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).]

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

A Million Little Things

Today is the official halfway point of pre-departure training. In another couple of weeks, I'll be on my way to Malawi along with the other 4 people headed to join EWB's sector teams in the country. According to my weather wiki, it's 28 degrees and sunny in the capital city of Lilongwe.

I'm supposed to be catching up on my homework today: we have a presentation to give on The Critical Villager: Beyond Community Participation, a book that is described by a past EWB volunteer as "a book which is intermittently in print purely because Parker Mitchell, co-CEO of EWB, orders so many copies." I think the book might actually have some traction outside of EWB, but I digress...

Rather than thinking constructively about my homework, I find myself more interested in reflecting a bit on my experiences so far. I think that sharing some of my observations with you fine people might help me get back on track. So, without further ado...

1. Of course one of my political fantasies comes to pass just in time for me to miss the election night party. Pfft.

2. My friends and family at home are amazing. In particular, amazing by phone, by facebook, by fundraising support, by farewell party (though not necessarily by posting photos of that party...) and by gifts for Africa that have already made my day (including a lot of advice).

3. Case in point: the furnace pilot light for the house wasn't lit when we arrived. We noticed yesterday when room temperature slipped to a chilly 14 degrees. After some tinkering (living with a bunch of engineers has its perks), we got it working and are now enjoying the pleasant sensation of central heating. In the meantime, however, I was lucky enough to have my very own microfibre travel blanket.

4. Many hands really do make light work. During pre-departure training, we've been learning a lot (since Monday morning, we've done training sessions on the history of the development sector, frameworks for understanding behaviour change, agriculture, effective writing, and understanding power & privilege). It's a lot of information to take in, and being able to work/share with the incredible group of people in this sending group has definitely made my life easier.

5. It's really hard to wrap your head around switching continents. I have my e-ticket booked, I'm halfway through a training module designed to get me to prep myself for departure, and I'm in regular contact with my coach (aka my EWB supervisor) overseas, and I'm still not really processing the fact that I'm going to Africa for a year. Go figure.

6. There are a lot of restaurants in Toronto. I know that seems obvious, but so far I've eaten Vietnamese twice, Thai twice, sushi, Indian, Italian twice, Second cup sandwich once, Chinese bakery once, pizza, shawarma, soda jerk diner ham & eggs, Duff's famous wings, Portuguese bakery breakfast, Starbucks snackfood of some kind, and a Portuguese deli sandwich. I've only return visited one restaurant so far and I've grabbed coffee from two different Second Cups, one Starbucks and two independent places. I'd like to do more independent/fair trade coffee places, but they're surprisingly difficult to find unless you know where to look.
And that doesn't even get into the home-cooked meals. Some of the guys here like to cook (and some peoples' moms are taking really good care of us), meaning that feasts of pasta & home-made sauce, French toast, curry, samosas, pakora and TRUFFLES!
Delicious. Not necessarily nutritious, but definitely delicious.

7. Last (and probably least), Canada is a really pretty country in the fall.

Touchdown in T-Town

So, after a nice early start (6 a.m. takeoff... yay) I arrived in Toronto this morning. A nice, scenic, multiple-transfer public transportation trip got me to the EWB Learning House, where I'll be living for the next month during pre-departure training with the other 9 people in my sending group.

Training has formal programming from 9 to 6 five days a week (with some longer days, some shorter days, some weekend days and a bunch of homework). I'm looking forward to such an intensive opportunity to learn, to prepare (and to blog!).

As sure as it gets.

Looks like I'll be working with PlanMalawi in the water & sanitation sector of developmenty-type things.

I'll be posting some additional info later. Right now I have to call my mom and dad! :)

95%

There's been a minor delay in the matching process for OVS (which is fair, since I've been holding up the show with a major delay with my forms), but my placement is about "95%" sure.

Stay tuned for the "99%" sure announcement early next week!

Not an Engineer. Not a Problem.

When I tell people that I'm going to be working on a development project for Engineers Without Borders Canada, I often get some version of this response:

"That's great!"
[pause, and a puzzled look]
"I didn't know you were an engineer..."

That's where the plot thickens: I'm not an engineer. My degree doesn't leave me with a professional designation (as one ill-fated ad campaign once said, I can "Be Anything" with a Bachelor of Arts. Har, har).

So what's an organization called "Engineers" Without Borders doing hiring a specialty-less Arts student-turned-adult like me?

EWB Canada (and for that matter, other EWBs) don't exclusively work on technical projects requiring the highly specialized skill sets of Western-educated engineers. Though all of their projects have technical components, the organization approaches those projects from a the starting point of working towards human development.

According to the United Nations, human development is...

about creating an environment in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests. People are the real wealth of nations. ... It is thus about much more than economic growth, which is only a means—if a very important one—of enlarging people's choices.

(taken from "The Human Development Concept," UNDP edition)

Apparently, I strike the folks at EWB as someone who might be good at helping to create environments in which people can develop their full potential and lead productive, creative lives in accordance with their needs and interests. That, in a very vague nutshell, is why I was offered this opportunity.

In a more specific way, there are a list of attitudes that EWB looks for in candidates for overseas placements available here. Those of you who know me already can probably judge for yourselves whether or not you think I might be creative, enthusiastic, or possessing "ruggedness." Those of you who don't will have to judge for yourselves over the coming months. In my application and interview process, I would say passion, empathy and adaptability were characteristics that were definitely stressed over and above technical proficiency.

One of the many things on my list of things to learn and do before I arrive at my placement is to deepen my understanding of what EWB Canada is aspiring to achieve with a people-first, project-driven approach to their overseas work as well as to achieve a deeper understanding of what participating in a human development project means to me (the good and the bad).

At the moment, however, we seem to still be in the "attitude is everything" phase. Actually getting a sense of "how to" is buried in the hundreds of pages of pre-departure resources that EWB has kindly sent along to keep the boredom at bay this summer.

The Story So Far...

For those of you who don't know her, Amanda (aka me - this post will probably be the only one that I write in the third person) is a recent graduate of the University of Alberta, holding a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Political Science and Middle Eastern & African Studies. She was recently offered a position volunteering overseas with Engineers Without Borders Canada (EWB), a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to poverty reduction through capacity building in the developing world and raising awareness in the developed world (especially Canada).

Without further ado, here's the scoop so far...

November 2004 - Amanda volunteers at a U of A Students' Union High School Leadership Conference where one of the keynote speakers is a returning Junior Fellow of EWB. She's, as they say, hooked.

Winter 2005 - Amanda attends a paltry 2 EWB events put on by the U of A Chapter.

March 2005 - Amanda gets roped into 2 jobs, likes one of them better than the other, and disappears into the inner workings of the U of A Students' Union, with her free time going to the U of A High School Model United Nations Conference (and not, as it happens, EWB).

Summer & Fall 2007 - Escape from full-time work! The return to full-time studenthood means more free time. Kind of. Amanda renews her connections with U of A EWB, attending events casually and helping a bit with certain awareness events held on campus.

January 2008 - Amanda has a chat with a friend (we'll call him "Jamaal") where she is encouraged to apply to volunteer with EWB.

Reading Week 2008 - She does.

March 15th - May 10th 2008 - Two phone interviews and one in-person interview (aka a whirlwind trip to Toronto) later, Amanda is offered a position as a long term OVS and jubilantly accepts. A great many people have already been tremendously helpful and supportive. Thanks to you all (I think I've thanked you all individually already. If not, I'm sorry and thank-you very, very much for your help and encouragement).

May - July 2008 - The paperwork starts, including a matching survey designed to help EWB identify placements on projects/with partner organizations that have the best chance of the most success, based on a variety of factors (and years of experience).

[Aside: As of right now, I know the following:
Contingent on not having anything awfully unexpected happen (like not being eligible for a passport or something), I will be working with EWB and a partner organization operating locally in Africa on a development project. I will be leaving Edmonton in early October for approximately a month of pre-departure training in Toronto before I leave for my placement in early to mid-November. I will be gone for about 12 months and return to Canada after that to debrief and figure out my next steps.
I will know more about all that (like narrowing down from "Africa" to a country and "development project" to at least some field of work if not an actual, specific project) in a month or so.]

August 2008 - December 2009 (and beyond? who knows?) - Stay tuned to this blog to keep updated on Amanda's activities and musings related to her work with EWB. In particular, stay tuned for the following three things (in chronological order):

1) A series of posts on Amanda's take on issues related to development work generally and a sort of introduction to the field.
2) Real-time (ish) updates on interesting things that happen in the lead-up to departure. This will eventually include the much-anticipated announcement detailing where she's actually going and what she's actually doing. Expect some things on the blog (the news and the title, for instance), to change as this information becomes available.
3) Notes from the field, updated as regularly as possible.

Cool, eh?