Warning, the following may trigger memories!
OYEZ! OYEZ! GOSSIP FROM 1977! An excerpt from the CUSOBOT Monday Morning Comings and Goings column of August–September 1977––Editor: SHARON SCHMIDT. (Re-typed and submitted by Ozzie Schmidt.) We are happy to report that the HELLARDS and AGNES LAU did arrive on schedule (despite the Air Traffic Controllers’ strike in Canada) in mid-August. All three, joined by ANNETTE MULLEY and BIBIANA SEABORN have just spent two weeks in the village of Kopong, achieving untold mastery of the Setswana language……AGNES, after a couple of tentative (Maun and Francistown) postings has been confirmed in Serowe and will be working closely with our veteran of one year BEA DAY…….the COX family slipped away quietly on the Saturday of the Country Meeting, July 30th…..STERLING has a teaching post in London. Ontario……ALLAN CULHAM, accompanied by at least three lovely ladies, left Gaborone airport on September 8th (but not on time)…..the personable, suave bachelor plans to recuperate in Canada until January, perhaps keeping his hand in by helping with the Canada-based November 2-9 orientation, and returns to Kanye Brigades Development Trust as co-ordinator in early 1978……author of several denunciations of CUSO’s policies, the affable CULHAM may have been heard to say: “I like working with people, and after examining other volunteer agencies, I have decided that CUSO………… ……”. Allan remains a CUSO volunteer for the next two years!!..........the FENTON family left Botswana in late July……NORM has decided to pursue a speciality, and will likely be working and learning in Kingston, Ontario……….We regret that for personal reasons RAY GIRVEN has returned to Canada…..we wish Ray every success in the future….until a replacement is found, the versatile DON ABBOTT has agreed to return to KRDA’s central office to pinch-hit for Ray……through a series of uncontrollable events Don was recently able to present CUSO policy to a group of volunteer agency co-ordinators at the Mafenyatlala Hotel……TIM GREENHOW has opted for a fresh two-year involvement in Botswana….he leaves in October, to return in January, to work in the Department of Town and Regional Planning……JIM HOUSTON will also temporarily leave Botswana, to return in January……forsaking Tsabong, JIM hopes to work with the nascent MATSHA COMMUNITY COLLEGE in KANG…….CUSO wags (give you one good guess who!) have, it is rumoured, dubbed him ‘KING KANG’……GROAN!.......DI and LOUEY LONG have taken a quick trip to visit family in Alberta, leaving RICK to indulge in marathon bridge-games and pork-chop fry-ups….the LONGS expect to leave CUSO and Botswana in December and make their way back to Canada slowly………NANCY EISENER and CHUCK MacFARLANE, after attending the Regional Meeting in Dar es Salaam, will visit several East and West African countries to spread the news of their Pitsane sorghum milling process, returning to Botswana at the end of October…..NANCY was heard to mutter….’when we finally moved to GOOD HOPE, KEN TRAYNOR was transferred the week before to Francistown and if that wasn’t bad enough, we’ve had more visitors in the last three weeks than in the last six months’…..but they’ve gone to RAMATLABAMA (60 km away!)….so, good people, remember the address for CHUCK and NANCY is now in GOOD HOPE….. DOUG RAMSAY left for Canada in late August, stopping on the beaches of Greece to complete his recovery from the ravages of hepatitis….it is rumoured that Doug is contemplating a return to school…..best of luck !.....We also say farewell to DON WILLIAMS who expects to rejoin his family in mid-to-late September……….the Regional Meeting delegation consisting of KEN TRAYNOR, DAVID TSIANE, NANCY and CHUCK and “THIS” and “THAT” FSO leave for Dar es Salaam on September 10th…..DOROTHY SEKGWA or “MMA VOLUNTEER” will maintain the office, better than ever, between the 10th and the 24th……..the DRAFT COUNTRY PLAN is completed, and the office will be pleased to share copies upon request…….BRIAN WILSON, the “tiny intimidator” and ex CUSOMAL will be visiting Botswana between October 13th and 27th. Brian is a member of the “Aggie” team in CUSO Ottawa, and plans to help us strengthen our aggie programming…the next CUSOBOT group should arrive in mid-November, comprising ERIC YAXLEY (DO(L)); PHIL SAUNDERS (DO(D)); PHYLLIS and WAYNE DIGBY and their two children (Wayne will work in Agricultural Information); LUC BOUTIN (adult educator) and MARIE DUPUIS (teacher); and Ms. LE YUEN HUANG (Brigade Business Advisor for Palapye)……in January, we expect Regional Medical Officer DAVID SHIH and Nursing Instructor LINDIE COPELAND; DO(L)) MATTHEW LAI, a replacement for a withdrawn DO(D)) candidate; and an adult educator couple……….RICH CAROTHERS is away at the Appropriate Technology Conference in Tanzania, and it is hoped that he will be featured at the RM as a special interest person…..FERN CATT coped with a cancelled trip to NXAI PAN by burrowing into books at Kgale…….IRA GREENBLATT took a nosedive into the Durban sands in his first surfing attempt…..TIM GREENHOW’s motorcycle crapped out on him at the border on his way back from a holiday….PANSY FLEMMING is a sketch in perpetual motion and ERNIE and PEARL MORRIS have just moved into their new house at KDB, and have been busy applying liberal quantities of Polystrippa to their floors, bathtub and sinks to remove excess paint left behind by enthusiastic brigade painters…….BOB KUPFERSCHMID sends greetings from “paradise” and recommends Mauritius as the ideal way to rehydrate after two years in Botswana……………VICKI and RICHARD CORSINO, CUSOBOTs from ’74-’76, have just left Canada for PNG and another stint with CUSO….perhaps we will be able to twist their collective arm and receive a PNG appreciation from them…… DENNIS LEWYCKY headed north in mid-August leaving an impressive-looking document behind [Tapestry—Report from Oodi Weavers] …he will travel back to Canada via West Africa and Italy ....…..BODIL PEARSON writes that she managed to get to Malawi DESPITE TRAVEL INTERNATIONAL.........BODIL is pausing at Malindi to give some help and advice to an embryonic pottery group.....ANDY LEGUN will be staying on at Kgari Sechele until Christmas...his lyrical skills have not been lost by MM yet....... SHIRLEY and NEIL DUNFORD are busy packing up their household in anticipatiion of an end-of-September departure.....LES FUNK WHERE ARE YOU????........ JEAN GOODCHILD whirled in and out of Gaborone briefly and has left an excellent sheet of sketches and recipes with “your editor” for use with a “three -legged pot”......the “grand old man of the mountain” KREMPIEN was alive and well and still terrorizing southern Saskatchewan when viewed in the west during July.....PAT, JERRY and BRIAN BRIX seem to have survived the trauma of the move from Botswana to Edmonton and then Calgary with little visible ill-effects....JERRY, now that BRIAN is fully mobile, can traverse a room in two bounding leaps [the leg substantially healed after falling over a waterfall in Swaziland] to save the intrepid toddler from imminent self-destruction.........KEN TRAYNOR seems to be settling nicely into Francistown and is taking over the NOTORIOUS NUN OF THE NORTH’s place as an expert hitchhiker...KEN managed to hitch an airlift to Gaborone to join the RM delegation and to forego the train trip down......SCOTT PAYMENT WHERE ARE YOU?????.............EMELDA REMY has been busy during MOFFAT SIBANDA’s absence from KDB, acting as construction foreman, quality control advisor, and public relations officer...except she was misquoted in the Daily News........ Tsamayang sentle. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sorghum Milling in Botswana That Botswana Guardian article of 8 November 2017 by Moreri Gabakgori about the evolution of sorghum milling in Botswana shook some memory fragments loose in my brain. Then I found an ICRISAT publication, “Commercialization of Sorghum Milling in Botswana” (2000). The upshot was this 25-year “time line” charting the evolution of sorghum processing in Botswana, as an intervention for employment creation, enterprise promotion, and food security. And CUSO co-operants played important roles in this evolution. In 1974–75 Andy Hamilton, an agricultural economist, took a six-month leave of absence from his CUSO job (Agricultural Recruiter), in order to conduct a rural needs survey in Botswana. The survey was aimed at rural households, their food preferences, and their perceived bottlenecks in attaining household food security. The survey results were published by IDRC in a report. The survey’s most important findings were:
The key question: was there in existence a mechanical technology that could, at affordable cost, substitute for the women’s labour? Yes and no. The hammermill did exist: it pulverized the dehulled grain into flour. But, there was no technology to help in the more arduous first stage of pounding, the one to dehull the grain. The Plant Biotechnology Institute in Saskatoon (part of NRC) experimented with modifying an existing mechanical barley pearler to dehull sorghum. Next, the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa supported an applied research project in Maiduguri, in the arid north of Nigeria (Sahel), as a first field-test of the modified barley pearler. Then in 1976–78, IDRC supported the Botswana Agricultural Marketing Board in a project to test the viability of commercially dehulling and grinding sorghum in a pilot mill in Pitsane. The technical staff for the mill were two CUSO co-operants, Nancy Eisener and Chuck MacFarlane. The output from the plant was filled into paper bags, and the product was soon selling successfully in grocery stores. Buyers were prepared to pay a little more for the sorghum meal than they would pay for the equivalent weight of maize meal, continuing evidence that sorghum was the preferred staple grain. IDRC then supported a follow-up applied research project, this time at the Rural Industries Innovation Centre (RIIC) in Kanye, with the objective of scaling down the dehuller so that it could perform small-batch size service milling. The experimental service mill was situated inside RIIC’s front gates. Families brought their home-grown sorghum in batches of, say, 10–20 kg, paid for the service, and took away the edible sorghum flour, as well as the bran (quite suitable for feeding the backyard chickens). The scaled-down dehuller was a technical and a business success. It appeared to be a viable village-level enterprise. Small enterprise development could now begin. RIIC developed a “dehulling and milling” business training and information manual. New small enterprises were established: 20 in 1980–84; 1985–89 (another 13); 1990–94 (41 more); 1995–99 (89). So, over a 20-year span, a total of 163 dehuller-hammermill combos were manufactured and set up, distributed among 145 enterprises, dotted all over the country. In 1984 or so, the Botswana Mill Owners’ Association was formed. CUSO provided the Association’s first co-ordinator, Diana Gibbs. The domestic production of sorghum did not increase substantially after 1991–94 (the land and rainfall likely imposed that limit), but the consumption of sorghum did increase. Botswana imported edible sorghum from South Africa to cover the shortfall in local production. Also a demographic shift occurred in Botswana over the span 1991–99. The rural population decreased; urban population increased. Thanks to the discovery of diamond deposits, the government was able to re-invest diamond dividends into the building of improved infrastructure. Botswana as a country, a society, was morphing into something new. Increasingly, the enterprises once specifically geared to service-milling adapted to the new reality and increased their volume of commercial milling as the demand for service-milling waned. The grocery shelves were filled with multiple packages of sorghum meal, each carrying the ‘brand name’ of different, competing milling enterprises, each using the same ’new’ technology. The 1999 survey (by ICRISAT’s agricultural economists, based in Bulawayo) of a selected sub-set of 24 mills showed that sorghum remained the preferred staple country-wide, but that in urban grocery stores, sorghum meal and maize meal were close substitutes for each other. Such was the situation 20 years after the scaled-down dehuller was finalized. Wouldn’t it be informative to know the state of Botwana’s sorghum milling industry in 2019, now that a further 20 years have elapsed since the ICRISAT survey of 1999? What could well-meaning and thoughtful aid agencies, NGOs, etc., learn from examining a 45-year documented history of a technological intervention in an indigenous food system?
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