The road goes ever on and on...

News is, I think, best delivered as band-aids are removed; suddenly and quickly with some time set aside to deal with the aftermath.

Out with it then… after some serious contemplation and for a variety of reasons, I have decided to end my placement with Engineers Without Borders Canada early and return to Canada.

The behind-the-scenes preparations for my return to Canada have been in the works for some time already. I delayed announcing this to the wider internet until after I had communicated my decision to my friends and family and to both of the organizations in question.

After wrapping things up at home and at work in Nkhamenya, I will be spending a few days in Lilongwe finishing up handover notes and having some transitional meetings with other members of the EWB staff. From there, I’ll be heading home via Toronto. I’ll be leaving Lilongwe on the afternoon of May 5th and arriving back into Toronto on the afternoon of May 6th. I’ll likely be back in Edmonton later that week.

Though this has at times been a challenging and even occasionally a frustrating experience, I have also found it immensely rewarding. I have been humbled to work with the amazing team of overseas volunteers currently working for EWB am deeply grateful to Engineers Without Borders Canada and to Plan Malawi for facilitating this opportunity. It has been my great privilege to contribute to the work of these organizations and also to work alongside their staff. I have been very impressed by the warmth and support shown to me by my colleagues at Plan, and by the friends I have been lucky enough to make while working and living in Malawi.

I will carry the experiences I've had and the people I've met these past few months with me for the rest of my life.

Thank-you for sharing this journey with me. Here’s hoping I see you on the next leg.

" The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say. "

(h/t to J.R.R. Tolkien for writing what I meant to say before he shuffled off bound for Grey Havens of his own)

[PS: Once I’ve gotten back into gear in Canada, I will be re-designing and re-purposing this blog (have no fear – I do have a design and a vague sense of purpose in mind).]

Easter Weekend

I know this is a week late - I'm sure you'll get over it.
I had a noteworthy Easter in Lilongwe. I got to spend some quality time with a number of other EWB types including Mr. Kang, my good friend Colleen, Alynne, Megan, Anna-Marie, and Garrett (whose blog I haven't been able to scrounge up. Lettner, Ashley and Enam were also around a bit, but they missed most of the hijinks.

Work was done (as Mike can tell you) and fun was had. There was a delicious eggplant BBQ with guacamole made from fresh avocados - the avocados are plentiful and GIGANTIC these days.

There was also an Easter Sunday spent attempting to make kites which quickly morphed into a paper airplane making contest on account of not having any string which in turn evolved into a series of attempts to make branded EWB airplanes = flying light bulbs for short.



And while retreat was not too long ago, it was really nice to see people again. Friends are great to have and great to see often, and I had some quality time with the ones that made it to Lilongwe. It was really great to have the quality time.

(Oops... I never did tell you about the monkeys, did I? Sorry about that...)

Dare I Say "Done Well?" What is "Development Work" Anyway?

I say 'development work' or something similar quite a lot in this blog, and no where have I defined what I mean by either 'development' or the 'work' that one might do related to it. That's because vague terms that everyone assumes mean the same thing to them as everyone else are convenient rhetorical devices that I shamelessly employ whenever they suit my purpose.

So, if we were going to get beyond the rhetoric, what is 'development work,' anyway?

According to my trusty Mac dictionary, "development" can be defined as "the process of developing or being developed."

... I may have used "trusty" a little prematurely.

"Develop," then, is defined as "to grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate."

Leaving aside the sticky questions about what "advanced" and "elaborate" mean (and especially according to whom) for now (otherwise we'd be here all day), let's move on to "work."

"Work" is "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result."

So, the layman's definition of 'development work' ought to be "activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to grow our cause growth so that the object of our work becomes more mature, advanced, or elaborate."
Or something to that effect.

That's a nice, vague definition that raises a whole bunch of interesting questions, no? Questions like:
- (as already touched on) Who gets to define what "advanced" and "elaborate" mean in the contexts of societies that are the targets of development assistance (nevermind "mature")?
- Who is making the effort? Who ought to be?
- In service of who? Of what?
- How do we best go about measuring success?
- Does learning about what kind of effort is involved count?
- When do we get to say 'enough - we have finished growth that is 'development' work and now go do growth that is 'sustainable' social evolution'?

It's also, in the contexts of the work I'm doing, laced with a bunch of assumptions about where we do development work, who 'we' is... and probably others besides.

Lots and lots and lots of people in the development sector claim to have answers to some if not all of these questions. And the ones I've linked to here are just a small sample of the experts - that doesn't even get to the institutions, the non-expert policy-makers, the implementors, the amateur volunteer-type speculators (including yours truly) or even, most important of all, the "intended beneficiaries" of all this (largely held to be people living in absolute poverty or people living in countries where there is widespread absolute poverty).

The truth is, though, that no one has "the" answers. What we have is lots of different answers and lots more questions arising out of those answers (and out of other, complicating factors like what happens when we throw more complicated ideas like "accountability" and "empowerment" into the mix).

For my part, the development work I've been doing so far is a little bit of helping and a whole lot of learning. I'm a volunteer, and I work with people who have a lot of experience doing 'development' in Malawi - all currently employed by a non-governmental organization, but coming from many backgrounds including work in Health, in water provision & sanitation and from governments, NGOs, and the private sector. I'm here to help where I can, to learn more so that I can help more, and to see if I can figure out some piece of this whole "development work" puzzle to help others in the sector work better by getting and then sharing a perspective.

Awhile back, I had a conversation with a traveler passing through Lilongwe. He was French and was traveling across Africa in a Land Cruiser. When he asked me about whether or not I thought I could 'make a difference' in a year in Africa - I could tell by the way he asked it that he was waiting for me to give one of those answers borne of youth and inexperience that runs something like this:
"Sure! My mom told me that if I care enough, I can do anything I set my mind to!"
Instead, I thought seriously about the question and said something like this:
"Probably not. I think though, that I can learn a lot about the challenge and complexity of the work I've signed up to do and maybe I can scratch the surface of understanding it. And I think that, as long as I spend the rest of my life trying to make this year up to the people who taught me about what it would really take to 'make a difference,' this year will be worth it to everyone involved. Plus I might actually discover that there are small things I can do that will change things for the better - but if I do, I'll see that as a bonus."

I still don't know if I was right about the prognosis for my placement on either the learning or the probability of making a difference fronts. But I think I was on to something regarding the essence of what development work is for me. I think, for me, "development work" can take many forms, but at its heart is about being critical of your abilitiy to but nevertheless remaining constantly committed to helping as well as you know how.

Choices, Changes & African Proverbs

I procrastinate.
This is a fact, and Malawi hasn't changed it one bit.

Today, I'm procrastinating by thinking, reflecting, and "Googling.

Some quotes that speak to me....

“If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.”
-Robert Fritz

"Hope is the pillar of the world"
-Kanuri proverb

"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek."
-Barack Obama

Choices are the hinges of destiny."
-Pythagoras

"The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become."
-Charles Dubois

"They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself."
-Andy Warhol

"The tears running down your face do not blind you."
-Togolese proverb

“There are always two choices. Two paths to take. One is easy. And its only reward is that it's easy.”
-Anon

"The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn."
-David Russell

"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."
-Epicetus

"Stay with me.
'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.
'What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
'I never know what you are thinking. Think.'"
T.S. Eliot

"He who asks questions cannot avoid the answers."
-Cameroon proverb

Movie Night in Malawi

The Prelude

I was eating dinner in the Rise & Shine Diner the other day. It's a frequent haunt of mine (I think I've become addicted to the nsima with beef relish. soooo tasty).

I wasn't in any hurry, so I sat around for a bit visiting with my friend Nelli and Zealous, the niece of the owners of the diner. Zealous is in town visiting over the Easter break, which lasts three weeks in Malawi. The diner was pretty quiet - this was around 5:30 pm, which is a bit early for supper in Malawi.

While we were chatting, someone put in a Nigerian movie.

A bit about Nigerian Movies

When I say "Nigerian movies" I do mean movies made in Nigeria. But leaving it at that is like describing Bollywood movies as "movies made in India." Nigerian movies are their own genre.

Sometimes referred to as Naija movies or Nollywood movies, Nigerian films are usually English-speaking, multi-part movies with slapstick comeday and crazy melodrama. They often involve witchcraft and/or the tension between 'traditional' and 'modern' Africa. They often come in 4 or 5 or 6 in 1 packs of DVDs, so you can watch the whole series of film in one go.

I could say more on these lovely gems... but I won't. Instead I'll tell you about the one that was flipped on in the Rise & Shine.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the exact title of this one... I think it was "Aziwa II."

The Plot
This Nigerian movie was a remake of Pocahontas. And not just any Pocahontas - this one was based specifically on the Disney animated feature.

The film starts with a 'tribal' princess (you can tell she's tribal because she's scantily clad and has her face painted) talking with the 'foreign' prince (you can tell he's foreign because he's wearing an orange poncho and a matching fishing hat). She's begging him to leave because she loves him but her father wants to make war. The foreign prince insists that he's just here to search for the "herb of life" and doesn't want to fight.

They are, of course, interrupted by a gigantic muscle-bound warrior and his posse. Cue the posse of foreigners with guns, who shoot one of the warriors. The foreign prince-guy is captured and, after being sentenced to death in front a a disgraced and hysterical tribal princess, thrown in a bamboo cage.

The princess visits him in the night and they have a touching exchange. At one point, the foreign prince says, "I would rather die tomorrow than live a thousand years without knowing you" (sound familiar?).

Anyway, the execution is interrupted. First the princess realizes that she'd rather die than live without her foreign prince guy and throws herself between the executioner and the prince. Then the prince's posse show up with their guns.

But the prince is betrayed! One of his men shoots him in the chest (it turns out later that they're planning on making off with a bunch of gold that they must have found in part one).

Luckily, him getting shot by his own people causes the tribal king to sympathize with this foreign prince-guy that his daughter is in love with and the village healer brings the prince-guy back to life using the 'herb of life.'

When the prince guy wakes up, the tribespeople give him a big bundle of the herb of life and he rushes back to his kingdom - apparently, he was off on this herb of life quest to save the life of his father, king of the orange poncho people. He strides into the throne room just in time to accuse his would-be murderers of treason as they're telling the king about his tragic death at the hands of the 'savages.' Huzzah!

But it's not over yet - he's left his tribal princess to pine after him and has to go back and sweep her off her feet properly. But the Queen Mom REALLY doesn't want him to go. And, back in the wilderness, the father of our distraught heroine seems to think that this infatuation with the foreign prince-guy is just a 'phase' and is trying to fix up his daughter with the muscle-bound warrior from the beginning. Ooh... riveting.

The End?

Just as the Prince finished telling his fiancee Princess (not to be confused with the tribal princess - this one is wearing an elaborate silver and blue dress and doesn't have her face painted), "I'm sorry, my heart is somewhere else," the electricity cut out. ESCOM, Malawi's neighborhood friendly hydro-power supplier, has a habit of gifting us with inconveniently timed blackouts. Rumours abound with respect to why that might be the case.

Anyway, I have no idea how Aziwa II ended. I finished my nsima, paid my bill, and went home.

Stupid Internets

So, I hadn't meant to let that other post linger for as long as it has - I've got big plans for a post about what I mean when I say "development work" and I need to tell wonderful stories about a staff retreat (my first trip to Lake Malawi!) involving monkeys and other, more serious things.

Unfortunately, my internet access has been and continues to be a bit sporadic.

Bear with me!