Life in Malawi

The responsibility of the intervener - understand how you change what you fund!

2011-12-04T02:41:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

It's been about 2 years since I updated this! EWB's current "perspectives challenge", a fundraising and outreach campaign, prompted me to put some updated thinking on here.

I've learned a lot in the past couple of years, trying to move past thinking about the "what" and more about the "how". It's true that the whole system is important if you want water and sanitation solutions to be sustainable, but what can actually be done about it?

My updated perspective is that we need to understand the contexts in which water and sanitation challenges persist as complex systems take responsibility for an integrated way of thinking - take responsibility for understanding the problems from the perpsectives of those who are have to worry about the issues after the end of a project or program or outside the scope of one particular intervention. The local government staff, private operators, central government authorities, and most of all communities are the ones who actually have to live with all the infrastructure, planning documents, new organizational structures that result from the aid sector's inputs, and like it or not, we are making more work for them every time we intervene!

When you are the African Development Bank or the World Bank, who for example are bringing $48,000,000 and $170,000,000 into the Malawian water and sanitiation sector respectively in the next few years, you have to recognize that these numbers represent the majority of the resources in that sector. The money, ideas and people an intervener brings into a system change that system for better or worse the same way a private company would respond if two of their 50 clients accounted for 70% of their revenues. The difference with state in a developing country is that they are also expected to be accountable to the central government, who controls thier careers, all the other donors, who are still bringing in a lot of resources, the people via democratic structures, and literally hundreds of NGOs implementing one-off projects around the country. A private company can ditch the revenue sources not worth its time and focus on the two big contracts, but a local government has to do it all.

The effect is a highly fragmented system that confuses and ask too much of local authorities who are ultimatley responsible for change. Consider post-Taliban Afghanistan. After the Taliban was removed from direct administrative control and a transitional authority was established, the Minister of Finance found himself spending 60% of his time coordinating his government's efforts with the dozens of donor agencies and NGOs who had rushed in to provide assistance and fill gaps in services, making it impossible for his to focus on creating an effective financing strategy with medium or long-term goals. From the user's perspective, a fragmented system is costly in a way an intevening donor or NGO can barely attempt to understand**.

So what's the answer? It's not easy, that's for sure, but there's still a lot we can do. Consider the government of Uganda, who sucessfully created an overal basket fund into which all donors must put their funds so that the country can move forward with their own strategy instead of trying despartely to manage dozens of strategies at once. That solution comes with its own problems, and the success of that strategy depended on the strenght of the state to enforce the strucutre, but it's a step in the right direction. In countries where the state remains weak, the onus is on the donors to undertake integrated thinking to determine how thier resources are affecting the effectiveness of the state, the local people, and local organizations who are ultimately responsible. Want to do a water project? Coordinate and plan with local government before you start. Want to fund a nation-wide sanitation program? Consider budget support for local government instead of implementing through dozens of NGOs with different strategies (you can always earmark it)!

Thanks for reading!

**Thanks to Clare Lockhart and Ashraf Ghani for their great book, Fixing Failed States, from which I pulled these figures.

Critters 2: The Return

2009-09-25T02:54:00.000-07:00

Even from beyond the grave, they can still get to you. Check out what got to me last night.

Playing a little game at Megan's place in Blantyre.

Looks like the competition is stiffer than I thought.

Post game analysis. Another job well done!

And here's what got to me in Thyolo last week. Even with a missing leg, a spider this big is scary as hell. This is a local resident of the guesthouse in Thyolo where I was staying. Slowly creeping movements, vicious fangs, and with menacing red streaks on its 7 remaining legs…

Up close and personal.

Don't ask me why I brought my "Save-on-More" card to Malawi, but it came it handy to show the size of this thing.

Watch as I set my camera for a close up video of the spider. I must admit, he gets the better of me...

At least there are no crocodiles where I live.

~Mike

Justice, Ignorance, and Action – Knowing which fight is whose

2009-09-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Justice is contextual, right? So what we can define as just and unjust must depend on a number of factors – what’s just for one person may be unjust for another. Right or wrong? I’m really asking because I’m not sure. Maybe the contextually-weighted injustice factor is…

InjusticeP = (What ought to beP – What isP) X (Right to Take Action) / (Ignorance)

The subscript P’s stand for “perceived”. I have been told before that I over analyze things. I then spent two weeks developing my theory that the people who tell me that are subconsciously taking an easy opportunity to vent repressed childhood angst through passive-aggressive yet constructive feedback. Either that or I actually over analyze things. ;)

I have been thinking a lot about ignorance and action, and under what circumstances action in the face of acknowledged ignorance can be considered responsible. I’ve been reflecting on this even since I got involved with development and have had plenty of opportunity to explore it since living here. Any ideas you might have are more than welcome.

In EWB we talk about the concept of “Dorothy”. Dorothy is a concept we use in EWB to give a face and a name to the people around the world who live in poverty. When I worked with my EWB chapter at UBC, I found it to be a useful metaphor for activities in EWB because it works as a vehicle for discussion – “how will this affect Dorothy?”, “how would Dorothy look at this situation?”, and so on.

The EWB overseas team is writing weekly emails to each other these days to talk about our “Dorothies”. I struggled a bit to come up with what to say because of this metaphor throws me through a bit of a loop these days. Below is an email I recently sent to the EWB people about Dorothy:

“For a few years, Dorothy has been for me an archetype that I found quite useful and even motivating. Dorothy was a face and a name of a person whom I could imagine - she lacked opportunity, she may have lost one or more children, she spent much of her day carrying unsafe water, the list goes on and on. Dorothy provided for me a language with which to make sense of my emotional reaction to what I perceived as one of the world's biggest injustices - continued extreme poverty despite the efforts of a system that claims to be trying to end it. When I thought about a kid, any kid, who doesn't see his or her 5th birthday because of god damn diarrhea, that gave me all the fuel I needed to stay up until 2 AM on a Friday doing important work for my chapter.

Things feel a little different for me now. I always that knew my understanding of how this injustice played out in real life was over romanticized, under developed, and largely based on my own egoic drive to "make a better world", but I didn't know precisely how. I think a person's sense of justice and how it makes them him or her feel is a function of 3 things - the facts of the situation, the control you feel you have over it, and the right or responsibility you feel you have to intervene. Living here and seeing for myself what development looks like, I see that Malawi is as Malawi is, and I'm not always sure I have the right or the responsibility to make it any different. And that makes it hard for me to feel the same pang of injustice from which I have drawn so much strength over the years.

This has left a bit of a hole in my emotional vernacular - I'm no longer sure how to make sense of what I see even if, a year ago, I thought I could. Quite simply, I don't always know how to feel about anything, Dorothy and Malawi included, and for someone like me that is awfully scary. It's been a personal project of mine for some time to figure out how to fill that hole.

Who is Dorothy? I don't really know. I guess Dorothy is just a name to which we add a bunch of baggage about a certain person's living situation, a certain ‘reality’. With that idea in mind, I can say that maybe I never really cared about Dorothy, rather I cared about the injustice I perceived to be causing the difficulties of said reality. And while the actual concept of Dorothy is getting harder and harder for me to reconcile emotionally and intellectually, at least I can still confidently say that there was injustice in the young boy's funeral I went to in February, and in the birth of the many children Chileka who immediately become HIV positive because their positive mothers couldn't get to a proper clinic to deliver them safely, and even in the choice that someone makes to spend their 70 MWK on Chibuku instead of food for their family. These situations are crazy and unjust one way or another, I'm sure of it - that's why it's hurting me to even write this right now and why my time in Malawi hasn't been without its share of tears. But still, my responsibility, my right to take any responsibility, how and whether to do something that I hope beyond hope is not just making it worse, how to intervene - none of these things are clear to me.

That makes taking action difficult - all you can do is rely on your gut to tell you if you are doing the right thing. And right now my gut is whispering to me about my friend Odala. Odala Banda is my friend from Chileka. He is a strong and intelligent man with a good head and a good heart. He is the voluntary Chairman of the South Lunzu Post Test Club, an AIDS awareness CSO. He does this because he has resolved to spend the rest of his life doing as much as possible to end AIDS in Malawi. He does that because he's lost 3 siblings to AIDS (not to mention 5 nieces and nephews to other diseases). He is working hard and slowly making progress, but he knows it's not enough. Still, he smiles and thanks God for what he has every day. Thinking about Odala, I am reminded of the article Graham Lettner sent out written by JK Rowling, in which she says:

‘Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.’ - JK Rowling

And I realize that I can't actually imagine Odala's situation. Try as I might I can not put myself in his shoes, nor the shoes of any of the people for whom Malawi is their whole world, not just a 2 year project or a distant exercise to keep azungus emotionally fulfilled and intellectually stimulated. If I can't really imagine his situation or anyone else's, then I can't imagine what choices I would make in the same situation. That means that the aforementioned hole in my emotional processes, my inability to know for sure how to feel, this is my own problem and mine alone - and it doesn't matter a damn bit what I would do in his situation.

I said before that the pang of injustice I have been milking for the last few years is harder to find these days. But that doesn't mean it's gone, because if it was I don't think I would be extending. Perhaps Odala is my Dorothy after all, and even if I'm not sure whether I'm still ‘Doin' it for Dorothy’, I feel just fine ‘Doin' it for Odala.’”

This is where my head is at right now. When I sent that, I got a reply from a colleague of mine reminding me of what was written by Eric Dudley for an EWB conference a while back. I’ve quoted Dudley in this blog before – remember back in November when I asked the question “who is this guy and what’s his angle?” The concept of “Recognized Authorities” used in that post was Dudley’s, from his book “The Critical Villager”. Here’s an excerpt from his stuff for the conference:

“Socrates taught us to recognise our own ignorance. It is about time that we got used to it. The only thing of which we can be certain is that we can be certain of nothing. History is a continuous record of the ways in which that lesson has been forgotten. We know that many of the problems that we face today are of our own making, problems resulting, more often than not, from our own and our forbears’ genuine good intentions.

It is an understatement to say that the process of development is complex. Development encompasses all human activity and the environment as well. In our own lives, both individually and in society, we make decisions which have unintended consequences. This is because we do not fully understand our own situation, and never will. It is hardly surprising that when we start to intervene in the lives of others we make mistakes.

This is our dilemma. Progress is not achieved by those who wring their hands with worried uncertainty and yet we have every reason to believe that we should be uncertain. The greatest leaders, whether in politics, the military, business, or science, are those who manage the paradox of confident action tempered by profound doubt. While acting boldly, they keep a part of their mind alert to the possibility that they have got it wrong and that a change of direction is required. Highlighting our ignorance is not a counsel of despair or impotent inaction. The recognition of ignorance is another way of saying that we should recognize our assumptions and question them. After all, it was Socrates who laid the foundations for the whole edifice of western thought. The relentless questioning of our assumptions is the characteristic that has been the engine of our progress.

At a practical level we cannot doubt and question all of our assumptions about everything – that way leads to madness. But, in any project, we should try to make explicit the key assumptions that define the context, the problem and our proposed solution.”

Dudley basically argues that we need to change our minds of action in the face of undeniable ignorance if we are going to avoid our worst fears:

The Approach:

Change our minds.

Traditional processes of planning are predicated on the assumption that we know what we are doing; we identify a problem, we state an objective and then identify the resources and a series of actions which, when executed, will result in the achievement of that objective. This is the mechanistic process underlying industrial production. In the context of development projects such certainty is a dangerous fiction. If we are to have any hope of success we require an approach of constructive humility. Such an approach will need to include three characteristics:

· QUESTION ASSUMPTIONS

o Recognize our own ignorance.

Socrates taught us to… [above]

· PROJECTS AS HYPOTHESES

o Design projects as testable hypotheses:

…the implicit assumption that development projects can be treated as industrial delivery mechanisms is profoundly flawed. Development projects should be regarded more like scientific experiments. A project, like an experiment, embodies an hypothesis…

· EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED

o Learn from unexpected consequences, in particular failure.

… In a sanitation project in Pakistan a workshop was established to make pour-flush latrine bowls which could be sold at a subsidized rate to householders. The project evaluations reported on how many thousands of bowls had been produced and sold. The indicators spoke of success.

The report did not say how many latrine bowls had been bought but not installed nor how many were installed but were reserved for the use only of guests. Neither did the report tell how the pour-flush latrines in use had drastically increased the work of women who carried the water from distant sources.

It is clear that many development projects fail. The reasons for their failure usually relate to a failure of understanding either of the context of the project or the processes by which the project has been implemented. In either case, the mistake is potentially a vital piece of knowledge which can point to future lines of enquiry and changes of policy. As long as funding depends on perceived success, the understanding of failure . the very information which can provide the greatest insights will be suppressed…

Dudley goes on to define “the problem” as “understanding change”, and “the solution” as “change-like aid”. This is good stuff but I won’t quote it here because it’s not quite on point. Though these quotes are not from “The Critical Villager”, I highly recommend reading this if you are all interested in development. The original publication from which these quotes come is also highly recommended.

Eric Dudley is a funny guy. Check out his take on how development implementation can bastardize linguistic jargon:

It’s just that easy!

I guess he’s making fun of how “community participation” is a box that is checked off in development projects as if it will accomplish, like magic, complete community ownership over the initiative simply by inviting the community members to the planning meeting or something.

He finishes with a bang. I get the sense that Dudley may have felt, some years ago (or maybe sometimes now), the way I was feeling when I wrote my Dorothy email:

“The known unknown - The Good Life

From one perspective development aid is simple. We want to do good -we from the wealthy world want to help the poor of other countries. An easy sentiment to understand, a hard one to implement.

…Development [used to be] about finance from the World Bank, technical assistance programs, and replicating the institutions of the developed world. Today, despite a rocky history, some people see this model as vindicated. For them, globalisation is demonstrably successful. Fundamental indicators such as infant mortality rates show that globally the situation is steadily improving; infant mortality has dropped world wide by over 60% since 1960. The phenomenal economic growth in India and China and elsewhere demonstrates how developing countries can indeed develop. The interconnectedness of the global economy has made the possibility of large-scale international wars appear more remote.

It is clear that the success of India and China owes very little to the western compassion industry, whether through the institutions of the UN or countless international NGOs. A case can be made that a couple of generations of Indian and Chinese nationals winning scholarships to attend western universities has contributed significantly to this growth and indeed to other notable achievements such as developing indigenous nuclear bombs. Another case could be made for large-scale vaccination programmes that have made a real impact in eliminating diseases such as small-pox. But as for the rest - whether improved hand pumps or loans of questionable worth, even where they have been considered successful, their impact on the lives of millions is dwarfed by the relentless gallop of industrial growth and the accompanying benefits of health and education that come with wealth.

So, why bother? If the system is working what is the problem? Some argue that globalisation has resulted in winners and losers, where Africa is the big loser. For them the real problem for development is how to bring Africa up to speed; how to replicate in Africa the kind of successes seen in Asia. Other critics see winners and losers within the emergent economies, with small minorities getting very rich while others remain marginalized…

…But others, including myself, are more than a little uneasy….Of course, the poor are as deserving of the benefits of wealth as the rest of us, but it is clear that a world in which everyone enjoys the current life-style of middle-class North America can not be sustained. Yet that consumerist life-style has been the implicit target of development for the last half century.

It remains the embodiment of the good life for billions of people. If that goal is not attainable, then what is the objective of development in the Third World? We have never been less clear about what development means. The framework outlined in this pamphlet is less than useless until we know what the Good Life really is. If we do not know our goal, how can we pretend to offer signposts on the route?”

So, basically, while I’m saying:

“I don’t know if working in development is working towards justice or against some injustice, and I have a feeling it might not be. But I still see problems that need solving. It’s all very confusing. I guess I’ll keep going.”

…Dudley seems to be saying “Yep, I hear you, welcome to my career sonny. You may be even be right, but don’t let it cripple you – just keep acting while asking these questions, and always keep learning. And by the way, get over it you whiner!”

Hmm…

Maybe he has a point.

Questions for thought and reflection – I’d love to hear from you:

Do you agree with Soccrates? Is Dudley’s approach to recognizing our ignorance, working through hypotheses, and expecting the unexpected good enough to avoid, well, whatever you might feel the need to avoid? What about “the known unknown” – what does it mean for the cause if we can’t define our objectives?

Hypothetically, if you have an opportunity to act, but fear that acting could make matters worse, but can’t bring yourself not to act, what do you do?

How do you define what’s just or unjust? Is it different in different contexts or is there an “absolute” definition? Like how, in boxing hitting someone square and hard is a clean and respectable play, but in soccer it would get you a red card. If you knew about some aliens on Mars that were oppressing their people according to your understanding of societal value systems, but you acknowledge that you don’t understand anything about the Martian system, is that injustice to you?

How do you reconcile your own ignorance when doing things you value? Is it that there are things you know you know and be comfortable acting based on those, despite all the things you know you don’t know? Or do you just not think about it all that much?

Credits (I don’t make enough to get sued, and I doubt J.K. Rowling reads my blog, but still…):

Dudley Quotes from “A Guide to Positive Change” – Eric Dudley, Author of “The Critical Villager” (one of my favourite books)

Drawing of Harry Potter by Eric Dudley

Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros.

J.K. Rowling quote Copyright of J.K. Rowling, June 2008 - From her Commencement Address at Harvard, Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, June 5, 2008

Escorts

2009-09-01T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Sorry it’s been such a long time since I blogged. I just got back from a few days of vacation in Nkhata Bay (which is amazing, I’ll blog about it a bit later) for some very much needed thinking and chilling time. I am not very good at taking that kind of time so I it was good that my boss and coach gave me an ultimatum – take a vacation after finishing at Freshwater or be fired!

I am now done at Freshwater, and I am relieved about that. I won’t go into why on here, but we can also chat about it in person some day when we discuss what I think volunteers should and should not be doing with development implementing NGOs, and what those NGOs should be doing, if anything.

I wanted to introduce you to a few friends of mine from the village. Their names are Black, Coffee, and Jackson. They are dogs, and their names are actually quite unconventional as dogs’ names go. Usually, when you meet a dog or a cat, its name will be “dog” or “cat”. Not to far fetched I guess given that English is a foreign language here – it’s like someone from BC naming their dog “chien”, which is actually a pretty lame name but is at least descriptive and somewhat hilarious.

When I first arrived in Malawi, my whole EWB sending group was exposed to a rabid puppy named Jambo. We didn’t know he was rabid, so of course most of us cuddled up with him. Someone from the team was even bitten, and I had quite a bit of oral-salival contamination for reasons I won’t disclose. While we were all told not to touch any dogs while in Malawi before we got here, guest house dogs are supposed to be vaccinated so everyone figured it was fine.

Anyways, since that incident, I have tried to steer clear of dogs a bit more than I usually would (and I usually don’t steer clear of dogs at all). But a few months ago, I caved in with the dogs that live at home and started playing with them a bit. Even since then, Black has been getting very excited whenever I come home, jumping and whining like crazy.

And, for the last while in the mornings, when I leave for work and happen to run into the dogs on my way out, I get a nice escort to work. It’s been quite pleasant, but unfortunately is now all over because I am finished at Freshwater…

Here are some photos of my intrepid escorts –

All three of my morning followers.

Coffee’s puppy dog face.

Black giving me that look.

Jackson the leader puffing out her chest.

Thieves!

The Freshwater gate is closed. Time to go home.

Thanks for reading,

~Mike

A New Friend

2009-08-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

I just got back to the office from lunch, and as I was heading back, with my bananas in hand, I decided to stop into one of the local barber shops. I needed a haircut, and I know I’m going to be busy this weekend, so I figured I’d just take care of it now.

As I was getting my haircut today, I had the good fortune to meet a pretty inspiring dude. His name is Gift Kampule, and he is the owner of the shop I went to today. Gift started this shop back in 2001 after having worked as a supervisor in a printing shop in Blantyre. He finished school and then started working with this company until he left because of “some problems”.

When I asked Gift why he prefers to be self-employed rather than work for a company or government, he said this (paraphrased).

“People think that, just because you finish school, you have to work for the government, or some company, or an NGO. I left in 2001 from Blantyre Printing and started this shop in Chileka. In companies, you might work, but the company might not be able to pay your salary all the time. They might pay you 8000 MWK in 30 days. Owning my shop here, I can get much more than that, I always have cash.

You go into town and you see people begging all over the place. This is not good. Just because they can not find a job does not mean they can’t work. They could be farming, or finding other businesses to do.

So many people finish school and then just sit around taking what they can from others. They think that because they can’t find a job with a company or government that they do not have to find another way. You can't just sit around and wait for someone to give it all to you. You have to work for yourself to have success.”

Gift says he’s trying to get a hold of more capital to work on different businesses. He wants to come up with 10,000 MWK so he can buy a fridge and start selling drinks. When I asked him how much start up capital he had when he opened this shop, he told me it was only 2000 MWK. I find it hard to believe that you could start a shop with only 2000 MWK unless he somehow came into the location for free or already had some other inputs, but I doubt that he was rolling in cash.

I guess one factor to consider is that Gift must have had some opportunity to take a risk on starting a business. It’s your standard risk versus reward dilemma here: if you have a job already, you could choose to get away from the industrial/ government/ NGO sector, all of which are pretty shitty IF you are a person who wants to be entrepreneurial. But doing so is a big risk and there are no safety nets, so many choose to stick it out and have their creativity hit a brick wall.

What does this mean for entrepreneurialism in Malawi? Well, there certainly is an opportunity gap. Access to capital is hard: loans are very hard to come by and interest rates are ridiculous, I think 30% or so. But it's not just about capital. Gift thinks, and I agree with him, that many people don't see opportunities to succeed as within their reach or withing thier sphere of responsibility to find. From my first glance assessment, I'd say the biggest thing Gift has going for him is his attitude and his willingness to make things happen for himself.

I only met the guy for 20 minutes, but I was still able to see a spark of creativity and entrepreneurialism of which I strongly feel Malawi needs more. Further, when people have that spark, I strongly feel it goes to immense waste in NGOs and government, partly because there aren’t enough people with it (very few, no critical mass) and partly because those whole sectors lack strong enough leadership and professional development for entrepreneurial people to have positive impact on them. Chicken or the egg: if these sectors had decent leadership, good leaders could help them be better, but they don’t, so good leaders just get swallowed in a sea of ineffectiveness.

Here’s hoping Gift and his family can keep leading the charge.

If this story is interesting to you, check out what of a friend of mine, Ryan Coelho, is up to. He is starting an initiative in Ghana called the Proving Potential Investment Fund. I think it’s a cool idea and I'm interested to see where it goes. He recently send out an email about an aspiring leader he knows named Daniel. You can read Daniel’s story here...

Thanks for reading,

~MK

Leaving Chileka in Blaze of…. Self Actualization?

2009-08-11T02:00:00.002-07:00

Hey all,

You already been introduced to my family. It will be not too long now, not more than a week or two actually, until I move out from that place and head somewhere else. Due to some craziness with EWB’s overseas strategy it’s not very clear where I’m going to end up, but in all likelihood I will be in Blantyre city for at least a while. I’ll then be heading home in November, then back to Malawi in January 2010.

A couple of weeks ago a bit of a bomb was dropped on me about my family. Ndaziona, whom you met earlier, was not going to school, and I didn’t know why. I talked with Evelynne about it, and they did not have money to pay her fees. It turns out at least a few things were going on:

Evelynne had fallen asleep with a few thousand kwacha on her (around $25, quite a bit), and some boys had stolen it apparently.
The dad of the house has been hiding money from the family. This explains a lot of the weird dynamics in the place and how conversations are vastly different between when it’s just the mom and kids versus when he’s around.
The dad of the house, who is Muslim (but who still prays with the family all the time), apparently has 5 girlfriends dispersed between Chileka, Blantyre, and Lunzu, and that’s where his earnings go to.

Does any of this make complete sense to me? Not quite. But what I did know is that Ndaziona was not going to school. I also know that Evelynne values school for her children – she only finished standard 4 (like grade 4), and I think she wants her kids to have more opportunity than that. Ndazi is the younger girl so she bears the brunt of the chores (though my family does do a pretty good job of sharing them between the girls and the boys, and even me when I am allowed and am around). She has also struggled in school and even failed her tests last year, so her likelihood of getting financed to get through school is substantially lower than that of Chinsisi, who is a boy, or Anasi, who is currently studying in Lilongwe. When faced with this situation I couldn’t do anything other than pay her fees, so I did. This, by the way, had to be kept our little secret from the dad.

“Ndi chinsisi chathu, musandandaule” – I remember saying, which means “It’s our secret, don’t worry.” This was met with big laughs.

And when I leave Chileka in the next week or two, I am going to leave behind a sizable sum of money for the kids’ school. I don’t know if that just perpetuates the whole National Bank of Azungu mentality that is clearly alive and well with this family. But honestly, sometimes, I don’t really care. I’ll be finishing up a post about action and ignorance in a couple of days which will explore my feelings about this kind of thing in a bit more detail.

This is Anasi

This is Evelynne

For all the whining I’ve done about my host family (it is quite a challenging environment to live in), I do have a lot of love for them and care about them a great deal. I want to see Ndaziona succeed. That doesn’t mean a woman can’t succeed by just being a good farmer and family wife, but I think Ndazi wants more than that, and she deserves the chance.

Last night I was eating dinner, and the dad had already finished so I was alone. Ndaziona came into the dining room to get something.

“Ndazi, tabwera” I whispered, asking her to come close.

“Aphiri!” she answered with her usual joyful tone.

“Ndazi, umapita kusukulu tsopano eti?” – "you are going to school now right?"

“eee”

“Umapita tsiku lili lonse?” -- “every day?", I asked

“eee, Monday to Friday!”

“OK, ndipo, udzamaliza liti? Sukulu idzatseka liti?” – “when does school close?” I asked her.

“October, ndipo idzayambanso January”, she answered.

“OK. Ukudziwa kuti ndidzaputa posachedwa, ndipo pameme ndidzapita, ndidzasiya ndalama

zina, kuti upitalize kukapita kusukulu.” – “you know I’m leaving soon. And when I go, I am going

to leave some money for you to continue going to school.”

“OK”, she said, a bit more seriously once she realized I wasn't just screwing around, which is usually the context in which we communicate.

“Ndikufuna kuti upite kusukulu nthawi zonse. OK? Ukuyenera kumwaliza sukulu, chonde.” - “I want you to go to school all the time. You need to finish school, please.”

“OK, ndidzamwaliza Aphiri.” – “OK, I will finish.”

Here's Ndaziona with a bit of her sass

If there are any worries about this action being insulting to the family or something – haha, no. This family has always been quick to take my money so I’m not too worried about that. I am worried about something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. At the end of this conversation Ndazi got a little cheeky and ask me to give the money directly to her. I laughed and told her I’d be giving it to her mom.

I am also thinking that I’ll talk to Odala about leaving him something so that Desire and Moses, his children, can be sure to go to school. I know that’s one of his worries. If he can use some seed money to start up his business finally, or maybe use in for the South Lunzu Post Test Club, his NGO, or even his save it directly for school fees, I think it’s a worthwhile investment. Maybe that’s the conclusion all azungus eventually reach which is why there’s sometimes this baseline expectation that azungus will give money to Malawians just because. I have expressed genuine frustration with this mentality and my feelings about how it is crippling for development. But I think there’s a difference between a random person asking you to buy them things and assuming you will, and helping someone with whom you have a real friendship.

Here's Odala

I'm teaching him to use the computer

Maybe I’m just rationalizing because my ego can’t stand to take a hit like not offering to help people I know I can help, or maybe I’m actually right. Not sure, don’t care (actually I do care). But I feel like if I choose not to help when I can in a situation in which I would if it were with one of my non-Malawian friends, choosing not to would be ever more paternalistic and would devalue the friendship. You might even call it racist.

Question:

§ I’ve talked at length about how aid undermines Malawians’ abilities and drive to solve their own country’s problems. It creates an underlying accountability dynamic of the aid system being responsible for Malawi’s success, so that development actors become accountable to donors rather than to the people of the country. I see a difference between this and helping individuals whom you really know. Do you see that difference, too, or am I mistaken?

Thanks for reading!

Critters

2009-08-03T01:26:00.002-07:00

“Atate mu dzina la Jesu Kritsu ndikuphempera kuti mundipatse mphamvu…”

That is the sound of Chinsisi’s before bed prayer. If you don’t recall, Chinsisi is the 14 year old boy with whom I live.

Chinsisi (AKA Sisi)

Sisi loves to pray – he is usually the one who has taken off with the Bible when Aphiri the preacher is trying to figure out where it is. Most nights before bed he prays for a good 20 minutes, yelling style. He does this even on nights when the whole family has done a good hour and a half of joint praying, complete with the yelling, screaming, and occasionally crying that I’m used to hearing.

Here's a glimpse of my night life:

On one particular night, a few nights ago, Chinsisi went to bed extra late for whatever reason, so it was about 11:30 PM when he got started. I had to get up early the next morning, so I was relieved when he was finally done. With the prayer done and my body good and tired, I thought it was time for a good night’s sleep. I was wrong.

Some weeks ago several large bags of maize were moved into my room. They had been being stored in another small house (the house that was originally supposed to be mine but still has no floor), but for some reason the family wanted to move them, so I helped Chinsisi move them into my room. Since then, my room has been the village’s hottest new destination for nocturnal rodents to fill up on as much maize as their bodies can hold.

Now, it’s not the rustling of the many mice who have taken a liking to the bags of maize in my room that bugs me. It’s not the mouse shit that I routinely find all over my bamboo floor mat that bugs me. It’s not even the occasional mouse screaming match (I think they are even fighting or fornicating, or both, or one then the other) that bugs me. Rather, it’s the fact that they seem to be organizing some kind of revolution, and they have allies.

On the night in question, after Chinsisi had finished his prayer, it was time to go to sleep. As soon as I had blown out my candles and the loud prayer had subsided, it was time for the mice to come out from wherever the hell they hide and begin their evening ritual. It started with the signature rustling. The mice climb up the bags of maize and seem to do some kind of dance. They don’t just sit still and munch on maize kernels, no, they move around and choose different pieces of maize from different parts of each bag to maximize the amount of noise they make. Sometimes when they do this I throw coins at the bags in an effort to make them shut up, but it doesn’t work.

Occasionally I even try to quietly reach for my flashlight and turn it on to try to spot them, but I never do. They always hear me flailing around in the dark trying to locate my flashlight and then go into hiding. When I turn it off, they are at it again after around 10 seconds.

On this night, I gave up with the rustling and munching and just let them go at it. Then, as I was trying to get to sleep, I heard a very light thump. Take a dime and drop in on pillow from a height of 10 cm and you’ll hear the sound I mean. Normally a sound of little consequence, but when you know you are surrounded by critters, it's a bit alarming. My eyes widened as soon as I heard the sound. Was it a mouse who’d jumped on my bed and was going to crawl all over me as I was trying to sleep? I lay there stunned for a few seconds, but was sobered by a light touch of something at my side. Something moving, brushing past me as I lay in my bed. Trying to keep still and calm, I slowly reached for my flashlight and turned it on. I removed my blanket quickly. Nothing. Damn it, where did he go? Is the little fucker hiding under my pillow or between my legs or what? I slowly sat up, eying the halo of my flashlight on the mattress like a hawk. I turned my body, and then I saw him.

A mouse??

No. It was a massive friggin’ cockroach who’d squeezed himself under my lower back. This was not the first time I had been infiltrated by insects in the bed. During the rainy season I’d routinely find bits of chewed up wood on my mattress with dozens of tiny termites in them that had been eating the support beams above. And once, back in April, I rolled over in bed to hear a crunching sound and felt something on my side. I removed whatever it was with my fingers, sort of gooey but not quite liquid. I remember thinking at the time, “I don’t recall having eaten any M&Ms since being in Malawi. But this sort of feels like a melted M&M. Weird…” I then sniffed my fingers in the dark, half expecting to smell choclately goodness. But it wasn’t choclately goodness at all. Rather, it smell somehow acrid and biting; it offended my nose. It occurred to me that it could be a cockroach, and I madly scrambled to find my flashlight to hopefully discover that it wasn’t. But it was! I had squished him to a pulp, which was now on my fingers and smeared across my torso. Pieces of his exoskeleton were still on me. That was unpleasant.

But this time I was having none of that – this thing was going to leave my personal bubble, and fast. I freaked out a bit and used my flashlight to flick him off the bed. It didn’t quite work the first couple of times, so I gave him a stronger flick, launching the roach towards the wall, the flashlight slipping out of my hands and flying after him. At least it was still on so I could find it easily. Time to go to sleep, right?

SCRATCH SCRATCH SCRATCH

The mice in Malawi seem to be huge, and can make a disproportionate amount of noise. And as if I was living in some kind of “Azungu in Malawi” sitcom, the mice decided at this point to have their turn. One of them was outside my door, and as my door is a fine example of Malawian infrastructure, it is unduly snug with the floor, meaning that the mouse couldn’t get it with the door closed or just didn't fee like squeezing. But that didn’t stop him from scratching at the door. He was scratching incessantly trying to get in. I threw something at the door hoping to scare him off.

Ineffective. After several minutes of this, I decided he wasn’t going to give up, and I surrendered. I’d had enough. I went over and opened the door, actually granting access to this mouse so he could join his friends in eating the family’s maize. I had to make this concession because they had the upper hand. It was nearly 1 AM by this point, and they had worn me down. Their revolution appears to be making headway due to a strategic alliance with the cockroach faction.

Here is a video log of number of the different factions I’ve come across in Malawi. Note – between 2:46 and 2:47 of the video there’s a really cool recon frame of a locust in flight. I hope you like my nerdy and lame play-by-play commentary. Enjoy!

The current "intel":

Thanks for reading,

~MK

A quick update with some photos

2009-07-03T01:20:00.001-07:00

I recently talked to Tara back home in Canada (good friend of mine/ ex-girlfriend). And it struck me that I was so disconnected from life in Canada. I wondered, have I forgotten what it feels like to be back home? Maybe not.

I was in the TNM store the other day (one of the major cell phone providers in Malawi), and they had the satellite TV switched on. National Geographic channel. There was a show on called “Wild” that was about predators or something. The show was painting lions to be brutal predators with perpetual bloodlust. It reminded me of the pride of lions I saw in Zambia that were lying face up in the grass, the cubs fighting, the adults sunning themselves and having a nap, and a herd of impalas eating the grass right beside them. No bloodlust there. Then a commercial came on for a National Geographic special on blue whales.

The following thought crossed my mind: “TV is such bullshit. Look how they are portraying those lions! I’d kind of like to watch that blue whales documentary though.” Then it struck me that I found myself thinking in a way I hadn’t in almost 10 months. Critiquing television! I live in a village with no water or electricity and read by candle light each night. But it was a little scary how quickly I found myself back in my Canadian mindset. I bet when I come home it will feel like I’ve never left, notwithstanding all the craziness I have been through since I left Vancouver in October.

Life here is hard to describe in a blog post. I think part of the reason I haven’t been writing home too much is because I find it hard to know quite what to write about. I’m trying to get a better handle on what kinds of things people are interested in reading on my blog. I was putting the time into writing intriguing stories a while back but then find that my momentum was waning to be able to keep doing that. In any case I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I have stopped giving guitar lessons to the preacher because he doesn’t seem too interested anymore. Instead we’ve moved on to computer and English lessons. I had to iterate 4 times with the English lessons before I eventually figured out exactly what he was expecting. I always thought I was a pretty good teacher, but then I realized that teaching is hell of a lot easier when you are talking to people who have been to school already. Aphiri the preacher has never been to school! Not even nursery or standard 1 primary school. Nothing. When I tried to teach him English, I started with subjects – I = ndi, you = u/ mu, we = ti, and so on. Little did I realize that he was so uncomfortable with reading that my attempts to show him English words, even ones that were phonetically pronounceable with Chichewa spelling rules, he was unable to handle it.

So I’ve gone to basics. Last week I made a chart of English pronunciation rules with my best stab at how phonetically explain the letter pronunciation with Chichewa spelling. This is tough in any context, but imagine that Aphiri speaks zero English, has difficulty reading even in Chichewa, and has never been to school! It’s a challenge but I’m up to it.

As I mentioned in my last post, my friend Odala and I discovered a common interest the other day. We are both really interested in local Malawian leadership. My last blog post summarizes my thoughts on all that stuff. Anyway I’ve been meeting with him regularly to show him how to use the computer and how to make budgets and proposals. Yesterday I was helping him formulate mission and vision statements for his HIV/AIDS organization. It looks like their funder, World Alive, is going to move away pretty soon because they thing the club should become self-sufficient now. So I am helping Odala formulate some thoughts as to how to run a financially sustainable organization, and part of that is drafting a constitution with a mission statement. It’s coming along.

Here are some random photos that have nothing to do with the rest of this post:

This is me flanked by Tendai (left) and Florence (right). All smiles.

Garrett, Alynne, and Garrett's brother Graham went to Zambia to see the animals. Note the family of giraffes in the background.

A close up view of a praying mantis that was hanging out at the Freshwater Resource Centre. Every time I brought the camera up to him he tried to attach it and almost fell off the slippery metal thing we was clinging to.

"Jambulani! Jambulani!" I've now managed to bring this cry out each time I walk home now after having taken this photo. It means "Take a picture!" The kids seem to understand that I can't take their photo every day. These kids live in my village.

The view during the rainy season on the path from my home to the main road. I want to climb that mountain in the background one of these weekends...

Quite nice, isn't it?

This was from my trip to the Galufu orphanage. Freshwater drilled them a borehole a few years ago and occasionally Freshwater goes there to show "Water First", a film that was made about the organization by a film maker form the University of Albany. They loved it. I had planned to go there with my guitar to play for them, but I never got around to it.

That's me dancing with the kids. I was giving them piggy backs. A funny thing happened with one of the kids. Most of them were boys dancing, but this one girl wanted to dance, too. I tried to lift her on my back but since she was wearing a chitenge (a tradition cloth wrap that sort of looks like a skirt) I couldn't spread her legs properly to get her on my back. She just kept slipping off...

I look forward to hearing from you guys!

Lots of love,

~MK

Overnight Music from Last Post

2009-06-26T14:35:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T06:07:00.001-07:00

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:

People had experience outside of the organization
People genuinely valued learning to improve and took personal responsibility for that
There was a “burning platform” à improve your organization or go bankrupt
The education system had strong and actionable instilled a spirit of self-directed learning and critical questioning
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

A Mantra of Peace in Malawi: “Chisankho Cha Mtendere. Inde Tingathe.”

2009-05-24T08:22:00.001-07:00

What does this mean? It means: “Peaceful Elections. Yes, we can.” This bumper sticker/ banner tagline has been ubiquitous on minibuses in Malawi for months leading up the federal election that just took place last week. On the back of minibuses and in gas stations, etc, we’ve seen it a lot. “Peaceful Elections. Yes, we can.” Here is the English version (note the partnership between the Malawi Electoral Commission and the Minibus Owners Association of Malawi):

And yes they did. I have gathered that people in Malawi have a certain sense of pride that the federal election, which ran last Tuesday, May 19, went off without a hitch in terms of political violence or other such disturbances.

“Malawians don’t like to die, or to kill. We will be fine.”

This was the response I got from a Malawian Organizational Development practitioner I know (a truly awesome guy) when I asked him, “do you think we will succeed at having ‘chisankho cha mtendere?”

I asked the same question of the Freshwater accountant a few weeks ago, and he told me this (for a bit of context, Muluzi = former President of Malawi, first President from Malawi’s first free elections in 1994; Binghu = President since 2004 who just won another 5 year term in 2009; Banda = Dictator President of Malawi from independence in 1964 until democracy in 1994):

“The countries that have those kinds of problems only have them when the governmental parties have their own militia forces. In Malawi the parties don’t have those things. Think back to 2008, when Muluzi was being accused of trying to stage a coup to overthrow the President, Binghu wa Multhalika. The Malawian Police picked him up at the airport and escorted him to his home with a warning not to do anything.

It was at this time that we could have seen violence in Malawi. If Muluzi’s party had had their own militia, then we could have seen a clash between Muluzi’s forces and the Malawian police. But he did not have that, so it was fine.”

Good thing. The last thing anyone wants in Malawi is for people to start killing each other. Malawi has enough to worry about as it is.

And the next day at work after the election, sure enough the accountant came to me and said: “You see? No problems.”

In addition, on the minibus the other day, I was chatting with someone about the election, and he told me that Zimbabwe and Kenya need to learn some lessons from Malawi.

People in Malawi are proud of the way their election went in 2009.

All of this begs the question: what’s the difference between a country like this one and the others that have such problems? If you’ve read “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier, you’ll know that there is a correlation between countries being resource rich and having histories of civil war. Whoa! What’s the deal with that?

At first glance, I’d say that Collier’s resource-civil war correlation is counter intuitive, at least to me. If countries have more money to work with, shouldn’t they be that much better equipped to develop and keep the peace? All that civil war stuff must be about oppressive governments, tribal conflict, and freedom fighters, right? Well, it might be just a bit more complicated than that. Collier’s observation also underscores how complex development is: clearly, it’s not only about money, it is about SYSTEMS of people functioning and not functioning. Pouring more money into Malawi or anywhere else is simply not a sufficient action for successful development, even if it is easier to demonstrate as a tangible action. If you ask what a country is doing for development, they usually answer with a dollar figure.

Collier argues that the people who fight these wars of “justice” against oppressive powers are often just out to gain as much power and wealth as anyone else, so they fight for the power backed by access to the resources that are abundant in the country. They target poor young adolescent men at suggestible times of their lives with no other source of income. “Grab a gun and some sunglasses. You’ll have money, women, and respect.” At the age of 13, I know at least a few young men who would be tempted. And if it becomes the norm in your country or among your peers, you have to imagine it’s even harder to say ‘no’.

Does that mean we should count our lucky stars that Malawi is very resource scare (save for some uranium which is apparently being mined up north, but I don’t know too much about it). If we had a bunch of gold, copper, oil*(see star below), or diamonds that people were finding all over the country, would we have seen blood spilled in Malawi? Not according to the people of this country. People generally here stand firm that Malawians are peaceful people. There is pride behind that statement. Well placed pride, if you ask me. If a country has anything to be proud of, having a reputation and a self-perception as a peaceful group of people is a pretty good one.

*Google "Sudan GDP per capita", then Google "Malawi GDP per capita".

Violence is certainly not heard of in Malawi, nor are large militia. During the end of the reign of Kamuzu Banda, the dictatorial ruler who was a self declared “President for Life” in Malawi from 1964 until 1994, he was at the command of a large group of militia called the Malawi Pioneers. Muluzi was the one who eventually took over in the country’s first free elections in 1994, and Muluzi’s party never had any such militia, so there was never any clash. The Banda administration is known (or at least talked about) to have used violence, murder, and forced exile in their political tactics, so it’s not as if violence is a completely alien concept in Malawian politics. Now imagine, if Muluzi’s party had had access to some kind of major source of income (such as a resource or, opening another can of worms, some foreign support…) what might have happened? Maybe nothing, but according to Paul Collier’s method of analysis, possibly something.

Collier is a skilled and experienced economist and a good writer, but I get a sense that his understanding of people and development is a little mathematical. By Collier’s equations, Malawi would have been more likely to end up in a civil war if there was any latent money in the system, such as resource money. But since Malawi is so poor, the likelihood of a civil war is low. This is Collier’s math, and it can be hard to argue with numbers.

But I bet Paul has never shared a bowl of nsima with a family and prayed for peace, prosperity, and forgiveness, or carried water alongside dozens of women and children doing their daily chores, or made bricks with a hoe and clay in a village. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not criticizing Paul Collier: I think his book gave a really great macro-economic perspective on things. But I am asking a question about people: how deep do our values run? If you are reading this, chances are you’ve never been a child soldier. Think about this, please really try to think about it because I really want to hear peoples’ opinions: under what circumstances can you imagine picking up an AK-47 and joining a roving army of militia? Canada is so far removed from these realities that this is probably pretty hard to answer, but try to think about it.

Because, the thing is, Malawi is not that far removed from these realities. That’s why we made the signs: “Chisankho cha Mtendere. Inde tingathe.” If it was a given that the signs wouldn’t be needed, they wouldn’t have made them in the first place.

If Malawi can, why can’t everyone else?

Thanks for reading,

~Mike

P.S. Sorry I missed by 3 week self-imposed deadline for new posts.

Wildcards

2009-04-15T03:31:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

I was in Lilongwe for the long weekend, and had a bunch of really good meetings with others from the EWB Malawi Water and Sanitation team. We are working on a new strategy, as I mentioned in my past post, and as such I am trying to get a better handle on what the rest of the team is up to, as well as try to understand how my work at Freshwater fits into our strategy. My placement is a little bit of an outlier because I am working on a water point implementer, not an organization that has much to do with water point operation, maintenance, and sustainability. In a perfect WatSan sector (which is sort of our goal I suppose), that distinction would either not have to exist, OR, there would be well defined and functional roles as to which parties would work on which of those 2 goals, and they would all work effectively to compliment each other. The WatSan sector is very far from perfect: I have a feeling that any of the WatSan OVS who just read that last sentence probably chuckled a bit at the description.

In any case, it was a good weekend and I really enjoyed seeing everyone again. I got a better sense of where we all are, which was helpful. Because EWB OVS are spread across the sector, it’s a challenge to keep each other really abreast of what our goals are. But that also has a great advantage because our team is able to see the sector as a whole in a way that many organizations can’t. Seems like a pretty good thing, especially because EWB’s overseas strategy is starting to venture into the realm of overall sector change at a systemic level as opposed to solely individual partner capacity building.

That’s enough about the sector stuff and team strategy for now. Instead, here’s an update on what’s going on at Freshwater and also a bit of stuff about home.

A developmental love triangle in Freshwater: incentives, obstacles, and trust pushing and pulling each other around

My big Leadership Development approach was presented to the whole organization last Monday, (everyone from the Executive Director right down to the construction staff), and the presentation went quite well. They way I started the presentation was largely inspired by some stuff I read in a really interesting book. The book, “Understanding Organizational Development Through African Proverbs” was written by Chiku Malunga, a Malawian OD consultant who works for CADECO. The book was really great and was lent to me by Wayne Miranda, an EWB OVS working with MoFA in Ghana. Thanks Wayne!

The point of this book is to give a developing country perspective on organizational and leadership development. Because so much of OD literature and theory comes from developed countries, there exists a healthy debate among development types (at least those who are paying attention to OD and thinking about culture) as to whether OD even fits into an African cultural context. I mean, if it’s the norm in African culture to have a highly centralized leadership style, does an OD intervention designed to arrive at a more empowering and decentralized leadership style fit into that cultural context? If not, is it right or just to try to make it fit or is it a cultural imposition? This is a question of values and is just another example of how development is one huge values judgment.

Imagine this: if people don’t want to use condoms to prevent AIDS even if they’ve been told of the consequences, is it the responsibility of the “development sector”, whatever that means, to find a way to change that? Maybe, maybe not. But any way you slice it, by being involved in development you make a values judgment, and you really have to search your soul to figure out if you are comfortable with that. I haven’t quite decided yet. I guess one way of looking at it would be to say that anything you do or choose not to do involves a values judgment anyway, so just don’t worry about it. What do you think?

In any case, this book provides an African cultural perspective that claims that OD does fit into an African culture, but you need to understand your context in order to use it properly. Otherwise you may be using one tool where another is more appropriate even though the overall goals are the same: organizational sustainability, better impact on your beneficiaries, and overall more effective decision making. To send this message, the book presents the African concept of ubuntu, or “the essence of being human”, as a universal value. This concept embodies the notion that, in traditional African cultures, “an individual, family, or institution is not judged primarily by external things like material possessions, skills, or competencies, but by the personification of human values. The ideal individual respects himself or herself and others, regardless of who they are”.

Chiku Malunga’s argument is that, in order for organizations to be sustainable and effective, they too must embody the values of ubuntu. It is in this way that OD fits into African culture: organizational and leadership development can be ways to help organizations and leaders help their cause by embodying these principles. Indeed, traditional African culture informs much of the perspective that African leaders have on the world. One of the really cool things about this book is that it chooses to send these messages using the same vernacular that traditional African culture uses: proverbs!

I’ve read this book and was quite impressed with the level of relevance it has to Freshwater. I used a number of concepts from it when developing the LD framework I shared with you in my last update. More interestingly, I recently shared that Framework with all of Freshwater, including the Executive Director and everyone else all the way down to the drivers and the construction staff. That required a lot of Chichewa translation, which was orchestrated partly be me (poorly) and with the help of others from the team.

As you saw with the LD framework in my last pose, my approach is two pronged: first, facilitated vision building so that people can start taking actions to increase their own skills and experience, and second, constructive relationship building so that people can work more effectively as a group and remove the barriers to success that exist. When presenting the framework, I decided I needed to get people’s attention by touching on cultural chords that would be relevant to them personally. In order to do that, I presented a flipchart with the following Chichewa proverbs found in the book, both in English and Chichewa, to set the stage for the approach I wanted to present:

1. Personal Visions and Change: why?

“A changed place can not transform a person, but a changed person can transform a place.”
“Kusintha kwa malo sikungapangitse muthu kusintha maonekedwe/ khalidwe, koma munthu osinthika angathe kusintha malo”

2. Constructive Relationships: why?

“When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion”
“Pamene nyumba zokanguade zamangana pamodzi, zikoza kumanga mkango”

“One person can not move a mountain”
“Munthu modzi sangathe kukangka phiri”

As I presented them, I facilitated a half English half Chichewa discussion about what these proverbs mean to people. This seemed to be a really effective way of setting the stage for the next conversation about my actual LD approach. Because this discussion was started in such a non-threatening context of sharing perspectives on some fairly ubiquitous proverbs, I felt like there was some actual positive energy in the group towards the approach.

The next step was to put an action item to the group. I created a sign up sheet for those who are interested in working with me to develop those personal visions, identify relationships they think could be more constructive, and identity actions they can take to get to where they want to be in both of those areas. This week I will be having probably 2 or 3 of these meetings to start discussing what the LD approach means to people on a more personal and individual level. These next few weeks will be really interesting to see how FWP is actually responding to the approach. So far, things look quite promising.

There are, of course, lots of wildcards here, not the least of which is the way in which people respond personally to this. For example, is it human nature to acknowledge a problem you wish could be rectified but not to take any personal responsibility for it? Perhaps. The more important question is: is it the nature of Freshwater culture to view problems in that way? Likely. So far in this post I’ve spun the LD process to be going very well. I think I’ve sent the message that this is not unequivocal, so without going into too much more detail, I think I’ll just leave it at that. I will check in again in the not too distant future to let you know what’s going on.

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed the Freshwater update.

A house is not a home without lots of yelling and love, at least not in my experience:

When I wrote my last blog update, I told you about the family I live with. I highlighted the things I enjoy about living there and things I love about the people. They are really nice people, and my life there is very interesting. The family is extremely religious, as I have said, and they really live those values. They care about me, and particularly about my soul, and I care about them, too. I really value their friendship and am truly glad to have gotten to know them. They’ve taught me a lot, and we’ve had good laughs together. We even cried together when we went to Mikey’s funeral, Mikey being the 9 year old younger brother of Alice who died of malaria in February. They have been kind enough and open enough to welcome me into their lives and allow me to share in their domestic activities, and for that I’m really grateful.

However, I am really finding my life at home to be a big source of stress in my life these days. I am actually considering leaving my place, not because I don’t like the family but rather because living in that context is really starting to wear me down.

The following is a translated version of an actual conversation I had with Evelynne, the mom of my house, last Sunday.

“How did you rise?” I asked.

“I rose fine, how about you?” she replied.

“I rose well, thanks”

“Thanks. Would you like some tea?”

“No thank you. My stomach isn’t feeling that well so I don’t want to drink any, but
thanks.”

“Your stomach is upset because you drank beer.” she informed me.

“Drank beer? No I didn’t, I was here last night with the family.” I replied, assuming she must mean that I was hung over, which made absolutely no sense because I was at home in the village all evening the day before. Of course, I couldn’t imagine what else she could have meant, though. She then said something else about God which I didn’t understand at first, so I just sort of nodded and continued.

“I’m going to town now. I noticed we were out of sugar, so I will bring some today.” I said, expected Evelynne to say “Zikomo” or something like that, which means “thanks”.

“How much?” she replied instead.

“How much sugar will I bring?”

“Yes, how many packets?”

I had planned to bring just one, but given the context of this question I figured that may not cut it.

“Uhh, two?”

“Two? Ok, fine. Also buy potatoes”

“OK, potatoes, sure. See you later.”

“And cabbage, tomatoes, cooking oil, green peppers, and onions.”

“OK, everything to make chips right?”

“Yes, thanks. And you don’t want tea? Because your stomach is upset.” she said, then repeated what she had said earlier. After a bit of back and forth I eventually figured out what she was telling me. A few days earlier, when asked if I drank beer, I said that I do, yes, occasionally. When asked if I had drunk beer in Chileka, I said yes, that I’d had a drink a couple of months earlier at the Premier Lodge, this bar in Chileka.

“Your stomach hurts because you drank beer at the Premier Lodge. God is punishing you because you sinned. When Abusa comes you need to ask him for forgiveness and we will pray for your soul, then your stomach won’t hurt anymore.”

“That was 2 months ago!” I replied.

“Yes but you haven’t prayed with Aphiri for that sin so that’s why your stomach is upset.”

“OK, well, see you later.” I replied with an uncomfortable laugh.

“OK, bye. Thank you.”

Interesting, eh? All of this was of course in Chichewa, which really just underscores even more how much I’ve learned having lived here. I really care about the family I live with. And they do care about me, too, in that they want to convert my heathen soul. That’s why Aphiri taught me to pray in tongues. And, they lived up to the promise of praying with me for forgiveness, too. That happened just last night actually, and I’ve now gathered that this is the main reason that I got static for going to Lilongwe on the Easter weekend: they wanted to use that weekend to pray for forgiveness for what I’d done. Last night, we read a bunch of bible passages that all related to the reasons why it’s sinful to drink and smoke, and I was the star of the show. Aphiri made sure I understood everything he said, and I had to provide my explanations of what the passages meant. That lasted an hour and a half and was really exhausting. Clearly, we come from such different worlds, myself and the family I live with, that I really shouldn’t expect there to be a heck of a lot of overlap in our values and certainly not in the way we choose to embody them.

I had an interesting “ah-hah” moment a couple of months ago related to that point. I was talking with Alice, the girl who is now in Lilongwe going to school but who was there is the house for the first while when I was living there. She speaks English quite well, but the norm in our house is still to speak Chichewa because she’s the only English speaker. Anyway, as we were chatting, the conversation somehow went to a place that caused me to mention the Second World War. I really can’t remember (or imagine) why that would have come up, but it did. The point is that Alice, who had been to high school in Malawi, did not know what WW2 was. This massive event that, in my mind, is such a staple of modern history that I can’t imagine not knowing about it, was not known to Alice. What’s my point? It’s not that Alice is ignorant, no, because there is a whole world of knowledge that she has and I don’t. Rather, my point is that our realities, up until the point that I came to live with her family, have had virtually no intersection. What seems ridiculous to me is normal to her, and what seems normal to me is ridiculous to her.

What this meant for a couple of months ago when I had this conversation is that, despite how difficult it is for me personally, it’s really worthwhile for me to live in a context that is so vastly different from what I know well because of how much I can learn from it. It’s hard, sure, but how often do you come across something that is worthwhile as a growth experience but isn’t hard? In addition, I have built a solid and caring relationship with the family, so it’s not just about learning, it’s about valuing relationships and caring genuinely for the people that have shared their lives with me. I thought back to something I had read about how Nelson Mandela really values the 27 years he spent in prison because of how much stronger a person it made him. He thought of it as a life “crucible”, an event that is not easy but you learn from it and become better for it. No, I’m not in prison, I am living with a caring and loving family in a village in Malawi. So if Nelson could take the 27 years in prison, I sure as hell better be able to handle a few months in a village with a family I find challenging but whose company I value and who cares about me, right? That was my thought process, and that’s largely what led me to stay living at Kwasakanda for as long as I have.

Coming back to my original point, however, how I’m thinking of leaving, the question I need to ask is how long someone can stay in such a situation based on the aforementioned merits when he finds it that difficult. I don’t want to and haven’t tried to impose my values on my family, at least not actively (I don’t think). But I do feel like they have been trying constantly to impose their values on to me, whether that means that they think I should pay substantially more than we originally agreed when I moved in, or that I should convert to Christianity and not go to Lilongwe on the Easter weekend to see my colleagues because I should be praying with the family. And for this, I have no contempt for them simply because of how different our realities have been. It wouldn’t be fair for me to hold it against the family that their view of the world and the model they build of me is so different from what it would have to be if it were easy for me to live with them.

I love my parents, too, and care about them a lot of course. But does that mean it makes sense for me to live with them? Mom, Dad, based on past experience, what do you think? ;)
I’m not too sure what to do, and I probably won’t move out any time too soon. But it does seem to make sense that I should move out at some point because, these days, I really don’t look forward to coming home to the village that much. When I arrive at home I am always waiting for someone to come pound on my door, yell something at me in fast and colloquial Chichewa that I don’t understand, then go and engage in a conversation in which I am often (but not always, to be fair) asked for money or told that I’ve done something wrong regarding prayer or sin. This may sound bitter, but it’s really not. It’s more that I’m frustrated with myself that I am uncomfortable in a family setting that I wish I could adapt to better.

Another question I need to ask was touched on in my last post: is it wrong to stay if the family thinks they are actually saving my soul? After I learned to pray in tongues and was protected from demonic possession, I was really freaked out and uncomfortable. It seems like the family is really staring to think that I have or should have the same religious values as them. For example, this morning, I left late for work and had a headache. I said good morning to Evelynne and Aphiri, whom I told about my headache, and of course they told me I had to sit down and pray. I said, no thanks, I need to head to work, and I got a “tsk, tsk” attitude towards this. This is the same thing I got when I decided to go to Lilongwe, and the same thing I get if I ever do anything that indicates that I’m not a Christian, which I’m not, or that I don’t want to pray single night for an hour or more. I’ve told them that I am not a Christian, but they either don’t seem to be getting the message or they are unwilling to accept my values for what they are. In either case, there is an expectation at home that I will see things the same way they will and I catch flak if I don’t. This is frustrating for me personally, but more importantly, it’s also potentially morally reprehensible. I don’t want to give a false impression because I don’t think its right. This is another wildcard: if it’s wrong for me to stay under these circumstances, then that would render the rest of the discussion irrelevant because I should just leave. Maybe. Thoughts?

I am really wary of talking smack about my host family because I really do care about them, and they care about me, too. They are good people, but maybe just for me personally it’s just not turning out to be a good fit after 4 months. I don’t know. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading!

Questions for thought and reflection:

1. What’s the deal with tough things anyway? Do hard things make you stronger? If so does that mean you should always be pushing yourself harder? Would you stay with my family in my situation? Think about it: 5 years from now, would I regret moving out if I would have learned more and built a more profound relationship with these people if I just stayed? Or, does that question simply get reduced to one of ethics: if they think I’m converting to Christianity but I’m not, what’s the right thing to do?

2. Referring back to the Freshwater update, what is the mental step you would have to take to go from the acknowledgement that your organization (or general life situation) has issues that you want to see changed to the acknowledgement it has issues that you want to see changed AND for which you will take personal responsibility? This is sort of the wild card in my placement right now. What do you think?

Letting the potentially great be the enemy of the probably adequate

2009-03-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

Once again, it’s been an awfully long time since I posted. And, once again, it’s not for lack of interesting things to share. Rather, it’s been the lack of time to sit down and articulate the things I want to share in the way I want to share them.

That’s all fine and well. I’m a perfectionist. It sometimes bites me in the ass, sometimes helps me achieve what I want to achieve. Often makes me stress out when I don’t want to settle for doing an OK job. I know others like this that struggle with the same things I do. And it’s fine as long as you are aware of and can control it.

Controlling it, though, that’s the hard part. It’s been over 2 months since I posted, and I have been working on a new post for over 6 weeks. It’s coming along slowly slowly (2 slowlys = a Malawian OVS inside joke). I’m looking forward to feedback on that one, because it concerns you. All of you. It’s about a theory I’m working on about one of the potential root causes of the development sector being so messed up, and also about the mental filters we use to make sense of the world. More on that later (how much later? Not sure…)

For now, because I don’t want to leave everyone hanging for 2 months at a time anymore, I’ve decided to just post an update as to what’s going on over here. With this post, I’ve decided to adopt a new regimen. No more than 3 weeks will pass between each of my posts, even if the posts are just quick, general updates as to what’s going on or some quick insights or questions. This is the plan, and it’s part of my personal strategy to change my own mental model: I’m trying to get out of the pattern of letting what I try to do perfectly be the enemy of what I could do well at the expense of doing other things adequately, or at all. Like blog posts. Or calls to the friends I love back home. Or maintaining my mental health. You know, that kind of stuff.

So, here we go: a new leaf.

Fishing lessons from a guy who’s never caught a fish.

It occurs to me that, in my infinite wisdom, I have neglected to actually explain what precisely I am doing in Malawi with the organization I am partnered with.

Since November, I have been working with the Malawi Freshwater Project, a small, locally founded and operated Malawian NGO. Freshwater has been around since 1995 and has been under the leadership of Mr. Charles Banda the whole time. My role coming into the organization was to do leadership development work with Freshwater to help prepare them for an impending leadership transition. I won’t say any more details on that specific aspect of things given that this is the internet and all, but suffice it to say that the stated goal of my work was to help the upcoming leaders in Freshwater get to where they need to get.

For the first few months, I worked on what can be most easily referred to as “gap filling” activities. This is pretty common for first year OVS early in their placements: you just do what you can for the first while and try to understand as much as possible about your partner, their challenges, and their strengths. For me, that meant over 3 months of report writing, planning support, other documentation, field visits, and countless other things that I did because I was willing and able.

More recently in my placement, like the last month or so, I have been looking much more closely as “turning the corner”. I’ve got the village feather in my hat (sort of, more on that if you email me and ask), and I’ve learned an immense amount about Freshwater since I’ve been here. So, what’s next is for me to try to nail down what my “value add” is going to be for my partner. Right now, I’m looking pretty closely at working with Freshwater to develop a leadership development system that will help them develop the skills and abilities of their people even after I’m gone. Quoting my good friend Duncan Mcnicholl:

“Don’t give a man a fish. Don’t teach a man to fish. Teach a man to teach a man to fish, and his community is set.”

“Something like that” is what I’m trying to do at Freshwater. I’ve been working with people there the last while to try to really articulate what my role is. It’s beginning to be clear that there may be some differing perspectives on what my role is to be between what’s in my head and what’s in others’ heads. Again, more on that if you are interested. Just ask.

For those of you who are interested in the affects of gap filling on small NGOs and the other ways that you can approach organizational value adding, check out the 4 diagrams below I presented to Freshwater recently. The power was out in all of Chileka for 4 days so I used my time accordingly. I should take up sketching again I think, because my artistic skills seem to be dwindling.

Illustration of the starting situation.

Patronizing? Maybe a bit, but not so much in context. Would love to hear your thoughts on that. How would you react if someone presented this to you for your organization? Maybe I screwed up. Hard to say.

The "Gap Filling" Approach to external helping
The fact that this one is there sort of justifies image number 1 above, in my mind. The issue is quite real: when you are a high capacity volunteer working in a small organization with limited capactiy, gap filling can do a lot of damage. Maybe that sounds a bit big-headed, but that's not where it's coming from. I made a whole framework to describe what I mean there. Email me if you are interested or have thoughts on this.

The "Training" Approach to external helping
Training programs and organizational development are not the same thing. I think training is really important for staff skills, but clear role definition and expecations are a must for such a role to be filled. Example: do you teach someone to use MS Excel, or do you teach them how to teach themselves to do it? Thoughts?

Organizational Development approach:
This is where the real meat of issues can get tackled. It's not so simple, though. An external volunteer thinking that an org needs OD is very different from an org reaching that conclusion themselves, especially if the external volunteer isn't necessarily right (which I'm not).

As things are now, I’m working on a couple of frameworks to structure my thinking as to what kinds of changes I’d like to see in Freshwater as a result of my “capacity building” placement there, whatever the hell “capacity building” really means. It’s one of those terms you can use to pretty much describe anything you want. Like how “sustainability” = “we will start the project and pay minimally, they you have to pay for the rest of your life.” Or how “demand driven” = “we will offer you a service so we can check it off our list of things donors want us to do, and if you don’t say ‘no’ then we’ll say there is demand for the service.” Anyways, that’s just a bit of jargon rant. Expect a strongly worded post elaborating on that at some point (When? Who knows.)

Anyway, some of the biggest things I’m focusing on, or hoping to focus on as my current thinking goes, are personal vision building for leadership knowledge, skills, and attitudes, and constructive relationship building. The latter point is a reflection of my assertion that organizations are not built by enhancing the skills of each person in a silo. You could train 2 incredible hockey players to be stars individually, and you could train 2 mediocre hockey players to play off each others’ strengths and work together effectively, and my money would be on the mediocre players.

Check out the frameworks below. Let me know what you think.

Building a personal vision:

Taking action towards it:

Not you vs. me, you and I vs. the problem:

Strategic Communication, not easy but necessary:

That’s pretty much the update in terms of work stuff. Hope you enjoyed it!

Go ahead, Demon from Hell, just try to possess me. I dare you. I double dare you.

Ahh, the home life. The last time I posted, I’d been living at my place for about a month. At that time, things were sort of weird, and I was at a bit of a loss as to what I wanted to share about it. At this point, things are substantially weirder, but I think that’s just the way it goes when you’re where I am doing what I’m doing.

I’ll start by introducing how I found the place. I’ve told the story of Odala already. The weekend after I met Odala, we went around all Sunday looking at villages looking for a place I might be able to live. My criteria were pretty clear: I didn’t care where it was as long as I was going to learn a lot and they didn’t speak English. After many hours of walking around and chatting, Odala went to his sister in law’s place, who directed us to someone else, who directed us to my place, which is called Kwasakanda. Asakanda is the guy who owns it, so the place is called Kwaskanda, and it’s in a village called Kwamapsuga, about a 25 walk (ish) away from the main road where the Freshwater office is located.

Odala and I met the kids who live there and the mother of the home, and we agreed on the price of the house I’d rent monthly. The issue was that the walls were not yet complete and the floor was not even started. So, the agreement was that Odala and I would go procure sand for them to finish it up and they would buy the cement. Then it would be 2 weeks for them to finish the work, and then I could move in.

So, Odala and I went to go get sand. I wasn’t too sure how to do that, but Odala said he knew a guy who knew a guy, so he borrowed my phone, made a few calls, and then we walked down to the river to meet a guy with a beat up old Toyota truck, a big assed pile of sand, and a few boys with shovels. A few hundred kilos of sand and 4,500 Kwacha later we were on our way. We drove back to the home in the village, backed in, and dumped this massive pile of sand in the walkway of Kwasakanda. I was off, and 2 weeks later, I returned to move in.

That was the end of November 2008. It’s now March 28, 2009, and the work on the floor is not only incomplete, it hasn’t even started. This is just one aspect of the strange situation I am in with my home life. I live in a room inside the family’s main house. That means I eat with them, hang out with them each evening, and, amazingly, pray with them nearly every night for about 1 or 2 hours. I’m not religious, and the family knows that. When asked which church I pray with (a very common question in Malawi), I said ‘none’, to which they were incredulous. There’s plenty more to tell here, but I could probably write a whole book about how crazy my home life is. For now, I’ll just introduce you to my family.

Evelynne- The mom

I call her “Amayi”, meaning “mother”, but it’s also just used as a respectful way to address a woman. Evelynne and I have a really interesting relationship. She’s the matriarch of the home, the bossy Malawian mom. She doesn’t speak any English, and speaking to her is always an adventure because, since she is completely not used to speaking with people that don’t know fluent Chichewa, she gets really impatient really quickly when I can’t understand what she’s saying. At first it bugged me but these days, after 3 months of the same thing every single day, I’m starting to get used to it and figure out how to deal with it. She tells me what to do all the time: what to wear, when to shave, when to wake up. If I try to leave the house with shorts on, I have to do it stealthily lest she notice, and when she notices, all bets are off. I have to change into trousers.

Evelynne is also really funny and always laughing. After dinner, if the family eats mandasi (Malawian mini-donuts) for a snack, she makes me eat some and says, “Aphiri, Musangalale!” with a laugh and a smile. She is always smiling, and almost always laughing. She makes fun of her kids a lot, and I go along with it because it’s pretty funny. Nowadays, as my Chichewa is getting better and better, we are able to actually talk a bit more. It’s really interesting to talk with her about the things she is passionate about, which are mainly God and the defeat of witchcraft in Malawi. More info on strategies for the war against witchcraft is below.

Asaladi- The dad.

I call him “Abambo”, meaning “father”, but it’s also just a respectful way to address a man. He sells cement in Blantyre, and works his ass off for his family. He works every day from 7:30 until 5:30. And by ‘every day’ I don’t mean M-F, I mean every single day, including weekends, all the time, no matter what. Since I have been living here I have only seen him take 2 days off: once when he had malaria and once on New Year’s Day.

Every night when the family eats, we eat together. At first it was sort of strange for me to be eating with just the dad and have the women and children eat in the next room, but that just seems to be the way the do things here. I also am not allowed to help clean up after dinner. Every time I try, I get sort of a “what are you doing??” attitude. It’s my nature to keep wanting to try, but that’s just not the way they roll in Malawi. Quite interesting.

Ndaziona - the younger daughter

Ndaziona, or Ndazi as we call her, is the 15 year old daughter of Amayi and Abambo. She and I get along really well. She has the same infectious smile and laugh as her mother, and we are always joking with each other. “Joking” is an interesting term to use because all of our interactions take place in Chichewa, and my ability to make jokes in Chichewa is pretty limited. I think the better description may be that we screw around and say stupid things, which is funny for her because she’s 15 and funny for me because it’s another aspect of the craziness of my life right now. Here she is:

Check out these videos below that Ndazi and I made today with the other kids who live beside us.

In this one below, the cute small one is Gertrude. Her older sister, to the right, is called Manis, and the boy at left is Leko, whose name I forgot and Ndazi had to remind me. Ndaziona strolls by the screen at the end.

In this next one, the dialog is roughly as follows:

Me: Well, now you’ve stopped recording, so you want to start again.

Ndaziona: Mmm.

Me: Can I see it? Oh, OK, leave it like that. Now you can choose what you want to record. Children!

Ndaziona: Should I press here?

Me: No. You see the letters that are red, “REC”, that means that it’s already working. Remember that we already made the video before? It’s working now, like that. Yes.

Chinsisi - the son

Chinsisi, sometimes called Sisi or Chisisiewe, is the 14 year old son of Amayi and Amabo. Chinsisi is a real character. He loves to dance, and really loves to pray. Most nights before he goes to sleep, which is the room next to mine, he literally yells at God for about 10 or 15 minutes praying. I’ve heard him praying for me, for Joyce (the house cat that I named and was previously named “Phusi”, which means “cat”, but who sadly died), and for the rest of the family. He’s a cool young man whom I am happy to know and who it’s fun to bug. He also doesn’t speak any English, but between us the communication seems to be easier somehow. I think it might be because he tends to leave me alone more readily when it’s clear I don’t understand and don’t feel like trying to. Think about it: if you lived with a family who didn’t speak English but who was very demanding for you to know their language, would you ^^always^^ feel like straining your brain to figure out what they’re saying to you, especially if they talk quickly and colloquially? I’m trying hard, and I’m succeeding, but a guy needs a break every now and then.

Anasi - the first born

Anasi, or Alice, is the first born daughter. She's about 17 and currently isn't around all that much because she's going to school in Lilongwe. She speaks English quite well, or rather she can speak English quite well, but we always speak Chichewa at home anyway. Since she's not around I haven't talked to her too much, but she is another kin to the smiling and laughter that Ndazi and Amayi bring to the household. She recently finished form 4, which is equivalent to finishing high school, and now wants to study nursing. She's quite delightful, but definitely got the bossy genes from mom. She's also the most critical of my Chichewa. She's quoted as saying:

"If you make a mistake once, you should learn. Once you have learned, if you make the same mistake again, you are not trying. Try harder."

This was said in Chichewa of course, quickly, and after about 2 weeks of my living there, so it took a few iterations for me to figure out what she was saying. Gotta learn somehow right?

Aphiri the Preacher, AKA Abusa

Abusa, meaning “preacher”, or Aphiri as I call him, which is his clan name, is the uncle of Abambo. This is a bit weird because he is actually substantially younger than Abambo, but I’m not about to try to figure out the family tree. Aphiri explained it to me once: it’s something to do with one of their parents having lost their spouse then remarried, but it’s not quite clear.

Most nights, Aphiri comes by the house to help the family pray. They do not mess around with their prayer in my house. The family is very, very religious. I have been praying with them at night, and though they know I’m not religious, they welcome me anyway. It’s a very interesting experience and it basically serves as my daily Chichewa lesson. They often read Bible passages and sometimes make me read them, and indeed translate them into Chichewa because they want to test if I’ve understood. Consider this: Leviticus Chapter 6 Verses 8 to 12:

"The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 9"Command Aaron and his sons,
saying, This is the law of the burnt offering. The burnt offering
shall be on the hearth on the altar all night until the morning, and
the fire of the altar shall be kept burning on it. 10And(K) the priest
shall put on his linen garment and put his linen undergarment on his
body, and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the
burnt offering on the altar and put them(L) beside the altar. 11Then
he shall take off his garments and put on other garments and carry the
ashes outside the camp to a clean place. 12The fire on the altar shall
be kept burning on it; it shall not go out. "

Right. Try translating that into Chichewa.

Aphiri and I are friends, I think. I have been giving him guitar lessons for some time now, and he’s getting pretty good. One thing that amazes me about people here as how great their sense of rhythm seems to be. This comes in handy when learning guitar. Aphiri wants to learn the guitar so he can play music in the church when he gives sermons. I’ve taught people to play before, and one common complain I often get is that peoples’ fingers hurt when forming chords. Not Aphiri. His Malawian hands are tough as leather, and we can play for an hour without him saying a peep about his fingers. This is a Malawian thing I think. This is the same reason that they can take handfuls of steaming nsima in their hands no problem, but I feel my skin burning every time I try it. And I thought I had a pretty high threshold for pain.

When my sister, Sylvia, was pregnant (she had her son, Charlie, about 5 weeks ago), I told the family about it, and that led us to do a night of prayer for the safety of Sylvia and her unborn child about 2 months ago. We all held hands, closed our eyes, and prayed that mother and child would be safe and healthy for about 20 minutes. Aphiri led us in the prayer and yelled his pleas to God for their safety. They did that all for my family because they wanted them to be healthy. This was pretty awesome, and I can't wait to tell Charlie that story when he gets older.

Check out the video of Aphiri below. Rough translation of the conversation:

Aphiri: But I’m not wearing good clothes! (before movie begins)

Me: No problem, you look good. How did you rise?

Aphiri: I rose well, how about you?

Me: Well thanks. This one is my friend Aphiri, who I am teaching to play guitar.

Aphiri: True, yes.

Me: And he’s teaching me to pray.

Aphiri: To pray, yes.

Me: So, he’s my friend. Thanks Aphiri! I can show the video I just made to my family in Canada, they’ll enjoy it.

Aphiri: Thanks!

Me: Thanks.

One thing that’s a bit unsettling about this relationship is that, even though the family knows I’m not Christian, I think they are trying to convert me. Aphiri and Amayi are constantly telling me that I need to pray back in Canada and tell my family and friends to pray too. This is fine by me: their view of the world is that this is their way of helping me. In fact, it’s really quite considerate. Aphiri really wants to save my soul. I just hope that I’m not giving the impression that I am becoming Christian, because that’s not the case and I don’t want to be deceptive. I’ll keep you posted on all of that. A bit further down you’ll see the story of demonic possession that may shed some light on my concern.

Things recently got kicked up a notch with the whole prayer situation. A few weeks ago I asked Aphiri to explain to me what he meant when he said “Roboshoka rakashakmamaba…” and other things like that that he says, or rather yells, during prayer. He LOVED this question. See the video below to find out why. Apologies in advance for the profanity: when I made that video I was a bit freaked out, which I think comes through in a number of ways. I think maybe Aphiri thinks he’s saved my soul. Hell, maybe he has. What do I know anyway?

Aphiri the Azungu, AKA Me

My name in Chileka is not Mike, it’s Aphiri. Alex from work gave me that name back in December as a joke indicating his view that I was becoming Malawian, mainly because of the way I was speaking Chichewa with the guards at Freshwater. I began answering to that name at work, and within a few weeks, it spread like wildfire around town. Now everyone in Chileka knows me as Aphiri, and nobody calls me Mike. Not at home, not at the market, not even at work. Everybody calls me Aphiri, and in fact most don’t even know my real name. Even the minibus driver who looks like Cuba Gooding Junior, with whom I’ve never spoken, calls me that. Every day I walk down the street and am greeted by my Malawian name by people I don’t know. It’s pretty funny, and it would be weird for me now if I went and lived somewhere else in Malawi. I like my Malawian name, so would it be strange if I decided to keep it if I moved somewhere else?

Life in the lane of confusion

I’m not in the slow lane, not in the fast lane, I’m in the lane where my speedometer doesn’t seem to be working. I’m learning a lot here, and sometimes I feel like I’m accomplishing a great deal, while at other times I take a look at what I’m doing and ask if it has any value whatsoever compared to what I would have been doing if I never moved to Malawi. The first 4 months have been really tough, as I have explained. But things are changing. It’s not clear how they are changing, but I can say that I am looking forward to the next months of my life here being different than the first 4 months. Things are about to come to a head at work (how friendly the face of this head will be remains to be seen), and I am going to start connecting with the other members of the team a lot more than I did in the first 4 months, which was virtually not at all. I’ve had my desert island experience, now it’s time for a change of pace. How precisely that will manifest itself is not yet clear.

I've been writing music again but am having trouble nailing down anything I like. Also been reading like crazy. Some novels, lots about organizations, too. I just started a really interesting book about Canada's role in Afghanistan called "The Expected War." Days are characterized by walks through to mud to and from work, rice, nsima, or chips for lunch, perpetual candle light at home when it's night time. Lots of praying (which is really wierd to see myself write because I'm not religious), lots of Chichewa, lots of learning.

Continuing the Odala Saga

Not too much new to report here really. Odala has bought a phone, which is good because that means he must be saving some money from his teaching activities. He’s recently opened a private nursery school. He has no qualifications as a teacher, but he went and bought some books and teamed up with a university graduate, and is now running a school. Not to sell Odala short, but he’s no teacher and neither is his friend, so it makes you wonder about the quality of the private schools in Malawi. Even more so, it makes you wonder about the quality of the public schools, which are free.

I’ve started doing computer lessons with Odala, and am still waiting to hear what’s gone on with him and his brick selling. He was supposed to sell the bricks a month ago then use the funds to start the DVD business, but it’s all up in the air right now I think. Anyway, that’s about all for now about Odala.

We can put ‘em in the ground, but we can’t keep ‘em working

The EWB Southern Africa WatSan team is in the process of hashing out a new strategy right now. There are two main prongs to it: Hygiene and Sanitation Behaviour Change, and Water Point Functionality. This new strategy represents an unprecedented level of focus for our team: we are going to start really thinking about who we partner with so that we can identify change paths where we can find multiplicative change impacts, like the concept of transformative change. There’s an underlying evidenced based principle that’s going into each of these areas of focus. For HySan Behaviour Change (HSBC, really) the idea is that CLTS (Community Lead Total Sanitation) is a pretty viable approach, and we are going to focus on it NOT because we think it’s the greatest thing ever, but rather because it will be a good vehicle to learn how to create change in the whole HySan sector, which is a complicated one that has seen limited success. For Water Point Functionality (WPF, which is confusing because WFP = Water For People and FWP = Freshwater Project), the idea is that, yes, implementers are succeeding in getting boreholes into the ground, but the problem is that functionality is not reliable. This is meant to be addressed by VLOM (Village Level Operation and Maintenance) which is supported by CBM (Community Based Management) training, which basically works to train communities on how to use and maintain an Afridev Pump Borehole.

The problem (well, one of them) is that CBM is basically not really working. Supply chains for spare parts and trained labor as well systemic accountability for borehole operation and maintenance are weak in Malawi, and this is leading to many boreholes breaking down. Right now functionality is only around 70%, which is substantially slowing the progress of getting universal water point coverage so that people don’t need to use unprotected sources for bathing, cooking and drinking. Because when that happens, water borne disease reigns supreme. Chikwawa District has a cholera outbreak right now, which is not a huge surprise given what I’ve seen in Chikwawa in terms of water provision.

You may ask (or maybe not, I won’t put words in your mouth): why can’t they just maintain the borehole themselves? I mean, it’s their asset, right? Why don’t the communities just suck it up and figure it our? Consider this anecdote I wrote in a report to EWB a while back:

Remember that random theorem you learned 4 years ago back in Math 200? Well, today you’re going to need it.

At the CBM training in Mozeni/ Jose, villages in Chikwawa District, I observed the ways in which the community is exposed to the ideas of leadership, fundraising, borehole ownership, hygiene and sanitation, and borehole maintenance. There was a lot of stuff crammed into a 5 day course (8 AM to 1:30 PM each day), and not everyone was present nor engaged for the whole thing. There were a few stars though: people who were really involved and clearly trying to learn the material.

The workshops were not really participatory, though the Community Development Assistant (CDA) who talked about fundraising, committee roles, and leadership was fairly good about this. The Water Monitoring Assistant (WMA) was really barking at the people as though it were a boot camp, however. I sat with the committees on their benches for a couple of days of the training to get their view of the event (I was sitting with the facilitators for the other days). One thing that struck me is that, if this were a university lecture, I might say that the prof was pretty good in that he was high energy. But, in an adult education atmosphere in which people were supposed to be learning how to care for a livelihood asset, I felt myself being critical of what I was seeing from the WMA. There was little space for questions and not any kind of atmosphere in which I think people would feel comfortable saying they don’t understand what was going on. Stepping back, I tried to find things about it that didn’t blame the attitude of the WMA (who was definitely a bit of a big bwana), but more looked at the overall approach of the trainings themselves.

I thought about it like this: imagine someone came at you with literally dozens of pages of pre-made flip chart text (with instruction sets with as many as 21 steps in them), and you were expected to take notes in notebooks and understand how to do something quite technical. Imagine the topic was how to change brake pads on a Land Rover, and there were some diagrams, etc. Now imaging you drive the Land Rover every day for 3 years but never practice or have any follow up on the brake pad lessons, then one day you need to fix them. You took notes on some flimsy notebook 3 years before and are expected to remember how to jack up the car, take off the wheel, remove the worn pads, and finish the rest of the 10 or so steps you learned a while back. If I had never changed brake pads or driven a car before, I think that would be a tall order for me, and I am a technically inclined university educated engineer who is used to writing and learning in that kind of context and is used to keeping notes.

Maybe I’m overstating this issue a bit or not giving the villagers enough credit (for example, maybe they take the responsibility to practice the skills they’ve learned every few months so that they don’t get rusty), but, given that so many boreholes are not functioning in Malawi, I feel that the quality and approach of the CBM training needs to be really examined.

There are questions about this story at the bottom of the post, and much more to come in terms of interpretation in a later post. For now, any thoughts you have would be much appreciated.

Stirring the political pot to thicken the political plot

As before, I’m not going to post any updates on the political situation in Chileka right now. But things are getting interesting, so, as before, email me if you’d like to know the scoop. May is going to be a very interesting month.

Questions for Thought and Reflection:

I’m interested in hearing reactions to the story I told about the CBM training in Chikwawa. If your water main breaks in Canada, does it ever cross your mind to go and fix it? Of course, you’re not qualified to do that so you couldn’t anyway, but let’s say you were trained to do it and told it was your responsibility. How would you react?

Now imagine you don’t pay taxes because you are too poor and your country’s government can’t enforce tax laws anyway. What does that change about the situation, if anything?

What would need to happen in your life for you to actively take charge of operating and maintaining your own water supply? I’m not just talking about doing what your told, either. I mean forming a community committee, going to meetings, fundraising, and actively scheduling and/ or carrying out maintenance and repairs for your water system. Thoughts?

I remember reflecting on this with my friend Anna-Marie back when there was the garbage strike and trash was piling up everywhere. I seem to recall that, when people started to take charge of their own public service and move some of the trash (voluntarily I believe) people told them to stop because it was helping the City to shirk their responsibilities. So it seems to me that it's all to easy to assume that simply telling people they are responsibile for something will allow people to take control of it; in fact, judging by our Vancouver trash example, some are even of the polar opposite mindset. What am I missing here? What do you think?

Thanks for reading!

~MK

What makes your blood boil the hottest: corruption, AIDS, infant mortality, witchcraft, or that guy who always lets someone else pick up the tab?

2009-01-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

This post is extremely long, and it’s taken me over a month to get through it. You know how when you start something, and then realize you’ve bitten off way more than you though you were going to have to chew, but then you just can’t bring yourself to do a half-assed job of it? Welcome to everything I ever do.

To those of you who get through the whole thing (and especially those who gain access to the bonus material, which requires an extra step), I extend my preemptive congratulations. That is particularly so because of the scattered and confused nature of it. It doesn’t flow well: It’s a reflection of what’s been going down with me over here for the last 5 weeks or so, and “flowing” is definitely not how I would describe that time. There’s frustration, confusion, amazement, and everything in between. So don’t expect it to make any more sense than people’s emotions normally do. Thanks for your interest and patience!

One final note: I’ve decided that, in all stories I’ll tell, conversations and events that took place in Chichewa will be presented with the original dialogue because I feel it captures the story better, whether it makes it more interesting, funny, or weird. It may seem pretentious to post stories with dialogue in a language that most of you don’t understand, but it’s not. Trust me.

It has been a while since I posted, but it’s not for lack of interesting stories. I’ve been really busy with work, and it seems I entered Freshwater in a time when they can use all the help they can yet. The end of the year has been looming, which means stacks of donor reports (of course, each donor wants a totally different set of difficult to obtain data), attempts to plan for the following year, Christmas, and other project deadlines spawning from it being just too tempting to say “by the beginning of 2009, this project will have accomplished…” Stack on top of this the nitty gritty water point construction and maintenance work that is also our responsibility and you get a schedule with more than enough tasks and not enough time to do them all.

In any case, my goal for this post is to tell you a few interesting stories that might help capture some the reasons why one needs to tread so lightly in the field of international development, and also just to get some of this stuff off my chest and share it with whomever is interested. These stories don’t relate directly to ID implementation, no, but they might be interesting data points for anyone trying to understand the world in which on-the-ground development exists. And also the world in which I am living right now. They have definitely been interesting for me, anyway.

Making friends or something like that:

The first weekend I was here, I met someone named Odala Banda. On the Sunday afternoon of that weekend I had decided to go look around to try to find a place to stay. I had left the main road and started walking into the heart of one of the villages surrounding Chileka, the town I live in. I had been walking up a hill when I realized that I was on a private path that led to someone’s home. One of the people from the house was sitting on the front steps, and he looked at me with a justifiably suspicious kink in his eye. Who was this white guy coming up to see him at his home?

“Mwaswera bwanji!” I said, meaning “How did you spend the day?”

“Ndaswera bwino, kaya inu?” he replied. This means “I spend the day well, how about you”, but it was said is sort of an “I’m fine, but, who are you and what do you want?” tone.

“Ndikufuna kuyenda, kuona…”. I said, which means, “I want to walk, to see…”, my half-assed attempt at trying to explain that I just wanted to walk around the village and check it out. Luckily for me, someone happened to be walking along the path that was behind he, and he called to me. I was relieved because he was speaking English and I could actually communicate with him. So I turned around to greet him. I told him what I was doing, and he explained to the person from the house who’d I almost walked into.

His name was Odala, and he and I got to talking. He brought me back to his home, where we sat out front on a mat. Odala has a beautiful view of Chileka. This region of Malawi has gorgeous mountains around, and as Odala’s place is on a hill he gets a bird’s eye view of it all. He says he loves his home because of his view. His father, a man of almost 80 years who walks with a limp, was (and I think still is) a welder, he said. He helped Odala get on his feet by building him that home. Odala is married, and has two children, a young girl of about 3, Patience, and a boy of about 1, Moses.

We talked about a few different things, including our relationships, life in Malawi, differences between Malawi and Canada. Eventually he asked me what I was doing in Malawi, and I explained that I work for a Engineers Without Borders, and I am partnered with Freshwater to help them advance their capacity to achieve their goals. He told me that he also volunteers: Odala is the Chairman of the South Lunzu Post Test Club (SLPTC). This is a volunteer group that was formed about 4 years ago in Machinjiri, Odala’s home town. The group does public outreach work in the area to try to get everyone possible to know their HIV status. They feel they are battling with fear because people are afraid to talk about and admit to the reality of HIV/AIDS in their lives. Because of this fear, many people just choose not to go for voluntary testing. In addition, the group helps HIV victims get a hold of counseling services if they find out they are HIV positive. Many people feel their lives are over once they test positive, so the SLPTC wants to help people realize that they have options. Anti retro viral drugs, for example, are apparently available free or subsidized from the government, according to Odala.

Odala went on to say how his organization had so many challenges and obstacles to success. And then he asked me for money. This happens a lot here, when you meet someone and begin to talk to them it is quite common that they will eventually ask you for money. I was disappointed because I thought I’d found a friend but was left thinking I was just an opportunity to him. At this point, weeks later, I am not so matter-of-fact about this. But I am still wondering about it. Does Odala value me as a friend, really? There’s a question on this at the bottom of the post. I’m truly struggling on this one.

Anyway, I told him I couldn’t help him financially because as an EWB volunteer I don’t make any more than the people I work with. I don’t have a large amount of dispensable income that I can give out on a whim simply because I am an azungu, I told him (this was my first weekend in Chileka, too, and I’d just met Odala 30 minutes ago). So, he said fine, if I can’t help him financially, I could just help them with capacity building so that I can show them how to get funding. Again, I had to decline. I am here to help enhance Freshwater’s capacity, and I can’t take on a second job trying to do the same thing. It’s just not realistic. I want to help everyone and do everything, but I can’t. So I told him this, and then told him that, even though I wasn’t able to offer my help in to him in this way, I hoped we could still be friends. Yes, yes, of course we can, was his response.

We continued talking, and eventually I asked him how he got involved with the SLPTC. Though my cross-cultural communication skills are still lacking, I still was able to sense that he felt a pang of something when I asked this. I’m not sure what is was. Pain? Hesitation? That weird feeling you get when talking about something deeply personal and you wonder how others will react? Whatever it was, I’m sure it made sense somehow.

Odala told me that he’d lost his brother to AIDS about 4 years ago. He told me it was extremely painful to lose his brother, and when that happened he decided that he was always going to be involved with the fight against AIDS, no matter what happens, for the rest of his life. I found out in later conversations that Odala had lost another brother, a sister, and 5 or 6 nieces and nephews (he wasn’t sure which), to TB, waterborne diseases, and others. I never got too much detail from Odala on this and don’t plan to dig much further.

A couple of weeks ago, Odala invited me to go to Machinjiri with him, which as I mentioned before is his hometown. He seems to go there quite often to visit his mother and his nieces. I am not totally sure of the situation (I find Malawian family trees remarkably difficult to follow), but I am fairly certain that his nieces who live with Odala’s mothers are the daughters of one of Odala’s deceased siblings. The plan had been to have lunch with Odala’s family when we got to Machinjiri, but when we were there, he told me that his mother had no flour to make nsima because she did not have money. To give you an idea, a bag of nsima flour that’s enough to make at least 4 or 5 meals costs around 2 Canadian dollars.

The Lunzu River runs directly through Machinjiri, and Odala and I went to see it. This “river” is more of a creek by my definition, but apparently when the rains really pick up the river follows suit. I took a few photos while I was there. It’s really quite beautiful in this part of Malawi. Look at the photos below. One of them is rotated the wrong way for some reason.

As Odala and I sat on the rocks, we talked as we always do when we see each other. I never know what to make of our conversations. Sometimes I feel as though we’re at that point in a relationship when you can just be silent and it’s not weird. Uma Thurman’s character in “Pulp Fiction” had a great line about this: something to the effect of “Why do people always feel as though they have to talk about bullshit to feel comfortable? I think it’s great if two people can just sit and say nothing.” In any case, it sometimes feels like we can just sit and chill out, and that’s just fine. But at other times it’s strange: forced conversation, questions about Canada and Malawi in the hopes of finding a talking point, that type of forced and relieved laughter that comes out when an uncomfortable conversation stumbles upon something you feel like you might both be able to laugh at. Maybe this is just the way it goes when you are getting to know some people. I certainly would be lying if I said that every time I meet someone in Canada that the words flow like wine and everything just clicks. But at the same time, rarely would I meet someone I can with whom there exists the strange feeling that I get between Odala and I, but who still somehow seems really eager to be your friend.

Aside: any alarm bells raised yet? If I were telling this story to anyone at work, they’d undoubtedly make the point at this stage that Odala must be trying to suck money out of me: “he sees an azungu and he sees dollar signs, so he will try to take advantage of that” is what they’d say…
They tell me that this is a big problem for azungus in Malawi, and it’s just the way it is.
I am not willing to take this as reality without a grain of salt at this point. I am choosing to give all the relationships I build here the benefit of the doubt. I am assuming the best and hoping it will be consistent with reality. So far it’s going questionably. Not terribly, certainly not well, but questionably. If what my coworkers warn me of turns out to be true of my relationship with Odala, and indeed true of so many of the relationships I seem to be ending up in here in Malawi, I will be more than a little heartbroken. I am lonely enough as it is.

Our conversation eventually led, as it often does, into talking about work. Odala doesn’t have a job: he does what’s called ganyu labour (casual labour when he can find it), grows maize, and occasionally sells bricks that he makes with clay from the sand. Check out the photo below. These are some of Odala’s bricks which he sells to people for about 1.5 to 2 kwacha a piece if someone’s building a house (1 kwacha is around 1.1 Canadian cents). Check out the photo below.

Odala had mentioned to me before that he used to show movies to make money. He said he’d bought a TV and a DVD player and would rent DVDs from the library to show to people. He’d charge 5 kwacha a head to watch the movies and he did quite well, he told me, until his property was stolen, causing him to lose out on this source of income. He’d mentioned to me before that he wanted to start this up again, so as we sat on the rocks in Machinjiri, I asked him how it was going. He told me that it wasn’t going well and that he wouldn’t be able to do it unless he found a business partner. Ah, I said, and how was he going to go about trying to find one? His response was as I predicted, and he asked me to be his business partner because it would be hard to find anyone else. Sigh. My response to him was that I wouldn’t know where to start in terms of finding a place to show such movies or how to go about doing it. He said it would be fine. My theory was that, as his “business partner”, I would basically just finance the whole cost. So, I told Odala that I would only invest in any type of project if I saw a sound business plan with some real consideration put into how it is going to succeed. With that, I offered to help Odala put together this plan. He has since done some research on the costs of inputs, and about week later we sat down and formed a spreadsheet together looking at how much he need for startup costs, what his maintenance costs will be, and how much revenue he expects, so that we could see under what conditions he will make money and in what timeframe. Odala found this to be really useful (he says), and I was happy to be able to help him with this. We’ve since revised the plan based on some new activities Odala is working on, and at this point our plan should see him starting his movie showing business sometime in February or March, in theory.

Now, my relationship with Odala, as I have said, is confusing to me. I lent him money for fertilizer which I haven’t seen and he hasn’t mentioned. When he sees me he uses the talk time on my phone as if it doesn’t matter at all. He still wants me to front the money for the DVD business, though I’ve told him I can’t afford to do that (we don’t make much money here as EWB volunteers. I only get paid about $15 a day). When we went to Machinjiri I paid for the bus ride there and back for both of us, and when I asked Odala if he had any cash on him he said no as if he was surprised that I would even ask. He assumed I would pay for both of us and didn’t even mention it. That bus ride cost the equivalent of 1/3 of a day’s pay for me. That’s not trivial. I have told Odala that I don’t make an azungu salary in Malawi just because I’m an azungu, but I’m not convinced he has gotten the message. In addition, Odala called me on Christmas, then told me to call him back, and then asked me what I had prepared for him. I told him, “Nothing! What have you prepared for me for Christmas?”, to which he just laughed and said “Nothing!”. So what the hell is going on?

So here’s the situation: Odala has seen so much pain in his life and has lost many people. He is poor and he struggles to get by. I am his “friend”, but I don’t know what that means to him. He assumes I can afford to fund our friendship and help him financially. He assumes I will do that without issue, and I feel like a request for money is always on the way every time we interact. He helped me find the place where I am staying now, which was great, and I am willing to help with this business plan. I feel for him because I know he struggles. But I can’t help everyone in Malawi personally. I feel terrible when I think of what he has lost and the worries he has for his own children, but am I helping him out of guilt or because I really want to? Even though I don’t make much here as an EWB OVS, I do have some money in my account. And, really, I could afford to give him a lot of money by his standards with minimal effects to my personal finances in the long term. So he’s not as wrong as I tell him he is when I say “I can’t afford it.” Quite possibly, I’m just full of shit.

Is it his right to assume that I will fund him the way he wants me to? Is it my right to feel pissed off when he calls me his “friend” but I suspect he just wants me as his money tree? Am I giving him the benefit of the doubt or I am doing the opposite? Would I feel different if he didn’t seem like such a happy guy? If I lost my brother, sister, and 6 nieces and nephews, I would be an emotional disaster. And if I were poor and knew someone I believed to be rich and able to help me, would I be as forward and presumptuous as Odala is being? What would need to happen for me to value that person as a true friend? I really don’t know! It’s so confusing.

Well, that’s the deal with Odala right now. Can you tell I’m frustrated and confused?

The power of prayer – Enough to save your kids from their Halloween costumes or from true evil?

Onto the next story. Later in the afternoon, after returning from Machinjiri, I decided to attend the interdenominational church service that is conducted each Sunday at the Freshwater Resource Centre. At the time, the Resource Centre was where I was living as I was looking for a new place. This building is a totally separate structure from that of the Freshwater office, and the resource centre is actually used primary for religious activities (this surprised me when I got here).

The previous Sunday I had meant to attend the service but didn’t because I wasn’t sure what was going on, when it started, etc. This time, since I wanted to learn more about the community and about this Resource Centre, the function of which I still don’t fully understand, I was determined to attend the service. The people from work who were there with me know I that I’m not a Christian and that I don’t go to church, but appreciated that I wanted to check it out. It turned out to be some of the craziest, most unexpected stuff I have seen since I’ve been here.

The service began beautifully. Sarah, the receptionist from Freshwater, started the service off by leading us all in song.

“Hallelujah!” she would shout.

“Amen!” the group would respond.

“Hallelujah!” she’d repeat in sort of an “I can’t HEAR YOU!” way.

“Amen!” the group would respond again, along the lines of, “we SAID, Amen!” in tone.

Then, Sarah led is in song. It was beautiful. She sings wonderfully, and the group was following along: everyone knew the words except me. As we reached the chorus, the group would sing together and Sarah would sing a bridge for us between musical phrases. It was wonderful.

Next, Sarah led us all in prayer. She asked that people testify in front of the group to share the amazing things that have happened to through the power of prayer. People obliged and received healthy applause after they shared. After about 30 minutes of this, the preacher showed up, and it was time for the real ceremony to start. He introduced to the group what was going to happen in the day’s service. Alex (the Freshwater Operations Manager with whom I’ve been working) tried to explain to me what was going on. It was hard for me to grasp exactly what he meant, but what he told me was that the preacher was saying he had helped to stop a wizard from performing magic. I was as confused as you might expect when he told me this, but there was a church service in progress so I didn’t ask him to clarify.

A few minutes later I was asked to go over the computer that had been set up so that I could help with the projector slideshow. I obliged, though I didn’t expect to be part of the service like that. Before the preacher began his energetic service, he asked me to introduce myself to the group. He said something in Chichewa that I was pretty sure had meant “please greet the group”, but I wasn’t sure and wasn’t about to risk it, so I kind of just stood there. Then he said it in English, prompting me to stand up and say ‘hi’.

”Mwaswera bwanji”, I said, which was met with predicable laughter.

"Dzina langa ndi Mike. Ndikuchokera ku Canada, ndikugwira nchito ku Freshwater ndi Alex. Ndikufuna kuphunzira Chichewa. Zikomo Kwambiri", I continued, which was met with huge laughter and some applause. It seems that, the fewer mistakes I make when speaking Chichewa, the funnier people seem to think it is.

Translation: My name is Mike. I come from Canada. I work at Freshwater with Alex. I want to learn Chichewa. Thank you very much.

Then the preacher said something else, and Alex told me that he was saying "go greet her", pointing to an elderly woman who was sitting in the front row. I had absolutely no clue what was going on, but I got up and went to greet this lady with "Muli bwanji amayi" (How are you, madam?)

I sat back down, and everyone seemed quite interested and intrigued with what I had just done, but it seemed to me that I had simply said hello to someone in the church. I was told to start the slideshow, and as photos came of this lady talking to the preacher with jars of different herbs in front of her, and with Alex explaining what the preacher was saying, I eventually realized what was going on.

This woman had been practicing witchcraft. This must have been what Alex meant when he told me that the preacher had stopped a wizard from performing magic. As I switched the power point slides on command and had Alex translating for me, I learned more and more about what was going on. Apparently, this woman had killed 5 people by her own admission, and the last person she killed was her son. She had sent him to go pick something up from the store in their car, and when he pulled up to the house she was sitting on the steps waiting for him. As her son got out of the car and walked toward her, she magically transported herself into the car and ran him down, killing him instantly. I asked Alex what her motive could have been, but he simply told me that it’s just what witches do: evil has no sensible motive. There was also an explanation of each her different medicines: there were ones that can kill someone by the end of the day if you have a dispute with them, ones that can summon children, ones that can make her invisible, ones that can control people’s thoughts, ones that can make people do what you want them to. According to Alex, she had repented because she felt guilty for killing those 5 people and for practicing evil magic.

After his presentation was over, the preacher called her up, placed his hand on her forehead, and led the group in prayer for her soul. Malawian prayer is loud, deliberate, and long. Everyone was praying at the same time but saying different things. After some time, 3 children were called up who had apparently been trained in witchcraft! You could feel it in the air: people were united in prayer for a purpose. The pastor placed his had his hand on the forehead of one of the young girls and began shouting a prayer that was clearly audible (though, to me, not understandable) even above the roar of the crowd’s prayers. Everyone had their eyes closed, but I sneakily opened mine to take a peak, and sure enough, the girl whom the pastor was clutching was sneaking a peak, too.

One of the things I’ve always noticed and been amazed at in every country I’ve been to is the way that kids are just kids everywhere. Regardless of culture or circumstance, a child is humanity in its purest and unsullied form. And this one was being a kid, too, giving me the side eye as her soul was being prayed for. "What is this all about, and what are you doing here anyway?" is what I understood her side eye to be saying to me. She was probably about 7 or 8 years old.

After the three children had been saved, it was time for people to get out of their chairs apparently, because that’s what they all did. It seemed that it was mostly, if not exclusively, women who partook in this next part. To be honest I can’t be quite sure because it’s all such a blur, what happened next. As these women all stood up, the pastor began blasting a prayer once more with even more conviction and energy than he had before. The women were standing at his feet, eyes close, arms placed in front of them with their palms facing the ceiling and praying passionately. The pastor, his booming words directed at God dwarfing those of the dozen or so women who were praying, began doing the rounds. He placed his palm on the forehead of one of the women, and before long she began crying hysterically as she prayed. Her legs began to shake, and convulsions soon took over her body. The power of God had entered her body, and her body was reacting accordingly. The convulsions intensified, and the prayer being delivered by the pastor followed suit. The woman began to stumble, shuffling backwards as she lost her balance. Mercifully someone came to her rescue at her back, and when she finally lost the ability to stand under her own power, she fell backwards into the arms of one of the parishioners.

At the risk of killing all the suspense, I’d like to take a brief interlude to talk about the domestic roles of women in Malawi. This is something I of course am not completely familiar with and never really will be, but my time living in the village and simply observing what people do has given me at least some perspective. Women are genuine multi-taskers here, as they are everywhere in the world. But here, it’s quite remarkable. It’s not uncommon to see a woman selling bananas from a basket on her head while carrying an infant on her back using a multi-purpose length of cloth called a chitenge. She might even be walking at the same time, undoubtedly heading somewhere to do some other activity that’s her responsibility. And, though I don’t think I have seen this yet, I would not have to rub my eyes or do a double take if I saw such a woman breastfeeding at the same time, because that’s another one of the tasks that the woman does. When I go to the borehole in my village, I see woman, not to mention girls, little girls, carrying buckets of water on their small heads with infants strapped to their backs with a chitenge. Perhaps you get the picture: women carry infants on the backs all the time and still go about the other activities they are required to do throughout the course of the day without missing a beat.

Getting back to the story, you may have guessed by now that one of the activities that women do with infants on their backs is go to church. And, of course, that means that one of the activities that women do with infants on their backs is pray, standing up, eyes closed, palms to the ceiling, and with the pastor palming them on the forehead, causing them to convulse madly as I have already explained. So, this is what happened at the church, but of course the infants had no clue what’s going on: all they saw was their mother’s shaking violently with a room full of shouting. If you were less than a year old, what would you do in that situation?

Screaming babies. Crying, praying women who’ve fallen to the ground, the babies having been narrowly rescued from their backs by bystanders as their mothers were collapsing to the ground. The pastor shouting the word of God above it all. And me, sitting there with my mouth half open. By the end, probably 10 or 12 women were lying on the ground, curled up, praying, and weeping, with their infants in hysterics. The prayer was deafening. And finally, as the pastor completed what he had to say, people helped each other up, dried the tears from their eyes, and went back to smiles and chatting. Everything was back to normal. To me, the end of the service felt as if a tornado had just torn through the room and then left with nobody noticing except me. People chatted with the pastor and made small talk with each other, and the parishioners left the hall as if everything was normal. I say “as if” because, to me, it wasn’t normal. But that’s my life right now. I’m the odd one out. To everybody else, that service was business as usual. And business as usual in Malawi sometimes looks like madness to me. I guess that means I have a lot to learn.

Democracy rules, man. Power to the people. Right?:

If you’re still reading, congratulations on making it this far! This next story relates to elections, more specifically primary elections, here in Malawi. The primary elections are the elections that take place in an area to select which candidate will represent a party in the upcoming federal election. While this story is not quite the Hillary versus Barack epic, it’s still saucy enough for me to choose not to post it on the internet.

EWB people have been kicked out of countries before (actually this happened only once as far as I know, but still). So, I’m not going to do anything stupid and post such madness on the internet. If you are interested in the state of democracy in Malawi and would like to read this story, it’s really easy for you to see it. All you have to do is take one little extra step, and either leave a comment at the bottom of this post saying you’d like me to email you the story, or send me an email at mikekang@ewb.ca. That’s it, piece of cake!

****Censored. Email Mike if you want to see the goods****

Can everyone’s reality been real at the same time? If so, which one counts?

Chambers once again. I think I’ll end up owing that guy some money by the time this blog reaches the end of its lifetime.

So you’ve heard the story of Odala. In addition, with the family I’m living with in the village, despite our original agreement, keeps expecting me to spend more and more money on them for things we had agreed they’d pay for. The floor in the house I am supposed to be staying in was supposed to be finished 4 weeks ago, and I procured about 300 kg of sand the day I found the place so that they could do it. They promised they’d buy cement, but now they want be to spend about 8000 Kwacha (75 bucks or so) on cement, even though I am only supposed to be paying 1,500 a month for rent, from which the cost of sand I bought is supposed to be deducted. That agreement has already been rolled over and I have just bought the sand. And fertilizer. And rice for Christmas.

I was talking to Alex, someone I work with, about this the other day. Everyone in the office has warned me about the way the azungu will be treated in the village. So I knew what I was getting into, but I thought it would be different somehow. Alex was telling me that many people in Malawi ask for money from azungus because they can’t afford not to. There’s so little stability in their lives that, even if they are getting by, they need to take every opportunity they can because they never know what can happen. The family I am staying with is fairly well off I think: they have chickens, doors and glass on their house, and the father has a job in town. Yes, they are doing OK, but I know that if the father got sick or injured and couldn’t work, they would be completely screwed. They have no other source of income except for a small maize field as far as I know. So, maybe this is their reality: we are OK, but we could fall into destitute poverty at any point. Here is a foreigner, and I know foreigners have money that they don’t spend all at one time, and I know he has at least enough of it to come to Malawi, use his laptop, and wear nice running shoes. He has given us money when we ask, and he’s living in our house, so let’s just make the most of this. I don’t know if this is their reality, but maybe it is.

The other day, I was talking with Alice, one of the girls who live in the house with me. I have been giving the kids at the house computer lessons (in Chichewa… yikes. Check out the diagram below that I drew for the kids).

That evening, I asked her if she’d like to do a computer lesson again soon.

“Eee, koma lero ndatopa.” Yes, but today I’m tired

“Oh, ok. Mwachita chiyani lero?” Ok. What did you do today?”

“Ndapita ku maliro”. I went to a “maliro”. (I didn’t understand this word, “maliro”).

“Oh. Marlira ichi chiyani?” What’s a “maliro”?

“Funeral”.

“Oh. Ndani?” Oh. Who?

“Mwana.”

Mwana means child.

On that day, Alice had gone to a funeral for a child from the area who had died. This is something that happens a lot in Malawi. About 1 in 5 or 1 in 7 (depending on which statistic you read) children die before the age of 5 in Malawi. They die because they succumb to waterborne disease or diarrhea. They die because they are orphans and nobody can take care of them. They die during childbirth or are stillborn because their mothers get malaria, which is extremely dangerous for both mother and child when a woman is pregnant.

I sat there without saying anything for at least 5 minutes before I eventually got up and went to my room. I swept my floor and got my clothes ready for work the next day. And I thought and thought, and I’m still thinking. That one word, “mwana”, shattered my heart and made me feel guilty for being lonely and sad that I have lost my girlfriend, and for being frustrated that I have trouble finding friends here because I feel like people see me as an opportunity. Who am I to complain? If I have kids in Canada, they will be almost guaranteed to see their adult lives.

I have been trying to relate people’s behavior here towards me to something I can imagine from my perspective to try to make sense of it. And I’m starting to realize that this is impossible. I am never really going to understand what it’s like to have a child’s funeral be a somewhat regular occurrence in my life and in the lives of my people. No matter how long I stay here or how many people I meet and befriend, I don’t think I’ll ever get it.

Recall the frustration and confusion I mentioned in the story about Odala. It’s still there, but now it’s even more confusing. And, to be honest with my friend the internet, I’ve been crying sometimes the last while when thinking about that mwana. Who was he? What was her name? Is this the reason I came here? To help Freshwater succeed so that they can help communities have safe water and sanitation so that other ana (plural of mwana) can avoid that waterborne disease and perhaps make it to teenage years? If so, is it going to make any difference?

My life here is hard. I’m not sure I’ve ever been as challenged and stressed as I am now, personally, professionally, emotionally, mentally. But I didn’t come here because it’s easy. I just hope beyond hope that I do something worthwhile with my presence here. And I hope that that mwana’s mother never again has to carry a child with her who will leave her before her age reaches the double digits. That’s just not fair.

Questions for thought and comment:

- Does this story get you down? Or does it bring you up? Does it make you care more or less about development, or neither? What impact would it have on your average Canadian? Would they care? Do they see it within their sphere or influence to do anything about it?

- As I was writing this, it occurred that there’s a hidden question in the title. I asked “which makes your blood boil the hottest”. And when I look at that question and disconnect it from the context of the post, I see that my clear first answer is infant mortality. But, really, thinking about it, haven’t I gotten way more pissed off when my team loses a game of hockey than ever have about any of the injustices of development I’ve ever read about or seen?

So I suppose the hidden question is: what really motivates people? What’s the difference in terms of people’s motivations and passions between the “here and now” (goal going into our net in OT for us to lose the game) and the “over there are sometime” (that mwana, whoever she was, wherever he was, whenever she died, not making it to her 5^th birthday)?

Thanks for reading.

Who is this guy? And what's his angle?

2008-12-05T12:04:00.000-08:00

This post is about the difficulty in understanding personal identities, something I’m experiencing in a few areas of life right now, which is all part of the game when things change drastically. And as such, this post is dedicated with love to Tara.

**************

Who is this guy? And what's his angle? These are burning questions for me of myself. What am I doing here? What is about me being located at this longitude and latitude working with these certain people on these certain things that makes any more sense than me working back home with other certain people on other certain things? These questions are tough to answer, and I think anyone who goes overseas in the capacity that EWB OVS do, involving hyper-consciousness of your knowledge, skill, and attitude gaps, is going to have to ask them eventually. If you’re humble enough to realize you don’t know jack, it’s always at least going to cross your mind: what can I possible do here that’s of any value or of enough value that’s it worth coming here? Those of you from EWB have heard this one a million times from OVS. It comes with the territory I think.

At this point in my placement, it seems to me that when you think about it hard enough, you see that there is a good potential answer to that question about your value: you can’t know until you find yourself doing it. Sure you can’t: if you thought you knew up front what exact value you can add, that would assume you knew up front what exact value you had within you that your partner could actually use to help them help their country, which requires you understand three things that I think can’t really be understood before you show up:

1. What is this country?
2. What is your partner?
3. Who are you when you’re in this country working with your partner?

So, yes, these questions I'm asking myself, trying my hardest to find an identity that makes sense here. Just as I have been ever since I decided to come overseas, though the learning curve just got a whole lot steeper. But, I'm not the only one asking these questions. The people I'm working with are in precisely the same boat as me. They don't know who I am or what my angle is either.

As an aside, the content of this post partly concerns my partner, I am aware that they have internet access and may read this at some point. If someone from my partner happens to read this post, I encourage you to come ask me about it. I feel I have nothing to hide and feel comfortable sharing these types of thoughts, so please read on and call me out on anything you see. None of these things I have to say here are criticisms, but rather my perceptions of the challenges of crossing cultural bridges when working together. If you think I have missed the point or are seeing things from the wrong perspective, I would LOVE for you to tell me about it. Zikomo kwawbiri!

Two weeks ago, I arrived at my partner and was introduced to the people who run the show. I arrived with Megan, my OVS coach, and we both communicated right from the get go that I hope that we can learn from each other: Mike from Freshwater and Freshwater from Mike. I was told to be “free” by the Executive Director, to “assess” Freshwater and tell them where their gaps are. This is very much the role it seems that I am expected to play, as an appraiser and solution finder. It seems there is an expectation that I know what should be in place here at Freshwater and, if I see that it’s not, I should be able to know how to fix it. Many times already since I’ve been here, I have been asked, “So, what problems have you found with Freshwater so far?”

Further, upon my arrival, I was given the title of “Programs Manager” (second highest in the organization, apart from the Executive Director) and given the executive office (second sweetest office in the building apart from the Executive Director). I have never worked in water and sanitation before and have never worked in Malawi before. But there I was, being introduced to my new job as a Programs Manager for a Malawian Water and Sanitation organization.

This floored me. My role, as I had expected it to be, was as an employee who floated and added value where he could, learning lots at first and adding more and more value as time and learning wore on. Someone who builds trust with everyone at all levels and understands their challenges. I never expected to be the big boss; I’m not qualified. I am overseas with EWB not because of what I know but because of the ability I have to learn. That is a very big distinction in my mind, and to me the distinction makes perfect sense. But for decades, so much of the development machine has been built on an unstated but very real assumption that “we”, western development professionals, know what “they”, people from developing countries, need to do. This is an assumption that I am not bringing with me, but the very fact that this is how things have been done for so long has built a large barrier to sending this message: for the time being I am here to help and learn, not to direct and criticise. And, yes, I AM open to feedback!

So, I made my concerns clear to Freshwater. I asked that my role be changed to “Capacity Building Officer” and that I be removed from the hierarchy. In addition, I invited two people who had no offices to come share mine with me. To Freshwater’s immense credit, they were open to my feedback on this (I broached the topic on day 2, Oooooo…), and they were willing to listen to my concerns. In fact, I think the fact that I nipped this early was something that Freshwater appreciated. This is a good sign.

The change in title and office made a pretty big difference I think, but actions tend to speak louder than titles and offices anyway, so I think I’m working this out. And I have worked to say this is words: “I don’t know the answer. I have worked here for 5 days, I don’t know what to do in this situation. I’m learning”. But saying this in words doesn’t quite seem to do the trick. Although I have changed the title and am now sharing the big office, I am still trying to place what the perceptions of my role are to the people around me. I am used to having to prove myself, but I am not used to having to “disprove” myself: to make it clear that I’m wearing my humility on my sleeve, acknowledging my own ignorance, but still trying to be useful as I am learning for the first months of my placement.

Now, with these challenges of expectation-setting in mind, let’s come back to my original point. I am struggling to find a life and an identity here. At my EWB chapter, I was the President. I was a facilitator, a poser of questions, a holder of key information, a sharer of this information, and someone who helped others grow (at least that’s how I saw myself). As far as I know, that’s who I was and what people knew me to be. On my hockey team I was the goalie. I was the backstop who could contribute to giving my team a chance to win by keeping our opponent’s score as low as possible, preferably zero (it was zero a couple of times actually!). In my recently ended relationship, I was the boyfriend. I was someone who was there to comfort, support, and share great moments with the woman I love. And at my job back in Canada, I was the researcher. I generated ideas, explored them, and shared them. But here, who am I?

Now think about this: if I am not even sure of who I am here, how the hell can I expect anyone else around me to have a clue? Especially when they are used to seeing foreign people like myself playing a certain role. Is it even remotely reasonable to expect people not to paint me with the same brush as most of the other azungus (azungu being a Chichewa word approximately meaning “foreigner”)? No, of course not.

In trying to make sense of all of this, I tried to picture a situation in which the tables were turned. In order to do that, I tried to think of something that one might want to do in Canada for which we might be likely to have someone from Malawi come and try to positively impact. And, actually, I had a lot of trouble coming up with anything that truly fits the example. Does that mean I’m not thinking hard enough? Or does the reverse context really not exist? Even if it does exist, it’s certainly not very common unless I’m just ignorant or badly read (to quote Chambers for the second time this blog).

So, for lack of a better example, I'm going to go with maize farming. People in Malawi are awesome at farming maize (corn) in what could be considered non-ideal conditions: dusty soil, rains that might not come on time, no mechanization, high instances of waterborne disease and malaria reducing your productivity, etc. But people in Malawi make it happen somehow. Maize is the staple here, and for a great many people in this nation, it’s the unequivocal backbone of their livelihoods. (See questions at the bottom of the post if you have thoughts on this example)

Let’s imagine this situation: you and your colleagues, let’s call them partners in your maize co-operative, are trying to grow a maize farm in Vancouver. You know how to do it and have been doing it with moderate success for years, but have a lot of constraints and problems that you aren’t sure how to solve or don’t have the resources to address. You are about to receive a Malawian volunteer from Maize Without Borders, a Malawian NGO dedicated to the end of crappy maize crops in the developed world. You and your maize growing co-op partners in Vancouver greet him excitedly because he’s from Malawi, where people grow lots of really good maize, and he’s come all the way to Canada for a year to help you out. Now imagine you ask him to tell you what you’re doing wrong, and he says that he has no experience with maize growing co-operatives, so he can’t give you any direct advice. He just wants to smile, be your friend, know your problems*, understand your work, and see what ideas come up over the next year, but the process has to be driven by YOU. What would you say? Maybe something like, “Ooookaay, so what are you doing here then”? Now imagine that, for 50 years prior to this, co-ops like yours had seen Malawians pouring into Canada telling you that you’re doing things wrong and you should do it this way because this works in Malawi. Wouldn’t you then be even more confused by the situation?

*I borrowed a bit from Eric Dudley in this sentence.

One of my best friends in the world and the type of person who makes you consider being proud to be human, Troy Barrie, helped me to work this out. He reminded me that, even if someone does listen and acknowledge what I’m saying about not being the boss and is OK with it, there’s still the problem of figuring out who I am instead. In The Critical Villager (an excellent and highly recommended book for anyone interested in humanity, not just development), Eric Dudley talks about “Recognized Authorities”. Basically the idea is that everyone has some notion of what is done by whom, and that those ideas are not universal.

It goes something like this: in a village in Malawi, it may be obvious to the locals the identities of who carries water, who fixes the roof, who sells this type of crop but not that type, who sweeps, who does this and who doesn’t do that. But to someone like me, it’s all a total mystery, at least at first, just as it would a mystery if a Malawian cobbler came to live in a frat house in Canada. The issue here is that the international development workers have in many cases established themselves with an identity that I don’t want to share, and in other cases have done a poor job of establishing themselves with any kind identity that is at all understandable to local people. When a development worker comes in, people are forced to ask: who is this guy, and what’s his angle? This is where societal and cultural filters really start to make this messy, because in Canada the establishment of one’s identity might look like something like this:

“OK, I thought this guy was an X, but he’s acting more like a Y, so he must be a Y”

Whereas, in Malawi, since I am still struggling to define my identity and because my angle is not necessarily clear to everyone around me due to cross-cultural communication challenges, it might look more like this:

“OK, I thought he was X, but he’s acting more like a, ummm…. hmmm…. What is he acting like actually?“

What Dudley suggests as a way to handle the situation of unclear identities is to simply act, and with time, people will begin to give you an identity. I’ve said it in words, “I’m not the boss”, and I’ve changed my title and my office setup to be non boss-like, but I’ll have to walk the walk as well. What does walking the walk mean? It’s hard to say at this point, but for now, I’m just going to try to be helpful and valuable in everything I do and support by co-workers in any way they seem to need. In so doing, I hope to be able to learn what their challenges are and see Malawi’s reality from their perspective. And as I learn about that, I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

Questions for thought and comment:

-When explaining that one of the questions you need to answer is who you are in this country working for this partner, I made an assumption that people are actually different people in different contexts. I have a feeling this is true: everyone acts differently around their friends than they do around their parents, but they’d probably say they’re still “being themselves”. What do you think? Where does the line get drawn between simply being yourself and doing what feels natural and trying consciously to find an identity? What does this mean for me in Malawi? What does it mean for you in your life as it is static or in your life is it changing?

-When I tried to think of a reverse example for the overseas sending scenario, I came up with something pretty lame. Can you think of anything more realistic? If so, please share. If not, what do you make of that in terms of the way people see people in developing countries and the way people in developing countries see Canada? Does the fact that the ratio of Canada’s GDP to Malawi’s is about 50:1 make all the difference? Or does it run deeper than this? What can you think of that you do in your everyday life that you think a Malawian could do better?

-Have you ever been in a situation in which you were perceived as someone who you felt you weren’t? How did you go about understanding people’s perceptions of you, and what did you learn? How much do people’s preconceived notions about who you are affect how they will interact with you, and how do you change these perceptions?

Loaded questions. I really hope to get some feedback here. Can’t wait to hear your responses. As always, any other comments are more than welcome, too.

Thanks for reading! I miss you all.
**************

From Canada: Understanding livelihoods, finding some wheels, and getting some exercise.

2008-11-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

This post was started about a month ago when I was still in pre-departure training. I just finished it now after being in Malawi for nearly 2 weeks. Hope you enjoy it.

****************
Hello my friends!

My experience during one of the weekends in Toronto was so interesting that I couldn’t resist putting together a post about it. For anyone wondering about what sorts of things we learn in EWB before heading overseas, this will hopefully grant you a bit of insight into the wondrous madness that is our pre-departure learning program.

This post is all about something incredibly interesting and challenging but seemingly very valuable called “Participatory Rural Appraisal”, or PRA. What is this crazy three letter acronym? PRA is basically an approach to getting information from the intended beneficiaries of a development program with the goal of making the program as successful as possible for them, and a method of facilitating the knowledge exchange and identification in a community so that they can draw their own conclusions about their situations. Throughout the history of development, projects that have been successful, by which I mean ultimately beneficial for the people for whom it was theoretically designed, have taken into consideration the needs and realities of said people. So, clearly, a method is needed to help people identify and articulate out what those needs and realities are, the process being driven by the beneficiaries and the the conclusions coming entirely from their mouths and minds.

Duh!

This seems like common sense to me: if you want to design a development intervention that works and fits into the lives of the people it’s meant to help, you need to have the participation of those people in the design so that the reality of their lives is understood. Common sense, sure, but you might be surprised how often this hasn’t really happened. So how does PRA make it work? Let’s take a look at a definition first and see if that yields any ideas:

“PRA is defined as a growing family of methods and approaches that enable local people to analyze, share, and enhance their knowledge of life and conditions, and to plan, prioritize, and monitor and evaluate.” – Robert Chambers (Google it)

So, as far as I can tell, PRA doesn’t do anything on its own. It’s a “family of methods” that range from semi-structured interviews to wealth ranking to role playing, plus whatever else you can think of. And if you dig deeper and really look at the members of that family, you find that their value is defined not by the methods themselves but rather by the values and attitudes of the people who use them.

Clearly, this isn’t easy. And as my colleagues and I have tried it here in Toronto as part of an assignment to understand and practice PRA, the art of asking the right questions is a delicate one.

Our task: use some of the methods of PRA to find out whether informal lending institutions (places like MoneyMart, Cash Store, etc) are more of gateway into or a ladder out of poverty for people in Canada. These companies give out advanced loans to people without credit checks at very high interest, orders of magnitude larger than the type of interest you get on cash advances with a credit care. There are many different ways of looking at this. Do people with bad or no credit who need money in a bind find real value and assistance in this type of service? Or does it suck people further into financial stress and put them in situations they can’t get out of? As always, the right answer is likely somewhere in the middle. We are to use PRA to find out where exactly that lands, which basically means we have to talk to people who use and provide the service to find out whether it puts them into poverty or pulls them out of it, if it does either. The goal was to get some experience from the methodology side of PRA, and while this task doesn’t totally fit with the above definition, it was still extremely valuable.

I talked to a number of people a few weeks ago as part of this, the most valuable conversation being with a guy who had an extremely engaging story. His name was Mike, and he was from Toronto originally. He had moved out to Vancouver to work with his family’s business, and according to him, despite his hard work, he wasn’t getting the financial return he deserved. So, he told them he wasn’t going to work for them anymore. It was at that time, at age 32, when he found out that he was adopted and had never been told about it. Obviously I didn’t get the whole story because a lot happens with a person before they turn 32, but you get the idea. Anyway, Mike was a manic-depressive, which made life difficult, especially when he ended up on the street after being disowned by his family and moving back to Toronto. He was on the street for about a year before he managed to get a job selling furniture, and now he manages a store. Mike is doing just fine, despite facing all manner of challenges.

So where does PRA fit into all of this? Well, I asked Mike what he thought of those informal lending institutions, and he told me they suck people dry; he’d never think about using it even when he was desperate. While Mike’s story is one of which I can see just one side, it is still quite remarkable what you can learn about a situation by approaching it the right way. I drank a beer with Mike and played pool with him in the bar. What better context can you find in Canada to find out what people think and feel about a certain issue?

I talked to plenty of other people that night with plenty of different results and different perspectives, the sum of which painted a less than spotless picture of the sector. The real blood and guts of the exercise, however, came a couple of days later when I decided to go out and do some more investigation. I wandered around like a lost puppy for a while, but eventually found myself in Regent Park, one of the lowest income areas in Toronto. As I was investigating a few concentrations of these informal lenders around the town, I was eventually approached by a guy asking me for some money for a burger from Harvey’s. I was busy and didn’t have any change, so I declined, but as I walked away I thought to myself, “Damn! I should have bought us both something to eat and had a conversation over a meal. Missed opportunity! What was I thinking?”

So I walked on, and was approached by a fellow riding a bike.

“Hey buddy, wanna buy a bike?” he asked in a somewhat sketchy way. “Buy that bike?” I replied.

“Yeah, 5 bucks.”

I took a look at the bike and at him, and with a listen to the tone of his voice and a ponder about the price, I formed my hypothesis.

“Did you pinch it?” I challenged him, not really thinking about it that hard.

“Ahh, (explicative)”, said he, as he rode off.

And as I continued down the street, it occurred to me: another missed opportunity! This man had offered to sell this clearly stolen bike and instead of just talking to him about it and buying it from him, I had stuck to what I was used to. Annoyed with myself, I decided to rectify my mistake, so I had to run up ahead a few blocks to intercept him as he parked his bike at the Beer Store.

“Hey man, I changed my mind, I’ll buy the bike.”

“Huh?”

“The bike, I’ll buy it off you for 5 dollars.”

Apparently there was a cop in the Beer Store, so the guy told me that we ought to move around the back of the store so that he couldn't see. I ventured a stab at getting into a conversation.

"So, I'll buy your bike, but I want to talk to you for a few minutes. Look, I'll even give you $10 for the bike" I said.

"Are you a cop?" he replied angrily, understandably so.

As we went around back of the store, in between thinking about where to go next and hoping that we didn't get busted by the guy inside the Beer Store, who was a cop, I asked myself what this person, to me a stranger for whom I felt some kind of compassion, and myself to him a potential adversary, must be thinking. Putting myself in his postition: why would some random, young, unshaven guy come running and offer to buy a stolen bike under the condition that we have a conversation? In his reality, the natural assumption would be that I was not his friend. To his mind, of course I wasn't. How could I be?

"No, man, I promise you I am not a cop." I said, trying my best to bring the genuineness that was in my heart to the forefront of what I was saying. I'm not sure it worked.

"You'd better not be a cop, or I'll (explicative) take you out." he replied.

I felt like he meant it.

"Man, I swear to god, look me in the eye, I am not a cop, and I don't want to (explicative) with you, I promise." I pleaded.

"I'm a big guy, I swear I will knock you out if you're lying to me." he reiterated with conviction.

He was indeed a big guy, and, as such, I wasn't scared because I was quite sure I could outrun him. The bike was too small for him so that would only slow him down. I was totally safe.

I told him that he could see my ID if he wanted to see if I was a cop. He wasn't totally sold on this idea because he said I could be hiding ID somewhere else. I showed him my UBC Student ID and explained who I was and what I was doing, and I reminded him that, if I was a cop and lied about it in that situation, it would be a wrongful arrest if I took him in, so I wouldn't risk doing that over a cheap little bike. That seemed to convince him.

So, we got to talking. The conversation was rushed because he just wanted to complete the transaction and get into the beer store before the cop saw what we were doing. I asked him my questions about informal lending, and his perspective was that people in his situation are totally screwed if they use the services to pay off other debts, but if they really need money for something urgent, they don't really have a choice.

With that, he refferred me to a loan shark on Egglington Street that would give out up to $100,000 at 20% interest. I politely thanked him for the referral, and as we went our separate ways, he did something that surprised me. He gave me a big hug. He reeked of whiskey, but the hug was worth it as it made me feel that he had really decided I was not a cop. I am still asking myself what else it meant. Was he astounded that I genuinely did not want to hurt him? Was he lonely and simply amazed that someone really wanted to talk to him without an alterior motive? Or am I totally off base? Was he just drunk?

I guess I'll never know, but at least I bought a decent bike for only $10.

Now that I was mobile, the city was my oyster. So, I decided to fly over into the area when I had seen another one of these places on the internet. This was one that was a bit sketchier as it was not part of any big chain. It was pretty far away, but since I had the bike I could make it no problem. As I got further into this low income area of Toronto, I made a startling discover that there was a whole nest of the places concentrated at Gerrard and Parlaiment. Why hadn't I seen this when I was searching on the internet? It seemed that these places were all smaller establishments, and none of them were members of the CPLA (Canadian Payday Loans Association). This was a Sunday, so they were closed, and I was left wondering what this meant. They were unregulated, independant establishments right smack bang in the middle of Regent Park, the lowest income part of Toronto. In addition, what does this mean in terms of the biases we get from our standard information sources? According to the source of all truth and knowledge, the internet, there was no concentration of informal lending at Gerrard and Parlaiment. But according to reality, there clearly was. Reality wins.

To make a long story even longer, the next phase of fun came when I tried to return the bike to the police. A lesson I learned from this: if you ever acquire stolen property and go out of your way to try to get it returned to its rightful owner while attempting to learn something about people's livelihoods at the same time, don't expect the police to see any value in your approach.

Here's how it happened. I called Toronto Police Service politely explaining the situation, and waited around the entire evening for a cruiser to show up at our townhouse. When they finally arrived, they grilled me. Understandably so, I suppose, given that I had purchased a stolen bike, but apperantly the fact that I had done for the reason that I had in the way that I had was not enough to prevent the police from acting confrontational (when I originally wrote this, 'confrontational' was definitely not the word I chose. This post has been edited for content). After finally convincing them that I hadn't done anything wrong, one of the officers made sure to mention twice that if they couldn't find a serial number then they weren't going to haul away my trash for me because it was my problem, not theirs.

I suppose I'm judging, which of course I shouldn't because they were just doing their jobs. I guess my contempt is not for the officers but more for the system that doesn't allow for people to act on their own values if they can justify them, and a system that unequivocally sees the best course of action in that situation as the reporting and arrest of the theif rather than the return of the property to the owner. It's not that I don't agree with that conclusion necessarily, I just don't like how it is made without questioning the big assumptions behind it.

Anyway, that's my story, which I suppose turned into a bit of a rant. Sorry about that. I hope you enjoyed it!

Questions for thought and comment:

-I did a quick values balancing calculation in my head when I bought the bike: Do I purchase it, learn something, and hopefully get it back to it's owner, or do I refrain from purchasing it so as not to encourage theft as a livelihood? I chose the former as being more in line with my values. What would you choose and why? In your opinion, did I do the right thing?

-This experience exposed for me some massive knowledge gaps about Canadian livelihoods that exist outside of the traditional employment framework. What is your understanding of the livelihoods of people who panhandle, live on the street, or are chronically on social assistance? What is your understanding of their stories and Canada from their perspective?

Thanks for reading!
****************

Attack of the ants.

2008-11-13T11:04:00.001-08:00

Hello all,

Today, Thursday, November 13, was my 4th day in Malawi. Months ago, when I was preparing for this placement, I made a promise to myself and others that I would not neglect recording and sharing my experiences with the people in my life. I have unfortunately had to break that promise, but the fault is not really my own. Let me explain.

I had been working on a post about an extremely interesting experience I had during my training in Toronto involving talking to people around the city about certain aspects of the Canadian financial system. The goal was to get some practice and understand some challenges surrounding the solicitation of information from people conducting their everyday lives. Learning how to ask the right questions, get multiple perspectives to form hypothesis, and plenty of other skills were the main themes of that excercise.

I was getting quite near finishing that post and working on several others, all of which were meant to be shared in the near future, when a strange thing happened. I was been checking my email in my tent here at the Mabuya Camp, where we are temporarily staying in Lilongwe, when my computer totally froze up on me. I turned it off, and when I tried to restart it did not cooperate. Alarmed, I took a look a closer look at the machine to see if anything was up, and sure enough, there were hundreds of ants crawling inside it. They were everywhere: going into and out of the USB port, into the ethernet port, all over the printer port. Everywhere. Hundreds of them. I took the machine apart to take a look at the motherboard, and, yes, an army of ants had set up shop.

So, while I can't be totally certain, I am pretty sure the ants destroyed my computer. This is why I haven't been able to post much recently and why there hasn't been any email from me. The internet here, where available, is slow and expensive if you don't have your own laptop, so there you have it. I will try to be in contact as much as possible in the coming weeks, but I can't make any promises. If you'd like to give me a call, please feel free anytime:

My phone number here: 011 265 9034067

Bye!

¬Mike

Testing the waters and sharing the results.

2008-10-09T20:12:00.001-07:00

Are these three different things?

Hi all,

Welcome to the first real post on my blog! For a little over three weeks now, I've been in Toronto training to go overseas with Engineers Without Borders Canada. This will be the biggest change of gears that I have ever experienced, but I am undertaking it for what is hopefully a more worthwhile reason than any I have had in the past.

This blog represents a significant step (and experiment) for me personally because I've never been one to keep any type of successful diary for myself, let alone having the discipline necessary to keep my other people informed as to my goings-on. Whether it was when I was in Germany or somewhere in Asia, I've always been so bad at keeping people informed as to what's going on with me: what I'm thinking about, what I'm doing, whom I'm with, what matters to me. I think the biggest reason for this is that I've never been able to truly fathom that anyone would be that interested in reading my musings about all of that stuff.

This time I'm taking a different approach: I'm just going to write, and I hope that there will be something interesting in here for you. For my family and friends, this will be a way for me to keep you abreast of what's happening with me, Mike. For those who are simply interested in an implementation-level perspective on international development, I'll be attempting to tell stories about people, systems, what's working, what's not, and what I believe we need to think about.

Notice that I put "people" first. Being involved with EWB for the last 3 year was a process that brought me from knowing nothing about development to where I am now: preparing to undertake a project aimed at the improvement of development implementation in Malawi. And if there's anything that I've come to believe in those 3 years, it's that any kind of human development, regardless of approach, scale, or vision, will only be truly valuable if the humanity of those it is meant to benefit is always at the forefront of one's mind.

Thanks for reading! I'll post again very soon regarding some of the things I have been thinking and learning about here in Toronto, as well as some more information about what I'll be doing once I get to Malawi.

Bye for now,
~Mike

Or the same thing from three different perspectives? (Different parts of the visible light spectrum as seen from different angles through a glass that's acting as a prism. Cool eh?)

First post with little to mention

2008-09-01T15:09:00.001-07:00

This is my first post. It's mostly a test really. I've never had a blog before nor have I successfully ever had a written diary, soI guess it's time to learn. I'll be heading to Malawi in November 2008, then my thoughts will spew all over this blog!

Did you enjoy my first post?