Thursday, August 25, 2011

6 Month Bash and More Updates (Aug 12-24)

Don't have a lot of time, so here it is in list form going backwards:

Today - Loaded up the dumb dog in a tiny car filled with people to get nutered in Mzuzu because he's the worst dog in the world (still like him, though), and maybe after a little castration action he'll be better behaved. Unfortunately, no general anesthesia, so that's a waste. Brought my trekking backpack so I could stock up on food though. Three packages in the mail today!! Thanks mom, dad, and Elinor Noble!!! Also letter from the Rider family, Mac Isseks, and Rachel Harris! I struck big!!!

Last Week (Aug 18-whatever) - Came home from party at Rob's a little less than excite to be back at site. I was on such a role all through August and had a hard time picking it back up again after a week off. The Chivute garden group is going SO WELL!!! THey took my to their garden the other day and were so proud to show off what they've done so far. I'm so impressed with them and their initiative. The Wadenya group, not so much. I read over the first draft of their proposal expecting them to ask for maybe 30,000mkw to start their garden. Nope, 150,000mkw, which is equivilent to about $1000US. THey're just trying to take advantage of the whole thing. I don't appreciate that. What do you need 10 watering cans for??? The Chivute group has their garden already going and all they did was raise 200kw membership fees. Don't be dumb, Wadenya. I start teaching Math and Bio for freshman and juniors in like a week. I was only planning on teaching 2hrs, 3 days a week, but SOMEHOW the headmaster got me to agree to 3 to 4 hours of instruction. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up all year. I'll see how this term goes, but its not my job, I'm just volunteering. I'm worried that that amout of teaching commitment will detract way to much from my primary work. I think the headmaster knows that too, so he made it really hard to say no. hmm...

The week before (12-18) - 6 Month Mark slash Christian's Birthday Bash at Rob's site. It was AWESOME! Two days camping on the beach with all my friends, eating cake and roasting marshmellows and more eating! Good times. I'm surprising myself with how well I'm cooking, and cooking for 10 people at a time. My rice and beans are BOMB! and my sweet potato stew is like whoa! Met "New Melissa". She's the new education volunteer replacing my friend Melissa Small in Chintheche. I like her! She's gonna bring a nice dose of normal to our Tonga Time group.

Protest's rescheduled to next month, Sept 21 or something. Time's up! Happy birthday, mom!

Wadenya Group and Water Project Update (Aug 16?)

I have no idea what is interesting for you guys to read so I’m just gonna update you on pretty much everything… its all interesting to me, but I’m biased.

So had another follow up meeting with the Wadenya group today, the second group who wants to start a community garden by getting a loan. I might have been wrong about them seeming unmotivated, so I’ll hold off final judgment. Apparently they held elections for the group yesterday without me, which is awesome because it means their taking initiative, first step to capacity building and sustainability. But their still set on getting a loan to buy fertilizer and hose…things they really don’t need, but whatever. Today they wanted me to train them on how to write a loan/grant proposal. Uh… we missed THAT session in training too. Apparently, grant writing trainings for volunteers don’t happen until our In Service Training in September (which, inconveniently coincides with the first two weeks of school). So, I made it up. Hopefully I’m somewhere close to getting the right information out of them. I drafted up what I thought a proposal template should look like and wrote an example using a made up jam making group. I then spent a lot of time drilling them on how important it is to pay back a loan on time and to have a backup payment plan if the garden fails. I also told them that if the group can’t get the money together to pay it back they will not even THINK about asking me to front the money, because I don’t have it and it’s just asking for every person in Chikwina to ask me for money even more than they already do. What I’m really thinking, because it’s going to be such a small loan, is to set up a little microloan action myself. If they seem really serious about this loan business and put the right amount of effort into the proposal I’ll provide the loan myself and have them pay it back without interest over a certain period of time. Trick is to not let them know it’s from me. But this way we’ll avoid the actual waiting time to get a grant or loan approved, not have to deal with banks or high interest loan companies, not have to rely on other organizations, and still be in time for planting season. But if the proposal and motivation seems iffy I have no problem taking the proposal they write me, putting it into the right format when I know what it is, and taking it to another organization to take myself out of the equation. I’ll let you know how it goes. Also, is this stupid?

And the unnamed NGO’s water project I was telling you about a few posts ago has taken an interesting turn. The other Azungu in my village wrote a blog post about the water demonstration for the American visitors many weeks ago when it initially happened. However, her blog is connected to her University’s blog and has a much high readership. Also, her writing style about the subject, in my opinion, is a lot more sensationalist and opinionated and painted a much bleaker picture of the NGO. She was really out to expose the shortcomings of the project and the work ethic of the organization. Of course, her controversial post got a lot of press and it didn’t take long for it to be read by a lot of higher ups here in Malawi and got her a lot of attention in the village. The response was interesting. First, said NGO organized a Chikwina field day where they toted us and members of the district and the MP (Member of Parliament) around to all the projects they are doing around the area, reminding us Azungus and the press that showed up of the successes they’ve accomplished. We started at the topmost water tank where they explained how the project would work when it was completed…by the end of the year. Still skeptical, but ok. Then we hit up the orphanage (where, tragically, most of the kids were either orphaned by HIV/AIDS or were positive themselves) 15km away in Mwambazi, near Meredith’s site. We were met by a room full of the most adorable 4-year-olds in adorable little matching uniforms, each with a stuffed animal, singing to us adorably. They also opened the session with a prayer, which they all had memorized and tried to say louder than the little mushy kid next to them. After that was the fish farm, the women’s juice factory, and the community youth center computer lab. I stopped paying attention at this point though, because I was hungry. But the crowning session at the end of the day was the final discussion at the NGO office where everyone who was anyone stood up and gave a speech. I was really hungry. But I perked up when the MP (or was it the head of the District? I don’t know, everyone has weird names here, I can’t keep them straight) gave his speech, in English, so he was sure we understood. Essentially he, in a very politically correct, vague, and public way, chewed out the other Azungu for making Malawi and the NGO look bad to potential foreign donors. He made a good point though, even if he does benefit personally/financially from the NGO. On the other hand, volunteers on the project are now being paid 200kw per day to ensure that the project gets finished on time. Good did come from her shock and awe exaggerated exposure of the whole thing. They’ve given themselves five months to complete it. I still won’t hold my breath, though.

WANTED: Pen Pal for Wonderful African Woman

The Pastor’s wife pulled me aside the other day and told me in all of the English words she knows that she will give me a chicken (whom I have already named Barbeque) if I can find her an American pen pal. She’s an unbelievably warm person and wife to one of my favorite people in Malawi, American or otherwise. Any takers?! Let me know. Better yet, just email me a letter to her (Mrs. Kumwenda) and I’ll print it out and hand it to her so she can work on her response until the next time she, I, or the Pastor have internet access.

In Other News!!! (Aug 6-Aug 15ish)

I’m finally getting some work done in my village. Now that my three-month PC probation period is over I’m really trying to get my hands dirty, literally. Not gonna lie, I’m pretty pleased with myself so far.

So in the last two weeks I’ve bought my first two chickens (named Fried and Finger Linkin’) and finished planting stage 1 of my garden, permagarden style. Permagardening is also called the lazy-man gardening style. You plant an area of garden as densely as possible and interplant vegetables that help each other grow. It’s designed in such a way as to make the most efficient use of the least amount of water and work. I don’t know if I did it right, since I’ve never done this noise before. But so far my tomatoes, peppers, onions, cucumbers, spinach, and sweet potatoes have germinated. Cross your fingers I don’t kill them. My neighbors are very skeptical. One of them even offered to come over this weekend and help me plant stage 2 of my garden in the neat single-planted row style that they use in their gardens to see which type of garden is more effective. I’m psyched! I’ll plant stage 3 and 3.5 sometime in September using two different types of fertilizer to demonstrate to my community that (hopefully!!!) relying on the government (not-so)-subsidized fertilizer is unnecessary and avoidable. I’ll explain the fertilizer problem below.

I’ve also been unbelievably busy with village meetings I’ve scheduled with the 5 closest villages in my catchment area and having one-on-one meetings with all my health center staff. I’ve been learning so much! And turns out, I’m in high demand! But honestly, I wouldn’t know what I’d have done without the other Azungu in my village, who not only set the bar for involvement high, but also showed me how to go about doing grassroots development work in a country that doesn’t speak my language. Lesson 1: don’t use a health worker (HSAs, no idea what it stands for) as a translator in village meetings. HSAs already have elevated status in the village because they’re not from here and they’re educated, employed, and have a steady-ish income (when the government actually pays them). So showing up in the village with them associates you with a higher status and during interviews you receive practiced, not necessarily truthful answers regarding health and whatnot. Better to use a person from their village or someone they know from a nearby village who speaks English decently to get better, more honest answers out of them. Because really, they’re mostly speaking to the translator, a friend, and not you, since you’re blabbing away in a language they don’t understand and you’re funny to look at anyway and your dog is distracting you because he’s shamelessly chasing everyone’s chickens. I’ve been using this kid, Samuel, who just wrote his secondary school exit exams. He’s something like 20-years-old, speaks English beautifully, uses his noggin, and wants to go into public administration if his test scores are high enough. He’s all about what I’m doing, which is great, and has a knack for simplifying my questions to get the answers I’m looking for. Man, I should bake that guy a cake or something. Oh! And he keeps time! It’s amazing and unheard of! When I say we have a meeting at 2pm, he’s at my door at 1:45. What?! I thought we were on Africa time.

In my first meeting in Mjutu, where I got Doug the Destroyer (he’s out of control), only about 10 people came, but it was enough. From that meeting I learned that besides water availability their major concern is how expensive the government synthetic fertilizer is and that they are worried about how reliant they are on it. The same issue has been brought up at almost every subsequent meeting I’ve had since Mjutu. This got me thinking about the nice man who comes to my door every morning with a bucket of fresh milk he sells for 30 kwatcha a cup. (P.S. this has dramatically increased my delicious food intake. Crepes, creamy potato soup and pasta with cream sauce! Zo my gods.) Anyway, after a little digging I’ve learned that most of the cow owners in the area just wash their cow manure away. Not while I’m here! I talked to my nice milkman guy, who is one of the few who composts his manure, and next week we’re going to try to get all the cow owners together to form a group to collect their manure and sell it cheaply to the community as fertilizer. This way, they can make more money, buy more cows, produce more manure, and pamana pamana (slowly slowly), our community can end our reliance on the expensive government synthetic fertilizer. Everybody wins! Cross your fingers that this one works. I’m all about it. Jesus, I’m all about cow poop now.

My next meeting was with Chivute, the village I live in. I started out with what I thought was just a silly, oversimplified Peace Corps sanctioned activity, called Community Mapping. It’s one of the tools we’re given to learn about what a community thinks is truly important. I did it by the book and split the group (of 40!!!) into men and women and had them draw a map of Chivute to see the differences in what the genders deemed important in their village. The men drew the village boarders, marketplace, and soccer pitch really big compared to everything else while the women included the names of the families that lived in each compound, which they drew as spatially accurate as they could. Gender! Interesting stuff. Anyway, the discussion part of the meeting reveled that besides fertilizer, they also felt strongly about the lack of transport, the dire need to have an ambulance (on it!), and the lack of an accessible CBO (Community Based Organization, or Town Council). The nearest CBO is in Chaula, which really is too far to be an effective organization for Chikwina. I asked them why the area doesn’t just form their own unofficial CBO, and the responded, “Wednesday, you come back Wednesday and we’ll start one.” So I came back Wednesday, they held elections (really they just informed each other who would fill which roles) and decided that their first order of business would be to start a community garden to benefit the village orphans, vulnerable children, and widows. Groundbreaking is on Monday. Just like that! They’re supplying the labor and the manure and I’m donating my leftover seeds from garden stage 1. They seem really motivated to get this mini CBO off the ground. The Secretary keeps coming up to me to inform me of the progress. He gave me a list of all the members so that I can call roll at the next meeting to shame everyone into showing up and tomorrow we’re having a pre-groundbreaking meeting to come up with the rules of the group and a long-term garden/business plan. Double cross your fingers for this one!!!

Third meeting was in Wadenya. Samuel and I did another PC activity and had the men and women write out their daily schedules, hour by hour. The pretense was so that I could understand what daily life was like in the village, but really it was so we could have a heated discussion on gender issues. After each group presented their schedules I asked, “So who has the most free time? Who works harder?” Everyone agreed it was the women and that it was a cultural tradition. But once the women were talking above the men and not letting them speak and clapping their hands, the men agreed that there might be some areas in which they could help out their wives, especially when they are pregnant. Then an old lady asked, “How can the older people in the village make money?” And thus gave birth to my favorite group so far, the Agogo Groupo (grandparents group). When I came back the next day to discuss the group in detail I actually found a bunch of old women and young women and men. Turns out they all wanted to do it. I’m still gonna call it the Agogo Groupo in my head. They don’t seem as motivated, though, as Chivute. It seemed they just wanted me to give them all the answers and loan them the money to start their own garden. Nope. I’m starting to worry that every group I start will want to plant a garden. I’ve decided that the next group to say they want a garden I’m going to say no, you have to come up with something unique that the area doesn’t already have. That means bread and jam are out of the question (the other two most popular IGAs, or income generating activities, in the area). Anyway, Wadenya is insistent on using fertilizer and not manure so I told them that if they need money to do this they’re going to have to write a proposal and I’ll help them find a microloan or grant, I’m not just gonna hand them the money. They need to show some initiative.

After meeting with the health staff, it turns out my health center is pretty dysfunctional. They’re pretty much never open, and when they are they only have one nurse and no other curative health staff. The HSAs are meant as field workers in the villages and do mostly preventative work. I’ve been hearing complaints from the villagers that there is no privacy at the health center and patient confidentiality isn’t guaranteed because of it. They don’t feel comfortable telling the nurse their ailments for fear that other people will overhear, so they don’t. That’s gotta go immediately, so I’ll be talking to my In-Charge ASAP. The first grant I plan on writing will be to procure an ambulance-like vehicle for Chikwina, if it is at all possible. I talked to the DHO (District Health Officer) who said that if I could get a vehicle, the district would provide the driver and the petrol when it’s available. I think that’s a pretty good deal, actually. But then I was talking to someone, I forget who, who said that a similar thing happened in another health center and after the volunteer left, the District took the ambulance back and gave it to another area until the government got involved and mandated that the ambulance be returned. Whatever, lets worry about that after I’ve secured a vehicle. Any reliable vehicle will do, really. Four-wheel drive preferable. Might be able to get one cheap off a soon-to-be-evacuated Canadian volunteer…hmmm.

There have been other meetings but I won’t bore you with the details until something uniquely interesting comes out of them. It’s really great to be working finally. But it has been literally nonstop for two weeks. So for this week I’m taking a breather in Tikombo at Robert’s site to have a 3-month-jailbreak slash Christian’s birthday beach-camping Tonga party with the crew. Ditching the Four-Legged Terror with the Pastor. Just about time to get the little bugger fixed. Maybe then he’ll stop running away at night and hunting Fried and Finger Lickin’.

Aug 6, 2011: DPP - Diesel Petrol Palivi

DPP is actually the Democratic People’s Party, President Bingu’s party currently ruling Malawi. Recently, I have heard people not-so-affectionately referring to it as “Diesel Petrol Palivi”, palivi meaning “it is without”.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the recent demonstrations happening in Malawi due to the rapidly declining standards of living and Bingu’s blatant political and financial corruption. I don’t know the details but by far the biggest problem Malawians are upset about (and Bingu ignores) is the petrol crisis. There is no fuel anywhere, and when it is found, it is exorbitantly expensive. Transportation is a nightmare, which translates to zero access to hospitals for those living in the bush, very few deliveries of medicine to health centers, etc. And food prices are going up at the same time the value of kwatcha is going down. As a result, things are getting exciting.

Exhibit A: The July 19-21 demonstrations in the three major cities. A total of 19 dead, including 2 policemen, 70-something-crazy in the hospital with bullet wounds, millions of kwatch in looting damage. Most of the violence occurred in Mzuzu, the city in the north and my closest pocket of civilization. Again, I don’t know the details, Peace Corps was quick to put us all essentially on house arrest and travel ban. In Chikwina, things were very quiet. We’re 20km into the bush so even if there was petrol to have, we would still not have petrol. I’m probably tucked into the safest, quietest place in the world. However, if Bingu does not address the complaints (which he won’t) more protests are scheduled for August 17-19 in the bomas, that means in all the town and major trading centers. I was talking to my good friend, the African Presbyterian Pastor and my adopted African father, about what he thought about the demonstrations. He said that when Malawians, famous for being the most peaceful, passive country in Africa, are angry enough to get off their butts, join together, and protest, you KNOW things are bad (I’m paraphrasing, he didn’t use the word “butts”).

Intially, we were all pretty nervous they would have us evacuated. I’m still pretty nervous. Hey, remember a few posts ago when I said that foreign aid just needs to leave Malawi so they can figure it out themselves? Oops. Now that Briton has pulled out 5.2 billion and America pulled out 53 billion in aid, and the protests are gonna be rough this month, and the other Canadian Azungu in my village IS being evacuated this week, things don’t look too reassuring for THIS foreign aid worker. While I still think it’s a good thing that Malawi will now be forced to less reliant on foreign money, I have no desire to leave myself. But Peace Corps usually waits as long as possible to evac a country, so I’m not THAT worried. But I’m still worried. I really am safe though, guys. Not to worry, I have a lot of people looking out for me here and Doug…barks. He’s not the most effective security guard. He’s just not that menacing, unless you’re a chicken. I mean the animal, a chicken. They’re scared shitless of him.

I’ll try to keep you posted better after the next round of demonstrations this month once the inevitable travel ban is lifted.