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.

To Profit or Not to Profit?

I know, I know - I'm supposed to be writing about what I'm doing. Bear with me awhile longer - this one is about something that got me thinking.

This article in the New York Times has caused a bit of a stir in some corners of the development blogosphere (I stumbled upon it here and followed up with some additional interesting reading here).

The gist of the question floating around is this: should people/organizations/CEOs who do development work be able to make money "helping?" How about a lot of money?

I don't have an answer to either, but they are interesting questions.

In trying to come up with an answer, I've come across the following additional questions and observations.

-Most people don't like it when other people make more money than they do. This stigma needs to be avoided by NGOs (who rely on donations from 'most people' either directly or through taxes) to function. It also needs to be ignored entirely when discussing whether or not it's ethical for NGO CEOs to make big salaries.

-The discussion on whether or not NGOs and the people who work for them tends conflate the question of whether or not aid staff should make a living wage with the question of whether or not they should be allowed or encouraged to make A LOT of money. They're two different questions. The answer to the first one is a resounding YES as far as I'm concerned. People who aren't making a living wage doing development work aren't maximizing their impact: they're learning a lot about the conditions they're trying to change via first-hand experience, but at the expense of being able to focus on and innovate in the work of changing them. I am fortunate enough to work/volunteer with an organization that provides me a stipend that I count as a living wage. While I can't live forever/start an RRSP with the stipend I get for being an EWB Canada volunteer, I can live comfortably in Malawi, and that helps me do (or at least try to do) better development work.

-The question of whether or not development professionals should make A LOT of money is trickier. One school of thought holds that a good way to improve development work is to reward good work and/or to use material incentives to attract talented people (aka pay people more) while another camp firmly holds that development work should be a reward in and of itself and that people who are attracted to such work for the money are simply the wrong sort of people to be doing it. I don't know enough about what "talented people" in development look like to declare whether or not money is the answer to unlocking their true potential, and I'm 100% convinced that, either way, the definition of "good work" needs a pretty serious overhaul before we can say that more money in the form of salaries will encourage it.

-On the "good work" point: an argument in favour of higher salaries is the meritocracy effect. Reward people for good work and the good work being done experiences a net increase. Kristof highlights the point in the example of Dan Pallotta, businessman-turned-pariah. I don't disagree with the logic: it seems to work in sales. I worry though about whether or not the targeted outputs of development work
a) exist in any sort of useful, form; and
b) lend themselves to the creation of salary brackets.
Outside of fundraising, how do you quantify whether an organization or a CEO or an individual field-level staffer is doing "good work"? By number of beneficiaries reached? Number of committees trained? Money spent on projects? Community members who feel they were "helped" by the organization when asked on a survey?

-I get the feeling that this discussion is about expats who are based in developed countries and go do development work in developing countries and largely being conducted by those expats and the people living in the developed countries that they're based out of.Do the terms of the discussion change when we're talking about local NGO staff? Should the Malawian Head of Malawi Fresh Water (this guy's partner organization) be subject to whatever moral consensus we reach? How do we involve such people in the discussion? (I'm going to ask around at my office next time I have the chance - knowing what Malawian development workers collecting pretty decent salaries think about this whole mess would, I think, be rather interesting).

-I have serious reservations about the implications of thinking about aid as an industry. These reservations need some more thinking (they're even more half-formed than my thoughts about NGO salaries), but I raise them because the question of whether or not aid is and should be an industry, with experts, careers, pensions and bottom lines is a thorny one that directly relates to how the sector's employees should think of themselves and be treated. My knee-jerk reaction is to rail against industrializing aid - I am motivated to be here by the (vain, perhaps) hope that I can work myself out of a job, and anything that lends more permanence to development infrastructure than is minimally necessary makes me nervous. On the other hand, 'industry' and the private sector more broadly have pretty good track records in solving some of the problems that hamper the work of development agencies. Areas of best practice like staff retention, professional development, organizational efficiency and output quality control might benefit from a more 'industrial' touch than the one currently being administered by us starry-eyed idealists.

-In case you're a data type, the Canadian government graciously hosts a database detailing the tax documentation filed by registered charities. The salaries of EWB's CEOs are quite modest, by the way.

That's all the food for thought I have for now.

So... the "weekend," eh?

By "this weekend" I apparently meant "early 2009."

Sorry!

I'm just in the process of returning to Nkhamenya (my home - more on that later) from Zomba (where I spent Christmas - more on that later as well).

I'm going back a few days early so that I can clean my yard and write the updates I've been promising before I go back to work (more on that later).

*sheepish grin*

Happy New Year!

Give the Gift of Opportunity

So...I'm planning on writing a more substantial update over the weekend, but in the meantime, please allow me to share EWB's current fundraising campaign with you.

The Gift of Opportunity Campaign is a chance for people to contribute to the work that EWB is doing in Africa.

I know that barely any time has passed since the wide world of Amanda and friends (and friends of friends and random officiandos of handmade jewelry) pitched in to fundraise for this year in Malawi. I'm not trying to pressure you into donating again. And EWB certainly isn't one of those "now that we have your email we're going to use it to ask for money ALL the time" organizations. I just wanted to let you know that the opportunity to keep supporting the work that I'm doing is there if you're so inclined.

I hear tell that it's becoming increasingly fashionable in some circles to make donations of material aid in the names of friends & family in lieu of Christmas gifts. This isn't quite the same - you don't get the satisfaction of seeing photos of your specific beneficiary with the specific goat that you bought. You do however get to contribute to the work I'll be doing to assist Plan International in their work in Malawi to ensure that Malawian children, their families and their communities have access to safe water & adequate sanitation to free them from the entirely preventable spectre of water-borne disease.

That's a pretty solid showing of Christmas spirit in my opinion... even without the goat.

What’s in a Name” – The ‘Amanda’ Mystery

“Dzina langa ndi Amanda.”
(My name is Amanda.)
[insert mysterious grins from adults or the pealing laughter of children here]

By Day 2 in Malawi, I knew there was something fishy going on with my name. Despite being far more pronounceable than some of the other Canadian monikers I’m chumming around with (“l” and “r” are pretty interchangeable sounds in Chichewa, making Alynne, Garrett and Colleen all exercises in hilarity ), my name rarely fails to prompt some surprise or amusement from whoever I happen to be getting acquainted with.
Armed with this suspicion, I decided to do a little bit of investigating.

I chatted with children with no real success.
I listened to the radio with some of the kitchen staff and made a surprising discovery.
I pulled in some help and got fellow EWBers (most especially one Graham Lettner) on the case.
I put some of my question-asking powers to work.

And before the month was out, my associates and I made a surprising number of interesting discoveries about the many reasons for the hilarity of being named Amanda.

• There’s an Amanda brand margarine. We’ve only seen it in one shop though, so as much as that’s kind of funny, it’s probably not the root cause.
• “A” is an honorific prefix in Chichewa, and “manda” is the Chichewa word for “graveyard.” So if I say my name slowly and deliberately, stressing the wrong syllables, it sounds like my name is “graveyard” or “Mr./Mme. Graveyard.”
• According to a book currently in the possession of one of the other EWB volunteers, amanda is also a title used by members of the Nyao in some of their activities (I know that’s pretty vague…still working on figuring out the whole Nyao thing…).
• Most people here introduce themselves by their first name or their first name and surname together. But if you wanted to introduce yourself by surname only, a man would say “A [surname]” while a woman would say “Na [surname]. So not only is my name “Graveyard,” it’s funny because I’m introducing myself as “Mr. Graveyard” (A Manda) instead of “Mrs. Graveyard” (Na Manda).
• Amanda Robinson (Or Robson, potentially) is the name of a radio personality on one of the big Malawi stations. I’ve been asked if I’m her a couple of times. Oh, the celebrity.
• Amanda and similar names like Tamanda and Miranda are fairly common Malawian names. Meeting a white foreigner named Amanda has actually given some people I’ve talked to pause not because it’s a weird name but because its weird for a strange person from a faraway land to have such a normal name.

Mystery solved. For now…

Really, Canada? I leave you alone for 3 weeks and this is what you come up with?

Though I’m half the world away and have my hands full getting settled in Malawi, I am at the end of the day still a Canadian and a politics nerd: I can’t help but to be following what’s going on in the true north strong and free. [This post does meander around back to being on topic eventually, but not in a “and we all lived happily ever after” kind of way…]

Others (daveberta, albertagetrich, Chris LaBossiere and Six meetings for starters) have all said much of what I’m thinking, albeit with their own editorial slants that I don’t necessarily agree with. I’m a little horrified, a little mystified, a little intrigued, and (saddest of all) remarkably unsurprised that Canadian politics have degenerated into such a shambles in such a short amount of time.

I think the budget update/campaign finance sneakaround that the Harper government tried to ram through was absolutely shameful; to even attempt such blatant partisan hackery at a time when real vision is needed to shepherd us (Canada and humankind a bit more grandiosely) through this mess is political opportunism at its worst. To screw it up so badly is equally ridiculous. And then to scream “separatist” at an already politically alienated Quebec… Nevermind the irony of staving off such a shady “backroom deal” oust via closed door meeting with the appointed representative of the Queen of England. It boggles my mind.

Then again, the Opposition isn’t exactly rising to the occasion either. The possibility that Harper is running away from “parliament” is NOT the issue here, nor will an unstable and – let’s face it – leaderless coalition of the desperate “fix” anything. Especially not one so beholden to the interests of Quebec’s self-appointed protectors and so devoid of focus on any objective higher than sticking it to the nasty mean Prime Minister man. That’s not cooperation – it’s collusion, and it’s the kind of collusion where everyone gets cheated but no one is really deceived.

As a Canadian I’m annoyed and disappointed in all this, and, despite all prior indications, still did expect better from my duly elected representatives. As a Canadian development worker living in Malawi, however, I’m swiftly coming to the realization that, whether I can expect it or not, I require better from them in order to do what I came here to do.

The ‘why’ goes something like this:

Both of the organizations I work with (EWB Canada and Plan Malawi) rely on donors for their funding. In the current global economic climate it’s likely (read: virtually certain) that both the pool of donors and average size of individual donations is going to shrink this coming year as people in the West start bunkering down for the rough ride ahead.

Cue the vicious cycle: hard times hit people and institutions in the West (donors) who in turn start trimming away their excess expenses (donations), increasing the financial constraints facing development agencies (my employers) which decreases either the scope, the number, or the efficacy of development projects (the work I do), thus passing along the hard times to the people who would’ve benefited from the projects had agency funding remained the same and who are additionally trying to survive the same financial crisis hitting donors but from a position of poverty such that they were the intended beneficiaries of development aid in the first place (the people I see and talk to every day I’m here).

I can’t fault individual donors for making that choice. People in Canada just like people in Malawi just like people everywhere else have a lot of responsibilities and tough choices to make, and I’d have a hard time arguing against people at home making the choices that will do the most to help those nearest and dearest to them (though I can probably make a good case for it not being an either/or scenario - some other day).

That being said, the money and the commitment and the vision need to come from somewhere and that 'somewhere' is the government of Canada, opposition and majority members both; the men and women who were elected to govern on our behalf and in our best interests, with conscience and with a view to elevating the state of our nation(s) and who have a responsibility to set aside their partisan squabbles when push comes to shove so that they can get down to the business of charting a way forward.
And no, “need” is not too strong a word.
Though I have no doubt I there are grand systemic arguments about justice and our responsibility as global citizens that I could make, the “need” for this commitment that I’m feeling right now is far more personal than grand theories of humanitarianism can communicate.

If the Canadian government fails to strike the hard balance between what’s good for Canada on the surface in time for the next election and what, in principle and in light of the reality of the world around us, is actually the right thing to do, I lose out. I lose an implicit support from my fellow Canadians and from my government that the work I’m trying to do here is something that people ‘back home’ value. The work I hope to do this year loses out as the prospects for the sustainability of Canadian-funded projects dim. The people I’m living and working with and for lose out too: this financial crisis affects them in ways that might actually kill them or their children, and the diminishing capacity of development agencies to do the work that they have been established to do exacerbates those effects. In the year that I am here, the lives of Malawians living in poverty (and even those who are better off) get harder instead of the already elusive easier or maybe even better that everyone was hoping for.

This risk of ‘losing out’ always exists, and was something I came into development sort of expecting to have to face. But the events of this past month have really thrown a sharp focus on the consequences that the mix of global financial systems and national politics at home can have here. If these challenges are not navigated bravely and carefully by the people in charge in the countries with the cash, being the change I want to see won’t be enough. Without commitment from something larger than me, the work I do this year might just wash away as the organizations I work with lose the ability to carry on building on their past projects.

From what I’ve seen this past while, I don’t trust the current Parliament to figure out what would be good for Canada in the short term, nevermind to engage in a sober, probing, and ultimately inspiring dialogue about striking a just balance between those short term needs and what Canada needs to be doing to contribute to a better world and a better future for us all.

And that scares me.

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.