Day 5 Getting Down to Work

Today I  met with my host client SEMOC (Seed of Mozambique). SEMOC is engaged in a variety of seed buying, cleaning, treating, repackaging, and selling activities. They import vegetable seeds from Holland for direct resale through local agents. They import potato seed from South Africa and have a contract with Mozambican government for a seed increase project which is designed to eventually make themselves self reliant in potato seed and dispense with imports. They have a storage contract to store barley for a local brewing company which imports the barley from Zimbabwe. They buy corn, barely, and rice seed from local producers. In turn they clean, treat and repackage this seed for sale. They also deal in minor amounts of supplies such as fertilizer. All in all it is not much unlike seed companies in the US. They have field men who advise local farmers, do demonstration plots and put on field days. Only they ride motorcycles, not pickups.

My assignment with this company is to help them improve there inventory control program. As you can imagine, with all these activities it can be challenge to keep track of it all. We started out they day with a plant tour and explanation of the processes. I was introduced to the administrative staff. Later we sat down and started to review their manual bookkeeping procedures. They do have a computerized system which we will review tomorrow. At the moment, the inventory control program seems to be a mixture of papers, excel spreadsheets and a computer system.

I do not have any pictures to load for you today. Taking pictures of people, places, and things in a foreign country can be dicey. Its import to get permission and especially not offend anyone. But I will get some more soon as I get accustom to my new location. Mozambique is a very friendly relaxed place to be. I do not see the military or police presence that I have experienced in other countries. Most of the police I do see are engaged in traffic control. The people here are very friendly, polite and respectful. A lot of the people I have come into contact with speak English. Portuguese is the official language. Mozambique is a former Portuguese Colony. When I speak with them, they want to know what happened with Arnold Schwarzenegger and his house keeper. They know more about the story than I do.

There are a few other foreigners about and staying in my hotel. Most are connected with NGOs. You see them setting out everyday to work with Mozambique on health care and education. Mozambique Is a poor country and there is a lot of organizations from other countries working here. There are not many tourists here. Tourist come here mainly to visit the Gorongosa National Park. (see link on left panel). This is the famous 4,000 square kilometer wildlife park that was featured on 60 minutes. I found out today that I am located less than three hours from the park. Take time to play the video on their website.

I finished of the day with a steak and potato dinner at a local restaurant. The steak being similar to our carne asada. It was tasty and went down well with the local beer.