Overnight Music from Last Post

Hey all,

The music I said I posted last time is now actually online. Remember to email me if you want the link but don't have access now. I said that I had "already uploaded it" in the last post under the completely groundless assumption that the infrastructure would cooperate. Lesson learned.

~Mike

From Ponderings and Preaching to Poems and Prayers

Hey all,

Sorry once again for the delay in having posted. Technology has been difficult to deal with of late, and I spent 2 of the last 3 weekends in Senga Bay doing EWB retreats. The weekend before last was the OVS retreat where I got a chance to see everyone who’s working in Zambia and Malawi. It was really refreshing and, as always, I didn’t want it to end. It did end, but then this weekend I got a chance to hang out with all 13 EWB Junior Fellows working in Zambia and Malawi. It was really awesome to see all these people and learn about what they’re thinking. I am back at work tomorrow, and I must admit that I’d rather be in Senga Bay with my people.

Three stories.

Imagine this: Lots of leaders doing the right things to drive the right activities for the achievement of the right outcomes. And imagine the opposite.

Leadership has been on my mind like crazy the last few months. Not just because I work on it every single day (and most nights and weekends) through my leadership development facilitation work at Freshwater, no, but because I’m starting to realize how much needs to happen in Malawi for strong leaders to start emerging.

I was just checking out the awesome blog from a friend of mine and fellow EWBer Florin Gheorghe about a social enterprise initiative that is some kind of awesome. www.businessforbetter.com. I was reflecting on whether something like this could work in Malawi. I’m sure it could with a few tweaks, so what’s standing in the way? Money is a factor, as it always is. Dispensable capital up for investment and spending in Malawi is pretty scarce, and high interest rates don’t help that. But, despite what many development professionals seem to think (even if not overtly), money isn’t everything.

I am working on a hypothesis right now about the state of leadership and professional development in Malawi. Basically, I see that “capacity development” in the sector (what I do) is trying to have impact on people and organizations in ways in which, in many (or most) cases, the people of the organizations are simply not interested. If you look at what I’ve been doing at Freshwater, you see that I am basically trying to help people realize for themselves what they have to do to help themselves and their organization. But that is such amazingly hard work because some people don’t highly value the types of changes I am trying to affect, or at least they didn’t when I arrived. I had to work my ass off on relationship building and learning for months before we could have these kinds of conversations.

I think it comes down to professional development and incentives for change, really. Should I be trying to find creative ways of getting through to people to help them change if they don’t want to take command of that process for themselves? Is capacity development just spinning those same wheels at a macro scale in development? Maybe. It just might be that this is what’s happening.

So many of the barriers to the type of effective capacity development I’ve been bleeding and sweating to achieve at Freshwater would be so much easier to deal with if:

1. People had experience outside of the organization
2. People genuinely valued learning to improve and took personal responsibility for that
3. There was a “burning platform” à improve your organization or go bankrupt
4. The education system had strong and actionable instilled a spirit of self-directed learning and critical questioning
5. The leadership of the organization took responsibility for strategizing as to how to deal with any of 1 through 4 above.

Now, let’s imagine that grown up office workers had gained work experience in the private sector on their way to working in the NGO (like the way people work at Subway in high school so they at least have some professional sense when they graduate from school). Let’s also imagine that the education system had put the onus on people to direct their learning, so when they don’t know something, their default mental model is closer to “let’s figure it out” and not “someone should have taught me.” Finally, let’s imagine that the development sector demanded leaders who were asking critical questions and looking at different perspectives, and was not driven by outputs, numbers, and did not just reward whoever talks the loudest.

If this was the situation, organizational capacity development wouldn’t be needed, at least not in its current form. Of course everything I described above constitutes a very tall order that is easier said than done. The point that I’m making is not that this is easy, or even that the development system, the way it is current structured, is the right actor to make this happen. My point is that capacity development, while important, amounts basically to putting new bricks in a wall that might be sinking into the ocean anyway. That means we have to be looking at the whole wall, not just our brick in it. Here’s one depiction of the wall, not comprehensive nor peer reviewed:

*This question, “what’s so bad about poverty anyway?”, is another discussion. Basically where I’m coming from with that is that people’s rights to choose for themselves how they want to do things or convince others in their country to do things is, perhaps, inviolable. Even if you talk about the “opportunity gap”, meaning that people have those rights but no opportunities to exercise them, you’re still left with the problem of responsibility for defining success. If a woman in a village in Malawi aspires to be a stronger servant of God, or a fisherman in Senga Bay feels a sense of normalcy when thinking about his children who have died of diarrhea but still chooses not to dig a latrine for his family, whose right should it be to change what they think and feel about their world?

Let’s get back to the issue I started with, some hypotheses about leadership in Malawi. I am working on a few different ones but here’s basically what I’m thinking about:

1. In the agenda for Malawi’s development, there is a gap in sophistication and rigor being applied to thoughts on leadership, personal skills development, and profession development in the workforce. Basically we’re not thinking hard enough about the basic capacities and motivations of people coming into the highly productive phases of their lives, say in the age range of 15 to 60 years or so.

2. There are many great leaders in Malawi who are committed to their country’s development and work their asses off for it, but their leadership influence is not sufficiently positively affecting Malawi’s development agenda. There are systemic constraints that are preventing driven people from having success, and meanwhile many people who are in the leadership positions influencing development organizations are just not doing good enough work.

Remember my friend Odala? The other day I went back to Machinjiri to meet up with him. There was a memorial ceremony for the brothers, sister, nieces and nephews he lost, which I wrote about previously. They were buried a few years back, so now that the ground has settled it was time to do the unveiling ceremony for the tombstones. This took the whole day, and it gave me a good chance to sit down with Odala and chat about stuff.

As it turns out, we have a common interest: local Malawian leadership. I learned a while back that he is actually the Chairman of the South Lunzu Post Test Club, the HIV/AIDS awareness/ action organization he has been involved with for 4 years. As we were sitting in the grass at the side of the village manda (graveyard) in the middle of the bushes and trees, the masons working away on the tombstones at our feet, we were talking about our respective work. I told him about the challenges and successes at Freshwater. We talked about the apparent gaps between what people seem to want and how much they are willing to change in order to achieve that. And we talked about leadership.

“You know Mike,” began Odala, “The big problem in Malawi is that no leaders want to take in everything.”

“Take in everything?” I probed. “What do you mean by that?”

Odala explained, “The leaders only want to be the ones who know things. They don’t listen to anybody.”

I was sort of floored by this. We got a bit deeper and found that we had some fairly aligned ideas about what values should guide an effective leader. Odala offered up some ideas of his own volition that were very similar to my own. This was surprising I must admit, though I’m not sure why. I think the issue is that, at the glancing level, the leadership in the Malawian development sector (by which I mean NGOs and government, which is what I’ve seen) is not where it needs to be, not even close in my opinion. But how do you define “where it needs to be?” Attempting to define that forces you to make an assumption that a certain system or approach (development NGOs and the current way the government functions) is what is appropriate for Malawian society to achieve its goals.

On the other side of things, there are MANY people in Malawi who want to see it develop from within and want to be a part of leading that process, even within the current institutional framework (a country with a bunch of organizations trying to convince its people to do certain things differently). In addition, there are many people in Malawi who are ready and willing to do things with new and progressive leadership paradigms. People like Odala and countless others whom we’ve met over here but who always seem to have a range of mountains to climb just to have an opportunity to really contribute.

So there you go. Let’s assume that the hypothesis is correct that bad leadership (“good/bad” being qualified as above) is hindering Malawi’s development, and that “Malawi’s development” as it has been defined by the system is a good idea in the first place. Let’s further assume that, if these “sleeper leaders”, these strong and dedicated people who do exist in Malawi, were to start influencing the sector more, things would change for the better. Then you are left with the question: what the hell is stopping them? Why is “bad” leadership attractive in the system and rewarded with more responsibility? Is there some massive ceiling stopping the champions, or does there simply not (yet?) exist a critical mass of them?

I don’t know, but over the next year and a half I hope to start figuring it out.

Jammin’ with Jesus until the wee hours…

A couple of Fridays ago I had another overnight prayer with the family. This time we left Chileka and found ourselves closer to town in Chirimba. The prayer was scheduled a good week in advance and Aphiri made damn sure I was going to be there. I wanted to be there, too, partly because these overnight prayers are awesome, partly because he’d borrowed my guitar 2 months ago and I really wanted to get it back…

I headed home after work and ran into Chinsisi, who was so adamant that we were late that he wouldn’t let me go home to change, bathe, or drop off my stuff. Off we went. We rolled up around 7 PM at Aphiri’s place, which was a minibus ride and a pretty hefty village walk away. I entered his dirt floored home and greeted his wife and the 5 other people, who are probably relatives, who were there. And there it was: my guitar! Finally I had it back!

I strummed a chord. OUCH! It was as if it had been tuned by a deaf person who was about to play for a crowd of dogs whom he was trying to piss off. I’ve been playing guitar for a number of years now and I’d never seen this tuning – not on key (any key), not consistent string to string, and about 100 Hz lower than it should be. I figure someone just played with the strings and didn’t care that the guitar sounded horrible.

Half an hour with my ear to the sound hole and my fingers on the machine heads later, I had retuned and we were back in business! I started practicing, which I hadn’t done in a while, when Aphiri’s friend decided he wanted to play. I gave it back to him and the first thing he did was (you guessed it), completely detuned the guitar again! He started playing it, out of tune of course, but was using a fingering that allowed him to make something not entirely discordant out of the top 3 strings. I’m still not sure what he was doing, but I think part of the reason he was tuning it so low was because it makes the strings softer (there’s more tension in the strings when you tune it high).

I sighed and we went outside to start the prayer. It was pretty cold that night being the end of May and all. Things started pretty standard. Aphiri stood up and began with the intros. This overnight had a pretty good turnout: I counted 35 people. Bamboo mats on the ground and a few chairs (women and girls on the ground, men in the chairs, yep), and a cute little village drum were all we needed to get started.

Aphiri introduced me early. Here it is approximately:

“Ndipo, mnzathu Aphiri abweranso. Amakondwanso mau wamalungu, ndipo aimba guitare, eti Aphiri?”

“Eee”

“And, our friend Aphiri”, that’s me, remember, “has also come. He also loves the word of God, and he’s going to play the guitar for us, right Aphiri?”

“Yep”

This just underscored my fear that Aphiri thinks I am converting to Christianity, despite my increasingly frequent reminders that I am really not. I guess I could just refuse to go to events like this, but I haven’t. They’re fun, but I’m not sure that’s the only reason I don’t want to refuse.

We continued. It was dark by this point, not much of a moon to speak of. It was clear night, too, so you could see the stars in all their Malawian glory. The fuzzy splotch of the milky way ran neatly through the part of the sky visible between the house and the trees on the other side of the yard. It struck me that those were the same zillion stars that people back home in Canada would be looking at in about 9 hours.

“Atate mudzina la Jesu Chirstu, tipemphere kuti mutipange mphamvu… ”

“Our heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus Christ we pray for you to give us strength…”

Aphiri didn’t waste too much time once everyone was ready to go. He launched straight into the big time loud yelling prayer that I’ve come to know so well at home. We went for about 5 minutes on this (relatively short), then it was time to go into sermons. Lots and lots of sermons. Aphiri started, and his stint was a good half hour. The Malawian call and answer approach to sermons (and lots of other leadership contexts, not surprisingly because people learn this stuff from childhood) is for the preacher to say what’s on his mind and in his heart, let to let the crowd finish his sentences. For example, he might say something like:

“Ndipo, timakhulupirira malungu kukachotsa ndani?”

“Satana!”

“And, we trust in God that he will remove whom?

“Satan!”

The call and answer is usually more complex than that and I often don’t understand the responses, but that’s the way it goes over here.

We did that for a few hours, rotating sermons. There were a total of 3 abusas (preachers) there, which is a good number. Sermons went and people listened and contributed, and everyone was loving it.

After a couple of hours came the time I had been looking forward to. The music. Aphiri asked one of the women to start us off, and she did. It was an upbeat number with some pretty precise vocal rhythms and a lot of soul. Standard Malawian style:

“Ayenda yenda, ponse, ponse”

“Adzungulira, ponse, ponse”

“Afuna funa, ponse, ponse”

“Sadzapezekanso!”

“They walked, walked, all around”
“They searched, searched, all around”

“The wanted, wanted, all around”

“They won’t find what they’re looking for!”

The best part of the music, apart from the big dance party/ jam at the end, was the quartet of 4 women who had choreographed about a half hour set with dancing and singing.

They were singing about Jesus. I talked with my family later on about the song. Turns out it’s about people who search for Jesus in all the wrong places. According to the song he’s not hiding in the field, or in the bar, or at work. He’s in your heart, that’s the message. I just like the song.

After all three abusas had their chance to say their bit, which took hours and hours, it was time for the real party to begin. Picture this: 35 Malawians singing a continuous string of songs, changes queued by either the abusas or anyone else who came up with an idea, for literally hours. My role was to play accompanying guitar. I actually managed to get a recording of this!

Check out the sounds of the village. I've uploaded a zip file on my Box.net folder online, which many of you have been invited to and already have access. If you'd like to hear the recordings of the songs, just let me know and I'll send you the link. The file is called "Overnight Sounds.zip"

Descriptions of the songs:

Song 1 Overnight.mp3:

This one is just a song, I start wailing the guitar at 00:31. Note how I totally screw up the chords and rhythm for the first 15 seconds before finding the groove. That’s the way it goes, I just try to listen and figure it out. At 2:10 they transition gracefully into a totally different song. Kind of amazing:

Song 2 Overnight with Prayer.mp3

This next one is another song, but this one has loud crazy prayer tacked on the end. That kind of prayer is what they do at my house each and every night. I removed about 5 minutes from the first part of the song, and, no exaggeration, I removed 8 minutes of solid prayer from the prayer part after the song! The prayer starts at 4:40, and goes until the end 5:15. Doing the math on that, it means they were doing the loud crazy prayer for 10 minutes solid. I’ve heard longer.

Prayer Overnight.mp3:

Here’s another look at the prayer. Notice the low, gravely voice one of the abusas who is praying in tongues for part of it.

Song 3 Quartet.mp3:

Here’s what was, in my opinion, the highlight of the night. This is a recording of the quartet I mentioned, which included Aphiri’s wife:

Song 4 LOUD.mp3:

Finally, here’s a long recording of some songs and guitar playing.

Hope you enjoyed it.

At home: “Thanks for the words of encouragement, NOT. I guess I’ll just write a

poem.”

Here’s a funny little tidbit about my home life. I have been getting up early these days to go running in the morning. I have decided that, even though I am succeeding at exercising each day in the privacy of my room before I go to bed (pushups and situps), with the amazingly high carb, high oil, and usually high sugar diet you have in Malawi, it’s just not cutting it. So I need to get more cardio, especially because my aspirations of playing soccer in Malawi seem not to have materialized. So these days I have been getting up early and running before I go to work. I am not much of a morning person and I start work at 7:30, but I’ve resolved to get into this habit anyway so I can stay healthy. Back home I’d run in the evenings sometimes, but that doesn’t really fly here after dark.

The reason it took me so long to start this up is simply because I’m not comfortable running in Chileka. All the attention is overwhelming enough just walking to and from work in the village (even after 8 months), so an azungu running in shorts is even weirder. Melissa Lefas, the totally awesome Junior Fellow Support Staff who is working with this year’s JFs, advised me that “you just need to get over yourself.” It was good advice, because really azungus are so weird anyway to people here that running is not that much more of a stretch.

After I got home from my run this morning, I was asked by my host mother at home, Evelynne, where I was.

Me: “Ndathamanga”

Evelynne: “Bwa?”

Me: “Chikfukwa sindikufuna kunenepa.”

Evelynne: “Munanenepa kale.”

Me: “Eee, zikomo. Ndikudziwa kale. Ndikufuna kusintha. Kukathamanga ndi bwinobwino kwambiri chifukwa cha moyo”

Evelynne: “Chabwino. Ndiwo bwa?”

Translation:

Me: “I was running”

Evelynne: “Why?”

Me: “Because I don’t want to get fat”

Evelynne: “You are already fat. “

Me: “Yes, thank you, I know that. I’m trying to change that. Running is really good for your health.” (But inside my head: a mixture of laughter and a sarcastic “thanks for that, that’s really useful”, but mostly laughter)

Evelynne: “OK, fine. What about money for food?”

Ah, Malawi.

This kind of interaction is not malicious by any stretch, it’s just a reflection of how totally different people’s models of human relationships are in Malawi from what I grew up with. I saw the same thing at the overnight prayer, and see it everyday at work and with everything I do. Stuff like this is what prompted me to write the following poem (it’s actually a song, but in blog form this is what you get). This is the product of the large amount of very lonely time I have here that can’t be uses for work or blogging due to infrastructural challenges. I’m glad I can

share it with you:

Where I live

Dusty roads paved with nothing better,

Than footprints of children who have never

Learned how not to smile

They’re staring at me while,

I am waiting,

To make sense of this land,

But I’m not sure I can,

Though this is where I live

This is where I live,

This is where I try,

And where I laugh and cry,

This is where I’ll fail,

And where I will succeed,

This is where I know,

It’s the same air we all breathe,

Though that’s hard to believe…

Path home lined with fireflies,

Fields that shine in silver moonlight,

And drums that keep the pace,

For people and their faith,

And they’re praying,

For things I already have,

What do you with that?

When this is where you live,

This is where I live,

In laughter and in smiles

I’ll be here for a while

This is where I live

In sickness and in pain

Here’s where I call home,

In dry times and in rain

When crazy and when sane…

A woman claps and everyone is singing,

It fills the air with harmony and rhythm,

Songs of love and truth,

And each and every ivory tooth

Is shining,

Their song soars like a bird,

And they all know the words,

‘Cause this is where they live

And this is where I live,

This is where they try,

And where they laugh and cry,

This is where they’ll fail,

And where they will succeed,

This is where I know,

It’s the same air we all breathe,

Though that’s hard to believe…

Thanks for reading.

~Mike