the promise of this vision that lured the ten of us out on our brief journey south.

The elements aligned in our favor. A cloudless night, a brilliant moon, a wind that kept the spray contained within the gorge. What’s more, we found all the other tourists gathered on one viewing platform, leaving the best views essentially empty for us to enjoy. The sight was incredibly striking. Seeing the falls in the moonlight felt like a secretive and special experience, more intimate than visiting during the day. From the dark trees we quietly gazed on the flowing water while in the foreground the prominent “moonbow” stretched to the limits of the mist. We moved slowly through the park, taking in each view with the sort of reverence that something so surreal and beautiful inspires. 

(I swear these were taken at night. The long exposure is what gives the water that cool smoky effect)

Triathlon

On April 13th the American School of Lusaka hosted its annual Triathlon. We entered a team in the "sprint" version. Emily dominated the swimming and Paul finished the run in no time. My part was biking 14km of bumpy trails. I looked like a real nerd the whole time, having to race with my bike lock on as I forgot the key. Even an unanticipated second lap of the course wasn't enough to stop me though and I finished, eventually. It was a fun, and humbling, day (too many fit friends).

Stats for team Panda Express:

15th out of 29 teams

Total time: 1:00:31 (fastest team time: 49:50)

Number of times we fell off our bikes: 0

(Team Panda Express)

Sailing Kariba

I find that April is a month that’s equally great in the US or Zambia. In Boston, it’s the true start of spring; in Zambia it’s the ideal balance of hot and cold, wet and dry. This April started off even better than usual thank to a lead in from the Easter long weekend. We traveled down to Lake Kariba, one of the closest vacation spots to Lusaka, and crossed onto the Zimbabwe side. From there we drove to the Cutty Sark Hotel, which we reached after only a few wrong turns, where we found our lodging for the weekend; four catamarans waiting for us on shore. After transferring all the coolers, food and bags from the car, and listening to a conspicuously brief sailing tutorial from our guides, we were handed sole command of our ships and turned loose on the lake.

We spent the first few hours finding our sea legs and getting a feel for the boats. By the time we had our tacking and jibing down and were comfortably cruising we realized we were pretty far from the other three boats. To our concern, two of the boats appeared to be motoring together off into the distance. Concluding that we must’ve missed a planning session, we quickly set a course in their direction and kicked our motor into high gear. Looking over our shoulders we clucked in dismay as the last boat shrank to a white dot in the distance. We tried texting and calling, in vain, to get them to start their motor and hurry after us.

The sun went down before us, a very beautiful splash of color silhouetting the island ahead and setting fire to the water around us. It was around this time that the last boat finally got through to our phones. Their motor had broken while trying to “rescue” a shipmate that had been thrown overboard. They had been drifting listlessly, without power or wind, for the last few hours that we had been motoring away. In their retelling of the story, they would claim they thought it was the end and had made their peace with God, which explains why they’d gone through almost their entire liquor allocation for the weekend. The three working boats consolidated ourselves onto two and sent one of the guides back for the stranded catamaran while we went to make camp at the island. As it was already getting dark by this point, we weren’t too hopeful about seeing our friends anytime soon.

(Photo credit: Jonny P)

Once we hit sand at the edge of the island we tied the remaining two boats together and started preparing dinner. The stars were coming out in force and before long almost everything above us was alight; the Milky Way a stroke of white paint across the sky, so bright its reflection shimmered in the black water. Then came moonrise. Like a great ego it lifted from behind the Zimbabwean hills, heavy and red; nearly full. It outshone everything else in the sky, its presence adding even more to the romanticism of our evening. In much less time than we were expecting we saw the twinkling of flashlights and heard the shouts from the two approaching boats, one towing the other. Reunited, they regaled us with their ordeal over dinner, after which we fell asleep one by one on mats and blankets lain on the decks of the boats under huge mosquito nets hung from the masts, the wind blowing through the rigging.

I woke up to sunrise peeking through the tall grass on the island, waving in the morning breeze. For a moment I thought I was on Cape Cod, but the grunting of a nearby pod of hippos quickly brought me back. We spent the day on the water. When there was wind we sailed, when there wasn’t, we drifted, played cards, jumped in the water (when we were far from shore), and generally lounged around the boat. We sailed past wildlife; elephants grazing on shore, hippos basking in the shallows. At intervals we brought the boats together but we spent the majority of the time on our own. One of my favorite parts of the day was navigating the boat under wind power through an area of petrified trees jutting out of the water. We went fishing as the sun was setting, and some of the catches were big enough to be featured on the menu that night. We ate together at one long table; a fire behind us, the water before us and the stars above us.

We got an early start the next morning, Easter Sunday, as our destination was a long way off and we needed to take advantage of the wind. That morning we had the best sailing of the weekend, really picking up speed and covering some ground before the wind died down around lunch. We stopped off at a nearby island then met up with the other boats on the other side for the final leg back to the hotel. Hanging off the boat as we pulled close to our cove I realized how stress-free and happy I was. It was a restoring few days of good food, good company and a beautiful environment.  I think most of us would agree that this was one of the nicest, easiest and most relaxing weekend trips we’d ever been on.

Mutinondo (Or, a Pit Crew in Training)

March is the month of long weekends in Zambia. Taking time to recognize everything from youth, women and the resurrection of a certain carpenter requires significant leave from work. Zambia is a large, spread out country and going anywhere outside Lusaka is usually a hike. These long weekends offer a perfect chance to visit those destinations which are typically just out of reach.

Our destination of choice this time was Mutinondo, a park situated in the north not too far from where the bat migration takes place. In the early morning hours we crammed ourselves and all our gear into two trusty RAV 4s and set off on the 7 hour journey. Back home, driving 7 hours south would take me to four states, through at least six significant metropolitan centers, and past countless rest stops and restaurants. Here, there’s only one that matters: Fig Tree Café. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason I go out of town. It’s a bright point in an early morning drive, coming at the exact moment when you start to come down from that initial start-of-vacation high.

Not long after our morning communion with baked goods and coffee we were forced to pull over. The leading car had a flat, but between the two cars we scrounged together all the necessary equipment and got to work with surprising efficiency. In no time we had it changed and were back on track; no sweat. In the next town we’d repair the flat and keep ourselves covered. However, once there we learned the flat was unfixable, and, it being a holiday, there wasn’t anywhere to buy a new tire. Then we learned the spare on the other car was also unusable. The best we could do would be to put a tube in the flat, which we did, in case the worst happened, which it did. 

A few hours later the spare loudly and messily gave up the ghost. Its death throes of flying rubber shredded the mud flap to bits and shore off part of the bumper. We limped into a rural church and, under the watchful eye of some Witnesses (now I know why they're not called Helpers) we, for the third time that day, removed the bike rack, took off the spare (punctured but filled with a tube) jacked the car up and replaced the tire. By that time we all had our assigned roles in the process and were actually getting quite fast about it. After the car was back together we congratulated ourselves then set off at a much more cautious pace, negotiating the last 20 km of dirt road as gingerly as possible.

All this stress and excitement made us that much more appreciative of the magnificent wilderness we were entering. A fault runs below the area through which magma has bubbled up creating clusters of rounded, purple black hills surrounded by flat terrain. Rivers cut through the volcanic rock resulting in a number of strikingly beautiful waterfalls. A minimum of dangerous land and water wildlife means these hills are prime for exploration. Over the course of the weekend we hiked, biked and swam our way across the reserve; jumping off waterfalls, scrambling over mountains and bushwhacking through the trees. While it makes me shudder a bit now, it was a good thing for the enjoyment level at the time that we learned about black mamba encounters (and chases) in that area after we’d come back.

It was good to take time away from the city, surrounded by trees and water and stars. It’s always good to get away from exhaust and congestion for a while, to eat campfire meals and be in the sun and spend entire days at a time outdoors. It’s also good to be away from home if only because you appreciate it more when you come back. For example, I’m glad to be near other people, and not hundreds of km from anyone, when the unexpected happens. We had yet another flat tire on the way back, but this time we were without any working spare. Very luckily for us, we had just reached a town where we found a second-hand tire that, while not quite the right size, was able to fit on the car (though not before it took us an hour to figure out how to the flat off the car). It was also good to be in a bed again. Some heavy rain at night, and the fact that I’d accidentally brought a damaged tent, led to a couple restless nights of sleeping in the car. Still, let it be said that not one of these setbacks detracted from the experience. It’s hard to feel anything but good in a place like that.

New Additions

It's been a great month thanks to two recent additions to life here.

First, say hello to our newest roommate, Spartacus.

You'd be surprised how quickly you can get used to calling a dog "Sparta."

Second, meet my new car (name suggestions welcome): a secondhand Rav4 direct from Japan via South Africa.

Having wheels again is definitely a game changer.