Business trip to Chiawa

I went to Chiawa to undertake a development control exercise with my colleague. Chiawa is one of the closest towns to the Lower Zambezi National Park with a lot of lodges that needed to be inspected to see if the owners have already applied and possessed planning permissions from us, the planning authority in the area.

Apparently, Chiawa has fancy lodges in Zambia... you might have to spend $8,000 per night to stay at the most expensive lodge there! (FYI; the least expensive one charges you ONLY $3,000. ) As I have never seen or heard of such lodges / hotels, it was a great opportunity for me to visit and inspect them.

The most interesting part was that almost all the owners of those lodges in the area were mainly white couples. Only one lodge was owned and managed by a Zambian couple. It seems that they have moved to Zambia to spend the rest of their lives here quietly and appreciate the nature that Chiawa has to offer after their retirement back in their home countries (probably either in South Africa or in Europe). I bet they do not need to have their guests all the time... When they do not have any guests, they probably would enjoy each other' companies in huge mansion-looking lodges where the national park is very close by. Visiting those lodges made me think that running a lodge after my retirement could be an option :)

Those lodges were far away from each other, so I was quite exhausted when all the inspections were finally over.. Visiting lodges by lodges could be a pain when you have to be in a car for two days as well as travel on unpaved roads!

At the last evening of the trip, we went on a boat cruise on the Zambezi River. I saw a lot of wild animals, such as hippos, elephants and birds. Of course I enjoyed it a lot and had a great time!

Trip to Kasama

I went to Kasama to visit an urban planner at the northern province earlier this month. It was such a wonderful opportunity to see how he worked at his office as a planner from a different country.

On the 1st day, my friends and I took Tazara Railroad from Kapiri Mposhi to Kasama. The train was delayed for a few hours but it was so much fun traveling in a train. It was really shaky somehow but being there reminded me of the time when my family and I were visiting our grandparents by Blue Train (long-distance sleeper train).

When we got to Kasama station after about 12 hours of train ride, we visited his office in a township. I was really impressed to see what he did and how he made some changes at his host organization. It was hard to believe that he has done all those things just in 2 years! I still have a year to go until I leave this country, so his work really made me think of how I should work and what I should focus on from now on.

Also, his coworkers made me feel I was welcomed. This was definitely because he did a great job working with them at the office as well as being good friends with them outside of work. It was overwhelming and heartbreaking for me to see them being sad when they had to say goodbye to him as he was leaving for good. I guess saying goodbye is always hard...

He also took me to Chishimba Falls. It was definitely smaller than the Victoria Falls in Livingstone but I really liked the way that we were able to get so much closer. I was able to feel the water splash coming directly from the falls. It was not as major as the Victoria Falls, so the nature was still untouched and we did not have to deal with too many tourists.

I really enjoyed my time there in Kasama. I would love to go back there sometime soon to see the falls as well as the people there (especially the staff at the planning department)!

Annual review meeting

Board members for our planning authority and us, the secretariats, came to a lodge at the outskirts of Lusaka for our annual review meeting. We discussed about what we have achieved in the year of 2011 and what kind of activities / projects we should focus on this year.

I needed to make a presentation about our use and application of GIS in 2011 and proposed GIS activities in 2012 at the department. There are variety of things that I want to do by using GIS, including GIS training to the staff here, improving our GIS database, collecting and creating necessary shapefiles for our jurisdiction, and so on. As I only have a little longer than a year left here, I should consider which tasks need to be prioritized before starting new projects.

I guess the annual review meeting was a success. There were so many issues that needed to be discussed... Of course I learned quite a bit from the meeting, but, to be honest, I was glad when the two-day long meeting was finally over!

Stakeholder Consultation in Luangwa

I went to Luangwa from August 7 - 12 for stakeholder consultation for the Luangwa IDP. It was my first time being there, so I was a bit nervous before going there.

After I got there, though, I fell in love with the small yet beautiful township. It still contained a lot of nature with beautiful scenery as well as some commercial activities such as tourism and fishing. 

Now I feel so proud to be involved in the development projects for the Luangwa District. I cannot wait to go back there sometime soon :)

Parceling

My colleagues and I are currently working on parceling subdivisions for LS-MFEZ. Since the land use plan as well as the layout plan for the phase 1 development were done by a consulting company, our department are expected to design the subdivisions only for the phase 2 - 4.

I am enjoying the project fully because the subdivisions that we are recently designing would be built in the real world. So far, we are somewhat done with parceling for the phase 2. We should be able to be done with it soon though (hopefully!).

It, however, requires a lot of patience as we have to keep adjusting the parcels little by little. For instance, it took us about 3 working days to finish parceling for the industrial area just in the phase 3. Because of the task, I am more interested in physical planning per se.

The project is supposed to be done sometime after 2030. I hope to see the economic zone in the real world as soon as possible :)

LS-MFEZ

The project that I am currently working on is for the development of the specific area in Lusaka South.
DPPH and other stakeholders are trying to create the economic zone in the area in order to accelerate the development of the surroundings.
As the area is enormous, there are five phases for the development.

What we have to do now is to create the GIS data for the project so that all the stakeholders can share the information and be on the same page for the project.

Today, we managed to finish making the GIS data for the land use plan of lots in all the phases and that of subdivisions in the phase 1.

After this, we will design all the subdivisions and the land use plan in all the phases.
Although it might be a challenging task to design the subdivisions, I am looking forward to completing the project and seeing all the subdivisions in the real life.

A work as a planner

I have finally started working as a planner for one of the departments at the federal government in Zambia this week.
It has been going great as my colleagues there are really nice and seem to be quite serious about their work as planners.
I am enjoying me work there because they treat me as a expert of urban planning and GIS.
Because of their high expectation, though, I feel the work I have to / am expected to do is quite challenging.
So far, I am in charge of three things; help complete the integrated development plans for the two districts in the province, manage the GIS database for the province, and help the planners the work related to the planning permission.
The job here is exactly what I wanted to do since I always wanted to work as a planner for a government in a developing country.
I am looking forward to working for the department for the next two years.