More Dodo

Zebras

This one is for my Mother.

“Thief!”

I go to the window of the MACO office that faces into the alley to see what the shouting is about as I see people run by the window. The shouting is angry, and one of the people who runs by is a Muzungo with a Canada patch on his backpack strap. As I poke my head through the bars that cover virtually all windows in Zambia I see that a considerable crowd is moving down the alley to catch up with the fast runners who I had heard and seen out my window.
Shouts of “Thief!” and, “It’s a thief!” are clearly audible now and I can pick out the man in the crowd who is the alleged thief. A police officer is amongst the crowd and wields his billy-club in attempts to control the periodic altercations that erupt between the crowd and the “thief”. The muzungo recounts his story while the “thief” denies it was him. The crowd moves back down the alley towards my window. As it approaches I can hear the dull slapping noises as members of the crowd bring their open palms down hard on the “thief’s” head despite the officer’s attempts to control the crowd. At least those slaps are more an insult than the rocks that are hurled.

Do you frown upon this situation because of the bodily harm that can be incurred from a mob at a mere accusation? Or do you admire Zambians’ sense of community that a cry of “thief!” results in everyone dropping what they are doing to put the situation right – even if the victim is a foreigner.

In either case, as volunteers overseas, or even as a tourist, one has to be careful that one doesn’t yell “thief!” after someone who has stolen something worth less than potentially a person’s life.

Flower bullet points

By the way - I have NO IDEA why what were numbered bullets in Word are now flower shaped bullets on the blog. Madness.

Street in Dambwa North [my neighborhood in Livingstone]

Project Update – My Intended Add Value

So we have finished compiling the interview results from the Manyemuyemu Dam community and are moving ahead with preparations for the community mobilization meeting. This work, however, can be conducted by locals and, as you know from the last post, EWB volunteers are trying to do more than gap-fill. So where is my add-value?

I’m going to take a minute here to make sure everyone reading this has a decent understanding of the Junior Fellow program. It is an 18 month position starting when you are selected. There is a lot of “foundation learning” we do before going to that pre-departure training session. The overseas volunteering is not the beginning of our development education, it’s the culmination. But I don’t think that’s very accurate because of course it doesn’t end there and you learn a lot by being on the ground. The idea is we come overseas with minds jammed full of development theory and field techniques so that we are effective contributors to our partner organizations. The Junior Fellow program as three goals:

1. Having impact overseas, with our partner organization, host community, and Dorothy!
2. Personal learning to become effective “Development Champions”
3. Impact in Canada

If you were wondering what we Junior Fellows will be up to for the 8 months remaining after our 4 months overseas ends its sharing the experience with our chapter and community in Canada so that Canadians are aware of the development issues. As you can guess from my Motivations post, this is one is something I am really looking forward to!

So, impact with my partner organizations. What’s my add value? It may seem like I am stating that question a lot… that’s because it’s a question that haunts us volunteers. No one tells you what your add value is, its impossible to know ahead of time. It takes a good month or so of working with an organization before you can figure out where you, a young Canadian student, can add value to this organization which has been around for years. For some placements that impact is more obvious, for others I am sure they are still figuring it out. But its of prime importance so in the mean time we are wracking our minds trying desperately to figure it out as the time remaining in our placement slips by. EWB tries to push us to become the most superb agents of change possible to do this job, pushing us to identify and overcome every weakness and build on our strengths [that pre-departure training is very intense let me tell you]. One fellow-JF commented that EWB is the only place he has felt challenged and I understand why. EWB is the only place where we have been challenged to challenge ourselves. I can’t speak for the rest of the volunteers, but I certainly ever felt our work was a matter of doing a good job. You never really think of it in terms of whether you have done a good job… only could the job be done better? Could I be having more impact? Is there anything I am not doing that Dorothy would want me to do? Quickly you realize the hardest boss to work for is yourself!

Anyway, back to the add value! With my placement I was told at the beginning my task was to verify this manual, “Mobilizing Communities to Maintain Earth Dams”, which Nick Jimenez produced during his placement the year prior. That was all the direction that given. As you know from the other updates first a verification that it worked at Mulabalaba was undertaken. It was found to have worked the first time, so now Kantu and I are using the manual in another area, Manyemuyemu, to see if it is useful for extension officers other than Nick and Ernest and applicable to another location. So far there is very little that can be improved in the methodology. There a few areas which need adjusting, but certainly not the same contribution as creating this comprehensive, 50+ page, participatory manual. I was really aghast at the enormity of the accomplishment Nick made. We learn about participatory methodology, but to write a participatory manual… quite the achievement. But my improvements to the manual can not come close to the contribution of its creation. Where is my biggest add value? But our impact is supposed to be long-term, so the fear begins to creep in that at the end of august there will be an improved manual and it will just sit on the shelf. Will it be used? A-ha! This manual needs to be more than a manual containing a good field methodology… it has to be a useful tool! If the methodology works the next task is to make sure it is presented in an extremely efficient and use-friendly manner so that it will actually be used. So while we continue the mobilizations of Manyemuyemu I will conduct some research amongst the field officers as to what participatory manuals they have used in the past, what made them effective/ineffective, and how they would like to see this manual structured so that it has the greatest utility for the intended users. Furthermore, in the process of including a stakeholder analysis to the methodology to identify what programs other NGOs might be running in the area that could compromise our activities [this is something that happened during the Mulabalaba mobilization – an NGO was offering a food for work program to the community, paying them to do maintenance that MACO was asking them to do for free] it became clear that NGOs and MACO [the government] do not have the best coordination with each other. In fact there doesn’t seem to be an established method of communication with them despite the fact that MACO should know of all NGO activities. At one time MACO held stakeholder meetings where all the organizations working in a certain area, or maybe within a certain sector, would come together and meet so their programs could be harmonized. But organizations didn’t like this harmonizing it seems and stopped coming. As a volunteer from an NGO working with MACO who will be leaving at the end of August – I am in a very good position to do some mediating. I am planning some research – perhaps it will only be preliminary research – into identifying what communication is supposed to be taking place, what is taking place, and what the concerns and issues are – from both side’s viewpoints. Hopefully from that some groundwork can be made in terms of establishing a format for communication. It may be as simple as an organization preferring letters rather than emails or the other way around. Right now there is nothing. There are some really convenient advantages to these two [manual utility and NGO communication] activities… they don’t require any resources from MACO! My co-workers are really incredible. They have lot of knowledge and many of them have a passion and care about their work instead of it just being another job. The biggest thing hold MACO back – as far as I can tell - is how terribly under funded they are. They just don’t have the money to conduct the work they are mandated to do. This research can be very beneficial to MACO without drawing resources such as overnight allowances and fuel costs that it takes to get me into the village [we have enough of those costs with mobilizing Manyemuyemu which is far enough away its cheaper to spend nights between days in the villages at a nearby town of Zimba]. Also, these activities do not require the help of the extension officers beyond being interviewees. The officers I work with have many other tasks they are working on beside the community mobilization that my placement focuses on, and this research can take place when they are required elsewhere or circumstances out of our control [ie the fuel truck doesn’t show up so the petrol station has no gas, the electricity is out in the city, the vehicle we hope to use is needed to take people to a funeral, etc.] prevents us from carrying out the mobilization activities that day. These ideas have been met with positive reactions from my co-workers and the DACCO [the head of MACO for this district] so it appears as if this is what I will be working on for the remainder of my placement.

So, in conclusion:

1. Continue mobilizing the Manyemuyemu dam community and using that exercise to further refine the methodology contained in the manual.
2. Conduct research amongst the field officers to find out ways to make the manual as user friendly as possible.
3. Do some research [as much as time permits] to better establish modes of communication between MACO and key NGOs.

There you have it. That is a lot to do in the time remaining so I better get busy!

Rural Livelihoods

Before the Junior Fellows are sent to their host country, we go through an intense, week long, pre-departure training. One of the many things discussed is rural livelihoods. Here are some of the factors we look at:

1. Households are the unit of analysis, and gender plays a role. [Households operate as an organic entity with everyone contributing something as if it was a joint enterprise which sustains each individual in return for their contributions. This also involves a division of labour amongst the household. That is why, in development, we talk about households instead of individuals]
2. Households make use of livelihood diversification strategies.
3. People have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them.
4. Religion and culture are extremely important to livelihoods.
5. Agriculture is of prime important to livelihoods [in rural communities this is often the largest source of livelihood]
6. Households are affected by macro-trends.

Each one of these factors can be discussed quite extensively but hopefully they are understood for my purpose here which is to flip them around. I haven’t fully worked out this idea, but its been interesting as far as I have taken it so I am sharing it with you…

The 6 Factors of Development Organizations!

1. Organizations are the unit of analysis, gender plays a role. [This is way more obvious than households. Organizations are, by definition, a joint enterprise between a number of individuals to achieve something and thus we discuss development agents in terms of organizations]
2. Organization make use of funding diversification strategies [non-profit organizations need to get money from somewhere, and those sources are not always reliable so its important to draw upon numerous sources as well sources which do not hinder your work by various requirements]
3. Organizations have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them. [A lot of these organizations have existed for many years and have a great deal of experience and knowledge for their respective fields. It’s important not utilize those skills and not simply to try go around them because you think you can do it better despite your inexperience]
4. Organizations have foundational values and an internal culture which affects how it operates, how effective it is, and how efficient it is. [anyone who has had more than one job knows how different work places get be, how expectations and interactions change depending on the corporate culture, and how that culture can affect the work that is intended to be achieved]
5. Donors are of prime importance to non-profit organizations. [Though obvious, this is really key. It is quite common for an organization which wants to work in one area of development, such as HIV/AIDS, having to compromise its goals because they can’t find donors because people want to sponsor sanitation projects. Also donors usually require tangible deliverables - such as number of latrines installed – which may force the organization to work ineffectively as it is trying to meet the demanding requirements of their donors – non-profit is a highly competitive sector, there is only so much money to be had – instead of making sure that their work is having impact. How many people are still getting sick because they are not properly educated about hygiene aren’t something the donors necessarily are worrying about.]
6. Organizations are affected by micro-trends. [as stated in factor 5: the sponsors go through “fads” where everyone wants to tackle HIV/AIDS or water/sanitation or food security and if your organization is working in that area you have to change or give up. Other macro-trends also affect organizations. Perhaps this point could also be switched to micro-trends affect organizations and you could look at how differences from one group of beneficiaries to the next can compromise the replicability of a successful project.]

Something I have really learned from my volunteer experience – which I knew ahead of time but there is no learning like from experience – is that development is extremely hard. There are so many factors working against an organization. Just like the root causes of poverty exercise we do in EWB, where we list all the causes of poverty we can identify in a case study and try to link them in terms of causality – I bet you could do the same thing with development organizations. The root causes of organizational ineffectiveness.

This, seemingly obvious, reality is being pointed out to you so I can better explain what I see as the role EWB is [increasingly] taking on in the development sector. This is what I have seen and not the official word from the National Office. But as volunteers we work, mostly individual, within partner organizations and try to help them. We try to avoid positions that would lead us to be gap-fillers [doing the job that any other local worker could be doing] but search for places where we can have the most add-value and help the organization build its capacity. These leads to very diverse volunteer placements because there is no one thing we do. We try to identify areas where we can add value and then try to make it happen. So ultimately what we end up doing is not working on the root causes of poverty but the root causes of organizational ineffectiveness to help the people who do have the experience do their job better. It seems that is where EWB has found its greatest add value to the sector as a whole is.

Faith

This post is an outgrowth of a conversation I am having with Michelle Murphy, last years EWB UBC President and now EWB journalist running around visiting all our volunteers so that EWB can get more information from the field. Many the ideas I throw out here are hers that came up during our ongoing discussion.

What is the role of Faith in development?

I feel much development tries to completely avoid the subject. We are not trying to develop people spiritually, they have material needs and rights which are not being met and that is the crisis we are trying to remedy. What place has faith in that? Ultimately though we are trying to achieve behavior change. Whether its changing farming techniques or implementing some new technology… behavior change is the goal. Humans are not material beings though. We need more than food and water and warmth. There is an intangible portion to us. You can label it and divide in many ways [intellect, emotion, spirit, soul, heart, mind, etc.] but its there. People have their beliefs, and often the less-economically-developed world is where you find very devout faith.

[as a side note: if you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you’ll likely see that everything we “know” is a belief, even what we think of as reason is just a creation of the human mind and so we cling to our beliefs – such as the laws of physics – in much the same way as any devout religious person clings to their beliefs]

Yet most development organizations don’t address this. Or, even worse, they address it by providing material aid in exchange for conversion to their faith which is, in my opinion, immoral spiritual coercion. I wonder how those groups see it though. After all, in their view they are saving people’s souls and bringing them unto God.

We prefer to view people as economic maximizers. Everyone does what is in their best interest [this refers back to that bit of economic theory I mentioned a couple posts ago]. Everyone weigh their opportunity costs and goes with what comes up being most beneficial. Then, some, balk at people going to Church when they could be earning more money. Watch people give money to their faith when they don’t have enough for themselves. Watch their productivity be interrupted by prayer. And be shocked and frustrated by this. But these actions, which may frustrate a development worker, should not surprise us. The frustrated development worker has just failed to wrap their head around the idea that spiritual activities such as prayer and charity add value to ones life. That individual weighed the opportunity costs and decided to be a little hungrier than to not practice charity.

So how are development workers supposed to come in and treat a spiritual community as if they don’t have beliefs and meet any kind of success? What are the other options though? Do we have only FBOs [Faith Based Organizations?]. Should the area an FBO can work in be limited to the extent of the people who already believe in it so that a Muslim development organization can not come to Zambia – a Christian nation – and do development work? Do we add yet another skill requirement to the development workers who are already in need of such incredible and diverse skills that you might think to do their job you have to be super-human? Not only do they have to somehow satisfy contradictory requirements from the head-office [who may be just passing on the requirements of the donors] - such as gender equality and respecting traditional values and social structures – as well as being multi-disciplinary so that they can tackle issues from all the different angles from which an issue needs to be tackled… but now they have to understand the spiritual practices of each group of beneficiaries and tailor their work so that it meets the communities spiritual needs?

Contemporary development rhetoric demands that development be conducted in a bottom-up [as opposed to top-down] way. Is our secular development pushed upon spiritual beneficiaries bottom-up? Seems top-down to me.

Or is making your development work spiritual manipulation? As an example, with my project, I had the idea that if you are having trouble getting a Christian village community to do maintenance on an earth dam which provides water… well there is certainly more than a couple verses of scripture that pertain to the sacredness of water. What if we involved the community’s pastor/religious leader in our project and have sermons that are timed effectively with our dam community meetings which focus on the sacredness of water and the importance of appreciated that sacredness. But, as I said, is that manipulation? Yet if we are trying to cause behavior change… is that not manipulation?

Does not every development worker take his beliefs into the field with him/her? Does that mean that organizations need to employees of certain beliefs?

There seems to be infinite questions that spin of this fundamental concept:

People have spiritual and material needs, and you are trying to change their behavior to satisfy their material needs… how do you incorporate the spiritual? Does this problem contribute to the lack of progress development, which has been going on for decades, has made?

What is the role of faith in development?

Culture Conundrum

I have a passionate love for many foreign cultures. I love the myths and sagas of Scandinavia. I love the food from many places around the world, particularly India. I enjoy music from all over. I am passionate, some might say obsessive, about beverages: all types of tea, espresso beverages, cappuccinos, real Chai, Turkish coffee, Artisan wine and beer [though I’m done with that now]. I really enjoy smoking hookah, especially at in hookah bar with middle eastern décor or in my home decorated like I am Indian. I think food is much more enjoyable when eaten with chopsticks. Poetry, paintings…. ART!

I must make a refrain here, because these things that I love are not, in fact, culture. They are part of culture, but they are only the very visible surface aspects. I’ve started to think of them as manifestations of culture. This opens up a huge can of worms in terms of what is culture? It is so innate in us that we can’t escape our own culture and if we can’t escape our own culture can we really understand what it is to be a part of another culture? I am living in Zambia for the summer. Do I know what it is to be Zambian? To think like a Zambian does? I am just trying to begin to understand how Zambian culture views things. Can we really experience other cultures when we travel? What is Canadian culture? As a Canadian does that not make all those things I mentioned above Canadian culture?
See what I mean? Can of worms! But that isn’t what I am trying to tackle in this post.

One thing I have personally struggled with in Zambia is that the culture here does not seem to have these things. I have tried and tried and tried to find Zambian art but to no avail. There isn’t art in Zambian homes. There isn’t art anywhere. The poetry I’ve heard is just about child-trafficking and HIV/AIDs. The music is mostly heavy beats that remind me of American Rap music. The food is largely based on nshima – which is like thick mashed potatoes made from maize [corn] flour which you grab small chunks of and make into sort of the shape of then end of a spoon and then use that to scoop up some “relish” which is any of the side dishes. There are virtually no books here. That isn’t true actually – there are tons of books. They are just all bibles. There isn’t even the traditional style of dress you find in West Africa.

I came to Zambia looking forward to discovering what Zambian art was, or even African art because I did not know much of it. I wanted to come and appreciate Zambian culture the same way I have been appreciating other cultures, through their manifestations. But I haven’t found any of it here. This may seem like a small matter… but I found it huge. It starts with puzzlement, and then like a painful whole in a tooth you keep poking at it. I started to search for this missing Zambian art. The biggest lead I had was the University. Of course that’s where the creative energies of Zambia would be focused… nope. No visual art whatsoever. It was driving me crazy. Right up the walls. How can 10 million people in Zambia, and likely other poor countries in Southern Africa, not produce any artwork?

But then I decided I couldn’t really blame them for this. I mean Zambians have gone from tribes in villages to colonial exploitation to independence [still largely in the villages], with independence largely bringing the pursuit of western lifestyle. As far as I know, there have never been any might civilizations in Southern Africa and it is those civilizations that produce a lot of the cultural manifestations I love. In fact, in anthropological terms, art work is an indicator of civilizations and societal wealth. When artifacts go from clay pots to intricately carved or painted pots [in other words, more effort is put into things than their practical purpose requires] it means that society is wealthy enough to support artists to do that work. If everyone is poor no one is going to pay for something artistic. And that is where the nickel drops.

A revelation occurs, that in hindsight seems so obvious. In EWB we call them “a-ha!” moments. A-HA! Of course the arts have never flourished here… they have never had a chance…. Zambia is too poor! Things start to fit together now. The curio markets which I felt indignant about, the markets where they sell “African” carvings of zebras and giraffes and carved masks that have nothing to do with Zambia but its what tourists want to buy. Those markets are full of art, the art for the only market there is… tourists. With most of the country living on less than a dollar a day, who are you going to sell your art to? It is not that Zambians don’t have any creative energies in them, they have never had the opportunity to unleash them!

A whole vast new perspective stretches out before me, but it goes much much further than this. I guess you could say the nickel keeps dropping…

There is 10 million people in Zambia and not much art is happening. That’s 10 million people that could be making enormous contributions to the world of art. What poetry and visual art, what music and literature could be coming out of these people. They are of a whole different culture [now I mean real culture, not just the surface stuff]. How much more would there contribution be simply because little has come out of Zambia before. But it doesn’t stop there. Science, engineering, medicine, politics. All these things are moving forwards without the innovations of this group of people because they are too busy trying to overcome poverty! Maybe one of the minds that are extinguished by the AIDS pandemic - or taken down by a meager illness because famine and malnutrition has left their body defenseless – maybe in one of those minds was the cure for cancer. The cure for HIV/AIDS! Suddenly the vast expanse of individuals whose lives are little more than desperate struggles to survive and offer their children better lives than they had – a struggle against factors we have the power to help overcome – are not only a tragedy because these people have the same right as you and I to live a happy life full of opportunity, but because those minds are millions of points of light from which contributions in every field of human endeavor could have sprung! Holy sweet mother of pearl. What are we losing because so much of the world is poor? What illnesses or diseases have affected your family that might have been cured? What art – whether food, visual art, music, etc. – is not enriching your life. What whole new systems of organizing society that we never thought of are being lost forever like so many lives. Out this enormous frustration with Zambia has blossomed a whole new sense of urgency about development. Is it not ironic that while being concerned for the lives of others in Africa seemed like the big picture, the BIG picture – of humanity as a whole – comes from realizing what its costing us to keep much of the world poor!

Perhaps they should be into account in our opportunity cost decisions.

The Gender Issue

So it has been requested that I say some things about the gender issue here in Zambia. One of things EWB would like to see is gender equality which is not necessarily prevalent in the less-economically-developed world. So I don’t have a lot I can say on the issue because I haven’t seen much of it. Within the MACO – which is the government – there are high powered women and there are low powered women like the secretary. The DACCO is male, and I suspect most of the really important positions are exclusively held by men. There is definitely the idea that women are equal in what goes on. The development sector is a major industry in sub-Saharan Africa, with many of the best jobs in these countries found with NGOs, and with gender equality thoroughly embedded in development rhetoric – which maybe a problem if it is not looked at as in issue in itself no one will take responsibility for seeing that it happens.

What I am trying to say is there is gender inequality, but the whole scene seems to be moving towards equality. Its in the minds of the development workers, and it can be seen in the villages. One of the questions we were asking during our interviews was “How many women are on the dam committee?”, and “Do you think there should be more? How many?”. Women definitely have their own ideas and want them to be heard, but there is still an ingrained hierarchy. In fact, much to my surprise 50% of the women we talked to didn’t think there should be more than the two [out of 16] women on the committee. That doesn’t mean 50% said there should be, only 38% said there should be more, the rest “didn’t know”.

Talking with Besta a Lweendo, both are going to school and want to get good jobs. Lweendo has actually gone up to the Copper Belt to work in the mines because she doesn’t like the hotel industry here in Livingstone. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I don’t really know what it is like to work in the mines here or anywhere. All I have is mental pictures of movies and pictures of the Industrial Revolution with the horribly coal mines. Besta was amazed to hear that I have been washing my clothes. She had to look at my hands because she didn’t think I could handle the job. I find the reversal of ideas of physical strength interesting. As I guy I am not strong enough to wash my own clothes, or cook nshima [nshima does tire me out, these people must have forearms of steel after cooking it everyday]. I tell them that I love to cook at home in Canada and they share their favourite chores with me. Besta loves to sweep and clean, but hates cooking. They tell me they know there aren’t these same gender roles in Canada [even though, as much as we try to avoid it, there still is underlying roles] but that’s the way it is in Zambia. They have almost a cultural pride in those roles. I guess its division of labor. I think you could get into a big discussion about the difference between equality and equity and which is more appropriate.

There are female extension officers too. At the end of the day it doesn’t seem like it’s a huge problem, but if you really looked you would see in the villages that the women do most of the work. Its not equal, or even equitable. But things are getting better. You can’t stop the emancipation of women. And if those women choose to have those roles, well it’s a lot different than that role being a prison one can not escape from.

I think it also important to note that Zambians have their eyes fixed on the U.S. Even when they dislike the U.S. government they try everything they can to achieve the North American lifestyle. All the Hollywood movies are available here. Those videos are propaganda for strong independent women, in a way. The girls watch them and see women not held back by anything but their ambition. And guys watch and see guys not holding women back and everyone just pursuing the lifestyle they want. So maybe we can’t completely condemn the pursuit of the American lifestyle.

This is an extension of the post after I wrote it originally:

I saw a Zambian beauty magazine the other day. It had the similar style of advertising its articles like you see an magazines in Canada. One of them read: “Why men won’t commit: what women are doing wrong!” I couldn’t believe it. There is a problem with the behavior of men but it’s the women doing something wrong. If books and magazines weren’t so damned expensive I might have even bought the beauty magazine just to find out if that is actually what they meant.

Defense of Personal Flaws on the Blog

Just in case some of you are thinking that it is probably not the best idea to post those personal flaws on a blog which is about my EWB Junior Fellow experience because it might reflect badly on organization, I want to explain why, though I thought that at first, I came to the opposite conclusion.

All organizations and insitutions are made up of people. And people are made up of strengths and weaknesses. That much, I think, is irrefutable. In EWB we identify our individual strengths and build on them, while working on our weaknesses. So I think it reflects positively on EWB because my sharing of personal flaws is a testament to that culture of self improvement which has made EWB one of the premier leadership training organizations in Canada.

Manyemuyemu Dam Community Meeting

Meditations on Poverty [Part 2: Concerning Dorothy]

First some Economic theory! [Don’t worry… you’ll survive it]

For all intents-and-purposes [an expression I have pronounced for years as “all intensive purposes” – one of those situations where you lean how to use a term from the context you hear it used instead of starting with the definition, but back to economics…] we have unlimited wants. I’m going to avoid the enormous can of worms that statement is because no matter how we might fight it, it is pragmatically true and is the basis of economics. Because we have a finite amount of resources to allocate to those unlimited wants, we have to make choices between them. Whatever you choose, you miss out on something else which has an inherent opportunity cost, which is to say you lose the benefits that the other option would have given rise to. An example: Choosing between a summer job in the city or a summer working in Fort Mac… the opportunity costs are numerous but the primary ones are summer earnings, a summer social life, physical health, and perhaps your sanity- I would go crazy in Fort Mac. You choose the option which has the biggest opportunity cost if you choose something else. What makes a lot of the decisions tricky is the comparison of benefits that - to be a total engineer I’m going to say - don’t have the same units. Some benefits you are comparing is amount of sleep you get, your social life, spiritual health, enjoyment factor, money, etc. etc. And for every person that will be different because everyone values, for example, sleep differently.

So that conclude the economic theory portion of this post. What am I getting at?

In EWB, and development at large there is a continual need to define what exactly poverty is. It’s a tricky one, let me tell you. There are some fundamentals like being able to feed yourself, but then once you satisfy those fundamental needs things get really fuzzy. Often in EWB we talk about poverty being a lack of opportunity, such as opportunity to work in the field you are passionate about, or work at all, or go get a post-secondary education if you so wish. One of the volunteers met a fellow who studied nutrition in school. He just loved food and wanted to know more about it and how to use it to be healthy. By what the volunteer told me it sounds like the fellow pretty much fell of his chair when he head in North America there are people who not only use nutritional knowledge in their job, but that that is there job.

I would like to add a bit to the definition, in light of the economic theory I’ve just mentioned:

Poverty is having to weigh opportunity costs between things that are fundamental to a healthy life.

To make that statement real: What is the opportunity cost of sending Jessie to school instead of Jamie. [note: these names are intentionally gender neutral]. What is the opportunity cost of feeding one of them and not the other.

Poverty is when that scarcity devours your unlimited wants and moves on to infringe on your basic needs.

I’m really not sure if that added anything at all to the “what is poverty?” debate. But in light of the economic theory I was reading I thought it was an interesting way to look at it. I’d love to have a in-depth discussion on it. Sounds like grounds for a potluck dinner party with a raging conversation that carries on late into the night – with the people who put a lot of value on sleep dropping out because the opportunity cost has been exceeded (they can get the re-cap in the morning) – and ending up with a second dinner at the Naam at 3 a.m. because we truly know very little about the scarcity we are discussing as our own scarcity permits a second dinner.

Meditations on Poverty [Part 1: Concerning the burden of wealth on the soul]

This has absolutely nothing to do with development and everything to do with how much I am enjoying my little bare room.

As I stated previously, living with hardly anything but a bit of clothing, some books, and a backpack is an incredibly freeing experience. Material possessions really are a burden that you can only begin to comprehend when either that weight is suddenly lifted off you, or you are conscious of the weight because it is crushing you.

At first I considered that it was simply an issue of “too much”. But perhaps there is not a critical mass when it comes to possessions. I think there is, but I also think there is more to the situation than that. I think material objects have weight which make it difficult to compare their influence in the same way that in economics you make comparisons using a products market value instead of simple units to avoid equating a computer to a box of pens.

My first stab at this issue has lead me to divide material possessions into three categories: something you absentmindedly own [accidental possessions], something extremely important for life [integral possessions], and something you are attached too [possessions]. I have no problem asserting that material objects are a burden, but what about my rucksack, my books, the moleskine journal I wrote this in?

Accidental possessions are just things you pick up along the way. You are not really worried about losing them and the only real burden they are is trying to figure out where the devil to put them. You would just get rid of them if you weren’t worried you would need them at some point later down the road. Which means that an accidental possession would essential become, temporarily, an integral possession. Oh my…

For the sensing people reading this [as opposed to the intuitive people on the myers-briggs personality type] I will provide some examples of what I mean. Cups are, I think, a pretty much accidental possession. I don’t need a whole set of glasses, but I have them for when guests come over [at which point they become integral]. I’m not worried if they break.

Integral possessions are different for everyone [which is where the trouble I think is, we collect possessions mistaking them for integral items]. By and large I would say an integral item is the bare necessities [which is different for everyone] as well as a few non-essential items which genuinely enhance life [these are definitely different for everyone]. Tea is an example of something I would consider integral despite being non-essential. A couple different varieties of loose-leaf tea, plus a smattering of tea bags for one loose-leaf is inconvenient, does not burden me at all [that is unless I have so much tea that it reaches that critical mass and thereby becomes a pain and I have trouble drinking tea because I have to choose between too many options. Based on what I learned from “The Tipping Point” I would expect that keeping the options limited to about 6 or 7 or – if you wanted to push it – 8 for best effect] and has considerable add-value to my enjoyment of life and general merriment and gaiety and whatnot. Music also would qualify, in my mind, as integral. But it similar suffers from a critical mass point. To illustrate this, when I was in high school and had a CD player instead of an iPod, I would bring 5 CDs [in their cases] with me to school. At some point the inherent inefficiency lead me to use a CD-wallet which could hold 24 CDs. I had the hardest time choosing something out of that wallet to listen to. Just too much choice! I couldn’t find anything I wanted. I went back to those 5 CDs because I was enjoyed at least 4 out of 5 of them that day. Freedom in scarcity. Crazy.

Now on to the really heavy ones… possessions! These are the real burdens, even in small amounts [perhaps they just have a really small critical mass or tipping point]. These are the things you experience grasping for. Things you are attached to. Those items that keep you up at night because you left it in the Civil Design Studio and if someone takes it you will be devastated [an iPod might it, despite the music being integral, the technology is not – you can live quite happily without an iPod]. These are the items you wear yourself out working too many hours so you can afford to pay for them. You become a slave to these items. Like the car you bought to drive to work, and you drive it to work to pay for the car [that’s from a Metric song]. Hopefully you get what I mean.

So therein lies the wealth of moderate poverty, or perhaps it would be better to call it moderate scarcity [this, like I said, has nothing to do with the extreme poverty we talk about in EWB]. The trick I think is to maintain this moderate scarcity - in which your integral items are kept below their critical mass, your possessions are as limited as possible, and your accidental items are minimized by simply improvisation instead of purchasing – consciously [I can never remember if I mean conscious or conscience – judge for yourself give the context] despite accumulation of wealth. That wealth can go on to be used for other purposes. There is always something more that wealth can be put towards, so why frit it away on burdens for yourself?

So that was just some thoughts. Welcome to the inside of my head. I would very much love to have a wild discussion about all this that lasts into the wee hours of the night. Instead of replacing something that is fine for something that is ideal [such as an older iPod for the latest one with all the fancy improvements], put that wealth to better use by have a crazy night of discussion at a dinner party that goes so late we end up at the Naam at 3am for a second dinner.

Oh and while I am on the topic of nights of incredible discussions at dinner parties, and to continue the confession of major personal flaws: I am a selfish person. I never was good at sharing candy as a child [part of that might be due to the outrageous Algeo sweet tooth]. Right here in Zambia I am inclined to have three cups of tea for myself made from the satchel of milk I bought instead of having one cup of tea and sharing the milk [I bought it after all…]. There is a part of me that shouts, in response to this idea, that the single cup of tea is much more enjoyable than 3 hoarded cups, but there is that really annoying part of me that isn’t convinced. I suspect that selfish part is tied in somehow with the ego. Too bad a war is being raged against it. In line with all this thought on poverty and the issue of the ego I’ve decided to experiment with a philosophy I am calling [in my head – but if you haven’t noticed anything in my head is effectively transferred to this blog] poverty of charity or poverty of generosity. What do you think? I probably should call it scarcity instead of poverty as it isn’t real poverty in the sense that I see all around me here in Zambia. To explain first I have to back up. I love hosting. I am hardly happier than when my house is full of people [I am sure I inherited this from watching my mother be such an excellent host while I grew up]. Because of that joy I try to create a house in which people want to come over. To do that I try to keep the house stocked with stuff [food and drinks] so that I can accommodate guests –forever afraid of being a bad host, but also wanting to hold back so that I personally will never be without. Damned selfishness. So, the plan is to share until I have nothing to share, and being okay with having nothing to share, even if it means I don’t get to enjoy a reserved cup of tea, cappuccino, or candy because enjoying something with friends [or even strangers who can become friends] is far more grand [or so that other part of me tells me]. That might mean I can’t offer as much when I am hosting, but it also means I will have a budget less out of control and allow the opportunity for other people to step up and contribute [why would they before if the house was already stocked?].

Thoughts from “The Critical Villager”

While you are all trapped in my head, you may notice I am very influenced by what I am reading. Many wonderful things happen at an EWB retreat, and one of those fringe benefits was cutting my hands on a copy of the Critical Villager: Beyond community participation, by Eric Dudley [a book which is intermittently in print purely because Parker Mitchell, co-CEO of EWB, orders so many copies]. So here are some quotes and thoughts from reading it…


[This is not Engineers Without Borders or even just my project… this is thoughts on development in general for the development minded person]

“It is common to find middle-class urban aid workers, children of the mobile society, lecturing to close-knit communities of villagers about the need to work together.”

It is pretty ironic how “community participation” is a recent buzz word in development. I guess all aid was conducted in a way that people saw no value in the indigenous institutions and knowledge, after all… if they knew what was good for them they wouldn’t be poor right? Wrong! There is a pretty well universal quality about people: we act in our best interest. If you put yourself in Dorothy’s shoes [does Dorothy have shoes?...], you’ll see that whatever new product or knowledge you are trying to convince her of is just one of the options she has available to her. She doesn’t fall back on traditional practices because she is stupid, but because she knows the extent they work and even if that extent is small, its safer than something new which could not work at all [and development has a history of that]. After all, Dorothy is not risking a life of luxury for a bit more luxury, she is just plain gambling life… and that is not something you take lightly.

This next one is actually a quote of Robert Chambers from within the Critical Villager:

“ “However much the rhetoric changes to ‘participation’, ‘participatory research’, ‘community involvement’ and the like, at the end of the day there is still an outsider seeking to change things. […] – who the outsider is may change but the relation is the same. A stronger person wants to change things for a person who is weaker. From this paternal trap there is no escape.” ”

This unfortunate reality really sucks. Development tries to be as grass roots as possible, but to pretend we are doing anything but trying to impose change is naïve. We have to come to grips with the fact that there is no escape from this paternal trap. We have to come to peace with it. Is it really so bad to be that outside trying to enforce change. Well enforce is too strong of a word, we are trying to coerce. We don’t want to think of it that way, but we are trying to create change.

At one point Dudley refers to what I have been calling the development sector as the “compassion industry”, which I find hugely interesting. It’s a fairly apt title. I was astonished to come here and so how enormous the compassion industry is. In many developing countries everyone wants to get a job with an NGO because those are the best paying jobs. Development started as a small, pure concept… lets help people who are in need. I find I readily available parallel with another industry: music. Same thing, a simple pure concept: lets make music. And now you have this mega industry that some would argue no longer has any soul and perhaps go so far as to say it eat souls. But we are talking about development.

“The successful field worker who is capable of stimulating and supporting well-rounded, community-based, integrated rural development has to be a kind of renaissance generalist. Over-stretched and under-resourced, the field worker must juggle the issues and strike pragmatic compromises between policies which tend to come to the field in the form of contradictory messages. Policy may decrease that community participation, self-determination, and village-level democracy are essential while at the same time holding that ecological considerations and the use of indigenous technologies are paramount. Policy may demand the emancipation of women while insisting on respect for traditional cultural mores and institutions. The field worker… is left to the task of resolving the unresolvable while keeping his or her employers happy.”.

How true that is. The field workers are the unsung heroes of the entire compassion industry. I want to expand on this… but I struggle to do so. He said it all right there. The requirements they shoulder contradict each other, they don’t have the resources they need to things properly, they may have to compromised their techniques to fit the donors requirements, etc. etc. As a development challenge, maybe you guys could offer suggestions on how things could be changed at the upper levels so that the field worker doesn’t have such an impossible job.

“In theoretical discussion, people will readily agree that failures are an important part of the learning process.”

“Meaningful evaluation and institutional learning are obstructed by a conspiracy of success. Success is rewarded while failure, however potentially informative, is not.”

“The knowledge of the nature of failures, the very information which could allow intervention policy to be improved, is lost.”

Here again is a huge disparity between the is said and what takes place. What makes development hard? IMPLEMENTATION. All the theory is great. That’s what makes the field workers job so impossible. Again… anyone want to suggest some solutions?

Dudley pairs a lot of development theory down to two core concepts:

1) The goal of aid is change.
2) Change is going on all the time!

What does that mean? Well…

“Technical aid interventions are more likely to be successful if they share characteristics with the indigenous processes of technology change.”

The book is basically all about technical aid as opposed to material aid. Dudley discusses why material aid is so unsatisfactory, but I won’t bother explaining that because most of you [those involved with EWB anyway] will already think that and I would just be preaching to the choir. But how much do you know about how a rural Zambian adopts something new [whether it be a new crop or a new tool or a new technique of farming]? How incredible a difference it would make if were offering [possible] improvements in a way that was the same as how Dorothy looks for [possible] improvements.

Anyway those are just some thoughts from the introduction. As the book tickle’s my brain more I will keep you guys involved.

In a more light-hearted development challenge: find a plastic tub 2.5 feet in diameter and 6 inches deep, fill it with water that is not necessarily cold but far from hot, and have yourself a bath… welcome to the satisfying shower many people in the world have! I’m serious: try it. If nothing else it will be good for some laughs and make you appreciate your hot shower a lot more.

Motivations

Disclaimer: This post is purely about my views that cause me to be involved in EWB and what I see as my biggest character flaw. It will have little relevance to you if you do not know me or work with me, but you may find it interesting none the less.

Motivations:

The new Cap’n of the UBC Chapter of Engineers without Borders has asked me, as a returning Junior Fellow and Director of Fundraising, as well as the individuals fulfilling the other core positions, to share our motivations for involvement with EWB to further increase the tight, high-performance team that is the chapter. I am just enjoying this blog business so much I thought I would go ahead and do it on here, (plus some additions reasons you will see below) instead of an email.

I would call my motivation a simple sense of altruistic responsibility. Prior to my involvement with EWB my extent of development knowledge and experience was the World Vision commercials on TV with African children with flies in their eyes. I was right with the majority of Canadians who think that all these NGO’s and FBOs [non-government organizations and faith based organizations] are, in fact, making the world a better place for those who need it most. I thought that building wells and schools and clinics and all that was a great contribution [they are a contribution, but I don’t think the most pertinent one, and also they hinder the pertinent contributions that need to be made]. Thought those second hand clothes sent over were helping out [they actually undercut the local textile industries which can’t compete with free clothing]. What I am getting at is that I wasn’t always development minded, however I did have some more general opinions with regards to altruistic responsibility.

The basis of this responsibility arises from art. I think art is an abstract concept which runs considerably deeper than is regular talked about. There are the obvious forms of art, such as painting, sculpture, carving, drama, poetry, writing, music, etc. But then there is the other side of art, which, for lack of a proper term, I will call the lay-man’s art. Any contribution to society, or the world as a whole, can be viewed as art. There is an art to the work of a plumber, a carpenter, a chap who just runs a little store. There can be an underlying spiritual essence to their work too. There is certainly the beauty of underlying form with the trades, and the elegant dance of business. It’s all art. Everyone contributes somehow [this notion coincides rather nicely with the Baha’i requirement of engaging in some trade or profession and prohibition on monasticism as we should be anxiously concerned about our fellow human beings – also, while I am on this tangent, in the Baha’i faith, work done in the service of humanity is elevated to the rank of worship right up there with prayer. That effectively makes this a summer, as a Junior Fellow, a summer of prayer for me… which is an interesting concept to think about.], and to not contribute is to live, ultimately, a self destructive life which doesn’t really get anywhere.

Beyond the obvious contributions to society each vocation makes, there is also the more altruistic spin that can be made. Maybe you passively run a small bike store – just because you like bikes, or maybe you are actively promoting a more environmentally conscious lifestyle [utilizing your passion for bicycles to help shape a better world]. Maybe you just run a coffee shop, or maybe you miss out on an extra $60,000 annually because you choose to sell Fair Trade coffee – not because there is a good market but because you believe in the cause. These small pushes for an improved society may seem small, in the same way that choosing to walk an extra block each day to get to a coffee shop that sells Fair Trade is a small contribution, but the world is nothing but a vast collection of small contributions. Elections are nothing but a series of individual votes [a tangent: the United States was not too big a fan of the British after independence with the war and all. They had a vote as to which would be their official language: English one by a single vote over… German. Imagine a world with a German speaking U.S.]. A business is nothing but a series of small transactions. You may think your individual purchase doesn’t make a difference, but that business survives on such small purchases. And your purchase is saying that you endorse that businesses practices and principles. Whether you like it or not, capitalism is a democracy where you vote with your dollars. Sadly there is no efficient way to look into the business practices of every business you ever come into contact with [hopefully one day their will be], but don’t get discouraged because every little bit counts – remember one vote separates us from a world with a Germanic U.S.

So to bring this back to art. Not everyone can be a great artist. Not everyone can be Jimi Hendrix or Henry David Thoreau. Not everyone can be Rumi or Whitman or Bob Dylan. But similarly not everyone can become a doctor or lawyer, which takes a lot of natural ability same as the obvious artists, not to mention the luck of being born into a support system [i.e. well off family or a country with support such as student loans] that is capable of putting you through the necessary schooling. Not everyone can work with children handicapped by mental illness [I wouldn’t last 2 minutes], and not everyone can become an Engineer. Seeing it this way I find it puts a lot of pressure to not only become a good Engineer because I can, but also to use that vocation to contribute to society.

The obvious artists have been, and are, making their contribution, why would I, a lay-artist, not make mine?

On top of all that, with the state of the economy in Canada currently we are in a more powerful position than we [I am speaking mostly of engineers now but the sentiment can be applied quite widely] have been in the past. In my parent’s generation, or if not them then my grandparent’s generation, you didn’t turn down a job. That was just inconceivable. If you were offered a job you took, no matter what it was, because you had to. You had a family to support. But things have changed. We have choices not only in where we spend our money, but where we work. In a field [engineering] where students [at least at UBC and UoC] are approached before they graduate by companies – the jobs are now coming to us! – we have an incredible power to influence. I can choose to not work with a company because I disagree with the way it is run, or the principles it is based on. What an incredible thing!

I think everyone has their burdens. Here in Zambia, a lot of people are burdened with trying to find any job. Burdened with the daunting task of feeding oneself and one’s family. That is the burden of scarcity. But I would argue there is the burden of wealth also. Obviously it’s a good deal less arduous than the burden of scarcity, but it is a burden none the less. When you can meet your needs and still have wealth to spare, then you have the burden of figuring out how to best utilize that wealth, hopefully for the benefit of others as well, because [and here’s that Baha'i business coming in again…] the gaping disparity between the extremely wealthy and the extremely poor is morally wrong.

Now to make sure I haven’t painted myself as a saint, I would like take a moment to point out these are all ideals and aspirations which I struggle to enact in my own life, but, more than likely, fail at it. I’m loaded with flaws, and that is why I decided to use the blog for this, to call in the reinforcements to help… you guys! I would argue my biggest flaw is my ego [maybe not a surprise after all that has been written so far]. If it is a surprise to you that’s just because it is such a problem that I fight with my ego all the time, and the problem is a huge embarrassment to me which I try to hide with abandon. I’m egotistical. It has been pointed out to me that everyone has an ego problem, but I think I have a bad ego problem. My close friend was commenting on why his mother isn’t my biggest fan and he said that she thinks I am egotistical. I was taken aback, but not so hurt [again, it was my ego that was hurt] as when he defended her comment by saying she is a good judge of character [ergo my close friend was confirming the comment himself]. In hindsight it was rather strange to feel hurt at all, as I agree with them. To give a concrete example: Coffee to End Poverty. I freakin’ love the event. It combines many of the views I have stated above. I hear from the EWB National Office that this year’s massive outreach event is taking a lot of inspiration from the event and they need our Africa latte art images for it and my gut reaction is damn… now it’s no longer my project. Well it never was my project in the first place! It never was mine at any point. Stupid stupid ego. I am constantly fighting it with one hand and feeding it with the other. I think too highly of myself. And that is why I wanted to do this on the blog, to call in the cavalry, the crack team. You guys [aka family, friends, peers in EWB and UBC]. The only way I can conceive of any success in battling the ego is to humble myself before you all, throw off the illusion I try to maintain that it is not a problem so as to gain your respect, and have your help in dealing with it.

To capitalize on the emphasis EWB places on feedback, I am requesting you guys keep an eye on me and when my ego is getting the better of me… call me on it. I’m going to be honest, I am more than a little intimidated by all this. It is, in my eyes, my worst flaw [feel free to also let me know if I missed a bigger one], and putting it out there for you guys to cut me down by is quite the vulnerable position. Terrifies me actually. But ultimately I feel this is for the best. And I really mean this. Call me on this stuff. Don’t hold back because you are worried about hurting my feelings. I am not sure how effective this will be as it is largely an internal battle, but having other people looking out for it should help. Any small help is welcome.

The ego serves nothing but itself and detracts from the benefit of the self and others around you. Any pleasure the ego feels is short lived and it always is left hungry for me. Instead of trying to privately fight my ego so that I can hopefully preserve your respect by trying to create the illusion that it is not a problem, I am bringing the problem into the public forum to truly confront it. In an attempt to be a better person and contribute more to Dorothy and the world, I hope you will help me battle my damned ego.

Now to bring this all back to the original topic (motivations)… My desire is not so specifically to contribute to the end of extreme poverty in Africa or anywhere else in the world. My intentions are more general than that. I hope to contribute in anyway I can, in whatever way I am best suited. I got involved with EWB not because of my desire to work in the development field [you think I would have with all that development knowledge I had from those World Vision commercials…], but out of a desire to use my Engineering degree to contribute. EWB just happens to operate in the development sector. Hopefully that doesn’t disappoint anyone. Directly contributing [in the overseas volunteer sense] was the secondary motivation for why I applied to be a Junior Fellow. The primary one was to have this experience which would allow me to contribute to the awakening my fellow Engineering students [and the wider public] to their greater potential contribution to the world. I think this placement is the best way to go about doing it, particularly as EWB views the Junior Fellowship position as an 18 month role whose primary impact is back in Canada. But don’t get me wrong though, I am overjoyed to have the opportunity to help out Dorothy directly! But this more general motivation is why you may witness my fervor with Coffee to End Poverty [conscious consumerism] and my desire to become a Civil Engineer to work on “green buildings”. [By the way, I have successfully managed to switch into the Civil Environmental option – way to go Clare Donaldson for helping me out with that!].

So yea… that’s my thoughts on motivations and flaws. This all is a continually changing dynamic process and whatnot so please feel free to engage me in an intense discussion about all of it. This is just a snapshot of my personal views at one point in time [it will all be slightly different tomorrow]. Send all intense discussion and [preferably constructive] criticism to me at tyleralgeo@ewb.ca.

My African Haircut

My hair got too long. Its unavoidable. I had gone previously with Katalausha when he needed a haircut, and his barber had assured me he could cut my hair also. I didn’t need it at the time, but now that I’ve been here a while I did. So off Katalausha and I go to get my hair trimmed.

Sitting in a little tiny room that exits onto a cement courtyard where some people are playing pool [there is a tiny bar across the courtyard] and others are disassembling or assembling [I can’t tell] massive speakers, I am face to face with my long hair in a mirror which has seen better days [you have to understand though, a mirror is a pretty novel thing after you’ve been here for a while, especially one this big. Someone where my host family’s house is a broken piece of a mirror that is the only one I have seen other than this one in the barber shop]. I’m feeling pretty good about the whole situation. Then Katalausha’s barber starts fiddling with his shears and asks me which size guard he should use. That’s when it hits me… there is no scissors in this barber shop…

I guess its really not necessary to have scissors to cut African hair. I felt pretty bad though listening to his shears try and get through the thick mop of hair I genetically inherited from my mother’s father [of German decent]. It took a while… but he finally got through it all. My hair is refreshingly short. I think the part of my beard that is right under my lower lip is actually longer now than anything on the top of my head.

In My Head

Not all of these posts are necessarily development related, as you may have already noticed. I could just simply write about the type of food we eat here [I promise I will write about food at some point, but there always seems to be more pertinent things] or what I did today even when it is not thought provoking [analyzing results from our interviews at the Manyemuyemu Dam community]. But this blog has taken a very personal turn. I mean what we, as Junior Fellows, are supposed to write on a blog is not defined [that would stifle creativity!], so I have been free to go which ever way I want. As a result, I have been writing about whatever is on my mind. Hopefully that doesn’t bother those who are actually reading the blog. But, in truth, I think this is a much clearer picture of the Junior Fellow experience. The experience is less about the little day to day differences one experiences when living in Africa and more about what affect those little differences [and the major differences] have on the individual [me!]. So while I am trapped in my head without anyone around to communicate to on a deep level [refer to what I wrote about different cultures being totally different worlds which make deep, meaningful conversation all but impossible]… you trapped in there with me! Well if you are reading this you are. I have no idea who you are or what you read and don’t read. So don’t feel you have to read every post if you are only interested in the development side of things. I won’t notice. I’ll try to keep the DISCLAIMER warnings up so you know something might not interest you.

Zambian School Art Competition

What was the last poem you wrote about? For some that might have been a long time ago back when you were forced to in grade school [hopefully not though]. What was the subject? High school love? Snowboarding? The mountains? The prairies? The Ocean?

Katalausha took me to see the Livingstone School art competition, the winners of which would go on to compete at the district level. Sadly I couldn’t see his pupils compete because, as National champions, they only had to defend their title at the higher levels. But I did see many other schools perform. I saw the tribal dances that are performed when a girl comes of age and she is sent away to be taught about issues with being a women. Several other tribal dances [there is quite an array with all the tribes there are in this area]. Also poetry readings, the most beautiful coral music, and drama.

The poetry was what really struck me. I am remember the poetry my classmates made when I was in grade school, and it is a far cry from the poetry of Zambian children. The themes they write about are child trafficking, HIV, and sexual abuse. One, very small boy, standing on the stage in his rags which are his stage clothes, spoke with such profound outrage that I would be tempted to say he was speaking from the bottom of his feet but the amount of outrage could never fit into such a small body. As if Zambian children not only have the invisible bounty of energy you see in children world wide, but an invisible bounty of outrage at how the world can be stacked against them.

Sponsoring DoDo

So one of my relatives asked me if I had considered setting up an education fund for DoDo after I had written about how I fear for her education. I had not at the time, and after thinking a good while on it I have decided firmly against it and I want to explain why.

It started as a gut reaction from my male instincts which compel me to be a good provider for my family. That is not to say the women I settle down with can’t work or needs to make less than me, but simply that the end of the day I need to be able to provide for me family. [hopefully Josephine, another EWB volunteer who is a strong feminist will not come after me for saying that – they are instincts Joe! I can’t help ‘em!]. So, putting my place in Katalausha’s shoes, if I was told that some Canadian chap wanted to pay for my daughters education I would be a bit insulted. It’s the whole, I am a Canadian and have more money than you so I will pay for your daughters education, thing. I would be suggested that he couldn’t support his own family. Though he might be grateful, I at least would be insulted.

Now I am now out rightly criticizing the sponsoring of children. With the HIV pandemic, it has been said the Zambia is a nation of orphans. There are heaps of child-headed households. Any education makes all the difference in the world. There are children who have absolutely nothing and it’s not because anything except where they happened to be born. The only thing that separates you and your privilege to any one of those orphans is a fluke of birth. There is another thing to truly meditate on.

Anyway, I intend to keep in touch with this family I have grown to love so much like my own family [which means all my relatives reading this now has vicarious Zambian relatives]. I intend to learn more about the economic situation because I don’t understand it right now [how do you ask someone if they are poor?]. If I learn of difficulties such as problems paying for education, I will ask the family what I can do to help them. And we will figure something out.

Dust to Dust

Ashes to ashes. Why am I quoting scripture? It amazes me how in Zambia people make a life out of absolutely nothing. Even the earth which they grow food from is like dust. They don’t need to rent a storefront in a mall, they set up a little shack on the corner of their property and sell various things. They don’t need a set up a garage, they just lay their tools and spare tire parts along the side of the road and take a nap till a customer shows up. Heck they don’t even need petrol stations!

When I first arrived in Zambia one of first things that struck me were the sheer number of people milling around doing seemingly nothing. Sitting by the side of the road, taking a nap under a tree, just sitting around chatting. Seemed the whole country was just hanging around waiting for something to happen. Well I know a bit of what they are up to now. Some people are waiting at mini-bus stops which are only marked by the fact that the bus happens to stop there. Others are petrol stations. They have drums of gasoline in their place, and they bring some jugs out and sit on a bench by the side of the road and offer their services to any passing cars.

Incidentally this contributes to the incredible number of fires in Zambia, which is another of those first things that struck me. With the country as full of that dry grass as it is I am surprised the fires ever stop. Some are started by personal petrol station accidents, some are good old slash and burn farming, maybe some were set by a mob of people trying to burn down a witches or, in keeping with the Christianization of the country, a Satanists house. Others were just set to chase all the rats, mice, rabbits and other critters out of the area so they can be caught for food. Life from nothing. Dust to dust.

The Ailing Digestive Track

Disclaimer: Don’t think, even for a second, that this post is about anything other than what the title suggests. I feel it’s important to give you as complete a picture of life as an overseas volunteer as possible. Skip this post if you are afraid of that.

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Have you ever been around a child who is being potty trained? Perhaps a younger sibling or young cousin. He [I started writing this with “he/she” and it just got annoying… so I have chosen to just go with “he”] gets up off his little Fischer Price mini-toilet and insist that absolutely everyone in the house comes and admires the beautiful little present he has deposited. He is so proud, like a conquering hero. I don’t know whether he is proud of the fact that he did not miss despite the fact that it would be much bigger accomplishment to miss if you are firmly planted on that little Fischer Price toilet, or maybe he is proud of the size [I did go with “he” after all]. Whatever it is, he feels triumphant in the way we students only feel after acing an exam [especially if we initially thought we failed].

Traveling in [Warning: cumbersome yet, in my opinion, more politically correct term ahead] less-economically-developed nations, particularly those closer to the equator… well your stomach won’t love you for it. Nor your bowels. Diarrhea is just a fact of life as an overseas volunteer. But on those infrequent occasions when things are solid… you feel like that little kid and his Fischer Price toilet. Thank your lucky stars that I have drawn the line this side of pulling out my camera.

Travel in the Bush

Just a quick note here about getting too and from the village. Transportation is accomplished via either a truck or motorcycle, but because it is currently winter here it is, apparently, too cold for motorcycle travel [at least to distant places]. You need to have a special license to drive the “GRZ” vehicles [each vehicle’s license plate has three letters and a lot of numbers. The Government of the Republic of Zambia’s vehicles all have the GRZ letters and no one else is allowed. What’s great about this is we just get waved through at any government checkpoints]. Unfortunately that bit of license issue means that Kantu can’t just bugger off to the village, we need to have a driver with the proper license.

So off Mr.Miti, Mr.Kantu, and I go into the bush. That is what they call the rural area here, and it is a fairly apt title. Rural Zambia is an endless sea of, well I am not sure what the proper term is. Dry grass everywhere, scattered little shrubs and bushes, and spread out trees all covering very gently rolling hills [not quite hills, but there are ridges and valleys]. Other parts of the country are more mountainous, but I don’t think there is anything quite comparing to those Western Canadian mountains [I proudly show my couple postcards from the Rockies to my co-workers and friends].

The main roads are as good as a Canadian highway if only someone would fill in the outrageous potholes. I have been told by a couple Zambians that no work has been done on the roads since independence. Other parts of the country I hear are fine, but for some reason the area around Livingstone just has had no work done to fix the roads [which I find particularly strange since Livingstone is the tourist capital of Zambia]. But those roads are much better than the ones in the bush which are dirt. I’d actually call them dust roads because the soil is so dry is like fine sand or dust. During the rainy season, fast flowing water erodes some areas and not others. In some places the two sides of the roads have seemingly taken turns being eroded so the truck bobs from side to side like you are on a ship. It’s slow going on those dusty roads, bobbing up and down. I love them though, great for day dreaming and contemplating development, Dorothy, blogs I write, emails, plans for when I am back in Canada, etc. Years ago the communities near the roads would maintain them because they use them [even if they don’t have vehicles they will have animal drawn carts]. After years of NGO handouts though, they won’t work on the roads till a program comes and pays them to fix their own roads.

USAIDS

One way in which Zambia differs from Ghana is the level of cultural pride. It sounds kinda harsh, but the reality is Zambians are trying to emulate North American culture as fast as humanly possible. I sometimes worry they are replacing Zambian virtues with N.American vices in the desperate scramble for our lifestyle. Men don’t wear traditional suits here like in Ghana, the attire is strictly “Western” and professional.

Another way the two countries differ is when it comes to HIV/AIDS. Troy Barrie, last years UBC Junior Fellow to Ghana, said [hope you don’t mind being quoted Troy] that he was surprised at how much awareness there was and how little of a problem it was in Ghana given what he had heard about Africa. Well what he had heard was about Southern and Eastern Africa. There is an HIV pandemic here. These countries have been devastated. And even now as the world wakes up to the desperate need to turn the tide… these countries have been robbed of the health professionals they need to combat the virus because of how far things have gone. In the Southern Province of Zambia, where I am, the HIV rate is 18%. Who are the four people closest to you in the room right now [proximity-wise not emotionally]. One of you has HIV [ok that’s a bit emotional]. Which is a rate yet beaten by the province with Lusaka the capital.

Despite the vehemently disgraceful amount of development aid the United States gives out, USAIDS [I don’t remember the acronym exactly but I will take a stab at it… United States of America International Development something… that’s who gives out the U.S.’s money for development] is a major donor. And in the cut throat world of NGO’s which all desperately need funding for their worthy causes, approaches get compromised to satisfy the people with money. I’ve mentioned this to you before when it came to the Mulabalaba Dam community being paid to build themselves an irrigation canal. Well USAIDS does not fund organizations that promote the use of condoms… only abstinence will do.

Remember again that all these Zambians are trying to emulate the U.S. culture. Many things are lacking from households here, but satellite TV, big TVs, and great sound systems are not one of them.

You might be wondering what I am getting at. Well…

Watching Zambians import movies [and other media] filled with rampant, casual sexuality, and make a desperate scramble for that lifestyle, from the very same country that refuses to fund anyone who promotes condoms while HIV devastates their country…

the hypocrisy makes me sick.

Don’t just read these words: truly contemplate the tragic implications of that situation. Spend some time and really appreciate it. I am asking this becase I am no writer and have failed to come close to expressing the full emotional reality of this [though I can likely say that about each of my posts]. So think on it a while. You’ll know when you’ve thought enough when you have the urge to spit because the potency of the hypocrisy has left a vile taste in your mouth. Which makes me wonder…

How much of the ailing digestive tract is not caused by foreign food, foreign microbes, etc. but the raw emotion of coming from a more-economically-developed country to a less-economically-developed country.

Don’t I have a job? [Project Update Part 2]

What next? Well having determined the success [at least in the short-term] of the methodology at the dam it was developed at, but what about other dams? The methodology has to not be location-specific, so the mobilization process was started again, this time at the Manyemuyemu Dam Community.

[If these names are starting to frustrate you, here is a trick I picked up from Clare… say the last syllable, then the last two, and so on. So:
yemu… yemu-yemu… man-yemu-yemu. It is actually pronounced more like man-yay-me-yay-me]

But wait! That’s not all! The manual has to not be user-specific. The methodology is a fusion of Nick’s and his co-worker, Ernest Melelele’s, methods, but what about other people? So now that we have a brand new Junior Fellow, lets pair him up with a different TSB officer. So currently I am running about the Zambian countryside with the previously pictured Kantu Kantu [his first name is the same as his last]. Perhaps I will find the time to write about him at a later date.

The Manyemuyemu dam was chosen because it has some severe erosion problems. The level spillway has to be level so that the water flows over it as slowly as possible to prevent erosion. The spillway is fairly level, but at the end of it things get a little less level as the water flows down into a shallow valley where the stream usually flows. The gully was not fixed after it started to develop and now… I can stand in it and ground level would be over my head. [picture to come later]. Very impressively, however, was the amount of work that the community had done in the form of fencing. An NGO had offered to provide the barb wire to fence in the dam embankment and spillway to keep it safe from livestock… all the community had to do was make and plant posts to attached the barb wire. They did that and the damn NGO backed out! But at least that means the committee is working somewhat, just need help figuring out the erosion problem. One area I see being a problem for my project is that a lot of the problems and/or possible solutions being identified by the community are all to do with needing external resources. They need to find a new donor for barb-wire and they need cement donated so they can make the spillway concrete and avoid erosion. I asked in an interview why they needed barb-wire and couldn’t use sticks and thatch which was what protects everything else in the villages, including their gardens, from their very same threat of livestock… but so far I haven’t gotten a good reason. Years of “hand-outs” style development have ingrained a dependency that is quite frustrating to the more participatory, down-up instead of top-down, ownership building development that goes on now. That being said, it hasn’t completely stopped either. That wonderful irrigation canal the community is building to better utilize their dam and improve their agriculture… not only has the materials been externally funded, but the community is being PAYED to do the work! The TSB officers don’t agree with it. Even some of the community members expressed their disbelief that people were being paid to build themselves something that would benefit them. But… the donor feels people need to be paid to work…


Back to Manyemuyemu…

Kantu and I are currently still in the information gathering stage of the manual. We have held a meeting with the community to discuss the uses, problems, and possible solutions of those problems, of the dam. At that meeting we also did a community mapping exercise which was really fascinating to see. We had the attendees split up into four groups [young men, old men, young women, old women] so that the women would not be intimidated by the men and the young not intimidated by the old. The usefulness of this exercise had been expressed to me in development literature, but seeing how detailed people know the area is really amazing. The Old Women group even made a key in the bottom of the map which denoted various types of structures [school, clinic, villages, locations of Village Headmen or subukos] and the different types of bridges. It was very entertaining watching the groups present their maps [and their ideas of uses and problems] to the other groups and all the laughter and criticism that accompanied fixing mistakes on the maps.

Now we are doing the interview part of the information gathering [where the real story is uncovered]. The interviews are conducted privately, in one-on-one sessions. Their responses are confidential and will be compiled and presented back to the community in another big meeting so that they can discuss and decide what to do. This process is to allow those meek voices in the community to be heard. We try to get a good representation of the community, but it is a particular challenge with the Manyemuyemu Dam Community as there are 9 villages that use the dam! Not only that, but the last community meeting they held was about whether or not to allow the villages beyond those 9 use the dam because some villages are closer to this dam than their other options [in the wonderful spirit of Zambian collectivism they decided to let them use the dam].

Anyway, in the mean time, interviews shall continue until the lengthy, and tedious, process of compiling and analyzing all the responses is undertaken after the EWB retreat at beautiful Lake Karibba.

Future plans of mine include doing interviews [yay! more interviews!] with TSB officers and other extension workers to find out if there are similar manuals they have used that they found very useful, what made them useful, how they would like to see a manual designed, etc. Even if the methodology is good… it doesn’t mean anything if the manual is too cumbersome to be of real use in the field. Currently I am under the impression this will be my biggest add value to the project. The methodology is quite comprehensive [with the exception of a few ideas which Kantu and I are testing that were suggested when Nick and Ernest presented the manual to a group of officers] and I will only be able to add small bits of improvement to that. Also the field skills of an EWB trained volunteer [trained in Canada], while a solid foundation, do not compare with those of extension workers who have attended post-secondary school in this field and have years of field experience. What I can do is try to translate all those skills and the wealth of knowledge contained within these officers into a manual that up and coming extension workers can gain from. But who knows, maybe my biggest add-value will show up somewhere else!

Don’t I have a job? [Project Update Pt.1]

Looking back on what I had previously posted on my work here… well it isn’t much. Basically that was all that I knew coming to Zambia. So how does that shape up after a month?

Things got off to a terribly slow start. Unusually slow. I mean this is Africa, and things don’t move fast, but nothing happened the first couple weeks. That is because Zambia has decided that all farmers should be registered in a fat book for easy reference. I think it is a good idea, but I am not really sure what you would need that reference for. There is also the question of how quickly that information will change. In any case absolutely all MACO personnel were out in the field in a big rush to accomplish the registry. In the mean time I was left to gather any information I could about dams in Zambia, participatory approaches, etc. and take a good long look at the manual produced during Nick’s placement.

After talking with the District Agriculture and Cooperatives Coordinator [the DACCO], who is essential my boss, it became clear that he wanted the methodology that was developed to be verified. Does it work? Or is that manual a pile of wasted paper. And while refining the manual I would of course be helping communities organize themselves to better maintain communal assets like an earth dam [the direct impact on Dorothy].

I decided the first thing to do in terms of refining the manual was make sure it worked in the first place. Most of Nick’s work had been at the Mulabalaba Dam Community [it is utilized by 5 villages so I shall refer to them as a dam community]. To how things had changed in the aftermath of the mobilization, I conducted interviews with the community similar to the one-on-one interviews, prescribed in the manual, for the initial information gathering when mobilizing a community. However, people are not stupid so I couldn’t go with my usual co-workers [the Technical Service Branch officers] because if a TSB officer is standing their translating questions about how you maintain the dam less than a year after the TSB and another muzungo conducted a mobilization exercise… well you are going to tell him exactly what you think he wants to hear so they will be pleased with you. Similarly when you are asking questions you can’t lead the interviewee by saying “You use the dam for…”, because the tendency will be just to agree with you so you have to ask “What do you use the dam for?”. There is a cornucopia of little issues like that which turn a one-on-one interview into a very complicated, walking on eggshells, affair. To distance myself from the initial work as much as possible I went with a social worker who acted as an impartial translator [I explained everything to her] and asked for “dumb” questions as if I hadn’t the first clue about dams in Zambia. So instead of “What maintenance work do you do on the dam?” I’d ask “Does the dam need any work to protect it or can it be left untouched?”. My earnest efforts to get an unbiased picture of how things had changed were somewhat mitigated by the fact that a little over 8 months after Nick had left, here is another muzungo, who happens to be from Canada, asking questions about dams again. But I did what I could. Also it is difficult to gage how the newly elected dam committee [no one was happy with the old one] was doing was the fact that there was a canal project going on which was under the supervision of the committee with the help of the TSB [see picture of TSB officer Kantu Kantu standing on the canal construction]. As a result of this, most activity being coordinated had to do with the irrigation canals to better utilized the dam water.

The results of the interview were very positive. Pretty much everyone knew what was going on with the dam, knew about the rules of use and maintenance, and felt the new committee was doing a bang-up job. No severe disparities were uncovered by comparing the responses of men vs. women, individual villages, or age groups. However there was a lack of consensus on what the punishments were for breaking the rules or disobeying work orders [some examples or responses include: fine a goat which would be sold and the money put toward dam maintenance, nothing would happen, they will be arrested and taken to the city by somebody]. Also, only a fraction of the community felt that if the committee was not doing its job that their ineffectiveness would lead to the election of a new committee [other responses include: the dam will fail, nothing will happen]. Thus two minor things which could be given more focus in the manual were revealed. It shall be edited to include emphasis on asking questions about punishments and dam committee failure so that the community can discuss it together and come to a community decision on what to do that everyone knows about.

Who is Dorothy?

I will be making references to Dorothy on my blog. And given that a number of people reading this include my family [I even have an Aunty Dorothy, which made the EWB-Dorothy concept a little hard for me to get used to] who don’t know this terminology so I will briefly explain her.

Dorothy is my boss. She is the boss of everyone in EWB, including the Co-CEOs Parker Mitchell and George Roter. At the end of the day, all the work we do is for her. She is an archetype. I don’t remember quite how the concept developed and got the name Dorothy, but that’s how we know her. She is the millions of people out there living in extreme poverty. She is our client. Whether she is a man or women, old or young, etc. All those faces you see on World Vision advertisements. Each one of those faces is Dorothy.

On my Myers Briggs personality type test I am an “I” [intuitive] and not an “S” [sensing] which means I am much more of a concept person than a concrete examples person. So my explanation of Dorothy is lack-lustre because for me Dorothy is an abstract concept I see manifest into a million forms everyday while I am over here. Perhaps someone from the chapter who is an “S” can leave a comment on this post explaining it better.

Victoria Falls

Working on the Fundraising Year Plan

My Evenings

DoDo with iPod

Order of blogs

By the way, make sure you read the blogs further down on the page first and move up. The most recent is the top one [this one at the moment]. The first three blogs are in reverse order than they should be, but it is not important for those ones and is a tad important for the latest ones.

Much Love from Zambia!

The Spiritual Side of Life

Disclaimer: This one is a happy-go-lucky ramble about life is like, for me, in Zambia, and has very little to do with development and everything to do with life. It is more personal, and less professional.

I love my little room dearly. It has almost nothing in it. The bed is just 5 inches of foam covered with a couple blankets and my bundle of clothes as a pillow. My rucksack sits in the corner, empty save for the dirty clothes I put in it waiting to be hand washed in the yard on the weekend. My dress shoes sit under my bed next to my hiking shoes for trips to the field, which are in turn next to my Birkenstocks, and only my tropicals [rainbow coloured flip flops… the most common non-formal Zambian footwear] are not there as they are on my feet. All my possessions, save for the couple sets of clothes for work hanging on 5 hangers in the open closet, sit on my little table. My little collection of books, more than half of which are the Baha'i books I brought thinking they would be harder for Zambian Baha'is to get than me [it turns out they are all readily available in Lusaka]. My nalgene bottle full of water, and my nalgene with the nalgene tea/coffee press that my friend Pam gave me for my birthday. Zambians love sugar-milk-tea, which is how I refer to the way they drink their tea, being the list of ingredients from most abundant to least in your cup. I’ve fallen in with the Zambians on sugar-milk-tea. It is quite delightful. Especially because all the milk here is full cream, and if you are in a town smaller than Livingstone or Lusaka you get it in little bags straight from the dairy farmers. Here in Livingstone I get the milk satchels that get shipped from Lusaka after being processed. They are 500ml and totally sealed in plastic, which is very convenient for brewing the milk in an electric kettle [Zambians make tea by heating up milk, diluted only slightly with a bit of water, and adding the tea leaves to milk] as surprisingly the heating coils do not melt the plastic and you can pull the piping hot satchel of full cream milk goodness out of the water and make yourself tea at the office [right there is how my mornings at the office start… gloriously]. I guess this would be a convenient point to share something I have learned about myself: I can live on pretty much any kind of food, no matter if it is unappealing to me, so long as I have some sort of hot beverage to look forward to during my day. They told us Zambians don’t drink coffee, but Katalausha loves coffee. So I bought the family a big bag of Zambian coffee, ground, espresso roast because Katalausha says he likes it strong. He usually has instant coffee, but I wanted to see how Zambian coffee tastes anyway. When we made it, and despite it being night and my reminders of how it will keep them up at night, the entire family wanted coffee except for Lidia and me who enjoyed our less caffeinated tea. As we sat outside under the clear sky showing off the amazing array of stars and I poured the hot milk into cups while the family anxiously awaited their respective teas or coffees, I had a moment [which I hope you sometimes experience to because they feel great] where I was so happy to be me for my eccentricities. It seems wherever I go I ended up making those hot tea or coffee based drinks for people. There is magic in beverages I swear, they are the great undervalued parts of our diet.
My little table also bears my Leatherman multitool… perhaps the best investment ever [shout out to Duncan], and my little container of spices I got at Mountain Equipment Co-op [another great investment for the traveler]. I may have mentioned Zambians only know about one spice, salt, which to be fair I love more than most people do also [my little container has garlic salt in it… some of you know my love for salt… you haven’t seen me with garlic salt. Thanks Geoffrey, for getting me hooked on garlic this year.]. Katalausha is also an avid lover of spices like black pepper and chili flakes [I don’t have chili flakes but I do have cayenne]. Beside my mini-library sits my pile of Moleskin notebooks. I got some skeptical looks when I brought a pile of those Moleskins, but I am using everyone of them. One, the sketchbook, I gave to my sister before I left for her to use during her first year outside of high school, whether she be in university or taking a year to work and travel like I did. The one Clare decorated so eloquently for me is filled with all sorts of things that I have needed to write down as I am on this crazy journey. I am not so good at writing for my own sake, but I do write down things I am trying to work out, such as using the problem tree technique that is common in development to figure out how to tackle the changes I want to make in my life back in Vancouver [I feel it is a novel, but useful application of development theory]. I also write quite easily when I am coming up with things to say to people. So a few blogs have been written down in there, while I hope that getting them out of my head and on paper will let me sleep! My undecorated moleskin is filled with quotes from the Baha’i books as I am studying this [for me] new faith which I feel I can’t help but become apart of. Also it has random bits of other things like ideas and little poems. The little moleskin the chapter gave me never leaves my side, even when my passport does. Beside being filled with all your messages, it now also contains a list of contacts, a calendar, hand drawn maps of Zambia, Lusaka, Livingstone, and the Southern Province, lists of emails to write, or blog ideas, and everything else that comes across my path. I am hoping if I get pick-pocketed they won’t grab that little book, as I also use the little folder in the back as an emergency stash of money. And the moleskin folder keeps my photocopies of important documents, postcards, and other assorted odds and ends neatly organized.
The table is covered by a brightly coloured, beautiful chitenge [traditional Zambian cloth wrapped around the waste to be a skirt], which now has wax stains from where my reading candle has over spilled its holder.

Life in that little room, lit by my lone candle, is a glorious thing. I do yoga on average once a day [sometimes twice a day, sometimes not at all, but mostly once a day]. I do other exercises like pushups and sit-ups, or I go out to the mango tree in the back yard [sadly mangos aren’t in season till December, but when mango season comes Zambians are drawn in mangos… how I envy them!] and do chin-ups on the branches.

Happy little nights in Zambia, belly full of warm sugar-milk-tea,
dancing around to a funky Metric song in between yoga poses.
Perhaps I should listen to different music while I do yoga.
Perhaps Not.

I think I easily enjoy these living conditions more than most people. I’ve always admired monks and sadhus and other spiritual aspirants who turn their back on worldly pleasures in favour of the inward journey. And that is just how I view this temporary life of mine, like the lives of my spiritual heroes except I am also surrounded by a wonderful Zambian family which has taken me in like a brother and uncle.

At night I curl over that little candle to read books like The Tipping Point, which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Canada, or When the Rivers Run Dry which makes me go crazy with ideas for EWB in Zambia, or just Jack Kerouac’s Dharma Bums which makes me see everything as a merry, poetic, and above all transcendental journey. My favourite definitely has turned out to be the Kerouac book. How it has inspired me for life back in Canada. I marvel at how perfect the books I chose at random before coming to Zambia all have turned out. I couldn’t have picked better.


Last night I chased Dorris around the house, had a hearty Zambian meal with my family, did some yoga, meditated, and prayed in my room, then made tea and coffee for the family before slipping back into my room containing my little foam and blanket bed, rucksack, and little table of books and moleskins and my lone candle. The cement walls are bare and dirty, their plainness only broken by random divots [by which I mean little pot holes only an inch or less deep. The only decoration is the patterned fabric that is draped over the window and serves as oversized blinds as it runs wild on the floor for a foot or two. I’ve added a bit of colour by using that chitenge for a table cloth on my little table but somehow, last night, that small extravagant addition almost seemed too much. I was tempted to remove it, and probably would have if the table underneath wasn’t in such a miserable condition. There seems to me a great wealth in living with the barest supplies. All those material things truly are a burden that you only realize when you are free of them… and how free that feels!
Yet I can picture my room in Vancouver, bare as this room here in Zambia, and I can’t stand it. Why!? Is it the ungodly bright white walls under the glare of the fluorescent lights? I think what it truly comes down to is the lighting. Even my bare little room is not the paradise during the day that it is illumined by my lone candle during the cool nights. The candles flickering lights barely reaching any of the walls except the ones in front of my as I curl over it, trying to get as much light on my book or moleskin as possible so I do not strain my eyes. Or maybe, and probably, it is just all in my head. Maybe my bare Zambian room is so perfect because that’s what the idea was: to live in a bare room while I am in Zambia. While the ide of a room in Canada is that it is only as good as the amount and quality of stuff we fill it with. Maybe it all comes down to how we construct expectations about a room. Regardless, in that bare Zambian room I am overcome with the question: What more could a person want?

[the answer, by the way, is one of those back packing espresso machines and milk steamers for camping stoves that they sell in Mountain Equipment Co-op, high speed internet, Chai [there is none here, but I can get my hands on some spices…], and all of you wonderful people back in Canada]

But until the day I return and we start living like Zen Lunatics like Kerouac, having transcendental evenings, reading poetry, and meditating on the absurdity of life while we drink Chai and smoke hookah… I will continue on in my happy-go-luck adventure here in Africa. Down dusty trails with a spring in my step and smirk on my face [which I think is more common than a big smile for me… just my way I guess]. I hope those people in Vancouver are taking advantage of the summer weather by going swimming naked in the pacific ocean, cooking on the beach, and getting in plenty of adventures.

Much Love from Zambia.



Stayed tuned for more stories from Zambia including…
nshima what?
and
The Sounds and Smells of Zambia
And if you are particularly unlikely, a scandalous photo of me taking a bath [just kidding, I will save that for facebook].

Katalausha's Jazz

When you travel to a country of a very different economic situation than your home country… you feel embarrassed by your wealth [I am generalizing completely based on my personal experience here in Zambia]. For me, this wealth was my iPod. I hid it entirely for the first while here in Zambia, mostly because I didn’t want it to be a barrier between me and Zambians, but there was also the bonus of the less people who knew I had something valuable, the less likely they would try to rob me. But I couldn’t keep it hidden forever, being that I am living in a house without electricity I charge it, and my cell phone [thank you all who send me text messages], at the office. Consequently, I have had to explain it to each of my inquisitive co-workers. Once the iPod was out of the bag, so to speak, I stopped worrying about it so much. I let my family see me with it… and I am so glad I did. The ensuing discussion with Katalausha revealed his passion for Jazz, and his love for the bass guitar he can’t effectively play in his house sans electricity.

I must go on a tangent here on the culture barrier [at first I was going to call it the language barrier, but the language barrier is just the tip of the iceberg that is the culture barrier]. People think differently in different cultures. All those wonderful, deep, meaningful conversations you have with your friends… they are made possible by the level to which you are identical in culture that person. You may have different backgrounds and opinions, but you exist in the same world… speak not only the same language but most of the same slang and idioms. Your thought process is similar. Your values are similar. The vast, complex array of unspoken rules of interactions are fluidly navigated by both of you making each interaction, in a way, a sort of elegant dance. And all that is lost when you leave that extremely narrow place that is your cultural home.
As a Junior Fellow, you want to explore the painfully difficult issues pervading development… and yet how do you even begin when you realize how insecure you are about using the word “development” or even “poverty” to your co-workers. Meanwhile you are busy walking on eggshells trying not to break any of those unspoken rules that absolutely everyone around you understands as completely as you are oblivious, hoping the ones you do break don’t cost you trust with your partner organization, or that visa you need to stay in the country. Cultures are different worlds…

But all those barriers and hindrances can be shattered in an instant by something so small as Katalausha’s passion for Jazz. I like Jazz. I am not passionate connoisseur, but I very much enjoy it. To what extent that passion is common ground between me and him does not matter though, because suddenly Katalausha is a real person who makes sense to me. He is no longer another Zambian that I make pleasant small talk with , that little passion has showed me a window into who he is. He goes from being a person from another world…
…to becoming a brother and dear friend.

My friend Besta

I went out this Saturday night with two Zambian girls who are of a similar age to me [a refreshing change from the adults and toddlers I am normally surrounded by]. They both live in my neighbourhood, and I know them through my family. One’s name is Lweendo, and the other is Besta, and it’s Besta who this story is mostly about.

We went to one of their favourite hang-outs: The Livingstone Safari Lodge. It’s a lodge [hotel/hostel] and campground for tourists but it has a very nice, open air bar/resteraunt under the high thatched roof which characterizes lodges in Zambia. We see an old classmate of Besta’s, with her little girl, talking with Besta and the girl’s old teacher. Despite the presence of the child, the encounter seems to be romantic. Besta tells us how he broke her arm once in class because he was drunk, though I get the impression it wasn’t more than a strain. She didn’t have him arrested, she chose to forgive and forget.

Lweendo and Besta drink sparkling white South African wine while I sip a coke from the glass bottles that you aren’t allowed to take from the places you bought the coke and thus have to carry an empty bottle to trade if you want to take it to go. I was continuing my abstinence from alcohol which I later relented and drank a glass of red wine. After the initial giddiness had passed as the alcohol went straight to my head from not drinking for a while, it made me just feel sick and reaffirmed my decision to stop drinking.
We played pool (seemingly the most popular activity in Zambia, bar football (proper football, as in soccer, not American football)] or just sat and talked. Somehow we got on the subject of her planned trip to the UK, which made me ask Why the UK? This brought out the very sensitive subject, which underlay the rest of the evening, of how her British boyfriend/fiancée had dumped her this last week over something so trivial that I am convinced he lost interest for one reason or another and just needed an excuse. On her hand I can see the band of surprisingly pale skin where the ring used to be. The issue of westerners engaging in frivolous relationships with Africans while traveling, only to have the twp perceptions of how serious the relationship is grossly distant apart, becomes an awful reality watching a beautiful, sweet Zambian girl blink away tears as you listen to her choked words. I don’t even know if my idea of a broken heart comes close to what she is dealing with as I hear how devoted she was to him, how much she gave, and how little was returned. I am faced with the awe inspiring ability of a Zambian women to be devoted to a man even when getting nothing in return. She tells me she thought white men didn’t fling relationships aside so easily, that she thought it was a behavior exclusive to black men. I assure her it is a universal human capacity to hurt, though I a not sure that it is in any way “assuring”. She would be attending college here in Livingstone this year except her ex-boyfriend convinced her not to with promises that his family was going to bring her to the UK to study there.
During the periods of happier small talk, I cope with hearing about her situation by trying to come to a conclusion on whether these thatched lodges are really “Zambian” or, like so much of the “Zambian” carvings for sale, not rooted in the culture but in what tourists think African culture is. The thatched roof is what all the poor villages use. Ironically, while all Zambians are striving for the corrugated metal roof which the British brought as it is a sign of wealth despite turning the house into an oven, tourists, most of which sound British to compound the irony, are paying top dollar to stay in safari lodges with thatched roofs. In the villages I have seen women binding and cleaning the thatch which they sell to lodge owners at a small price which I don’t know if it’s reasonable or not given the work involved. I wonder if tourists appreciate the level of authenticity when they stay in these lodges.

We go back to Besta’s place for dinner and tea. And despite her being roughly my age the place is hers, both her parents have passed away years before. I am afraid to ask from what because the answer might be aids. She has an array of DVDs and we watch the movie “Honey” with Jessica Alba. In Canada I had head this movie referred to as a “Dick Flick” [being the cleverly named reciprocal of a “chick flick”, with not much substance and lots of “T & A”]. But to Besta it’s a lot more. She has an enormous passion for dancing, and even teaches dancing [the main theme of the movie. She has watched this DVD so many times I am convinced most of the skips are not from scratches but from simply being worn out. This film is filled with, what in Canada I would consider, a cheesy uplifting story about inner city, troubled youth finding salvation in their love for Hip Hop dance but which here in Zambia is something else entirely. It means the world to her, and its uplifting story I am sure contributes to that incredible strength I see in her which holds together her fragile life. She cries at the feel-good ending every time. Besta’s daughter from the boyfriend before the British one ones around the house, even happier and more full of energy than my DoDo. I’d guess her to be between one and two years old. Besta assures me, without my solicitation for assurance, that her daughter is an incredible blessing for her. I wonder if both, or either, will actually get to go to school. But I am looking forward to going out with them again next weekend, and being taught how to dance by someone who actually teaches dance. We’ll be celebrating Besta’s 20th birthday. A fact which makes me wonder if those adults I mentioned spending my time with are really that old…

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I warned you that was a dark one. I’ve written this after I had gone home from Besta’s, and after I lay in bed a while, failing to not construct these lines. Having written them down, I’ve been tossing and turning in bed, ironically just as sleepless as before. [while I type the words up, somehow they don’t seem to capture the emotion which kept me up last night, and has weighed on my chest all day]. Desperate for sleep I will make myself a cup of NeoCitran to help me sleep with cold water from my nalgene water bottle sitting on my little table by my books. For me this was a haunting experience, made all the more so by how much light I see in Besta. I can’t imagine how you are feeling reading gthis in Canada. Perhaps you’re at your office or on a laptop, perhaps sipping a three and a half dollar starbucks concoction [a scenario which problem comes to mind because if our roles were reversed I would be sitting in Wicked Café, Vancouver, sipping on of Arthur’s cappuccinos which are so good I readily liken them to liquid crack]. I’m not trying to depress you with this story, though I may have. I debated sharing this experience on so public a medium as a blog, and considered it may be more appropriate for an email to a select few who don’t mind shouldering the darker experiences. But as you can see I have decided otherwise. That’s because I wanted to remind you I am not traveling in a place of sunshine, rainbows and kittens [well actually I have seen all three, but you know what I mean]. Because I want to remind you of why members of Engineers Without Borders (perhaps you are among them) are working so hard for change.

Disclaimer

I am not sure what the people reading this expect from my blog. If you expect to always read an uplifting story of overcoming extreme poverty or a story about how the girls in my family laugh as they teach me a Zambian dance… I’m afraid you are going to be disappointed. I think you deserve more, I think you deserve a more complete picture of the experience of a Junior Fellow. So I am warning you know, some blogs may be a bit troubling, even haunting, but I will try to warn you before those ones as best as I can.

I’m warning you now… this next one isn’t happy.

DoDo

Dorris is one of my favourite people in the world. To remind you, she is the two year old daughter to Katalausha and Lidia, and is more commonly referred to as DoDo [pronounced dough-dough or doe-doe].

We first bonded over the simplest game ever: we both were wearing clothes with hoods, and I would imitate her in regards to having her hood on or off her head. That simple little game endeared us fiercely to one another. She refers to me as Uncle, [one of the few audible words she can speak, and one of the even fewer ones that are in English]. From the moment I arrive home after knocking off [which is what they call leaving work here in Zambia] she is shouting “UNCLE!” unless I am paying attention to her.
Kids are like rubber, and so one of DoDo’s favourite games is to have me toss her around the big comfy couches. Grabbing her by the legs and flipping her over her onto her stomach or back. Or simply picking her up and tossing her up into the air and catching her. She laughs and giggles like a crazy person. In between flipping her around, I tickle her. And she giggles in the way only a child can which makes me totally loose control and giggle likewise. Seriously, I can’t not giggle like a 2 year old when she is giggling.

She also likes to play games where we scare each other. She will hide around the corner and poke her head out at me and squeal and giggle because she sees me. Or I will come around the corner and grab her. Or she will simply crouch behind the armrest of the coach and I will lunch my arm over and tickle her… and she giggles and giggles.

She really likes my iPod, she loves music just like her father [foreshadowing of a blog to come]. And she loves to dance, moving her clumsy two year old body in her best imitation of the older girls in the family. What I would give to know what is going through the mind of a two year old Zambian child’s mind as she listen to music on an iPod. I get up and dance with her, a headphone in each of ears playing a funky Modest Mouse song.

The trouble with having a two year old that fond of you is they boss you around! The number of times she has repeated “tia” [“come” in Tonga or Nyanja…. I’m not sure]. She yelled at me to pray one time before we had dinner because we hadn’t prayed yet, her little hands already clasped together, her eyes continually peaking up at me to make sure I am praying to while she mumbles a totally incoherent slew of syllables that is her prayer. After she gets worn out a bit she will pat the couch and say “beppi” which means “sit” but she has confused to for “sleep”. Apparently DoDo likes to get up out of bed at night, so Katalausha and Lidia will blow out their candle and make noises which DoDo knows are coming from her parents but she plays to be scared and runs back into the safety of their bed. They explained this to me one time after DoDo had said “beppi” till I lay down on the couch beside her, and then began making funny hushing noises… she was imitating what her parents do to scare her into bed to play scare me to go to sleep also.

DoDo is the most wonderful child I know. The apple of my heart. The kind of child you can see the light that sustains the world in her gleaming eyes. But suddenly I am scared by a nagging question… will she be able to go to school? Of course the intention is that she will, but maybe there will be two many funerals within the family, which are an enormous financial burden, and they won’t be able to afford it. I know adult Zambians who haven’t done passed grade 7 because of this, and I’ve listen to how they struggle to overcome that limitation. Can you imagine being a grown up and having to go back to do grade 8 through 12? And this is the Southern Province, with an HIV rate of 18% or almost 1 in 5, which means plenty of funerals. I often see big trucks, that would normally be hauling gravel or some other material in Canada, which are filled with people, and when I ask people around me what they are doing the tell me it’s a funeral.

I fall asleep at night, snug under a couple warm blankets [the nights in Livingstone are cold] and a mosquito net, with my little bundle of non-work clothes wrapped in my hoodie for a pillow, cosy in the naïve self delusion that it couldn’t happen to her. That it couldn’t happen to my DoDo…
…still…
…but at least that delusion means I can sleep at night.

Zambian Home and Family

I am staying in a “compound” of Livingstone called Dambwa North [compounds are like neighborhoods]. It is not super close to “town” [the main part of L’stone], and probably takes about a half hour to walk. However, that’s where the joy of share taxies come in. A trip out to one of the compounds usually costs about 8000 Kwacha [about $2.20], however, there are certain locations you will find share taxies to one of the neighborhoods [each has a different taxi depot] and these taxies wait till they have four people ready to go and everyone pays 2000 kwacha. Then the taxi driver picks up people on his way back into town and it only cost 2000 kwacha no matter if you are the only one who ends up getting picked up or if the taxi is full. It’s a brilliant system, but as far as I know only L’stone does it, Lusaka runs on minibuses.

So I am staying with a Zambian family in Dambwa North. The head of the household is a fellow named Katalausha Shabeenzu [kat-a-loo-sha sha-baen-zoo], and he is a teacher at the Livingstone Primary school. He also is studying Math and Civics at the college here and wants to go to University of Zambia. He is married to Lidia, whose job it is to run the household. They have the most wonderful little girl [she turned two the day I am writing this] named Dorris but is more commonly reffered to by “Do-Do” [dough-dough]. But that’s not all! There is also Katalausha’s two younger sisters… Mutinta [both their names are Mutinta]. The older Mutinta has a couple of children also [Ruthie and Theresa] as well as Katalausha’s sister in-law, Sara [who is the oldest of the children]. Then throw in the mix the neighbours kids and well… that’s a lot of little Zambian girls running about underfoot. Also Katalausha’s cousin Brenda has been staying with us while she is selling fish here in L’stone. She has a little baby named Joseph… my namesake. Tyler is impossible for a Zambian to pronounce. Well, that’s not exactly true… they get something close eventually, but I am more commonly known here by my middle name [Joseph] as it is super easy. I usually introduce myself as Tyler Joseph and am just referred to as Joseph. However I didn’t do this at first so some people who have gotten used to the name Tyler won’t give it up. The younger kids in my family also call me uncle. So I have many names now! But basically I am Joseph Shabeenzu!

The family is absolutely fantastic. I really lucked out [credit to Josephine Tsui for finding the Shabeenzu family!]. I am slowly learning Tonga from them [Katalausha is from the Tonga tribe, Lidia is Nyanja]. The older women of the household like to say things to me in tonga/Nyanja [I can’t tell the difference unless I know what they are saying] and laugh that deep hearty laugh that so many Africans do when I am dumbfounded. The younger girls mostly just laugh when they have me wrap a chitenge [traditional piece of fabric worn around the waste like a skirt or, when dancing, folded so it is about a foot wide and wrapped around the hips] around my hips and they try and teach me the traditional dances.

The house does not have any electricity or running water. The previous renters ran off without paying the utility bills, so the property has an outstanding debt on it [something not uncommon here]. We get water from a hose from the neighbors house [with their permission… people take care of each other here]. There is a toilet [and not a squat toilet either] and we use a bucket to flush it. Baths remind me of when I was little and my family would go camping. We had these rubber basins that we would wash dishes in, and were also used to bath us little kids. Bathing here reminds me of that because it is done in basically the same size basins… only I am a lot bigger now! The sun sets around 18 hours [a.k.a. 6pm… Zambia runs on a 24 hour clock] so often I am having my bath by candlelight… how romantic! So if you were wondering how we deal without electricity… we don’t use flashlights [well I did but my MagLite bulb burnt out and I don’t have a replacement], we use candles. I still have the headlamp I brought, but I can’t remember the last time I used it. Candlelight is way more pleasant. And if you are just trying to find your way to the toilet in the middle of the night… the soft glow of the backlighting on my cell phone works just fine. Cooking is done on the brazier [its like a pot full of holes that you fill with charcoal and sit your cooking pots on top of]. And we eat lots of nshima. I will leave food for another post.

Random Bits of Life in Zambia

So there are a few things I want to share with you that stood out as odd to me. Ever see those shoe shining stations in malls, or on the streets [most of the time I see them it’s in a movie set in an American city]. I never understood it, who would bother making sure their shoes are always very shiny and polished? Well all of Zambia would. And it isn’t easy, let me tell you. The soil here is very sandy [and red] and so you basically are always walking through a thin layer of Zambian red soil-dust. But those shoes got to be shiny! So people carry around with them shoe brushes that they can stop as they are walking along and brush their shoes down. Sometimes they just use a small cloth.

Religion is huge here in Zambia. The missionaries certainly did their job! Zambian is extremely Christian, and there are is a large variety of churches here. I have found that in Zambia, you are nothing but the summation of the groups you belong to. I guess that’s really the case everywhere, but here the groups are more obvious while at home you are the summation of your interests/activities [for example: what types of music you like]. Here in Zambia you have your tribe, your church, your football [soccer] team. I can’t tell you how many taxies I have been in with a “This car is protected by the blood of Jesus” sticker on the dashboard where in Canada there would be a panel for the airbag. Somehow I don’t imagine the taxi has one and I hope the sticker is telling the truth! Up in the corner of the front window is usually a couple stickers proclaiming the drivers support for Manchester United, Liverpool, or Chelsea, etc. And you wear your groups on your sleeve, as it were, here. The churches have uniforms. Sometimes full outfits, other times just church chitenge’s [those traditional fabrics wrapped around to form a skirt. The political parties also have Chitenge’s]. Then within the one church there will be different groups that have gone through some sort of training so that they can better serve to go and visit people at their homes or hospitals. These groups have their own uniforms. I was told by some of the L’stone’ Bahais that on Sunday, people wearing different “uniforms” don’t greet each other [you have entire conversations with complete strangers here on a regular basis. It puts into sharp relief how little north Americans interact with each other].

As I mentioned in a prior post, L’stone is the tourist capital of Zambia. There are more Muzungos [ma-zoon-goos: “Englishmen” but now means “foreigner”] here than anywhere else in Zambia. You get so used to not seeing any white people that when I first got here I wanted to react like so many little Zambian children do… jump up and down, point, and yell “muzungo muzungo muzungo!”. But then I realize I’m white… and how white I am.

Another strange thing regarding religion… there are young Americans here to spread the faith. Seriously, there are Americans, who look roughly the age to be in University or backpacking around the world, who have come to an African country which is more Christian that the U.S. to try and convert people! I can’t wrap my head around that one.

EWB has volunteers all over Zambia. And there are many different languages [72 tribes in all] so we all end up learning different languages]. I am leaning Tonga, as are a 2 other Junior Fellows I believe, lots are learning Nyanja, some Lozi, some Bemba. As a result, OVs [overseas volunteers] end up adopting the tribe. Effectively making me a Tonga. Josephine [who is a long term volunteer based in Livingstone, but she is in Canada for a bit to visit family before she returns here] is Lozi. Tonga and Lozi are tribal cousins which makes it ok for us to make fun of each other [a tribal right]. So Josephine is my cousin, Katalausha [being Tonga] is my brother, and Lidia [being Nyanja] is my sister in law as she is married to a Tonga.

Where the Devil is Tyler???

Greetings to everyone who checks my blog. I am sorry for the delay in posting anything. But here I am now… so let’s get started.

For those who don’t know where I am…

I am based in Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone is the tourist capital of Zambia, and was established after Dr. David Livingstone “discovered” Victoria Falls [a.k.a. the local people showed him]. Victoria Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and is absolutely breathtaking. Livingstone is 10km away and I can see the mist from here.

I am working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Co-operatives [the Zambian government] on a project to rehabilitate dams. About 8 years ago, as part of another program, a number of villages applied for the construction of earth dams. Anyone who doesn’t know what an earth dam is… well it is exactly what it sounds. They pile a big mound of earth into an embankment across a river/stream and then you create a level spillway off to the side at a certain level so that when the water level gets too high, the water flows out over the spillway and does not overtop your dam [which would be very bad]. It is a bit more complicated than that as there are soil mechanics involved… but that is the basic idea. I had just finished reading a book called “When the Rivers Run Dry” which was all about how humanity is messing up the water cycle by diverting rivers into dams and for irrigation and rivers are no longer reaching the ocean. Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” scares the hell out of me, but I can’t say with certainty that it is scarier than “When the Rivers Run Dry”. Pick it up, it’s a good read. Why am I mentioning it out of nowhere like this? Because it made me feel like a total jerk being as I am working on dams! But the end of the book is rather hopeful [optimism that is long overdue, before you get to that point you are convinced it’s the apocalypse because the author is so unrelenting] and talks about a bunch of things that are happening around the world, often going back to old traditions, which are really working. One of these things is rain water harvesting. And fortunately that is exactly what my project is. The streams that have been dammed are annual streams [they only flow in the rain season]. So instead of all that water being lost in a quick rush to the Zambezi and over Vic Falls, a small lake is formed. Farmers have water for their gardens, crops, and livestock. Also, the sitting body of water recharges the water table so boreholes near the dam don’t dry up! Very exciting. I wouldn’t be surprised if boreholes that had dried up before the dam are now working again [but I can’t substantiate that claim]. So I am building dams right…? Actually no. The dams are already built, as I said, about 8 years ago. But unfortunately earth is not very durable [especially when you throw water in the mix] and consequently the dams need maintenance. The catchment area needs to be undisturbed so it does erode and silt up the dam. The embankment needs to be protected from animals and people walking on it, and trees putting holes through it. My project is based around this problem… no one was doing any maintenance. So what I will be doing, as a continuation of Nick Jimenez’ Junior Fellow placement last year, is work with the Technical Service Branch [TSB] of MACO to mobilize communities to maintain their earth dams. Nick and the TSB developed a methodology and produced a rough copy of a manual detailing that methodology during his placement. There was no previous methodology for a participatory mobilization of communities with regard to Earth Dams, so aside from actually mobilizing the communities, the another aspect of the project is to refine the manual. This is all be conducted in the Kazungula/Livingstone Disctrict around Livingstone.