Glenwood City graduate brings farm life to northwestern Zambia

By Cara L. Dempski

DOWNING — It may be hard for those of us living in Wisconsin to believe there are parts of the world where people think milk is not something that comes from an animal.

Such was the case the first time Methodist missionary Paul Webster milked a goat and provided some for a man working at the Mujila Falls Agriculture Center to drink.

“I took a sip of it and then held it out to him to drink,” Webster said. “He drank it, and I saw the lightbulb go on in his mind. ‘It tastes just like milk!’ he said to me. I told him that was what it was, and he said ‘no, milk is that powder missionaries bring us.’”

Webster, a 1973 graduate of Glenwood City High School, has lived in rural northwestern Zambia since 2000, when he and his late wife Roxanne moved there from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they had served as missionaries since 1995.

The land that is now called the Mujila Falls Agriculture Center was presented to the bishop overseeing Webster’s mission work by Chief Kanyama of the Lunga people. The chief informed the bishop he would provide land for the agriculture center if “missionaries like those ones up in Congo” would move to the area.

Webster did not know at the time that Chief Kanyama was referring to him and his wife.

In the years since he and Roxanne moved to the site, the 1,000 hectares (roughly 2,500 acres) of land Kanyama presented to the missionaries has grown from a region of protein starvation and stunted growth in children, to a place where new food crops and animals are feeding the local residents as well as providing income for the center.

Much of it is thanks to a man raised on a farm in western Wisconsin.

Paul Webster

Webster was born in New Richmond, but was raised on a farm near the towns of Forest and Emerald and attended Glenwood City schools.

After graduating in 1973, Webster said he wanted to get as far away from farming as he could.

“I went to UW-Superior, where I studied history and geography, and minored in history of religion,” Webster explained. He was very active in the Methodist church while in college.

His late wife Roxanne, who died in 2004, was a Catholic who grew up in Waukesha. Her education included a minor in Spanish, and Webster said she had always been very interested in going overseas to work with other people.

The duo started out on a Peace Corp mission to Guatemala, where they taught families about smaller animals that can be raised for food. While there, Webster became close to the man who would eventually become the country’s minister of agriculture.

He said it was an excellent learning opportunity for him, and translated well to the three-year contract he and Roxanne signed to work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, then known as Zaire.

“Darkest Africa”

The region where Webster found himself working in 1992 at the start of his mission work in Congo was known as “darkest Africa” by the European powers who divided the continent into seemingly arbitrary pieces at an 1872 meeting in Berlin.

The area received the name because it was largely unknown by European explorers at that time, and there was little to no knowledge about the landscape, the cultures, or the flora and fauna calling the region home.

As explorers were able to reach the newly-formed and claimed countries, they discovered watersheds and continental divides that created many of today’s existing borders.

Chief Kanyama controlled a large portion of land in the far northwest corner of Zambia, and could have given the mission land on any part of it. He opted to present 1,000 hectares that included not just land, but also a river and a waterfall.

The Lunga people living in the area existed mostly as hunter-gatherers, but the local herds had depleted to the point where children were suffering from Kwashiokor, a protein deficiency disease marked by bloated bellies, stick-thin limbs, and stunted physical and mental development.

The group also had the lowest life expectancy of any group in Zambia, and the highest infant mortality rates.

“Children did well while breastfeeding, but when weaned – between the ages of two and six – they would lose weight, their hair would turn red and fall out, and they would get potbellies,” Webster explained.

It was not just the humans suffering, either. The animals meant to provide protein were suffering from the lack of protein too.

One of Webster’s first tasks was to introduce and propagate high-protein foods and animal feeds.

Getting started

“With people, we started focusing on egg production, meat and milk,” Webster explained. “In order to do that, we had to improve the diets of the animals we kept. We focused on soybeans, because they can have 46 percent protein when the oil is extracted.”

Soybeans have become one of the most valuable crops at Mujila Falls, as has corn.

Webster was initially told corn, or maize, would not grow there, but he has had the crop in some fields for nearly 20 years now; moreover, the yield appears to increase each year.

The agriculturalist (his official title) credits the use of integrated farming techniques with the center’s success. People integrate animals producing manure, milk, meat and animal traction to plant larger fields, provide food, and help break up fields and fertilize crops.

A hectare can be plowed in four days using a team of oxen, and can be cultivated in one day, making the work faster.

There are also plants, such as sun hemp, used in an integrated manner to provide necessary soil nutrients. In the case of the sun hemp, the legume forms a symbiotic relationship with the bacteria in the soil which creates nitrogen – an element necessary for healthy corn crops.

Even animals like chickens and pigs form integral parts of the integrated agricultural practices at Mujila Falls. The chicken coops were purposely built close to the garden to make it easier for the manure to be transported to the garden. The manure is placed in bags and then dropped into water barrels and left for approximately one week.

The nutrients leech out of the manure and are used as spray fertilizer for the various vegetables in the gardens.

If a chicken dies, farm workers will boil it and then feed it to the omnivorous pigs, providing a high-protein feed to assist in creating more quality protein food for human consumption when the animals are butchered.

The pigs might also be useful for the future fish ponds. Webster plans to have a dam and canal to form fish ponds in the valley near one of his garden. The water from the storage tower on the property will be used to wash the pig manure from future pig sties, and will flow into the nearby fish ponds, fertilizing the plants fish feed on.

The agriculture center has grown from just a few animals and select crops in the early years to many, many acres of cultivated land and a wide variety of animal herds.

Mujila Falls Agriculture Center

Nowadays, the center milks approximately 10 cows daily, and hopes to soon have a milking parlor of 20 stalls to increase its daily milking to 20 cows. Webster said the hope is for there to be 20 milking cows and 20 dry cows at the center in the future.

Pigs provide a fast-growing source of high-quality protein, and he aims to introduce a new “piggery” with space to butcher and store the animals until the meat is sold.

Families can purchase milk, yogurt, eggs, and meat from the center, which has not only helped children and adults maintain good health and development, but has also increased school attendance and provided something of an incentive for educators to remain in the area to teach.

Prior to the center’s opening, the region’s schools had difficulty keeping teachers, since first the educator’s wives would leave because there was no food, and then the teachers themselves would become discouraged and leave.

Now, the quality of life has improved for everyone in the area, and Webster reported educators often purchase food items from Mujila Falls.

The center has also provided work and agricultural training for many men and women living in the area. Mujila Falls regularly employs anywhere from 15-20 people, but increases its workforce by 20-25 people between school terms when students arrive to work with the crops and animals.

While plowing, planting, cultivating, weeding, and threshing/shelling is now done using machinery, the students work in the fields watering plants or with the animals to help earn school tuition, money for uniforms and books, and funds for their personal needs.

The better diet has led to physical and mental growth, which has in turn led to more children attending school. Working at the agriculture center has led to more students graduating at a younger age.

Some students do not finish high school until age 28 because families are not able to afford the tuition for regular attendance. Sylvester Santimu, whose uncle works at the center and who is a student at a nearby high school, will graduate in 2018 at the age of 22.

After the presentation, which closed with a worship song shared first in English and then in Swahili, Santimu said it is the work and better food that has helped him get as far as he has in school. He also professed an eagerness to see the St. Croix County Fair later that day.

Webster told the Lunga in 2000 when he first arrived that they would have to work together for the center to be successful.

“The key word is to work together,” he said in a speech to them. “I cannot bring development. I cannot do your work. I cannot feed your children. Only each of you can do that. God has provided everything you need. We have rich soil here, we have many trees, we have running water, and abundant rain. The things that are lacking are organization, cooperation, and faith.”

By assisting the people both spiritually and as individuals, Webster appears to have been successful in his mission.