Role: Global Citizen

Location: Calgary, AB, Canada

Duration: September 2007 – April 2008

Your Organization – Engineers Without Borders Canada

Engineers Without Borders is a non-profit Canadian international development organization. . EWB’s overseas objective is to promote human development through strengthening already existing organizations. EWB sends Canadian volunteers to Western and Southern Africa to partner with local organizations. EWB is striving to make Canada a model global citizen for how the world responds to the challenge of global poverty. Choosing to reduce poverty will only happen when people understand the connections between their daily actions and the lives of people in developing communities. That is why EWB is raising awareness among the general population and challenging:

• Canadians to make pro-poor decisions
• Our government to improve their policies
• Canadian corporations to adopt fair and humane practices

Your Placement – Global Citizen

Specifically, I will be based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada where I will be working with the University of Calgary Chapter and the Calgary Professional Chapter on the outreach and engagement component of their activities. This community generally has the passion to drive change in Canada, however, there is a lack of connection between In-Canada activities and Overseas impact. There also appears to be challenges in engaging people who generally care, but are distracted by other activities.

    The Match

      1. This placement is located in a booming city of approximately 1 million people. I will be working alongside some of the best and passionate champions of development that Calgary has to offer to maximize the impact – an experience which I am looking forward to.

      2. This placement, since it is mainly focused on Outreach and Engagment, requires someone who has strong communication skills – something which I have experience with (but still much to learn).

      3. This placement is going to be a little bit challenging because I will be working on this placement over 8 months to engage people on broader development perspectives and how to translate that into daily actionable items. I will also be partnered with next year’s Junior Fellows to prepare them for their placement.

As this experience is coming to an end, a new one is emerging set with new challenges, new opportunities, new solutions and creating new relationships. This new placement takes me to places and provides me with opportunities that 2 years ago, I could only imagine that it was possible. As a result, it’s an opportunity and a placement that I couldn’t turn down.

My next placement is set in a country that has had a history of corruption, a waning government, an impeding energy crisis, a growing disparity between the ‘wealthy’ and the ‘poor’ and a different culture that would require new skills to engage and empower people to believe that change is possible.

The customs and language are not far from what I’ve already learned, the climate and geography are easy to acclimatize to and the people whom I’ll be working closely with, from what I hear are one of a kind development ‘champions’ if you may.

The biggest challenge that I have identified with my next placement is:

1. Apathy – The majority of the population, from what I know is more on the apathetic side. I found that the citizens, although really warm and inviting, have a problem of being distracted from all the materials in life, having challenges focusing on issues that really matter, believing that they have a voice to call out for change.

2. Balance – This is more of a personal challenge. Balance to the cause in the next chapter of this placement will be a little more challenging especially when faced with something as challenging and as difficult as apathy. Balancing my personal life with ways to overcome apathy, well, there seems to be a very fine line that separates the two. There’s also a lot of change occurring in my personal life with the post-secondary chapter of my life coming to a close end.

However, I’m excited for the next placement, being able to leverage what I have already learned as a Junior Fellow in Malawi and use it to the benefits for the next placement.

I suppose you’re feeling pretty anxious and sad that there’s a possibility that you will not be seeing me. However, I’ll be continuing this blog, documenting the joys and tribulations of volunteering in the next placement. Luckily for you though, my placement is in Calgary, Canada. Stay tuned for more updates.

On Friday, June 27^th, I arrived at the Guesthouse at 3:30pm from work. I dropped off my stuff (backpack with my laptop) to head to the market to pick up some gifts for the ladies of the village. The door was locked but the system was to leave the key in the cabinet in the common kitchen area (room 1,2,3,4,5). Coming back from the market at around 5:30, I found my fellow volunteer hanging out and we proceeded to chat for about 2 hours. When he decided to go for a run, I decided to get some work done on my laptop and lo and behold, my laptop along with the cord and adapter and $200USD was gone.

I reported it to the management and to the police but I was pretty upset, although it may have not seemed like it. Now I’m following up with the police as I’ll be in Lilongwe for the next 2 weeks to see what progress has been made. So far, I would like to believe that the police are doing their job, but it has been pretty difficult to track their progress. I mean, it seems to be my bad luck that everyday when I have visited them, they police officer in charge of my case is either not in yet or has knocked off and apparently, when I text them, they don’t text back. Bad luck or just screening the calls, who knows? I suppose I should just accept that chances of recovering the laptop are pretty low and that I should make the most out of the back-to-school deals.

Now the emotional part:

I’m on the slow road to recovery, finally accepting that laptops and money are pretty liquid and replaceable items. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it still sucks to have these things gone with my personal information, but it’s not the end of the world for me. I’ve learnt to deal with it pangono’pangono (slow by slow) but this circumstance has put a little bit of life into perspective.

For instance, say you were a farmer in rural Malawi and you hired someone to transport your entire tobacco yield to the auction floors in the big cities, only to find out that the transporter disappeared with all your tobacco, what would happen then? Or, if a hyena came in the middle of the night and took one of your biggest pigs into the bush and you were only able to recover a leg and the stomach, what would happen then? That’s some food for thought.

But I’ll admit that during my time here, I’ve had a pretty hard time trying to find poverty. I know, I thought that once I got here to the third poorest country in the world as defined by the UN Human Development Index, that I would see it everywhere I go. But instead, I had to really look hard at the circumstances and the situations surrounding me and in fact, had to have this sneaky theft occur for me to finally realize what poverty really is.

So my definition of poverty is based on vulnerability and opportunity. I, like the two very real situations described above (the first one is based on a farmer that one of my fellow JF, Tony had encountered, and the second is one that happened 2 nights ago to Mpanje, my neighbour/brother/uncle?) We were all vulnerable, all humans are vulnerable to something in some extent (my apologies for the vagueness of the comment) but we all have different opportunities. For instance, I have the opportunity to come home to recover these losses. I have opportunities to employment and earning a steady, fairly well paid income, cushioning these losses. The tobacco farmer has the opportunity to regrow his crop next season, but for this season, he has no income. Mpanje has the opportunity of waiting for his 19 piglets to grow big to the size of this pig (man, it was huge). But the questions still linger:

If someone steals all your tobacco, your goat, your maize crop, how would you go about recovering that? What types of systems or safety net could you use to cushion the losses? What effect would that have on your life for the next 6 months to a year?

Like I said before, I wouldn’t consider myself to be a victim, it’s pretty hard for me to accept that because to be a victim is to be powerless but I’m not really in a powerless situation. I have the ‘power’ to cushion these losses, but at the same time, I’m becoming a little more irritable and more curt when this happens, I’m becoming more cautious and weary of strangers, just generally, I don’t want this to happen again while I’m here.

It’s funny how one situation can influence your life.

A: “Hello?”

M: “Hello Annie”

A: “Hello Mpanje, how are you?”

M: “Very fine. Anne, a hyena took my pig! Very wonderful!”

A *slight confusion*: “I’m very sorry Mpanje, when did this happen?”

M: “Just right now. Malikhitcho, Strong and me, we went looking for the pig and we only found one leg and the stomach.”

A: “Very wonderful”

M: “Bye”

A *slightly confused*: “by…(Mpanje hangs up the phone)…e”

I waved goodbye to who once were strangers but became my family, my community and my friends for the last 3 months on Sunday. But before then, we had a formal ‘celebration’ with the Senior Chief for the region to send me off on my way. It consisted of the village (37 people) sitting together under the cool shade of the trees with the men and I sitting in the chairs. The ladies and children sat in on the mat. First, the Senior Group gave a speech along the lines of “Thank you very much for staying in the village, if you have any problems, please let us know, I’m very happy that you have stayed, please remember the problems faced by your family here.” Agogo (Grandfather) then gave a speech “Napiri, we are very happy to have received a visitor like yourself who have stayed with us here. I’m asking for your forgiveness if the children have touched or offended you in anyway. We’re very sorry for your going and wish you a good journey.” I gave my impromptu speech “Thank you everyone for allowing me the privilege to stay with your families. As you can see from my body, I have been kept very well. The children and the families here have been very hospitable and I have learnt much from all of you (like cooking nsima). I hope you stay very well in the villages and I can’t express how thankful I am for this experience and opportunity for working and living with you”…

We ate chicken and nsima for lunch and that was that ceremony.

I, of course, in the tradition of having a Foodfest annually, had to throw a Foodfest in the village. There was an entire goat, Irish potatoes, carrots, onions, biscuits, and fanta/sprite/coca. Let me just say that Mpanje is awesome. He helped me locate a goat for 3,500MK (about $30) and biked a total of 60km to get this goat for me! But you know, Charlie, my Cock. Well, we didn’t eat him after all, so he’s living a long and prosperous life in Mwansambo (to the dismay of my carnivorous friends).

Now: Three months later, I’m leaving the Gulugufe village, my eyes saturated with tears. I’d like to believe that it was from the dusty roads around the village, but honestly, the tears were from feeling pretty lost, having to leave my home, my family and friends. I had no idea what was going to happen with the relationships that I built with them or what their futures would bring. I couldn’t express my gratitude enough in Chichewa, the local language!

Part of EWB’s strategy is kind of like walking on the beach. When you walk by the water, you’re sure to leave a footprint, but when EWB walks, it is trying to lessen that development footprint so that the work that we do with our partner organizations is sustainable and continued. Have I achieved this?

I’ve focused on helping to advance TLC’s operations lessening that development footprint means that I have focused working with certain people in asking questions and providing suggestions (only after I ask for their suggestion). Right now, the work in the Monitoring and Evaluation side of things is on implementation and building habits. Credit recovery I think is being emphasized but it has a long way to go trying to overcome challenges such as free issues from the government and other NGO’s. (Who said free = good?)

But nonetheless, I’m wrapping up or exiting Malawi in three different areas of life:

–         Community – I’ve already described this in the previous post

–         Work – I’m going through that process now, producing recommendations based on my four month experience

–         In-Canada – I’m looking for strategies to help me reintegrate back into Canada and change some minds in Calgary.

Comments are always welcomed!

If you have been following this blog, you would have read a post called “So this is what Anne is working on and this is what Anne should be working on…” That situation has now changed to “this is what Anne was working on and this is what Anne is working on.” I came to the realization that my happiness is directly proportional to myself and to borrow the words of the wise “Be the change that you want to see” (Gandi) which speaks volumes on the changes to my work.

After learning a lot about the field work from my counterpart, Llewellyn, I was able to spend a week in the office about a month ago to learn about TLC’s operations in the “bigger picture” realm. Remembering what my job description should be, I did some digging to confirm the purpose of why I was to focus on these activities. Lo and behold, I found the information that I was looking for and immediately went to work on my impact plan.

In a nutshell, my impact plan looks like this:

1. Provide feedback directly from the field on the monitoring and evaluating tools that the EWB LTOV created before her contract expired. By working in the field with the monitoring and evaluating tools, I’m able to translate the lessons learnt in the field to the office. This way, the organization knows how successful their projects are and have information readily available. What’s important is gathering knowledge to know the direction of the organization as a whole and what type of impact it is having on their beneficiaries.

2. Provide feedback and strategies on loan repayment based on my field experiences on the Chia Lagoon Project, specifically focusing on treadle pump loan repayment. Loan repayment is important because, well, imagine you lent $100 to 10 of your acquaintances with the expectation of them paying you back in about 1 year’s time. At the end of the year and you only received about $4.26 in return from a total of 10 farmers. Exactly. My role here is to document some of the best practices to help increase the 4% repayment rate. What’s important to note is that TLC uses a revolving fund where the funds paid back are invested into the farmers again by providing more inputs (fertilizers, treadle pumps, seeds, etc.) If the loan repayment rate is low, it hinders the sustainability and the goodness of the revolving funds.

I would say that the work has been going quite smoothly. I’ve gathered data and information from the field coordinators working directly with treadle pumps and irrigation activities and I have also gathered information from farmers (let me tell you more about that in the next post!) I believe that I have the necessary information to write valid recommendations on both of the points above.

Anyway, the reason why I’m only focusing on two main areas is because 4 months is a very short time period for a volunteer to have significant impact. I realize that not all my ideas will be adopted by the organization, but hopefully, I’ll be able to have some impact on the organization’s capacity, which will help them monitor and evaluate their projects properly and efficiently and also help them recover some funds to help make the revolving funds sustainable.

I’ve just described the actions that I’ll take to have impact. In reality though, EWB focuses on building organization capacity which I’m currently doing by building key relationships within TLC. In these relationships, I hope to emphasize the importance of certain habits that will develop into long term benefits for TLC.

I’ve included pictures for your viewing pleasure. These snaps were taken from a recent TLC Field Coordinators training where all the Field Coodinators arrived in Lilongwe (about 50). At this meeting, I created the Monitoring and evaluating presentation and helped facilitate the loan repayment workshop. I have never attended an orientation meeting with such passionate ideas being thrown out there. I have never seen loan recovery issues being debated with such heated passion.

There was also 10 minutes spent at one point in time explaining the “Righty Tighty, Lefty Loosie” at the motorcycle maintenance workshop.

ps- your questions and comments are always welcomed

Summary

TLC works in irrigation during the winter or dry season in Malawi. Under irrigation, TLC deals with stream diversion and treadle pumps. Below is a description of field visits to both sites.

Field work – Treadle Pumps *Please use your imagination, my batteries were flat!*
After eating a breakfast of either rice, bread, sweet potatoes, or cassava and tea, I get dressed and wait for Llewellyn. Puuuutttputtttttttttttt. That’s the sound of his motorcycle when he arrives. We greet each other and I hop onto the back of his bike, ready to roll into the village (or villages) of the day. This one particular day, we visited about 5 treadle pump members, each in different clubs. The main purpose was to 1. encourage farmers to start paying their loans and 2. allow me to survey these farmers and ask questions about loan repayment so I can get a full comprehension of the obstacles to overcome.

The first farmer we visited – Krispin – Llewellyn and I are riding to this village only to find the Krispin in the dimba (garden) we ride through the bush on this narrow dirt path that’s bumpy and full of rocks. We ride for about 5km through the bush, but oh no! There’s a patch of buffalo beans that are growing on the sides of the roads! *side note: buffalo beans are not pleasant. They make you itch and itch and itch and the only way to stop itching is to scratch the hairs of these beans out from under your skin *wince in pain** Luckily, the wind was favouring us and was blowing the buffalo beans away from our path *breathe sigh of relief*

The road gets too steep downhill for the motorcycle so Llewellyn and I dismount and walk for about 100m until we reach the bank of a river. I look across the river with no clear understanding of how the farmers get across it… I mean, as a structural engineering student, shouldn’t there be a bridge or something? Or something is right.

We take off our shoes, socks and roll up our pants and walk across this river..except, we couldn’t walk directly across. We walked up stream for a while and then onto the river bank where the paprika plantation and treadle pump was located. Barefoot (hookworms anyone?), we survey the paprika field but the owner was kulibe (not there!)

Slightly disappointed, we walk back through a different path that required hiking through the paprika, tomato and bean garden with sharp point reeds (yes reeds! Schisotomasis anyone?) poking at my legs and we cross the river. Lo and behold, Krispin was waiting for us on the other side. I ask questions that Llewellyn translates and I get a pretty good response from him. We’re all satisfied and Llewellyn and I ride off into the afternoon heat to visit a handful of treadle pump farmers.

At the end of the day, I have gathered enough information to start making recommendations to help increase the loan recovery rate. I’m pretty sure too that the farmers now are at least aware of the loans and of the seriousness of the loans. It’s still pretty frustrating though when farmers are looking for free issues – something that they’ve been trained to look towards (ie. The government provides free treadle pumps and some other NGO’s as well)

River Diversion

I feel pretty terrible for my camera batteries having gone flat so I have included pictures of a stream diversion project (I also have video for when I come back home!)

After spending a night at Nkhotakota working on inputting and analyzing data for the conservation agriculture project, I took a ride to go to Lilongwe with one of the TLC staff members. Lo and behold, I ended up visiting a 11 hectare, 68 farmer in the club field where they used river diversion to irrigate their lands. Let me say that it was an impressive site. 11 hectares tilled all by hand is nothing short of unbelieveable.

In the big white SUV (yes, very typical of the development worker), there were 2 men from ASNAPP in Zambia, 2 staff from TLC, a Member of Parliament and of course, yours truly. It was interesting to have the MP come for the field visit too, I mean, the women were singing and dancing and the MP sings and dances too. Apparently, out of all of us in the vehicle, we all knew at least one other person in EWB. Either Malawi is very small or EWB is becoming pretty well known in the development sector.

Anyway, I hiked for 3 km along the canal which they dug on the mountainside by hand and almost slipped and fell into the abyss (or steep bush) more than a handful of times. But at the end, it was well worth the risk.

Through my eyes, although a little small and squinty at times, I’m not comfortable to say that I’ve seen Malawi. However, I am comfortable to say that I have captured certain snapshots through my lens of Malawi through my experiences in Lilongwe and in Gulugufe Village and the Mwansambo region. So through my eyes, here’s what I’ve seen:

• Bicycles are the new pick up trucks. I have seen strapped to a bicycle: Queen size solid wood bed frame; Wife, baby and toddler riding the back of the bicycle while the Husband is riding it; a full sized goat riding the handle bars; 100kgs of maize and/or peanuts; 7 foot timber planks strapped across, taking people out; 20 chickens strapped by their legs upside down onto the handle bars with about 20 more on the back; and last but not least, my luggage, me, and my backpack wedged onto the back of  a bicycle with the cyclist turning around every 5 km to let me know how heavy I am.
• Need a hand…or a head? Things I have seen carried on someone’s head: Basket of chickens; bale of second hand clothes; huge bundle of grass (about 3ft diameter and 7 ft long); bundles of firewood (I’m not talking about twigs, they’re tree trunks); 30L pail of water; bar of soap
• The women must be descendants of Wonder Woman. I swear, I don’t know how these women do it, but they manage to do it and it surprises me every time. They have a baby strapped to their backs (by baby, I mean child ranging from new born to 4 years) while pumping water from the borehole and then carrying a (insert item here) on their heads with a child on their back.
• KarateCHOPPPP! I’ve noticed a certain fondness for Asian Martial Arts movies.
• China has arrived. I learnt that about 40 years ago, China was invited to help develop Malawi by the then President and so came the rice, cabbage, turnips, clothing, but no chopsticks.