Mutinondo Wilderness Blog - Page 3

Most of the year has sailed by whilst we celebrated the slow but sure repair of Mike's back, the truck being back on the road at last with a new engine and the return of peace and quiet to Mutinondo. The super Kwacha and Government's ban on exports buried our soya bean out growers scheme having only got K650/kg for our remaining 100tons (which we had bought for K1100). It's criminal that the farmers could only sell their soya for K400 this year and tragic that after 10 years of building up the project, the 1500 farmers on our books have since lost an annual income of about K440 million Kwacha. We personally lost K53 million and found it unethical to offer the same price we were offering in 1998 so we reduced our loans from 23 tons to 5.5 tons.

Over 400mm of rain in Dec 2004 promised a well needed refill for our thirsty Musamfushi and Mutinondo Rivers. Other positive starts to the year included the first big batch of accounts completed in February and a great seaside celebration in Malindi with friends and family in April which revitalised us with big plans to make more spare time to enjoy ourselves, our wilderness and long forgotten pleasures like golf. Zambia National Tourism Board made 2005 the year to promote Zambian tourism, the economy and security was so stable for the past 3 years; this was the time for our tourism industry to take off……….

Everything has been early this year, the rains ended early, the dry season flowers followed suit, we're sure the birds nested earlier than usual and now the rains are already in full force with 426mm to date (23.12) which has brought us a magnificent array of mushrooms. We are in the midst the magic season of change where we can almost hear things squeaking as they grow as the rain replenishes what was a worrying low water table. Our nearly stagnant river went from nearly 0 to flood in 10 days, the termites are feeding the nation (instead of eating it) as the flying ants rise, previously burnt expanses are flourishing again and the range of wild flowers emerging seem to be on fast forward.