Story of nurse-turned Chinese farmer in Zambia
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-10-23 16:47 LUSAKA - An hour from Zambia's capital Lusaka
towards the end of a 30-km highway and an 18-km rugged untarred road, Johnken
Farm stands out like an oasis amongst the wilderness of Africa.
This farm, as wild as any other surrounding unclaimed land 12 years ago,
has now become a flagship and a token of the Chinese-Zambian cooperation in
agriculture.
Eggs produced in Johnken Farm are sent to Lusaka and other cities every day,
snatching 10 percent of the whole market of Zambia.
Together with its 1,000 head of cattle and over 2,000 pigs, the
3,500-hectare farm is the biggest one among a dozen of Chinese-owned farms in Zambia.
Behind the success of Johnken is the middle-aged Chinese woman, Li Li, 43,
who came to Zambia to support her husband, Wang Chi, former managing director of
the farm, but ended to shoulder the task by herself after Wang passed away one
and a half years ago.
The early days with the farm was a struggle of the couple against harsh
wilderness, bad infrastructure and inexperience.
Wang used to be a university lecturer in Beijing before he arrived in Zambia
with his African dream. His wife, Li, gave up her nurse career in a famous
hospital in the Chinese capital of Beijing and followed Wang here.
They had to begin their work with cutting down bushes and grass along with
100-plus local employees to turn the primitive area into cultivable farmland.
Electricity was then connected to the farm and boreholes were drilled for
irrigation.
"We had to start from scratch by ourselves," Li reminisced in her sitting
room decorated with a verity of African wooden artwork and a shelf of agronomic
books.
They came to the farm in 1994 with 200 chickens. As
there was no henhouse at that time, they had to share their house with the
chickens.
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