SOME TIME IN MID-JULY . . .

Sunday. Winter has arrived in Chipata Valley and brings with it several days of cold temperatures, gusty winds, and occasional grey, ominous skies. I hear thunder rumbling in the distance today, and the clouds threaten to spill big drops of rain. After several hours, the Valley remains dry and rain-free. Because of the cold, I stayed in my motel room and did some paper work. After two weeks of long weekends, I am ready to work vigorously and catch up on delays in my work. I missed two, self-imposed due dates because of office and personal distractions.
Last Thursday (9^th July), I presented the orientation workshop on the Regional and Urban Planning Bill (2009) for Zambia. I wanted to get the planning staff ready for thinking about what the changes in administration, as required by the Bill, will mean for Chipata Municipal Council planning. The RUP Bill now calls for the production of local plans, which are detailed neighborhood plans to address urban problems. It also calls for sectoral local plans that will serve as planning guides for addressing critical problems in local districts, such as transportation development and unplanned settlements, waste management, etc. I understand that the planning department does not currently write plans; they have relied on the old town and country planning guide, which does not address critical factors afflicting Chipata District. As such, I am thinking about how to best approach the comprehensive planning training planned for August and whether or not to include guidelines on writing urban plans in the training.

The workshop coincided with a Public Works Development Committee (PWDC) meeting, but enough staff attended, which included two people from the Provincial Planning Authority, to make it worthwhile. We also had a pretty good discussion after the orientation. People asked specific questions about elements of the Bill and I felt that we as a team were able to navigate our way through the fuzziness to see clear lines.
Volunteering, I am discovering, is also a collaborative process. Although I have training in some of the capacity needs, I am not an expert in all of them. One example is the ArcGIS training handbook I compiled to respond to the skills need for about three of the planning staff. Although I have been trained on ArcGIS, I am not an expert on database building and have not used the software in seven years. Thus, I need the assistance of a volunteer better at it than I, which forces me to seek out a GIZ volunteer because GIZ tends to bring GIS technicians to Zambia.

Monday. I bound the Local Area Plan for Magazine Squatter Compound today and included the minutes and illustrations to complete the required paperwork. This maneuver follows the guidelines for area plan production under the RUP Bill. I thought adhering to the guidelines was a good way to acclimate the planning staff to the planning practices desired by the Bill and to start new planning habits. On Friday, 15^th June, 2011, I was scheduled to present it to counselors at the Hope Campus School, so I rushed to make 40 copies of the worksheets just so I could make it to my pick-up point on time (16h00) and not have to make the driver wait. However, as it turned out my ride never showed. I waited until 16h22, and then gave up, as the talk was supposed to end at 17h00. Such is the working life at the Council.

Tuesday. I gave a presentation on Integrated Land Use Design to introduce the concept and the models of ILUD to Chipata communities and to the planning department. I discussed some of the ILUD models – green infrastructure, greenways – but talked mainly about the use of permaculture in ILUD. I covered the main principles of permaculture and explained how it connects to ILUD in urban and regional planning. I anticipate incorporating ILUD concepts into the Integrated Development Plan, which I hope will become a central platform by which to think about urban design and environmental improvement in urban areas for the planning department of Chipata Municipal Council.

My presentation preceded the more detailed presentation on permaculture given by Edgar Banda, who received HIS permaculture training in Zimbabwe. I am happy to learn that permaculture teachings are making their way around the world, including sub-saharan Africa. Mr. Banda was quite knowledgeable and was able to give the participants in-depth knowledge about the historical foundation of permaculture and its central tenets and ethics of permaculture.

Friday. I finally finished the small grant for the Japanese Embassy due at the end of this month. Hectic and stressful, so stressful in fact that I ranted during the last few hours! I needed to hitch a ride to Lusaka and my only opportunity is next Monday, which means the grant truly had to be completed by today by 16h00 at the very latest. At least the bulk of the costs are listed in the bill of quantity and if we get the grant, the bill of quantity will be polished. Monday morning, I take off with Richard, a volunteer for GIZ (Germany) and company, for Lusaka and plan to be dropped off at the Japanese embassy. The following morning, I head straight for Lilongwe, Malawi with my passport in hand for a short, four to six day vacation, which I anticipate will refresh me and gear me up to face work, again.

With that, I leave you with a beautiful image of sunset that greets me as I descend into evening in my motel bed, and is the reason the fires of frustration in my heart cool into passive embers. 

Chipata setting

NACHOMA BWANJI IN JULY!

One day in June, SPAR supermarket did not open until 9:00 hours, which drove a wedge in the spoke of the wheel of my daily routines. At exactly 9:00 hours, I left my desk at the Council to seek out my daily coffee at SPAR, but it still hadn't opened. I went in search of the butcher because they too sold coffee there. I used to go there for coffee before SPAR opened, but there is no place to sit comfortably without flies buzzing around my nose and ears. Irritating to someone accustomed to sitting in fly-free cafes. Music is also often not to be found at the butchers. I realized, on the walk back to my office, butcher coffee in hand, how much SPAR filled a void in my life, in which daily trips to pleasant cafes in the Happy Valley had become such a daily norm. Sad to say, but I do crave for the cafe culture; if I had to live without it, I could adjust, but definitely with some difficulty. I also realized, from living in a community practically devoid of cafe culture, just how much independent coffee shops had become an important element of the compendium of daily pleasures in my life – things that one should not do without for too long, in my opinion.

May got me a bloody nose. One morning, I awoke with what I thought was a stuffed nose. To clear it, I got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and tore off a piece of toilet paper, and blew. The blood was bright against the white paper. I blew again, and more blood came out. I began to panic because I couldn't remember how I could have gotten a bloody nose. I hadn't had bloody noses since I was a child. I racked my brain, trying to remember the previous night. I knew, though, that my evening ritual of one glass of wine or beer would not have produced the catastrophe regarding my bloody nose facing me. My first guess is I must have been clobbered on the head. What other reason could there be for my gushing nose? Eventually, the blood cleared and I called my colleague. His reaction was nonplussed. I asked him if he was at the motel last night because if he was, then he might have seen something. “No”, he answered, and then asked, “so you are not coming in?”, as if I had just told him that I had caught a simple cold.

Being clobbered on the head could have been the only cause, in my opinion, as it has happened before in Zambia, while my back was turned. I have a suspicion about who the culprit was, this time and in previous times. This incident, as I have been learning, is merely one of the wacky events that have happened to me. Women are not treated with dignity here, but I have also gradually learned that the circumstances are worse if the woman looks Chinese or is Chinese. I have been told by Zambians that the Chinese are not looked upon with high regard here because of the problem with the low pay of Zambian workers in the Chinese-owned mines. What, though, does that have to do with me? Certainly, on one side of the argument, there are the feelings of resentment because of labor exploitation, but on the other side, there is the gross stereotyping of black haired, Chinese-looking women, who have nothing to do with the mines, let alone authorizing the wge levels of miners. That would be me. Anyway, I am not here as a labor organizer, but as an urban planner.

The bloody nose incident is about as wacky as the fact that I am still living at Chipata Motel, where the food is the same, and I can't control my food intake. I have to tiptoe around one of the cooks, who works seven days a week, because he might take out his resentments on me. This is the cook, whom I might have mentioned in a previous blog, who saturated my relish with salt even though I asked him to not put it in my food (the cause of my stomach pains) and the one, who has consistently served my food at least two hours, sometimes three hours after I have requested it.

My life is not my own here. The agreement about living accommodations, as I was told, was that I would live with other volunteers, possibly by myself, but definitely in my own room. At 41, I would like to have such a luxury, but in Zambia, such agreements are apparently not honored. The failure to honor agreements also spill over into other areas of business in Chipata, as complaints from various Zambians have quite succinctly informed me. And, the bicycle that volunteers living more than 2 kilometers from the place of work are supposed to get, according to the agreement between the partner organization and VSO Zambia, has not materialized four months after the start of my volunteer period.

Which means, I have to spend money on a bicycle, taken out of my monthly allowance of ZK2.2 million (equivalent to US$ 425).

At least I feel very productive in my work. On May 29^th, I submitted my quarterly report to my programme manager and in looking it over, I realized that I had accomplished all of my goals for the first quarter. The upgrade plan for the squatter compound is complete and was presented to representatives from the development committee in the compound on June 9^th. I have set out to follow the policies of the new Regional and Urban Planning Bill, which requires local authorities to allow stakeholders to review an urban or community plan for 30 days. Once more comments are given to me, I can incorporate them into the final draft of the plan. In July, I will be submitting a grant to the Japanese Embassy. The funds from the grant will pay for upgrading the marketplace.Also in July, I plan to go out with the socioeconomic planners to the compound and begin the outreach programs regarding land laws and other regulations.

While my personal life here is very unpredictable, my professional life is pleasantly sailing along and I am accomplishing what I intended to do here, which is to share skills, build capacity, and help prepare the planning department transition towards the Integrated Development Plan.

Just a reminder to those reading my blog, I am fundraising all year for this placement. Please contribute $10, which is easy to do through “My Fundraising Page”, which can be accessed on the left of this blog. Zikomo kwambiri! (I'm learning very easy phrases in Nyanja).