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!

Bad Volunteer Staff Member? Bad Person? Only Human?

This kind of work encompasses my whole life unless I fight to wall off little pieces to keep outside of the 'me' that works in development.

Some of that is because of EWB's ethos of volunteer sending ("Being a development worker is not a nine-to-five job – it is a lifestyle"), but I can't help but wonder how much of it is universal to the expatriate experience itself and especially in development work (dare I say, done well?*).

When you travel halfway across the world, the trip sort of necessitates you building a new slice of life (nearly halfway, anyway - I figured it out one day and the actual halfway mark for me is actually a bit closer to Sri Lanka). You've left your friends, family, and context on one side of the ocean, and now have to find new friends, family and context on the other. It's a great adventure to do it, but the stakes are high and whatever costs incurred are invariably more at other peoples' expense than mine.

I'm here to live, to understand and to "have a positive impact:" there are tensions between these three things; not the least of which is having the humility to question whether or not I'll ever be able to figure out what a positive impact even is, the understanding that, whatever it is, I probably won't manage it on this contract, and the motivation to try anyway. One of the other tensions is that, in order to ever come anywhere close to achieving 'understanding' of the cultural contexts and pragmatic considerations of living and working here Malawi, it's important to experience Malawian life and culture firsthand (to use one of the more distasteful turns of phrase floating around in development, it's "necessary to achieve a firsthand understanding of the livelihoods of the intended beneficiaries").
By the same token, I want to make friends, have a house, and learn how to cook so that I can live: all these things involve behaving like "intended beneficiaries" are regular people, figuring out what to do about being a relatively well-off traveling white person, and letting go of the need to 'understand' and 'achieve' for awhile so that I can just be.

And all that is just what I do in the evenings. We haven't actually touched on the 'job' yet, in the 9 to 5, contractual responsibilities sense of the word.

So then we have the job. We also have the bits of life that I wall off as mine: my addiction to technology, calls home, brief road trips to the city to shop and eat cheese. Even these things aren't clearly unrelated to my life as a development worker. Communicating home can be about 'raising awareness,' technology is a tool that helps me 'focus,' 'increase productivity,' and 'do outreach.' Even the road trips end up being about work - be it through taking some time away from the office to write down thoughts on development lessons I'm learning not directly related to my project or my partner, time meeting with other volunteers to share experiences and tools, or even accidentally stumbling into a staff meeting in a different city, it's rare for me to go 24 hours without doing something development-related.

I notice the all-encompassing nature of my life as an EWB Overseas Volunteer staffer most sharply when I'm away from that life.

Like now.

Right this moment, I'm sitting at Mabuya Camp (again, not still), writing this post. I've been away from my house in Nkhamenya for a little over a week now. My backpack is packed and sitting beside me, and it's early afternoon. I need to walk or catch a minibus to carry me from expat/tourist-soaked Mabuya to the bus depot, and from there commence the public transportation adventure that will take me back to Nkhamenya.

I don't want to go.

It's not that I don't want to go, exactly. The trip, though a bit stressful (wandering through the market with a backpack in the hot sun while being beset by the wonderful variety of vendors who populate the market) is fun, and usually involves exhilarating brushes with the unexpected. And the bus ride is usually a great space to think, read, and/or meet new people.

And I'm looking forward to being back in Nkhamenya. I've been away for just over a week, and am missing my friends (and, if I dare to admit it, my nsima, compliments of the Rise & Shine diner). There are a group of Pentecostal missionaries from the United States coming to visit the husband of my good friend Nelli, and I want to be there to see them and lend Nelli a hand during what's likely to be a chaotic, crazy-awesome couple of days. I'm also missing and being missed by several of the people in Nkhamenya that I've been lucky enough to call 'friend' (mbwezi) this past while. Three "where are you" phone calls and counting.

I miss sleeping in my own bed, and want to see how disastrous my yard has become without my tender lovin' care. I am not looking forward to hauling water from the borehole, but am looking forward to cooking something homemade with it and to sitting on my couch and walking around in my neighborhood - comforts that are seriously lacking while I'm staying in Lilongwe.

Stalling here is putting me a bit behind at work too. I've got an outstanding project with the Sponsorship Coordinator that I was hoping to work with him to finish by the end of the month and a couple of reports to write. Plus I need to meet with the Health Coordinator to catch up on how projects have been going this part week, get back around to giving a hand, and get the jump on making arrangements to visit another field office.

That being said, I'm still sitting here typing away instead of closing up my computer and starting my journey.

The reason? There are many; some are complex, some are obvious and some are likely subconscious. One is that I'm lazy about traveling in the sense that I dislike all the work that goes into leaving point A in order to get to point B. I'm also a lifelong procrastinator, and the fact that I have a lot of things to do in Nkhamenya is seriously affecting my interest in going, despite the fact that delaying isn't going to make doing my laundry any easier.

On some level, though, it's a relief to be away from my job and my domestic responsibilities. Vacations are always nice - unfortunately, I'm thoroughly unjustified in taking one. That's not what I'm here for, and I think it's a bit of a disservice to my employers and my partner, who are supporting me here on the basis of a shared understanding that I will be giving 110% to the work.

Other than the running water, however, I'm not actually 'vacationing' by delaying in Lilongwe. I'm using the time to meet with fellow volunteers about work stuff, get caught up on 'technical' background reading (which I try not to do when I'm at work and can't do at home owing to the lack of domestic electricity), and get everyone I can get my hands on with EWB onto twitter (outreach!). I'm also trying to use the time away from Nkhamenya to get some perspective on the time I've spent there so far; trying to figure out how I've been doing on balancing the tensions I mentioned above. It's my first time in Africa, my first job as a development worker, and I'm pretty sure I'm screwing important things up; being able to check in with people who have more experience is something I need to do to try (and likely fail, but at least try) to pick through how much of the failure and frustration I've experienced so far is a forgivable part of experiencing, how much requires immediate and severe course correction, and (most troublingly) how much of it isn't me at all, but has more to do with the complex dynamics of 'the big picture.' Successes I can talk about in Nkhamenya - failures are harder territory to navigate with people I've known for such a short span of time whose own jobs and lives are somehow bound up in the work we do.

But do I need to be here to do that? Why am I not trying harder to work through these things on my own in Nkhamenya, or to integrate far enough into local life to find people nearer to my Malawi work and life that can fill the roles that I'm currently giving to the characters and circumstances I meet when I go to Lilongwe?

I don't know if all this makes me a bad volunteer or a bad person who should be doing more and trying harder. All I know is that today I'm in Lilongwe even though it feels like I should be in Nkhamenya.

[UPDATE: My mom says 'only human.' Go figure. ;-)]

A Moment of Weakness Multiplies ad infinitum: @amjhenry

As some of you may have noticed, I've added a new box to the sidebar of this blog: I've surrendered to IDEAfest-induced peer pressure and registered on twitter.

Twitter is, in my former opinion at least, kind of silly. It's basically a website that lets you 'tweet' your friends/'followers' from the web or from your cell phone to give them up to the minute 'updates' on whatever you feel like keeping them up-to-date on (a more frequently updated version of facebook statuses, for those of you familiar with that little gem of social media). In 140 characters or less.

While I'm still not sold that twitter is inherently un-silly, I've decided to give it a try. While I'm in Malawi at least, I think it might be an interesting way to try and keep you more immediately in the loop about life, times, and crazy random happenstance as they unfold. Hopefully, I can keep up with it (without totally failing to, you know, do good work) and pass along some interesting insights into things here that wouldn't make it to you in the more formal, I-actually-need-to-sit-down-and-think/write-coherently land of the blog.

Please feel free to let me know if you agree - or let me know whatever else you might feel like telling me. Email, blog comment, facebook, or, introducing tweet @amjhenry. I may be far away, but the internet just might be able to keep me at your fingertips (delayed, maybe, or crazy slow, depending on where I am in Malawi, but at your fignertips all the same).

Also, Happy St. Patrick's Day (green beer day!). When this publishes, I'll be in Senga Bay blasting through a working week of EWB Team Meeting.

Maybe I'll tweet to let you know how that goes (though it depends on talk time - text message tweets cost me a 20 units. Ouch).

A Week in Lilongwe

By the time you get to read this, I'll be in Lilongwe again, en route to Senga Bay for a staff retreat (yay post-dated blog posts)...


Anyway, I spent the first week of March in Lilongwe.
The trip had been coming for some time.

While the past 4 months have been rewarding and wonderful and unlike anything I've ever experienced before and likely ever will again - even if I continue in development work or in living in Africa, I doubt that my first four months anywhere else will ever be identical to these - they have also been extremely challenging, sometimes frustrating, and quite often pretty lonely.

I needed to come to Lilongwe for some meetings. I was overdue for a face to face discussion with my contact at the country office of Plan Malawi about the progress on the Community-Led Total Sanitation project. Two of my areas of responsibility are to "document lessons learnt" and "provide assistance in effective scale-up" of the project. Having been able to make some observations, I was hoping to get a check-in on expectations for 'lessons learnt' and make plans to visit another field office so that I can see how the project is rolling out at other locations and provide an opportunity for the two CLTS teams to 'compare notes.'

I also needed to meet with someone on the EWB Team (southern Africa edition) to talk behavior change and get to know one another so that we can make a space to talk strategy, learning, and other aspects of hygiene & sanitation promotion as they relate to our work.

Those two meetings would have taken 3 days, but a combination of circumstance and deeply personal intuition turned it into 7.

The easy bit first: circumstance.

I had a hard time getting in touch with my country office counterpart due to
a) sporadic blackouts (this is, apparently, because Malawi's hydro-electric dam is getting clogged with detritus in the river...) making email difficult
b) network problems with my cell phone (though it may actually be my cell phone - it seems to be possessed by technological gremlins)
c) 'tis the season for Plan to prepare their budgets for the next financial year - so my country office counterpart is understandably otherwise occupied.

So I came into Malawi for the weekend for my EWB meeting, trusting that I'd be able to call on Monday and make a meeting for Tuesday.

But... Tuesday was a national holiday.

So... Wednesday. But as I was heading to the meeting (and I really mean as - I was about 30 seconds from getting onto a minibus), I received a call from my counterpart: he had been called into a high-level government meeting with sector donors and needed to reschedule. That took us to Thursday. By then, it just made sense to stay awhile longer.

The hard part: personal intuition.
The last month has been hard. I've been homesick for both personal and professional reasons, and have recently been bowled over by a series of really profound personal epiphanies. Personal epiphanies are good, true - but they're a bit difficult to process so far from home and the people that I have been friends with for long enough that they'd understand where I'm coming from.
It's also been frustrating at work, but I didn't really realize that at the time - my frustrations and their sources really only came to my attention after I'd been in Lilongwe for a couple of days.

Anyway, back to missing home: I reached out via email to reconnect with those people -that I was missing and who would just know what I was thinking and where I was coming from without having to really explain - also good. Really good. I'm deeply grateful that I have been privileged to have such close friends and colleagues.

But being able to reconnect with them threw my level of satisfaction, focus and performance at my work with Plan into pretty sharp relief. I still haven't picked through exactly what was going on there, but something was going wrong, and I needed some perspective on what it was, why it was, and what I could be doing differently to make things work better.

Which set off a weird cycle in my personal life. Just as I was making friends in Nkhamenya, and starting to really be comfortable enjoying my life there, I was also being confronted by pretty heavy work and personal stuff that was kind of quintessentially 'Canadian' (as in, related to my life back in Canada - I have no idea what universally quintessential 'Canadian' stuff would look like) and (as I learned rather quickly) extremely challenging to talk to my Malawian friends about. Not impossible - but the degree of challenge in the conversation caused those conversations to be interesting learning experiences of their own that didn't really help me deal with all the, for lack of a better word, 'upheaval' I felt like I was going through. Learning, good - feeling increasingly out of my depth and alone in uncharted personal growth waters - not so much.

So that's how I was feeling, and I kind of knew why (but not really) and it was really messing with my ability to 'be' (useful, yes, but also just 'be') at work.

So I went to Lilongwe. And spending a week at Mabuya socializing with other EWB volunteers, various other development volunteers (including a pack of people from the United Kingdom volunteering as teachers), tourists, and the crazy hodgepodge of expats who are regulars at the camp gave me a profound and much-needed recharge. As much as I'm starting to really love Malawi and find my Malawian friends becoming wonderful, heart-warming fixtures in my life, it helps to be able to talk to people whose life experiences are a little bit more similar to mine.

Some part of me feels pretty conflicted about that admission - I kind of feel like I've cheated somehow. But I haven't delved into why or if that makes sense or is something I should be keeping tabs on in future - right now, I'm just accepting that some part of me knew I needed the time, and some other part of me listened to that little voice telling me to 'go' and took it.

That seems like an incomplete, anti-climactic place to finish. Which is bad blog etiquette, but probably the most stylistically honest way to close.

Til next time.

Canada Plays Snookers With Bilateral Aid

I've been meaning to post about the Canadian government's recent announcement regarding their decision to shift our bilateral aid focus to the Americas.

I haven't gotten around to it, because the decision makes me angry, but in a "familiar & forlorn, wow, this decision's already been made - way to go, jerks" way as opposed to a "I think they might listen to well-thought arguments and rethink this shadiness" way. Again.

Anyway, EWB Canada is fighting the good fight in Embassy magazine.

Please take the time to at least care.

[Quick aside: what I've written here and here provides a nice, long, "between the lines" summary of my thoughts/fearful predictions of yore.]

Absence makes the... brain explode

I've been out of Nkhamenya for about a week (more on that to follow - and I really mean it this time. That post is already nearly done).

In the meantime, the place has gone and changed on me!

Minor details first: someone swiped my mop. To be fair, it was my own fault - I left it hanging on the clothesline instead of locked in my house.

There is a row of trees behind my cooking/bathing house that separates the houses owned by my landlord from the properties just behind. I don't know what the trees are called, but they bear tula fruit (which is extremely poisonous and may not be spelled correctly).

While I was gone, those trees were pruned. And I mean REALLY pruned.

While I don't have a 'before' shot, here's a view of the arboreal carnage:



On the other side of my yard, the extremely large house that has been vacant since I moved in (it used to house a PeaceCorps volunteer) has been occupied. That means that I now share a latrine.
Which is a bit embarrassing, as I had neglected to clean my latrine before I left for a week, trusting that no one would have to deal with the declining conditions in the building except for me. Nothing like having to greet the new neighbors with a "sorry about that."

As a result of this new arrangement, the 'long way' to the latrine has now been 'thrashed' (meaning that the grass has been mowed by means of swinging a long thin piece of metal at it with a technique that I have yet to try and master). Which is nice, but the pre-exisitng overgrown state of that path compounds my neighborly embarrassment.

Speaking of 'overgrown,' my yard looks like some sort of strange jungle. That is NOT supposed to happen - my neighbors are all quite careful to keep theirs free of errant vegetation and swept clean.
I have hired the boy next door to take care of it for MK 300 (about $2.70 thanks to the tanked exchange rate - sigh...) but may pay him a bit more to assuage my guilt over how bad I let things get.

My yard:



My neighbor's yard:
(the weird halo effect on the house is rain bouncing off of tin, I think)


Speaking of decrepit... in the week that I have been gone, some sort of blight has killed a bunch of the maize growing in the garden that my latrine is located in the middle of.
The maize belongs to my neighbor. I'm not sure if she knows that a significant portion of it is dead, and am really not sure how to tactfully raise the subject.

Speaking of my neighbor, she has taken to singing in the evenings with her nephews and house guests (both nights I've been back - it's kind of awesome) and has new house guests.

Speaking of new people... At work, one of the field staff has transferred to a different office, so there's a new face.

On my way to work, there are new vendors: a phone booth (which is actually a table manned by someone who stewards the phone and sells mobile phone talk time) has set up in the trading centre, and a previously unoccupied shelter across the paved road from the entrance to my neighborhood (well away from the trading centre) now houses a chip vendor.

Last but not least, mango season has officially ended. It was tapering off before I left, sure, and we had already started buying 'oranges' (which are actually green and quite sour) from the vendors, but there are well and truly no more mangoes to be had.

I had something profound to say about my emotional reactions to all these changes, but I've already made peace with my initial knee-jerk disappointed internal "hey" changing into a quietly reflective pondering of my assumptions about 'timeless Africa' and more pointedly about 'timeless rural life' mixed with a pang of regret on being away from "my" community and some stress about upcoming time away all swept up in an irrational bit of optimism at the end on how changes, no matter how small, show us that bigger things can get better too. Or if not better, at least different (yes, I just said "can get different" - figured I'd share the brain explosion with any arm chair grammarians in the audience).

Instead I say "bring on the guavas!"

IDEAFest Edmonton

While doing the kind of work I"m doing right now on the kind of contract I'm on has all kinds of difficult and interesting challenges, one of the hardest is simply this: missing things at home.

While I miss my family & friends and personal landmarks like birthdays and funerals, I am today specifically referring to IDEAFest, an event organized by a long-time friend, colleague and collaborator of mine.

I'm going to h/t Chris LaBossiere and shamelessly rip off his description of the event (as I couldn't have said it better myself(:

IDEAfest is a perfect example of how one person can start a movement, and bring people together to discuss ideas in person. IDEAfest was the brainchild of U of A graduate Michael Janz. (his Twitter profile can be found here).

IDEAfest was a rapidly formed event (two weeks of grassroots planning, marketed strictly through Edmonton's Social networking community). It took the format of a larger, popular idea sharing event called TED. What I found exciting is that people were asked to self-register to give presentations on ideas and topics that they were passionate about. If you are one of those that think our younger generations are simply screwing around on Social Networks, I challenge that thinking.

Here is the link to the event that was mostly planned and administered in facebook. you can see that the topics of discussion was very broad, and for the most part the quality of the presentations was exceptional. For a first event it was well organized, and I can easilly see it growing into a new "festival" for Edmonton. Something that we as a City do very well. What could be done better as it grows, is better coordination of AV/Tech needs and attracting even higher quality speakers, but again I have to say the first run was very successful.

I'm really excited to hear about the amazing things going on with social media, with my friends (who are doing amazing things that I expect to see flourish... sadly, even in my absence), and with broader themes around new eras of interpersonal interaction, social intercourse, and intellectual and civic engagement, especially amongst young people.

But I'm also moved by regret. As much as I'm learning here in Malawi and as much as the work I'm doing here is valuable and deeply needed, I feel a pang at not being involved at home. Especially with events and projects that are moving so fast along courses that I so fundamentally want to be involved in charting.

I miss you guys.

What would you do if you were a donor? Some Answers from the Field (Office)

Sorry for the radio silence. It's because I wanted to give the utter awesomeness of my last post (or note, as those of you who follow this publication on facebook are wont to say) time to sink in.
...
Kidding.

Actually, Malawi has been having some serious electricity issues these past few weeks, which has been making it a bit challenging to stay caught up. In my case, 'caught up' means trying to type and email a quarterly progress report and a project update without the benefit of a computer to do it on and support my counterparts at Plan Malawi who have been extremely busy with some budget stuff.

During one of the irritatingly frequent blackouts (for Canadian and Malawian residents alike), I had an idle chat with some of the staff at the field office.
At one point in our chatting, the community development facilitator who was part of our group (CDF or field staffer) asked me what I'd do if I were a donor to help (here in Malawi, specifically) - it was as this point that our chatting became less idle.*

*[no less paraphrased though - this was awhile ago, so my recollection might not be exactly accurate. Anyway, you'll get the general idea]

I didn't have an answer for him, so I made a joke (that wasn't very funny) and spun the question back to him.

The field staffer in question said he'd spend on getting HIV/AIDS under control, as it affects everything, from food security to the growing challenge of orphans in Malawi.

The ICT Coordinator said dealing with HIV/AIDS as well.

The office assistant said nutrition and research - into AIDS as well but also into health and disease more generally. That's interesting enough, but it was the way he put it that was really profound (and caused both of the other members of our chat to agree emphatically). He said that developing countries need to invest in research because their priorities (HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition) are different than those of developed countries (heart disease, cancer). He argued that developed countries devote their time and effort to challenges that affect them, and that it would be really positive if development aid were to go to recipient agencies in ways that stimulated the same.

Intrigued, I asked out of NGOs, the private sector and government, which places (if we were to take this question of research, anyway) donors should direct money to. The CDF said, without any hesitation, that it should be NGOs; because, as he put it, "the money we see given to NGOs at least goes directly to the people." The ICT Coordinator said the private sector, and specifically "those companies at the leading edge of whatever field we mean." The office assistant said "not the government."

Things went sideways then, as we were chatting during the week where Presidential candidates to hand in their nomination papers, officially kicking off election season and the mention of the "g word" of course led to a discussion about that.

A bit later the power came on.

The conversation really left me thinking. Now it can do the same for you (I hope).

What Star Trek is Teaching me about Development

I'm no expert on the development sector and I'm certainly no expert on Star Trek, but starting in my first couple of days of pre-departure learning with EWB, these two areas of non-expertise have somehow met up in the strange corners of my mind to share insights with one another.
So far, here are the top 4 things that Star Trek has taught me about development:

4. Technology is the engine by which humanity brings to life its most beautiful dreams and its most terrible nightmares
(to paraphrase another bit of science-fiction on the big screen that I'm a fan of...).

It's a theme throughout all the iterations of Star Trek. Technology is everywhere, and it gives humanity (and humanoid variants) tremendous power, but with tremendous responsibilities.
In the future, (aka Star Trek) hunger is all but eradicated (yay replicators!), transport to and from your starship is instant, and all but the zaniest interstellar diseases are no problem.
But... most of the zaniest interstellar diseases are man-made, and many of the tragedies of the Star Trek universe are man (or species similar enough to human to make the lesson transferrable) made. From Bajoran to the Borg, Star Trek continually comes back to the beauty and the horror that technology puts at our fingertips - both in its existence and in the disparity of access to it.
Technologies (appropriate, integrated into more diverse approaches, and otherwise) are viewed as one of the tools we can use to solve the tragedies of the world in which we live. And being able to "beam me up" would definitely make my life easier as well as solve one of the more ubiquitous challenges faced in development - namely, getting people and supplies from Point A to Point B.
On the other hand, technologies are also a fundamental part of the many, many, many problems we're now trying to address - climate change, war, drug-resistant TB and malaria, and the widening gap between the developed and underdeveloped worlds are all at least partly because of a technology (or several) developed by humankind.

3. Scotty's School of Managing Expectations is where it's at
This one is from an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Relics. Don't ask how Scotty and La Forge manage to be in the same room in the same century: it's better if you just accept it and enjoy the wisdom of this little gem.

Lt. Commander Geordi La Forge: Look, Mr. Scott, I'd love to explain everything to you. But the captain wants this spectrographic analysis done by 1300 hours.
Scotty: [thinks about it some time] You mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want.
La Forge: Yeah. Well, I told the captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour.
Scotty: How long would it really take?
La Forge: [annoyed] An hour!
Scotty: [looks unbelieving] Oh. You didn't tell him how long it would REALLY take, did you?
La Forge: Of course I did.
Scotty: Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

He goes on to explain that, if something will take an hour, you should say that it will take at least two, be really dramatic about how impossible it will be to get it done in an hour, and then deliver it in the 60 minutes alotted, thus guaranteeing that everyone is really impressed with whatever you did instead of accepting it as part of the job you're supposed to do without any fuss.
That's quite possibly the best fundraising advice I've ever heard. I think it also applies to job performance in general... though only if no one else understands what it is you do well enough to hold you accountable. Which is, in a nutshell, the development sector (how long do you think it actually takes to "document lessons learned regarding the implementation of CLTS in the pilot phase, hmmm?).
[Random aside: The CLTS website I linked to there is new! This excites me, and has delayed the publication of this post, as I stopped editing things to spend some time exploring the new site.]

2. If we can dream it, we can "make it so."
Just before I left Canada for Malawi, I was watching the Discovery Channel in the middle of the night and stumbled across a little special called "How William Shatner Changed the World."
While I'm not sure that everything cool invented since Star Trek first aired can actually be attributed to all inventors since then being Trekkies, I like the idea that a fictional universe helped unlock the potential in humankind to dream. I also like the vision of a better world (and strange, new worlds) that Gene Roddenberry gave us a glimpse of in the original Star Trek and in spin-offs since. The power of the human imagination in both cases showed us all that we can boldly go where no man has gone before - a lesson we can and should take especially seriously when we're trying to improve the world we have.


1. The most effective people and the least effective projects in development have one thing in common: a Kirk Complex.
There's a certain exchange in The Wrath of Khan that sums up what I mean when I say "the Kirk Complex." The exchange is regarding Kirk's impossible success on a simulation in Starfleet Academy (the Kobayashi Maru scenario):

McCoy: Lieutenant, you are looking at the only Starfleet cadet who ever beat the no-win scenario.
Saavik: How?
Kirk: I reprogrammed the simulation so it was possible to rescue the ship.
Saavik: What?
David Marcus: He cheated.
Kirk: I changed the conditions of the test; got a commendation for original thinking. I don't like to lose.
Saavik: Then you never faced that situation... faced death.
Kirk: I don't believe in the no-win scenario.

In people, this complex is a strength: it is lateral thinking and perserverance and mental agility and ironclad determination, even in the face of impossible odds (in the case of both Kirk and some of the most urgent development work, of death itself). Attributes that, in my limited experience, are critical to success in development work.

In projects, however, it is stubborn fanaticism in the worst sense: clinging to optimism, even when the signs of failure are obvious and crying out to be seen and responded to; perhaps by a person willing to try something else, even something unorthodox, to deliver a success instead of another doomed silver bullet.

The jury's still out for me on what that means for development organizations, which are comprised of both people and projects (and the relationships between).



Anyway, thus concludes our lesson. Live long and prosper.

My house!

And other photos...

That's not a good sound...

I have a story that I’ve been saving for over a month. As I put it to someone who got a sneak preview via text message: what follows is the account of “a small crisis that I’m hoping will turn into a funny story.”

I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not it qualifies as either a crisis or a funny story…

Picture this: it is about 4:30 in the morning on December 13th. A sunny day is just about to dawn in the Warm Heart of Africa. The corn is about 4 inches high and dusted with dew. The muted pre-dawn light is enough to see by, and the smoke from the many cook-fires that will be starting shortly isn’t yet hovering in the air. The doves are though. They’ve already landed on the roof belonging to the hapless star of this story. As for that hapless star, we’ll call her “Namanda.”

Namanda is awake at 4:30 in the morning on December 13th for two reasons. The less compelling of these two reasons is that one of the roosters who lives in her neighborhood has decided to announce sunrise early, and seems to be located somewhere in the immediate vicinity of her window. The second, far more urgent reason is that she needs to use the toilet. The “toilet” in this case is a pit latrine located in the middle of the garden in front of her house. Her house is a nice place made of brick and plaster with a roof of corrugated sheeting. On this fateful morning, she’s been living there for less than 48 hours.

Because Namanda has no furniture yet and therefore nowhere to set things and because she doesn’t understand the rhythm and norms of life in a Malawian town yet, Namanda takes her house keys with her when she goes to use the latrine.

Due to the urgency of the situation on that fateful morning, she does not lock the doors behind her. She drops her keys into the breast pocket of her pajama shirt, slips on a pair of flip-flop sandals (or tropicals as they’re known locally) and hustles out to the latrine.

As she’s doing her business, she thinks, “I’d better be careful not to drop my keys into the pit. That would really suck.” So she puts her hand over her pocket.

She finishes up, makes use of the toilet paper she’s brought with her from the house. With toilet paper in one hand, she turns to replace the pit cover.

There’s a gentle thud – the sound that something metal might make as it glances off of something concrete – followed by the sound of metal clinking against metal and another, more distant thud. Namanda’s hand flies to the previously abandoned pocket, but her brain has already noted the absence of a hitherto comforting weight.

That’s right. On Day 2 in Nkhamenya, I dropped my keys in the latrine.

This unfortunate event in turn precipitated a series of adventures investigating whether or not the house had spare keys (negative), whether I should go through the landlord to replace the locks or if I should take care of it myself (myself, but with substantial assistance from my neighbour), whether or not I could buy the same brand of locks to replace the old ones (negative), and then attempting to purchase the locks and hire the carpenter.

Many a learning experience later, the locks are replaced and I have a shiny new set of skeleton keys.

In retrospect, I strongly advise against dropping keys in the latrine. It's kind of inconvenient.

"Canadians share in the global consensus that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures"

The 2009 Federal Budget of Canada was released on Tuesday, and was introduced as follows:

"The world is passing through an extraordinary time. Canadians share in the global consensus that extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures.

Budget 2009 will help Canada to meet the challenges of our times. It aims to protect our country from an immediate economic threat while providing the solutions we need to secure our long-term growth and prosperity."

I am concerned that the 'extraordinary measures' arising from this consensus are so narrowly targeted.

Basically, this article sums up the situation nicely as follows:
"...there are no fresh ideas about updating international trade rules, or how to help the world's one to two billion poorest. It is a domestically-focussed, Canadian macro-economic document, which is appropriate for the times, but breaks little new ground."

While it's true that the budget "meets our international obligations" - you have to be careful to define those obligations as to our G-20 colleagues and to other industrialized nations. The budget is quite clear on that point, and quite silent on our whatever obligations we may have outstanding to the other 60% or so of the world's population.

While I don't disagree that the Canadian government owes its citizens a good-faith effort to avert the potential impact of this recession domestically (and that such measures may indirectly benefit the entire global economy), I worry that we are turning our focus inward at the precise moment when we need most to be paying attention to the long-term, global consequences of the actions we take in the short-term to stave off disaster.

While it's true that "extraordinary times" are widely accepted to be "dangerous and uncertain times" in this case, I think that they can also be seen as a time of opportunity - with everything that has broken in the last 3 months, we are uniquely positioned to apply innovative solutions to deeply rooted and concerning challenges.

This budget is, I think, a fine example of one of the more tragic dilemmas of Western democracy. Elected by Canadian voters, the Canadian government is accountable to Canadians first and foremost, and so must put the interests of Canada ahead of all other considerations; this looks to be shaping up to be especially true in a post-1990s deficit situation. In extraordinary times, it seems, spending outside of the domestic market can only be justified if it directly benefits Canadian citizens.

I think, Canada, that we can do better than that. In the words of Lester B. Pearson (someone that I think our current leadership could learn a lot from):

"It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world. "

(h/t to Embassy Magazine, the only online publisher currently paying attention to the the global part of the global financial crisis as it's playing out in Canada)

My Head, My Heart And My Hands May Be in Malawi...

...but at least one of my feet is in an all-too-familiar Chamber in the halls of my alma mater...



Have a good weekend.

Obama, Obama, Obama

This needs to be quick as I have real work to do, but the political science nerd in me couldn't let the inauguration of America's 44th President pass by unremarked.

First of all: yes, people the world over (read: in Malawi at least) really were paying attention to the inauguration proceedings.

I haven't seen a Malawian paper yet today, but the weeks leading up to the inauguration have been sprinkled with stories about the newly minted President. As far back as November, American Ambassador Peter Bodde was warning Malawi that Obama's election could mean renewed pressure for democratic reform. A couple of weeks ago, both papers ran stories quoting Bodde quashing any hopes of a Presidential visit in the first 100 days. This editorial in The Daily Times on Obama's oratory style was a really interesting read last week.

Anyway, a number of people in the office spent last night watching the inauguration in various T.V.-equipped locales around Nkhamenya (the speech wrapped up around 7:30 p.m. local time). One fellow from work showed up this morning with a digital video recording of the address; another has already printed off a transcript of the speech and has half-jokingly vowed to "imprint the words on his heart." Someone also keeps wandering through the office singing "Obama.Obama.Obama" in a rising chant. The whole event is also a hot topic of conversation... in particular people are (unsurprisingly) interested in Obama's hints at foreign policy and what the talking heads on PressTV and other outlets have to say about it.

For my part, I stayed late at the office last night and attempted to watch via online video feed. One of my colleagues left to try and watch it at a neighbor's but came back, foiled, because the neighbor didn't seem interested/was under the impression that the speech had already aired. So we cosied up to the laptop to watch streamed video, which glitched and we missed a lot of the speech (as the video froze and lurched forward, played for a few seconds, then froze and lurched forward again).

We got the general idea though.

I'll save critical analysis for some other day - right now I have to go to a meeting to discuss work schedules for the next two weeks (I have a village stay, site visits to some Community-Led Total Sanitation projects, some software training and at least one visit to the field to learn about home visits to sponsored children to coordinate).

Not in Africa, but...

While skimming through the world news this morning, I ran across this feature on the BBC, written by a girl living in Pakistan.

It's a diary of her life in the Swat Valley region of Pakistan. The area used to be known as "the Switzerland of Pakistan," but has lately been making headlines as a hotbed of Taleban activity and the focal point of their campaign to close/destroy Pakistani private schools in an effort to stop the education of girls.

Education and the rights of women and girls have long been causes dear to my heart. Since coming to work with Plan, I've found that the listening to the voices of children (and protecting their ability to speak) has joined the list of causes I'd like to advance. With that in mind, it goes without saying (though I'm going to say it anyway) that this article struck a chord with me.

I touched on the education of girls in a previous post sometime back. Though I still don't know if achieving real success in development is as 'simple' as "getting girls (especially rural girls) into and through school up to the 8th grade," but I'm pretty sure ensuring that girls receive educations is a pretty significant step in the right direction.

Education is a a huge economic asset; for women especially, it opens doors to economic self-sufficiency and sustainability in the future. It's also been shown in studies all over the world that more educated women marry later (read: when they're women and not themselves still children), have fewer children, space the children that they do have, are substantially less likely to die in giving birth to those children, and are more likely to have children (both boys and girls) who themselves attend school and reap the benefits that it brings. And that's just the benefits to the girls themselves; the benefits to the countries and communities in which little girls grow into empowered and inspired women are nothing short of profound. (You can check out the reports being published by Plan as part of their Because I Am A Girl campaign for more detailed info).

In Gul Makai's case, you can already see the difference education has made. Being able to read and write allowed her to share her story with the BBC: maybe, just maybe, the education she already has will help her secure the education she and others like her need and deserve in the future.

You can't catch AIDS from sharing textbooks

As part of my orientation to Plan and the projects that I'll be assisting with for the rest of my placement, I've been visiting schools in the Kasungu District participating in the School Sanitation and Hygiene Promotion Project. The project is partly funded by the Plan Canada office, which is neat - it was both surreal and really exciting to see development dollars from the true north strong and free at work here in Malawi.
I'll write more about the project later (read: I want to run my post by the powers that be at the office to make sure that I'm providing a fair representation of one of their projects so as not to mislead fellow Canadians who may also be donors to Plan). For now, I just want to share a brief and deeply affecting episode.

We were visiting Mpsaszi Primary School to deliver construction materials and meet with the headmaster. Though I don't remember exactly the order, Mpasazi was later in the day on our first of 2 days conducting visits - probably the 5th or 6th school. So I knew the ropes.
1) We arrive in the Planmobile.
2) School is already out, so we either wait for the headmaster to come from his home (which is always nearby) or are greeted by the headmaster.
3) We go into the headmaster's office, make introductions, receive an oral progress report on the project including any oustanding problems, and sign the visitor's book.
4) We walk out to the construction (in this case, latrines) to inspect progress. These inpsections have been a great learning opportunity for me, both in terms of seeing what "good" and "bad" Ventilated Improved Pit Latrines (VIPs) look like and in terms of having the chance to talk to Sam, the field office manager (aka the "PUM"), Chingati (the Health Coordinator) and Tuntufye (the project point person) about the ins and outs of the project and Plan's history with each of the schools we visited.
5) We make sure the materials are all delivered and either chat with the headmaster, the teachers and the gaggle of children that has inevitably materialized or we pack up and go.

This visit went exactly according to the steps outlined above, with just a minor deviation in Step 3.

After showing us into his office, the headmaster was called outside to discuss the construction materials, leaving me with a little bit of time to kill. This headmaster's office, like all of the others I've seen in Malawi, doubles as a store-room for miscellaneous supplies and academic materials. The upper-primary school English textbooks happened to be on a shelf at eye-level, so I picked one up to flip through, curious about the curriculum in Malawi.

The second page of the book features a lively cartoon of children sharing books (a common occurence in Malawi - there never seem to be enough textbooks to go around), with this caption:

"You can't catch AIDS from sharing textbooks."

The previous page is also a message about AIDS - about how children with AIDS are children too; they're just special children. But it was the targeted mythbusting really dropped my stomach to my feet.

Occupying the intermediate space somewhere between "reading the statistics" and "attending the funerals" this single page brought home one of the major realities of Malawi to me in a potent, de-abstractifying way. High HIV/AIDS prevalance (one reasonably reliable estimate puts adult prevalence at 14.2%) means that children living with HIV/AIDS or at risk of being exposed to it are real, ever-present, and one of the many things that children in Malawi must be educated about that simply are not issues for the vast majority of children in Canada. I tried to put myself in the shoes of the children who must accept peers with AIDS or worse, have it themselves; with the teachers who face HIV positive pupils in primary school; and with the parents who have to field those awkward questions that children bring home from school about HIV/AIDS before we even get as far as the birds and the bees. I have a sister who will be entering elementary school fairly shortly: soon, my mom will have to explain why some children need wheelchairs or why she has to be careful about taking peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. The analogous situation here here is explaining to a child why some of her classmates have a deadly virus transmitted by sex, body fluid transfer, or from mother to child.

I pretty much failed outright in my attempt - it's just too big a thing for me to understand without ever having had to live it. But trying was a sobering experience.

A Walk Home

This is one slice of life in Nkhamenya. It was a particularly good one.

On Tuesday January 6th, I knocked off from work at about 6 ‘o’ clock. The sky was already starting to darken to dusk, owing to the large thunderhead building on the Western horizon and to the fact that the sun sets before 7 here.

Some of the field staff offer to give me a ride home on their motorcycle, but I decline. The skirt I’m wearing is inappropriate for motorcycle travel and anyway, I kind of want to walk.

The air was cool and smelled of rain – Malawian rain-smell is fresh and cool, like at home, but it doesn’t have the sharp, clear edge that it does at home. The view is breathtaking. Plan’s office in Nkhamenya is on the southern edge of town on the top of a hill. Heading north (towards my house) is a valley where the Nkhamenya trading center is, then another, gentler hill where the town unfolds. From the paved road in front of the office, you can see mountains in the distance to the northeast that mark the boundary between Malawi and Zambia, the town in the valley and sprawled up the next hill, and farmland and more town and villages to the east.

On this night, the eastern sky is clear and blue, while the mountains are gently greyed by falling rain, and a breathtakingly impressive thunderstorm is (as I’ve already mentioned) billowing in from the West.

I set off at a brisk pace, wanting to beat the rain home, and am promptly interrupted by running into Macfarlane, one of the men who lives near the maize market on the southeast edge of town. We exchange greetings in Chitumbuka (“Matandala? Tatandala makola. Kwali imwe? Natandala makola.”) and then I get lectured for not coming to see his house on the weekend. I promise to do it later in the week, and we part ways.

A little farther up the road, I’m flagged down by one of the local women who wants to chat. I decline the invitation in broken Chichewa (“Ndifuna kupita ku nymba… mvula zibwera”) and she laughs and wishes me well in Chitumbuka (“Muyendi makola”). A gaggle of children spot me from across the road (“Azungu!” Hello!”) and I pause to wave and laughingly reply like I do every day (“Hello! Good-bye!”). Then I continue on my way across the bridge just before the trading center.

Neli Ngoma and her family live in a compound just across the bridge – they’ve sort of taken me under their friendly and generous wings since I’ve moved to Nkhamenya. Frank, the father, is just pulling into the driveway with his bicycle. We stop to chat (exchanging greetings in Chichewa and then chatting in English). He’s just come from the field, and is looking forward to the rain. I’m planning on stopping at the restaurant his wife works at for supper. Which works out well – Nkhamenya has a resident madman who likes to throw stones at people and speak to you in unintelligible rhyme and Frank spots him headed our way. Frank escorts me to the restaurant – the rain seems to be due at any minute, but hasn’t started yet.

We sit and chat for a bit while we wait for Neli, Frank’s wife, to come from the kitchen of the diner. They’re busy tonight so it takes her some time. After she’s spoken to Frank and I, Frank leaves and I sit and visit with Fatsani, one of the other women who works at the diner. We chat about school, our families and about Canada, and she translates the choruses of the music videos playing on the restaurant’s TV.

After chatting for about half an hour, I remember that I wanted to order dinner. But Fatsani and Neli already have me covered. I have nsima with beef relish and am told that it is a gift – they flat out refuse to take my money (it’s a fight to pay for the bottle of pineapple Fanta I had while I was visiting with Fatsani). By now it’s about 7:15 and night has completely taken over – but no rain yet.

I say “night has taken over” and not “it’s completely dark” because it’s nowhere near dark outside. The thunderhead has blown into the east without loosing the storm, and the sky is alight with a waxing quarter moon and stars like I’ve never seen. Winter stars in Canada are bright, but rainy season stars in Malawi seem so close. And even at half-mast, the moonlight is bright enough to cast shadows; you can even still see the dark outline of the mountains in the distance.

I walk the rest of the way home without running into anyone I know. Once the blaring music from the local Chibuku bar fades, the quieter sounds of town at night set in – crickets, bats, and the metallic creaking and running water sound that means someone is drawing water from the borehole near the second bridge (a Chibuku bar is hangout that mostly sells locally brewed Malawian “beer” that comes in cartons and that I haven’t been brave enough to try yet). Just past the second bridge, I turn west off the paved road onto the lane that leads to my home. I can hear children laughing, women doing dishes or the sounds of people visiting by candlelight as I pass by the many, many houses crammed into my neighborhood (you’re never alone in Nkhamenya).

The maize garden in front of my house is beautiful in the moonlight. I stop to admire it a bit before dropping my things in my house and then stopping in next door to visit my neighbor. After a brief chat, I head back into my house, stopping on my porch to again admire the view before retiring for the night.

A Little Bit of Awesome in Africa

My neighbor has a dog, and that dog has a name and the name that it has (other than my neighbor's dog)... is Chuck Norris.

That is all.

Christmas Photo

(h/t to Alynne for this beautiful shot of the southern Africa half of our sending group tooling around on the Zomba Plateau)

Spark Notes Update

Happy 2009!

I live in Nkhamenya, a town/village (I've heard both - I personally lean towards 'town') 60km north of Kasungu on the M1, Malawi's main north-south paved road. For MK 4000 (about $35 CDN) per month - MK 5000 when/if the electricity gets hooked up - I have a 5 room house all to myself. Tin roof, brick & plaster, glass windows with burglar bars, locking doors, concrete porch - the whole nine yards. Also, 5 rooms is A LOT, as the latrine, cooking house and bathing room are all detached.

Work is good. I'm still learning the ropes here at Plan, but I've been able to attend (and help with presentations at) several training sessions on things ranging from Plans School Linking Program to Community Led Total Sanitation facilitation. I'm learning software by the bucketload, figuring out the filing system, and visiting the field whenever I can.
Work updates will get more interesting when I can update my photobucket with new pictures. I promise.

Life in general is good this new year. There's no shortage of people in the area wanting to be friends (though attempting to learn ChiTumbuka and ChiChewa at the same time is proving to be a bit tricky), the weather's good, and the market keeps me full of vegetables.