Tree Finding

Like any over-achieving homeowner, as soon as I moved into our mud-brick hut with grass-thatched roof, I had ideas for home improvement. Most of it revolved around making a better use of the space for storing things. But we also had a dream of some satellite structures around the house, like drying racks, solar dryers, fences, and gates. For any home improvement on a house far from a big town like Lusaka or Solwezi, the search for materials does not start in a store but a walk into the bush behind our house. No permits required. Just grab an axe and maybe a knife, and look for what you need. On the Saturday before Christmas I found myself working with two brothers in the village to gather materials for a fence around our garden. Goats keep any gardener in our area in need of a fence to keep seedlings and starters from getting eaten before you can say "I can't wait to make pesto!" So the three of us took a walk into the bush one sunny afternoon to find the perfect trees to make the posts that would be sunk into the ground and the rails that would connect each post, followed by dry grass to tie to the rails, the sum of which make a sturdy fence. Finding the right tree required the same kind of patience and skill that I have learned in my Christmas tree hunting in Washington State. And the idea that I was out in the bush looking for the "perfect tree" at about the same time as my neighbors in Yakima brought fond memories of fluffy snow, hot chocolate, and the smell of a freshly cut evergreen tree. But perfection in a tree for a fence is a little different than the perfection in a tree for a christmas ornament. There are some similaries: it should be the right height and girth for example. Not too short or the goats can jump over, not to thin or else the goats will push it over, and not too tall or thick or it will be too heavy to carry a bundle of them back to the garden area. For both poles and rails, we were looking for trees that were not going to be munched by termites in a matter of months. And the brothers I was working with knew exactly what to look for. When I saw a nice straight tree of about the right height and thickness I would ask "How about this one?" The brothers would look at each other like I just asked them to use a fork to eat nshima, and politely say "Ah, Mr. Scott, that one is not strong. The termites will eat that one very fast." So we continue along looking for the strong trees that these brothers have been looking for ever since they were little kids to make everything from fences, roofs, walls, wheelbarrows, cages, stools, hoes, axes, slingshots, and just about everything else. And the list of names of trees and their best purpose is long. Some trees are used for their strength, some for their flexibility, some for their bark, some for their termite resistance. Some have multiple qualities. As I planned to build something out of wood in the U.S.A. I saw only soft woods or hard woods, and the remainder of my vague qualifications for selecting wood was how it would look. But in the bush, the type of wood is important and to use the improper type for a particular thing is like using thumb tacks to install dry wall. So I will continue to learn how to build stuff in the bush with "appropriate technology", using the wisdom of a backwoods dendrologists each time.