Reality TV Africa

Big Brother 3: Africa just wrapped up, and it’s a pretty big deal here. In a real nail-biter, Ricco from Angola and Hazel from Malawi tied in the number of countries that voted for them, forcing a tie-breaker count of the percentage of actual votes cast. Hazel lost by a hair, meaning that Ricco took home the big cash prize of $100,000 USD. Though the second-place finish was a bit of a disappointment, making it to the finals has made Hazel a bit of a national celebrity. She’s big news in both The Daily Times and The Nation, and the President of Malawi issued a statement congratulating Hazel for making it so far in the competition. According to State House Press Officer Chikumbutso Mtumodzi,
the President feels that Hazel’s performance on the show proves that Malawians have got what it takes to perform in international competitions (like Big Brother Africa).

“The President is therefore encouraging all boys and girls, men and women to enter international competitions as one way of putting our beloved country on the international map,”

he said.
According to the Daily Times,

“the race also revealed that all Western African countries voted for Ricco while countries in Southern Africa voted for Hazel except Zimbabwe which voted for their housemate.”

Two things in particular strike me as interesting….
1) Reality T.V. is somehow everywhere. Though I haven’t been here long enough to truly experience the BBA hype, stories from other OVS tell of patrons jamming bars & restaurants to watch the show in scenes that look eerily like Survivor parties (the early seasons, anyway) back home. For those of you reading this blog for more academic purposes (*cough* HLS students), it might be interesting to think about how things as zany as reality T.V. can help us understand the ups and downs of globalization; I know that BBA is definitely giving me food for though on that front.
2) Regional and national pride. Though I haven’t really talked to anyone local about their take on Hazel’s second-place finish (something I intend to do in fairly short order), the fact that President Bingu wa Mutharika seems to see Hazel’s achievement on the show as a potential source of national pride intrigues me, especially in relation to the regional ‘bloc’ voting that seemed to occur in the finals*. I don’t personally take reality T.V. contests very seriously; in fact, I find the Canadian/American versions of shows like Big Brother (with a few exceptions) to be vacuous and irritating. But if Hazel really is an inspiration to Malawians (or Malawi as a more abstract concept), I wonder if there might be more to Big Brother Africa than meets my untutored eye. Politics and entertainment news are often closely linked (ONE anyone?) and I certainly don’t understand the links in Malawi yet… but Hazel has definitely got me thinking about the power of pop culture.

*If you notice me saying “seem” a lot, it’s because I’m looking at all this with an outsider’s point of view; as such, I probably got a lot of it wrong. But I thought it might be valuable to share my impressions anyway.

Photos!

Check out my photobucket (also linked permanently in the sidebar).

Hopefully that will help me actually get them onto this blog...

Day 10 - Holding onto the Whirlwind

Well, loyal readers/stumblers/diggers/whoever else checks this out, here comes the long-awaited rewarding of your patience.

As you may have gathered from our neighbourhood-friendly facebook, I’m here. Intact, and (miraculously) luggage in tow.

“Here” is Lilongwe, Malawi. I’m currently sitting on the veranda of a guest house in Area 3, enjoying the frog-filled and extremely dark early evening while covered in DEET (stupid mosquitos – they and I are not going to get along). It’s a balmy 23 degrees Celsius out – nice and cool by my rapidly adapting standards.

I spent the first week on the ground participating in an in-country training program put together by some of current members of the southern Africa team of EWB. To be honest, it’s been a bit of a blur so far. We spent day 1 exploring the Old Town Market looking for a chitenje (a bolt of cloth used as a skirt, the building blocks of tailored clothes, a towel, a baby carrier, and probably dozens of other things I haven't seen or thought of yet), buledi (bread) and willing, friendly, people to chat about Malawi with (of which there was no shortage). From there, we divided the remainder of our time between learning Chichewa, workshops on EWB’s history and role in southern Africa and going on excursions to peri-urban and rural areas near Lilongwe. The rains have started – so far, we’re getting sporadic downpours, mostly at night. The first real rain we had was on Saturday night; as a result, dusk on Sunday was CRAZY with wildlife of the bug and amphibian variety. Other than the millipedes, it was pretty neat.

My first couple of days at work have also been a blur. Day One was this Monday, and ended up being a half day spent meeting the head of Water & Sanitation at Plan Malawi and doing some HR things. Day 2 was a trip out to Mpanela, about an hour’s minibus ride north of Lilongwe, to participate in/observe the second day of a Community-Led-Total Sanitation (CLTS) Training of Trainers Workshop. The workshop was really informative; though it was primarily conducted in Chichewa (meaning I really didn’t understand much) I learned a lot about CLTS and about Plan. Watching community development facilitators participate in a workshop like that was equal parts exciting, inspiring and intimidating. The people I met yesterday are really passionate about the work that they do and really committed to doing it well. I’m also really grateful to them for being so accommodating of me. I was late and don’t speak the language, and still felt welcome in the group.

The mosquitoes are really starting to come out in force, so I’m going to wrap up and retreat to the safety of my netting-festooned bed (aka my “Fortress of Solitude”… copyright kudos to DC comics/please don’t sue me!). But before I do that a collection of random anecdotes so far.

- I can’t escape cell phones. A large percentage of Malawians have one (well, urban Malawians, at least).
- Related to that, the act of "flashing" someone is really different here than at home. Basically, it means calling someone and hanging up on the first ring so that they call you back...
- Barack Obama is pretty big news here. I get a lot of “so, you’re from Canada? What do you think of Obama?” when I’m out in the market.
- Local cuisine is hard work, but pretty delicious so far. Remind me to tell you about our experiences learning how to make nsima & ndiwo sometime…
- On a related note, fresh mangoes are AMAZING (and pretty cheap).
- Children the world over are in some ways exactly the same. Many of the children here are captivated by foreigners (and cameras - if I can ever get an internet connection moving fast enough to upload pictures, I'll show you what I mean).
- I really, really need to get a move on picking up the local language.
- I really, really need to get a move on picking up the local language for a bunch of reasons, but one of the pressing ones is figuring out the names of all the plants. I've been able to pick out maize, sisal, cassava and mango trees so far, but the variety here is spectacular... and I'm still in the city.

...And we're off!

After an awesome lunch of sushi/maki boat, it's finally time to go.
At this very moment, I'm sitting on a plane that is hopefully in the process of taking off for parts unknown - also known as Lilongwe, Malawi via Frankfurt (Germany) and Johannesburg (South Africa). Cool, eh?

It's been an amazing month. I've learned a lot and spent a lot of time with a really great group of people (pictured below).


(from left to right)
Front: Me, Mike
Middle: Wayne, Alynne, Colleen, Ryan
Back: Garrett, Etienne, Dan

That's it for now. Next time you hear from me, I'll be in Malawi: that's when things will really start to get interesting.