In the States, we sort of understand how begging works, and depending on where we live and spend most of our time, we do encounter it from time to time. Growing up in the outer suburbs of the Twin Cities, I didn’t have much exposure to this. I recall going into the Cities as a child, usually with my dad going to a Twins game or something, walking through the city and coming across some down and out folks asking for cash. I followed dad’s lead, completely ignoring them, and then once I thought we were a safe distance away, I would start asking a bunch of questions: “What is he doing?” “Why doesn’t he have his own money?” “Why didn’t you give him any money?” “Do you ever give them any money?” I soon figured out that it is best not to hand out money to people in public, and if someone asks you for money, you should give no reaction at all and walk away at a slightly faster pace than when you were approaching. In Minneapolis, this usually seems to work, but in Malawi this often just seems to attract more attention (“this white guy doesn’t seem to be noticing me, maybe if I yell louder and act more like an idiot he will…”).
In Malawi, begging is completely acceptable. It is an acceptable form of employment, entertainment, social interaction, and way to start a conversation. Everyday I hear requests like:
“Give me my money.”
“Give me a pencil.”
“Can you borrow me 100 kwacha.”
“Boss, please help me.”
“Give me 1 tambala.” (This one’s supposed to be funny, a joke to get your friends to laugh. 1 tambala is about 1/150 of a cent. It never gets old, especially if you’re 10 years old and live in Mitundu.)
“Give me my Christmas card.” (This is my all-time favorite. A little girl yelled this to me, in English, as I rode my bike past her on some remote road in the middle of nowhere. I believe it was March)
It seems to me that here in Malawi begging can be divided into three categories: 1) Genuine. A lot of people don’t have the basic needs to get by, and at that particular moment (from their limited perspective) their best option is to ask other people for help. The reasons for them not being able to procure their basic needs can range anywhere from laziness to severe physical disability, but my point here is that genuine beggars are really looking for help and they are not begging for either of the following two reasons.
2) Comedic. If I’m having a bad day or not in a good mood, this kind of begging can really tick me off. Imagine a group of about five guys, most likely losers in their mid-twenties with nothing better to do, standing on the side of the road. They’re board out of their minds because they don’t have any initiative to find something constructive to do. They’re more than likely drunk (A common habit of many men in this area is to find a few hours of piecework (this is comparable to temp work, but its completely unregulated and usually disorganized) in the morning, earn 100 or 200 kwacha (about a dollar) by noon, spend all the money on enough local hooch to get sloppy drunk, and stumble home in the evening, only to realize that all of their children are crying and hungry, but they don’t have a single kwacha to buy dinner. But no lesson has been learned, and they just go and do it all over again the next day. With these two problems of food scarcity and alcoholism in this country, I would guess that we are one of the top ten countries in the world for percent of dietary calories coming from alcohol. However, I highly doubt this statistic actually exists. Please excuse me for going off on this tangent, but I think it gives an interesting snapshot of the situation here. Now, let’s get back to the stuff outside of the parenthesis.). So as they’re standing there, they realize something interesting is about to happen. A white guy is walking down the street, about to pass by them. One nudges to other, “Ask this dude to buy us some booze.” They all start giggling, and then the guy does just that. The white guy then get’s pissed off, tells them to go find a job, ridicules them for being morons, and says some other things that he probably shouldn’t. This happens here about once a month. Who’s the white guy? I’ll leave it up to your imagination to figure that our. Most begging from children falls under this category as well. I’m pretty sure that the first English phrase that Malawian children learn in school is “Give me money.” (I predict that their success rate would go up tenfold if they threw in a “please” at the beginning and a “sir/madam” at the end of the phrase.
3) From left field. From time-to-time I’ll be having a good conversation with someone, talking about anything under the sun, and out of nowhere they’ll ask me for something. Often times I can see the request coming (that’s usually what they call it, a “request”: “Bryan, I have a request for you…”—then I give them the stone face), but every once in a while I’ll be thrown for a loop. This usually happens when I’m talking to a stranger while traveling. I’ll be talking with them for a while, and when they see that we are about to go our separate ways, they figure they might as well give it a shot with something like “Sooo, I have I nephew in secondary school, but we aren’t able to provide school fees for him. Do you think you can assist us?” It never hurts to ask, but it does annoy.
Recently, we have started a project whereby we are distributing bed nets to women of children under the age of five. This is part of a larger effort with the lofty, but not impossible, goal of eliminating malaria. Most of the work (i.e. transportation of nets, distribution, and documentation) is done by Health Surveillance Assistants (HSAs) from Mitundu Community Hospital. HSAs are low-level medical staff that are being used to relieve some of the enormous strain on the healthcare system here caused by a dearth of nurses and doctors (amongst other things). These HSAs are assigned more rudimentary tasks such as organizing outreach clinics, vaccination campaigns, and basic healthcare education for rural communities. Anyways, the hospital administration and I decided that the bed net distribution should be done by these HSAs. This seemed like a good idea to me since the HSAs have the most direct contact with the people we are targeting with this project: children under five in rural areas. Also, these HSAs never seem to be that busy. A typical day for them entails some work in the field in the morning, maybe taking two to four hours, and then sitting in the shade at the hospital playing board games all afternoon. Therefore, I didn’t think that this additional responsibility, participating in the distribution, would overwhelm them with work, especially since there are about 50 of them, and this work is being divided up somewhat evenly so that each person is only doing about 90 minutes of extra work per MONTH. Not surprisingly they have been asking me to give them bed nets as well. Despite the facts that they are paid government employees, participating in a project to assist poor people in rural areas, and not doing a whole lot of extra work, they came right out and told me that they should have an extra benefit from helping with this project (I could go on about this-Malawian professionals and semi-professionals being addicted to allowance and extra benefits, but I’ll save it for a different post). To be honest, it’s been hard for me to deny them since I can’t really do this on my own. The begging has been even worse from non-hospital workers. After starting this project, I’ve been surprised by the number of people that now know my name. It seems like every time I step out the door I hear, “Bryani, kodi mutipatsa manet?” (“Bryan, are you going to give us a bed net?”).
For the most part, people are usually thankful when you assist them here. However, this doesn’t usually stop them from asking for more and more. For example, in previous posts I have been writing about our food security project for people with HIV. In the upcoming months the groups we have been working with will finally start benefitting from this project with what looks like what will be an impressive harvest. In general, (knock on wood) most of our fields look good, and therefore the families of the people in these groups should have plenty of food this year after a good harvest. Nevertheless, a few of the groups have already started asking me how I will help them next, after this project is finished. They are asking me this in spite of my constant reminders, from the beginning, that the purpose of this project is to eliminate their chronic malnutrition and struggle to find food so that they will be healthy and able to invest their time and energy into activities (such as starting a business, increasing their agricultural productivity, or spending more time doing HIV awareness outreach activities that most of these groups already do) that will benefit their respective families and communities. As a result, the idea was that this project would sort of wean them off of external support, putting them on the first step on the latter out of poverty, and allow them to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps (ha-da-ya-like them metaphors?). Well, (sticking with the metaphors) weaning isn’t as simple it sounds, the first step on the latter may be relatively insignificant if you consider how tall the latter is, and if you’ve ever tried to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps (or if you don’t want to look like an fool, just imagine doing so), you know that this is completely impossible because the same force you use to pull your bootstraps up also pulls your upper torso down and you end up going nowhere. What I’m saying is that many of these groups expect, or would at least prefer, Bryan to keep helping them. (One more clichéd metaphor, this time with a twist:) It seems that a lot of times, I’m speaking about development in general, rather than giving a man a fish, or even rather than teaching a man to fish, we end up somewhere in the middle-just giving the man a fishing pole and saying, “good luck.” The man is excited to get the fishing pole, because its free and all his friends are getting it, but he soon loses interest once he realizes that he doesn’t know how to use the pole, and maybe he uses it for fire-starter or something. I’m a little bit worried that this is what is happening with the projects I’ve currently got myself into. But all we can do is try our best, evaluate, adjust, and try our best again.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.” Bob Marley
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Ndabwerera ku Malawi
Living in Malawi for two years has taught me to live by the phrase, “plan for the worst, hope for the best.” This is exactly the approach I took when coming back here a few weeks ago. When I left Malawi for home in December, we had many different projects that we were in the middle of, and I flew back to the States concerned about how things would be going when I got back. Coming back to Mitundu, I was prepared to encounter some disaster that had happened while I was gone. Locusts destroying all of the crops in the area, my house getting broken into, a close friend dying, or the theft of the supplies for the girl’s hostel construction-I wasn’t going to be surprised if any of these things happened. It turns out that everything worked out fine while I was gone, not great but fine.
The hostel that we have been working on for almost two years now should be completed within the next month or so. Hopefully, it will start housing students by April, when the third term of the school year starts. In December, we were concerned about not having enough cement. We purchased enough cement, but the problem was that we purchased more than was available—in the whole country. One characteristic of a third would country: frequent shortages of basic commodities such as cement, fuel, electricity, and…food. Until now will still don’t have the cement that we paid for, but it looks like we already have enough to finish the hostel, just not the kitchens or bathing area. The girls will have to be creative until we get the later constructed.
Our food security project for PLHIV is going along about as good as I could have hoped for. We’ve spent the last few weeks since I’ve been back visiting the various groups that we are assisting. There are no major problems, just little things like one group’s beans not growing at all (this raised suspicion that the expensive hybrid beans that we gave them were never planted at all, but redirected elsewhere (ie stolen)), two groups having squabbles about lazy members that don’t show up to the field to do work, and another group with a field infested with witch weed-a nasty plant that starves maize of nutrients in the soil.
As you may or may not know, malaria is a big problem in Malawi, especially this time of year during the rainy season. One effective way to prevent the transmission of this bug is to sleep under a bed net, which prevents the malaria vector-a specific species of mosquito that only feeds at night-from sucking your blood and at the same time spitting some plasmodium (malaria) into your bloodstream. We wrote up and submitted a proposal in November to get 2000 (as a start) nets that we wanted to distribute to children under the age of five in rural areas where access to nets and halfway decent healthcare is hard to come by. When I left in December, we hadn’t heard anything back about this, and I kind of lost hope and forgot about it. Therefore, it was a surprise when I opened up the door to my little house and found 1000 bed nets inside. We had originally planned to store the nets at the local hospital, but recently there’s been a large turnover in staff at the hospital, resulting in disorder and confusion, so someone though it would be best to just throw all of the nets in Bryan’s house. It turns out this was the right decision to make, and the bright side to only receiving half as many nets as we requested is that I still have a little bit of room to walk around in my house. After some initial confusion and multiple changes of plans, we’ll start distributing the nets this week.
Another potential crisis that I had my eye on was the electricity in my house. I was worried that it would be cut because I haven’t paid my bill for over two months now. However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the lights turned on when I first got back to my house. I was also surprised to see that I hadn’t received a bill for either December or January. To me, this was a cause for concern because ESCOM (the Malawi government’s halfway functioning company that has a monopoly over the country’s electricity) is know for causing bizarre fluctuations in one’s account balance, cutting one’s electricity out of nowhere, and doing other things to inconvenience their customers. To avoid any misunderstandings that would blackout my house for an indefinite length of time, I made a trip to their office to figure out what the heck was going on. It turns out that, from ESCOM’s perspective (which is the only perspective that really matters), I overpaid my November bill by about MK3500. I’m pretty sure this didn’t happen. I guess poor customer service and poor accounting sometimes works in the customer’s favor. Now I don’t have to pay my bill until around May!
So things are moving along. Obviously, they could always be moving along better, especially in this crazy place, but most of us are managing to live respectable lives.
"If you are planning for a year, sow rice; if you are planning for a decade, plant trees; if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people." Chinese proverb
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Kwanu ndi Kumeme Kuli Mtima Wanu
It was nice being home, and I’m excited to get back to Malawi. Most people don’t think of taking a vacation to Minnesota in the middle of winter, especially when they live near the equator. There’s good reason for that, but I enjoyed seeing my family and friends after being away for over two years. I had a lot of people tell me that they are reading this blog. I was always looking at the dearth of comments (by the way, the user-unfriendliness of the comments posting feature has been fixed; please refer to the previous post) and assumed that my audience was small, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear that many of you find this interesting. I’ll try to post more frequently this year. It should be easier now that I have a MacBook and daily Internet access. It will just depend on how much time, wit, and energy I have.
Peace Corps often warns and informs us about “reverse culture shock,” meaning that it is difficult to readjust into your original society after being away for a while. However, I didn’t see this as a problem. I definitely was awestruck by this place we call America at first, riding through Minneapolis on the interstate after leaving the airport when I first arrived was almost like a hallucination (ain’t no skyscrapers in Malawi), but I didn’t feel uncomfortable. A few other things that surprised me: HDTV is everywhere now. Driving was like playing a video game (especially with a few inches of snow on the ground). Bruno Mars and Rihanna completely dominate the pop music airwaves (I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I estimate that at least 75% of the time when I turned on the radio it was one of these two singing some lame, cliché love song. They are both great singers, but I can’t believe there isn’t more variety on the radio here. In Malawi, there’s only like ten people that know how to record music, but they still find a way to mix it up more than we do here). Last, I forgot that American women dress so provocatively, even in the middle of winter. If a woman in Malawi has a hemline above her knees it’s a good indication that she’s a prostitute.
Some things that haven’t changed and I’m happy to get away from:
1.Cookie-cutterness. Every freeway exit, town, house, park, etc. looks and feels the same. I went to Applebee’s a few times, and every restaurant had exactly the same floor plan (this makes it a lot easier to find the restrooms). This was the world I grew up in, and I always used to hear yuppies complaining about this cookie-cutter world we live in (Am I a yuppie now? Probably not, I bathe with cold water out of a bucket.), but it didn’t really bother me until I experienced it coming from another world. The other world being Malawi, where everything is different and a surprise, for better or worse (usually worse, but you can make it better with the right attitude-that’s just not very easy to do).
2.Ignorance laced with fear. One of the first things I heard when I set foot on American soil (concrete) was a guy in line with me waiting to go through customs security. He claimed that we should “just nuke the whole Middle East,” which would get us through customs a lot faster. Obviously he was joking and his statement was a bit extreme compared to how most (but certainly not all) Americans feel. It’s easy for me to preach and say this now, but we should be ashamed about how little we (collectively) know about the rest of the world. It is this ignorance that is pointing our country in the wrong direction, down a dark road where our politics are motivated by fear and our old friends no longer trust us.
3.Winter. Humans really shouldn’t live as far north as Minnesota, and I’ve decided that whenever I settle down it will be somewhere where the climate is hospitable.
4. Nevermind, three is enough. Complaining is for losers.
With all this off my chest, I can end by saying that this is really a great country. While talking with people about the last two years of my life, many eluded to the fact that we have it so easy here and we take a lot of things for granted. That’s true; we do have relatively safe and comfortable lives. It’s inspiring to remember that we have this safety, comfort, excess, and extravagance because we work our butts off, make education a priority for all our children, embrace diversity (most of the time in most places), and our quote unquote forefathers made many sacrifices so that we can prosper like we do. Down the road, we will be known as forefathers so let’s try not to screw things up too much.
Check it out, they put my ugly mug on the front page:
www.westshurburnetribune.com
"You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it." Paulo Coelho
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Commenting is now easier
I've been informed that commenting on this blog is kind of a pain because you have to make an account and jump through a bunch of hoops. Therefore, I've opened up the comments section for anyone. So feel free to comment if you have a comment. Just don't get too out of hand or we'll have to revert to the old ways.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Ulendo wa kwathu
I think I’ve already mentioned my trip home next month, and I now have a few more details. It looks as though I will fly out on 20 December and arrive in Minneapolis on the 22nd. I’ll then be in Minnesota until around 13/14 January. I don’t have any concrete plans at this time, but I’ll definitely be spending a lot of time with family and friends. Things I’m looking forward to include (in no particular order): going to the movie theater at least two times, getting a deep dish Top of the Line from Pizza Factory, giving a short presentation about Peace Corps to anyone that is interested at Big Lake High School, watching Bowl Games and college basketball (In the past I would also be interested in watching the Vikings, but for obvious reasons, that’s not the case this year), visiting U of M Medical School (notice-I didn’t write graduate school), not being stared at all of the time, being able to walk around without everyone around me paying attention to everything that I’m doing, drinking good alcohol and coffee, avoiding one month of Malawi’s rainy season, being dumbfounded by the fact that everything is available all of the time, and more than all of these things-seeing family and old friends (it’s certainly been awhile). I suppose there are a few things that I’m not looking forward to: bitter cold, inevitable hassles at the airport during Christmas time, repetitive questions about Africa (but don’t be shy to ask them, I’ll still answer you thoroughly and politely), and not being the most popular person in every room that I walk into (strangely enough this is also something that I’m looking forward to-I guess it will depend on the setting). Most likely, around 13/14 January I’ll be heading east (but not quite to Malawi yet) to New York City to visit some friends for a few days before I fly back to Malawi, leaving NYC on the 18th and getting back to this beautiful chaos we call Malawi on the 20th. I’m really excited about seeing New York. I’ll be meeting up with some good friends that I’ve made in Peace Corps and whomever else I might run into. Actually, I’m really excited about this whole trip. It will be refreshing to get away from Malawi for a month, just enough time for me to binge on America; get sick of it; and run back to my simple life here.
On a different note, last month I went on a little adventure with a few buddies of mine.
We climbed the highest peak in Malawi: Mount Mulanje. It was a lot of fun, with gorgeous views, good exercise, and interesting people along the way. However, it was a lot of work as well. It was about 14 hours climbing up. The first day was the hardest. What is commonly called Mount Mulanje is actually a massif, or giant plateau up in the sky. The first day mostly consisted of getting up onto the massif, climbing out of the hot plains and going up and up for about five hours, and then hiking for a few hours on rolling terrain to a nice chalet provided by the Mulanje Forestry Department. At this point, we were on the massif.
On the massif/plataue there are a handful of peaks, but we had our eyes set on one-Sapitwa. In Chichewa, sapitwa means something like “don’t go.” It’s cool to go up onto the plataue, but you’re asking for trouble if you climb Sapitwa since it is known by locals to be inhabited by unfriendly spirits. Well, the next day, going up Sapitwa, we didn’t run into any spirits (maybe my bandana and polarized shades scared them all away). I’ll admit that I feared for my life a few times. I’m not used to scrambling up mountains, but I steadily built up confidence to the point where I was a bit reckless on the way down and no longer worried about making one small mistake and falling hundreds of feet. The top of Sapitwa, which is the top of Malawi (OK, I know that’s not saying a lot), had a breathtaking panoramic view.
However, as I can imagine is the case climbing most mountains, the arrival on top was a bit anticlimactic. We took our time going down, and thanks to Newton’s invention of gravity, the descent was a lot easier (if my knees and quads had a conscience, they might not agree with this statement). There’s a nice pool/waterfall near the entrance to the park that we used, and we thought it would be wise for us to bathe our disgusting bodies in there before we returned to society. That was the end of the excitement. I then headed back north. I must say that I felt much more safe climbing the mountain than I did traveling back on Malawi’s killer highways with demonic minibus drivers, swindling bus conductors, drunken truck drivers, pot hole polka dotted pavement, and 120 mph BMWs. Nevertheless, I got back to Mitundu, with its easy-to-dodge oxcarts and bikes, in one piece-happy to be safe at home.
I don’t have much more to say right now. Work’s coming along slowly, but things should pick up a lot this month as the funding for our girl’s hostel and food security projects comes in. I’m also getting started with teaching about fifteen secondary school graduates (such as health and agricultural workers, primary school teachers, and other younger adults looking to improve their lot in life) in the evenings. The idea is that I’ll help them with a few subjects, most likely Biology; Physical Science; and Math, so that they can retake the national exams next year, hopefully do better than the last time they took it, and then ideally move forward on their career path. It might be a little chaotic leaving all this behind for thirthy days when I come home next month, but what isn’t chaotic in Malawi?
"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err." Mahandas Gandhi
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Zithunzi
This one will be relatively short. I'll include a few pictures here for those of you that prefer to be entertained visually. As a reminder, if you want to look at all of my Malawian pictures, then check out the link to the left. Apparently this isn't obvious to some of you, but the password is "malawi" and the username is my email: bjvonasek@gmail.com.
Our first snap (Malawians call them "snaps" instead of "pictures," this makes me chuckle to myself) shows Bryan's new preferred way of cooking. The local name for this contraption is mbaula. It's designed to be used with charcoal, and that's exactly how I use it. As an environmentally conscious Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm supposed to be against the idea of using charcoal to cook my food. Supposedly, it uses up significantly more firewood than using firewood directly, and because deforestation is such a problem here in Malawi, we're supposed to look out for this kind of stuff. But I like it. Why? One, it's cheap. I bought all of the charcoal in the two bags below for 1000 kwacha (about USD7).
Two, once you get it started, it doesn't produce any smoke. This gives many advantages over cooking with firewood: you can cook (or warm yourself) indoors, no smoke in you eyes, you don't reek of smoke after cooking dinner. Three, it doesn't make black soot all over the bottom of your pots and pans (this is a pain when your cooking with firewood). Four, a little bit of charcoal goes a long way. For this reason, I especially like charcoal for cooking beans since they often seem to need all afternoon to cook. In sum, I say, "Srew the environment, and give me my charcoal." I don't feel so guilty when I contemplate my miniscule carbon footprint. (Guess what-I burn my trash too- good thing there's not very much of it.)
Our next snap here is Bryan's new house. Compared to the one at Chadabwa, this one is very nice. When the wind blows, I'm no longer aftaid that the roof's going to blow off. There's electricity inside (although its not completely reliable and blackouts are frequent). There's a sink,
Our first snap (Malawians call them "snaps" instead of "pictures," this makes me chuckle to myself) shows Bryan's new preferred way of cooking. The local name for this contraption is mbaula. It's designed to be used with charcoal, and that's exactly how I use it. As an environmentally conscious Peace Corps Volunteer, I'm supposed to be against the idea of using charcoal to cook my food. Supposedly, it uses up significantly more firewood than using firewood directly, and because deforestation is such a problem here in Malawi, we're supposed to look out for this kind of stuff. But I like it. Why? One, it's cheap. I bought all of the charcoal in the two bags below for 1000 kwacha (about USD7).Two, once you get it started, it doesn't produce any smoke. This gives many advantages over cooking with firewood: you can cook (or warm yourself) indoors, no smoke in you eyes, you don't reek of smoke after cooking dinner. Three, it doesn't make black soot all over the bottom of your pots and pans (this is a pain when your cooking with firewood). Four, a little bit of charcoal goes a long way. For this reason, I especially like charcoal for cooking beans since they often seem to need all afternoon to cook. In sum, I say, "Srew the environment, and give me my charcoal." I don't feel so guilty when I contemplate my miniscule carbon footprint. (Guess what-I burn my trash too- good thing there's not very much of it.)Our next snap here is Bryan's new house. Compared to the one at Chadabwa, this one is very nice. When the wind blows, I'm no longer aftaid that the roof's going to blow off. There's electricity inside (although its not completely reliable and blackouts are frequent). There's a sink,toilet, and shower (but no running water, we're expecting that sometime within the next decade). All in all, it’s handsome and sturdy, just like the one living inside. However, I’m still worried about the upcoming rainy season because I’ve heard that the roof leaks a lot, but we’ll see what happens.
I’ve should have shown a picture of this a long time ago, but here it is now. This is one of my most prized possessions (though it’s not really mine, I’ve have to return it to Peace Corps whenever I finish my service (if ever?)). Its handsome and sturdy, just like the one that rides it (did I already use that line?). Now that I’m not stuck at school all day, I’m riding it a lot, and I have become attached to it. I wash it religiously every Saturday or Sunday. Its been very reliable; it only failed me once when the old freewheel stopped cooperating last year and I had to push it home four miles. Most Malawians are very confused by the height of the seat, and I always fail to explain to them about the leverage of a fully extended leg.
I’ve should have shown a picture of this a long time ago, but here it is now. This is one of my most prized possessions (though it’s not really mine, I’ve have to return it to Peace Corps whenever I finish my service (if ever?)). Its handsome and sturdy, just like the one that rides it (did I already use that line?). Now that I’m not stuck at school all day, I’m riding it a lot, and I have become attached to it. I wash it religiously every Saturday or Sunday. Its been very reliable; it only failed me once when the old freewheel stopped cooperating last year and I had to push it home four miles. Most Malawians are very confused by the height of the seat, and I always fail to explain to them about the leverage of a fully extended leg."The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him." Carlos Casteneda
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Mtako Wowawa
Last post I promised to give ya’ll a brief about what I’m doing with my time now that I’m at Mitundu. OK, here it is. Let’s start with work:
These past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time on my bike sweating, getting sunburnt, and covering my khaki pants in dust while moving around the area meeting different groups and trying to get a sense of what kind of NGO and governmental assistance is already going on in the area and to find out where I can help. In this area, which I can generally call Mitundu (although the geographical scope of my work has already gone well beyond the general area of Mitundu (good thing my bike’s and I are both in good shape)), there are a handful of small, semi-competent community-based organizations (CBOs) that have the general purpose of getting funding from the government and other larger NGOs (i.e. UNICEF, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, etc.) and then use this funding to help orphans, elderly, and the sick in a variety of ways. Throughout the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Malawi, these CBOs have a reputation for giving, at most, half of the assistance they claim to be giving and using, at most, half of the money that has been given to them for the purposes it was intended for. It’s easy to call this corruption and theft, but I’ve come to understand that this lack of monetary efficiency (I’ll have to go into this in further detail another time, but in short…) is do to many complicated factors such as disinterest, incompetency, and laziness by the donors themselves; a culture of skimming a little money off the top since you (the worker at the CBO) are usually almost as poor as the people you intend to help; and a general disorganization and lack of understanding between all parties involved. I’ve come to realize that not all of the blame can be put on the CBOs that are “misusing” the money.
Anyhow, during my first two years here, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to these CBOs, and now I am working with them on a daily basis. So far (keep in mind that I haven’t gotten very far yet), its become clear to me that the people working at these CBOs have good intentions and most of them actually do good work, but the general issues they have include a lack of applicable experience, guidance, and knowledge in the area of development and assisting needy people. I’m clearly over generalizing here, but life (not to mention writing blog posts that can be read in less than ten minutes and don’t put your reader to sleep) is so much easier when we over generalize. What I’m trying to get at here are two things. One: I will have a difficult time here working with these people IF (notice: IF) I find that they are more interested in skimming off the top and exploiting donors than helping people and promoting development. Two: I should try to focus on helping these organizations to become more efficient, competent, and honest.
I’ve got two projects started that look as though they may actually be successful, make me proud, and put a chip in the mountain of problems that we have here. To make things easier for me, I’ll just cut and paste the “Basic Description” of my first project, Mitundu Area PLHIV Food Security Project (keep in mind that PLHIV stands for “people living with HIV” and OVC stands for “orphans and vulnerable children”):
This project was initiated by the Grace Foundation PLHIV Support Group, requesting help for funding of farming inputs to provide food security for the upcoming year. Since the initial planning stages, the project has expanded to include five other PLHIV Support Groups in the Mitundu Area.
The basic plan is to plant a total of 12 acres of land. Three quarters of the land will be planted with maize inter-cropped with beans, and the other quarter will be planted with soya beans. The maize, beans, and half of the soya beans will be divided up between the PLHIV members at harvest. The other half of the soya beans will be sold at harvest and this money will be banked to provide funding for next years crop and to provide secondary school fees for OVC.
The training/education plan will include a coordinated effort between Mitundu Youth Organization (MYO), agricultural agents, and the Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). These PLHIV support groups are all affiliated with MYO, which is a 10-year-old CBO registered with the National Youth Council of Malawi. MYO is also the work site for the PCV responsible for this project. MYO will be responsible for assisting the PCV with field visits, assisting the PCV with communication with the PLHIV, and using these PLHIV support groups to help with community awareness and the importance of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT). There are four agricultural agents in the area, and they have agreed to help us in any way needed. We have asked them about talking to the group about sustainable farming methods and accompanying us on monthly inspections of the land that is under cultivation. The PCV will be responsible for developing a business plan with various PLHIV groups, encouraging and training the PLHIV in processes to add value to their cash crops, and providing advice, especially in the area of financial management, to ensure that this project is sustainable with no additional donations in the future.
Obviously, this is a farming community, and most of these members are farmers who know their land, the weather conditions, and how to care for crops maize, beans, and soya beans. That along with the technical help of the agricultural agents gives this project a high likelihood of success.
We are requesting VAST Grant funding of $1420.67. The PLHIV groups’ contributions of in-kind and cash have a value of $2204.00. That is a 61% community contribution. Therefore, the total budget for this project is $3624.67. The time line of this project is for the growing season of November 2010-April 2011.
Compared to most projects done by CBOs, NGOs, and the government itself, this is simple and straightforward. Early on in my service, I didn’t really like the idea of handing out money (or things that are bought with money, such as fertilizer, seeds, bags of cement, etc.) to people in this manner. In my short time here, I’ve come to realize that many (dare I say “most”) development projects (from large scale things such as USAID funding the construction of multimillion dollar highway to small scale things such as the construction of a four thousand dollar community library) never get completed, don’t get used for their intended purpose, or are so poorly managed that most of the materials get stolen or never used at all (At this point I feel like I should sincerely apologize for the negative tone of this post. I’m just letting the world know what I see here. Please keep in mind that I don’t go around cursing and yelling at everyone all day, but I am actually very happy, and I strongly believe that my presence here is having a positive effect on the people I live and work with). After seeing these things, one would assume that I am now less inclined to search for donations to do God knows what. There are plenty of things that I could do with my time that wouldn’t require funding. I could teach at the school like I have been doing the past few years. I could do sorely needed book keeping trainings for the local businesspeople. I could go around preaching about condoms, sleeping under a mosquito net, and farming without fertilizer. But I’ve put a string of ideas into my head these past few months that help me to justify what I’m doing:
1) This area is going to continue to get lots of aid money for a long time.
2) That aid money will continue to be mismanaged for a long time.
3) Bryan is awesome because he works with the beneficiaries of this aid money directly, he can kind of communicate with them in their local language, and he works his ass off.
4) This aid money will be best put to use towards projects that are managed by Bryan.
5) Therefore, Bryan should try to get his hands on some of this aid money and put it to good use.
So I’ve been riding my bike around a lot lately trying to get all of these PLHIV groups on the same page and prepared so that starting around December we can start using this fertilizer and seed to produce a lot of food. This food (if God (please pray for Him to allow these things so that I don’t look like a fool) allows the rain to fall in good amounts and in good time, keeps our fields disease and pest free, and encourages thieves to stay away from our harvest) should feed these 105 PLHIV, whom will be doing the farming, and their respective families for about half of the upcoming year. In addition to this, they will be farming their own land so HOPEFULLY (notice: HOPEFULLY) they will have more than enough food this upcoming year. A PLHIV, or anyone for that manner, has a much better standard of living when they don’t have to deal with chronic malnutrition, which most of these people and their families have been dealing with all of their lives.
The other big project that I’m working on doesn’t entail handing out money and other nice things such as fertilizer for free, but instead it is centered on loans. One of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers has been working with a local private financing agency to give small business loans (we like to use the lingo “micro-loans”) to small groups of struggling women in rural areas. Last year they started with just a few groups, and they were very successful, with 100% payback on the loans. Due to this success, they are looking at expanding the project. I managed to talk these guys into including Mitundu in their area of expansion, they agreed, and now were getting started.
Again, they want to start small, with two groups of about 13 women each. We will start with six days of business trainings and forming cohesive groups. Then the loans will be distributed, the businesses will begin, and finally the groups will pay back the loans. Micro-loan projects such as this have been successful in the developing areas of Southeast Asia, and they’re just starting to catch on in Sub-Saharan Africa (less so in Malawi-but it’s exciting to be on the cutting edge of something). The micro-loans are centered on the idea of using social and group pressure to encourage honesty and swift repayment of the loans. Simply put, if someone in the group fails to pay back their loan, then the rest of the group has to pick up the slack. The defaulter then has to continuously deal with their own shame since the groups are formed so that all members know each other well and come from nearby communities. The loans are small (somewhere between 30 and 100 dollars) and so are the businesses they are intended to start (such as selling doughnuts, fish, or freezies at the local market). The interest on the loans is also very small (3%). The Lilongwe based company that is providing these micro-loans already makes plenty of money, and this it like a charitable side project in which they will be completely satisfied if the investment just breaks even. To be honest, I probably won’t have a large involvement in all of this once we get it going. They already have a few guys that do a great job with the training and advising of the groups, and all of the funding will come from this Malawian (for-profit) company. I just kind of encouraged them to come out here and help us, and now I just have to put the groups together and let them know that help is on the way. The guy that’s in charge of all this beams when he talks about how honest and hard working these desperately poor women are. His other “real” clients who receive the big loans are constantly late on payments and defaulting, but these women that he has just started working with seize this opportunity and don’t mess it up. Lately, he’s been hearing a lot of stories about how the women and their families didn’t have any money for food and basic needs the previous year, but since receiving the micro-loans and getting a simple, well-run business going, they have enough to get by and live respectable lives. I’m very excited about all of this, and I think it will also work well here, but time will tell.
In addition to these two big projects, I’m also working on some other stuff on the side. The volunteer that was here in Mitundu before me had to finish her service a few months early, and she was helping the local secondary school build a small science laboratory and didn’t have time to finish the project before her service ended. I offered to take things over for her, which hasn’t been a big deal since most of the work is already done. I just have to check on things a few times a week to collect receipts and make sure that stuff isn’t stolen. Plus, I’ll get to take pictures of the project when it is all done.
Perhaps you remember that girl’s hostel that I’ve been trying to get funding for since the beginning of last year. Well, I still working on that, jumping through hoops and continually landing on my face. However, I think (pray) that we’ve finally found funding so that the project can be completed in a reasonable manner. The district government has already helped us out with about a quarter of the needed materials (things such as cement, iron sheets, nails, door frames, etc.), and we agreed in a meeting last weekend that we will start construction in the next two weeks. We will start with the materials that have already been donated. It’s still on Bryan’s shoulders to find money to buy the other three quarters of what’s needed. But we’re not worried because Bryan usually pulls through.
As for the rest of my working days, I spend my time at the Youth Organization office talking with people, talking with my co-workers about other projects we want to work on in the next year, showing them how to use cool shortcuts on Microsoft Word and Excel, getting my butt kicked at chess, and writing blog posts.
Outside of work (there hasn’t actually been a lot of this time), I’m reading a lot, watching episodes of 30 Rock on my new computer (Thanks Mom. The keys get dirty a lot faster in dusty Africa so I can’t call it “new” for much longer.), working in my garden, chatting with the endless number of interesting people in Mitundu, and cooking dinner (this takes up a lot of time, time that I didn’t have to budget for when I was at Chadabwa and had someone to do it for me).
I’ll end here. Don’t be shy to tell me what you want to hear about by posting on the comments page. I do look forward to reading those, and if you don’t tell me what you want to hear I will just babble on like I have been doing for the past two years (but perhaps that hasn’t been all that bad). BTW, I still plan to be around during Xmas, and I’m excited to see you all.
These past few weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time on my bike sweating, getting sunburnt, and covering my khaki pants in dust while moving around the area meeting different groups and trying to get a sense of what kind of NGO and governmental assistance is already going on in the area and to find out where I can help. In this area, which I can generally call Mitundu (although the geographical scope of my work has already gone well beyond the general area of Mitundu (good thing my bike’s and I are both in good shape)), there are a handful of small, semi-competent community-based organizations (CBOs) that have the general purpose of getting funding from the government and other larger NGOs (i.e. UNICEF, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, etc.) and then use this funding to help orphans, elderly, and the sick in a variety of ways. Throughout the developing world, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Malawi, these CBOs have a reputation for giving, at most, half of the assistance they claim to be giving and using, at most, half of the money that has been given to them for the purposes it was intended for. It’s easy to call this corruption and theft, but I’ve come to understand that this lack of monetary efficiency (I’ll have to go into this in further detail another time, but in short…) is do to many complicated factors such as disinterest, incompetency, and laziness by the donors themselves; a culture of skimming a little money off the top since you (the worker at the CBO) are usually almost as poor as the people you intend to help; and a general disorganization and lack of understanding between all parties involved. I’ve come to realize that not all of the blame can be put on the CBOs that are “misusing” the money.
Anyhow, during my first two years here, I didn’t have a lot of exposure to these CBOs, and now I am working with them on a daily basis. So far (keep in mind that I haven’t gotten very far yet), its become clear to me that the people working at these CBOs have good intentions and most of them actually do good work, but the general issues they have include a lack of applicable experience, guidance, and knowledge in the area of development and assisting needy people. I’m clearly over generalizing here, but life (not to mention writing blog posts that can be read in less than ten minutes and don’t put your reader to sleep) is so much easier when we over generalize. What I’m trying to get at here are two things. One: I will have a difficult time here working with these people IF (notice: IF) I find that they are more interested in skimming off the top and exploiting donors than helping people and promoting development. Two: I should try to focus on helping these organizations to become more efficient, competent, and honest.
I’ve got two projects started that look as though they may actually be successful, make me proud, and put a chip in the mountain of problems that we have here. To make things easier for me, I’ll just cut and paste the “Basic Description” of my first project, Mitundu Area PLHIV Food Security Project (keep in mind that PLHIV stands for “people living with HIV” and OVC stands for “orphans and vulnerable children”):
This project was initiated by the Grace Foundation PLHIV Support Group, requesting help for funding of farming inputs to provide food security for the upcoming year. Since the initial planning stages, the project has expanded to include five other PLHIV Support Groups in the Mitundu Area.
The basic plan is to plant a total of 12 acres of land. Three quarters of the land will be planted with maize inter-cropped with beans, and the other quarter will be planted with soya beans. The maize, beans, and half of the soya beans will be divided up between the PLHIV members at harvest. The other half of the soya beans will be sold at harvest and this money will be banked to provide funding for next years crop and to provide secondary school fees for OVC.
The training/education plan will include a coordinated effort between Mitundu Youth Organization (MYO), agricultural agents, and the Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). These PLHIV support groups are all affiliated with MYO, which is a 10-year-old CBO registered with the National Youth Council of Malawi. MYO is also the work site for the PCV responsible for this project. MYO will be responsible for assisting the PCV with field visits, assisting the PCV with communication with the PLHIV, and using these PLHIV support groups to help with community awareness and the importance of voluntary counseling and testing (VCT). There are four agricultural agents in the area, and they have agreed to help us in any way needed. We have asked them about talking to the group about sustainable farming methods and accompanying us on monthly inspections of the land that is under cultivation. The PCV will be responsible for developing a business plan with various PLHIV groups, encouraging and training the PLHIV in processes to add value to their cash crops, and providing advice, especially in the area of financial management, to ensure that this project is sustainable with no additional donations in the future.
Obviously, this is a farming community, and most of these members are farmers who know their land, the weather conditions, and how to care for crops maize, beans, and soya beans. That along with the technical help of the agricultural agents gives this project a high likelihood of success.
We are requesting VAST Grant funding of $1420.67. The PLHIV groups’ contributions of in-kind and cash have a value of $2204.00. That is a 61% community contribution. Therefore, the total budget for this project is $3624.67. The time line of this project is for the growing season of November 2010-April 2011.
Compared to most projects done by CBOs, NGOs, and the government itself, this is simple and straightforward. Early on in my service, I didn’t really like the idea of handing out money (or things that are bought with money, such as fertilizer, seeds, bags of cement, etc.) to people in this manner. In my short time here, I’ve come to realize that many (dare I say “most”) development projects (from large scale things such as USAID funding the construction of multimillion dollar highway to small scale things such as the construction of a four thousand dollar community library) never get completed, don’t get used for their intended purpose, or are so poorly managed that most of the materials get stolen or never used at all (At this point I feel like I should sincerely apologize for the negative tone of this post. I’m just letting the world know what I see here. Please keep in mind that I don’t go around cursing and yelling at everyone all day, but I am actually very happy, and I strongly believe that my presence here is having a positive effect on the people I live and work with). After seeing these things, one would assume that I am now less inclined to search for donations to do God knows what. There are plenty of things that I could do with my time that wouldn’t require funding. I could teach at the school like I have been doing the past few years. I could do sorely needed book keeping trainings for the local businesspeople. I could go around preaching about condoms, sleeping under a mosquito net, and farming without fertilizer. But I’ve put a string of ideas into my head these past few months that help me to justify what I’m doing:
1) This area is going to continue to get lots of aid money for a long time.
2) That aid money will continue to be mismanaged for a long time.
3) Bryan is awesome because he works with the beneficiaries of this aid money directly, he can kind of communicate with them in their local language, and he works his ass off.
4) This aid money will be best put to use towards projects that are managed by Bryan.
5) Therefore, Bryan should try to get his hands on some of this aid money and put it to good use.
So I’ve been riding my bike around a lot lately trying to get all of these PLHIV groups on the same page and prepared so that starting around December we can start using this fertilizer and seed to produce a lot of food. This food (if God (please pray for Him to allow these things so that I don’t look like a fool) allows the rain to fall in good amounts and in good time, keeps our fields disease and pest free, and encourages thieves to stay away from our harvest) should feed these 105 PLHIV, whom will be doing the farming, and their respective families for about half of the upcoming year. In addition to this, they will be farming their own land so HOPEFULLY (notice: HOPEFULLY) they will have more than enough food this upcoming year. A PLHIV, or anyone for that manner, has a much better standard of living when they don’t have to deal with chronic malnutrition, which most of these people and their families have been dealing with all of their lives.
The other big project that I’m working on doesn’t entail handing out money and other nice things such as fertilizer for free, but instead it is centered on loans. One of my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers has been working with a local private financing agency to give small business loans (we like to use the lingo “micro-loans”) to small groups of struggling women in rural areas. Last year they started with just a few groups, and they were very successful, with 100% payback on the loans. Due to this success, they are looking at expanding the project. I managed to talk these guys into including Mitundu in their area of expansion, they agreed, and now were getting started.
Again, they want to start small, with two groups of about 13 women each. We will start with six days of business trainings and forming cohesive groups. Then the loans will be distributed, the businesses will begin, and finally the groups will pay back the loans. Micro-loan projects such as this have been successful in the developing areas of Southeast Asia, and they’re just starting to catch on in Sub-Saharan Africa (less so in Malawi-but it’s exciting to be on the cutting edge of something). The micro-loans are centered on the idea of using social and group pressure to encourage honesty and swift repayment of the loans. Simply put, if someone in the group fails to pay back their loan, then the rest of the group has to pick up the slack. The defaulter then has to continuously deal with their own shame since the groups are formed so that all members know each other well and come from nearby communities. The loans are small (somewhere between 30 and 100 dollars) and so are the businesses they are intended to start (such as selling doughnuts, fish, or freezies at the local market). The interest on the loans is also very small (3%). The Lilongwe based company that is providing these micro-loans already makes plenty of money, and this it like a charitable side project in which they will be completely satisfied if the investment just breaks even. To be honest, I probably won’t have a large involvement in all of this once we get it going. They already have a few guys that do a great job with the training and advising of the groups, and all of the funding will come from this Malawian (for-profit) company. I just kind of encouraged them to come out here and help us, and now I just have to put the groups together and let them know that help is on the way. The guy that’s in charge of all this beams when he talks about how honest and hard working these desperately poor women are. His other “real” clients who receive the big loans are constantly late on payments and defaulting, but these women that he has just started working with seize this opportunity and don’t mess it up. Lately, he’s been hearing a lot of stories about how the women and their families didn’t have any money for food and basic needs the previous year, but since receiving the micro-loans and getting a simple, well-run business going, they have enough to get by and live respectable lives. I’m very excited about all of this, and I think it will also work well here, but time will tell.
In addition to these two big projects, I’m also working on some other stuff on the side. The volunteer that was here in Mitundu before me had to finish her service a few months early, and she was helping the local secondary school build a small science laboratory and didn’t have time to finish the project before her service ended. I offered to take things over for her, which hasn’t been a big deal since most of the work is already done. I just have to check on things a few times a week to collect receipts and make sure that stuff isn’t stolen. Plus, I’ll get to take pictures of the project when it is all done.
Perhaps you remember that girl’s hostel that I’ve been trying to get funding for since the beginning of last year. Well, I still working on that, jumping through hoops and continually landing on my face. However, I think (pray) that we’ve finally found funding so that the project can be completed in a reasonable manner. The district government has already helped us out with about a quarter of the needed materials (things such as cement, iron sheets, nails, door frames, etc.), and we agreed in a meeting last weekend that we will start construction in the next two weeks. We will start with the materials that have already been donated. It’s still on Bryan’s shoulders to find money to buy the other three quarters of what’s needed. But we’re not worried because Bryan usually pulls through.
As for the rest of my working days, I spend my time at the Youth Organization office talking with people, talking with my co-workers about other projects we want to work on in the next year, showing them how to use cool shortcuts on Microsoft Word and Excel, getting my butt kicked at chess, and writing blog posts.
Outside of work (there hasn’t actually been a lot of this time), I’m reading a lot, watching episodes of 30 Rock on my new computer (Thanks Mom. The keys get dirty a lot faster in dusty Africa so I can’t call it “new” for much longer.), working in my garden, chatting with the endless number of interesting people in Mitundu, and cooking dinner (this takes up a lot of time, time that I didn’t have to budget for when I was at Chadabwa and had someone to do it for me).
I’ll end here. Don’t be shy to tell me what you want to hear about by posting on the comments page. I do look forward to reading those, and if you don’t tell me what you want to hear I will just babble on like I have been doing for the past two years (but perhaps that hasn’t been all that bad). BTW, I still plan to be around during Xmas, and I’m excited to see you all.
"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." Nelson Mandela
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