FINAL BLOG: MY YEAR IN REVIEW

The sun was beginning to set on the horizon. I could see the reddish tinge of the sun set against the powder blue-grey sky. The early dusk chill began to settle into my bones as I walked briskly across the native grasses towards Old Jim.

“Hi, could you tell me how to get to Old Jim”, I asked briskly to a fellow commuter peddling on his bicycle. 

“It’s that way, but you . . . “, he quickly glanced at the slippers casually strapped to my feet. “There’s a stream – you have to cross”. 

I nodded, thanked him, and plodded on.

The stream was actually a small creek, but my anxiousness to get across before the dark descended quietly onto the valley’s undulating landscape made the creek appear more ominous. To my eyes, the river gushed rather than gently rolled downhill, and as I crossed, I was too careful in balancing on the moss covered stones, which formed a trail across the gurgling water. I almost fell into the chilly water.

Once across, it occurred to me suddenly that there might be poisonous, dangerous snakes laying in silence between the tall, native grasses. I prayed quietly, feeling vulnerable in my slippers. I hoped the shuffling of my feet wouldn’t awaken any if they were indeed present. 

The shortcut turned out to be winding, dirt trails that eventually took me back to the main road; the shortcut turned out to be unnecessary, after all, as I got to Mr Banda’s house in more time than if I had used the proper route. Moreover, the roads after the turn off to get to his house all looked alike that I began to worry that I was lost – but then when I arrived at a small intersection, I looked to my left and saw the familiar hump and garden adjacent to his neighbor’s house signifying that I was in exactly the right place. 

When I arrived, he was just coming around his main house. Mr. Banda is building, using his meager monthly income to incrementally buy nails and bagged cement. He used the soil around his house to mold the bricks that would serve as the structure. He and his wife greeted me as a imposed on them. 

“Oh, hello, Camille.”

“Hi Mr. Banda”, I greeted, using the formal way to address a stranger in Zambia. I handed him the plastic bag of vegetables I purchased from the market stalls on Lundazi Road. Tomatoes, kale, the usual items purchased by poor, Zambian households. “I wanted to make sure you got these. Sorry about not buying the cassava – I was sick the last few days and wasn’t able to get back to the Saturday Market”.

The real reason was that my memory wasn’t functioning well; the flu had done me in and I was bedridden for a couple of days. Three days later, my mind was still fuzzy and I had trouble keeping track of my days.

We bade each other farewell, as I did my other colleagues at the Council, and promised to meet up if I ever returned to Zambia. 

The walk back to Chipata Motel didn’t feel as long. I returned to my room just as the last rays of sunlight sank into the red, dry soil of Chipata Valley and resumed packing, in preparation for my departure from Zambia. This day was my last in Chipata.

When I parted from Mr. Banda, I began to feel a little sad about leaving Zambia all together. It had been my home for a year, and even with all the aggravation that periodically migrated into my heart, I had discovered a home in Chipata and settled into the life there, somewhat, having developed friendships and acquaintances. Here I was again; having lived the full experience, I (as usual) recognized the familiar nostalgia that always hits me (to paraphrase an old cliché) like a ton of bricks as the end of the experience comes to a near. 

As a volunteer funded by CUSO International, I cannot really judge my work at the Council by interpersonal relationships, alone. Because the funds supporting my service were partially paid for by Canadian taxes, I have to judge my work also by what I accomplished for the Council based on the targets that the planning department had issued to me.

In reviewing this past year, I would assert that the year was a success. The integrated development plan was written and I fit the format to the specifications of the Regional Urban Planning Act as well as the wants of the planning staff. It had become clear to me that the planners wanted an urban planning guide, so I fashioned the language and the format of the IDP according to the needs of the planners so as to make the planning process as painless and uncomplicated as possible. 

Secondly, I completed the draft sectoral plan for unplanned settlements, which grew out of the local area plan written to upgrade the Magazine Squatter Compound. If everything was on my timeline and in my control, within a year, I would have signed the consent to legalize lands and started allocating land for community gardens, and worked with the social planners to develop a 3-year plan to saturate the houses with vegetable plots. As this was not my reality at the Council, I settled for a completed grant for building the market shelters, GPS coordinates of most features in the Compound to facilitate the mapping of the area, and the beginnings of a health outreach and food security program. It must also be pointed out that the work on the Compound had to bode well with the schedule of the other planners. Admittedly, I was a little selfish as far as pushing to get things done there.

In addition, I managed to include a few trainings into my otherwise mundane planning work load. The trainings helped to add spice to my professional life at the Council.

If I was unsuccessful in this placement, it was in failing to navigate through the politics of local government of Chipata District, which replicates the politics of governments everywhere. If you want to know what I mean by this, watch CNN or the local news coverage of your governments at all levels. Whatever you learn about in the news coverage also plays/played out in Chipata District. 

The difficulty for me was the balancing of political interests with public ones. I’m not sure it this skill is one that I will ever perfect. I prefer simply planning and letting the more skilled people to politic, while I play the puppet master in the wings, pulling the strings.

Another year, another experience well spent. Thank you, CUSO International, VSO Zambia, and Chipata Municipal Council!

Another fundraising reminder –

I will continue to raise money for CUSO International until my $2,000 goal is met. Hence, I will keep this blog open until I’m told by CUSO that the goal has been reached. Please continue to send in your $10 donations through the link to the right of my blogs or by check/money order. The instructions are written on the fundraising page. 

On that final request, I leave my readers with my favorite images of Chipata. These photos should explain to readers my sudden attachment to Africa. Thank you for staying tuned all year!

Posing with Naomi's children

Another photo with Naomi's children

Fish from the day's catch in Nkhata Bay, Malawi

Residents bathing in Lilongwe River not far from Mabuya Lodge

Musungu fruit - native to the Eastern Province (i think) - sweet and succulent. In a word, delicious.

A view of Lake Malawi from the Big Blue Start Backpackers

The Cewa Village in Katete from one angle

Children residing within the vicinity of Chipata center - eating a vsimbi fruit

One of Marco's students studying at his school in Magazine

Ngonis rehearsing for the Nc'wala Festival, which just passed

A scene of grain vendors taken when road tripping through Malawi

On the last leg of my return trip to Chipata from Nkhata Bay, Malawi

HOUSEHOLD FOOD SECURITY PILOT PROJECT

The dry, Savannah heat pulled me into SPAR during my lunch break on this day to snack on a mini-cadbury chocolate bar. The hot cup of coffee doesn’t solve the heat rash rising in my gut, a common occurrence with me in really hot weather, but the air conditioning in SPAR’s café corner, a popular hangout for foreigners, cools the hot, black liquid to make sipping it bearable. This moment is another one of my favorites in Chipata – writing in my journal or blogging, chatting with acquaintances and friends, and taking delicate bites of melting chocolate that contrasted well against the known bitter tang of coffee. I savor the contrast now as both tastes linger on my tongue.

          Last Friday, 3 February, 2012, I embarked on the first of three pilot urban agriculture projects for poor residents. In the mid-morning, I rushed to the one shop in the Down Shoppes, my brisk steps closing the distance, to claim the two, broiler, day old chicks I was promised by one of the merchants. True to his promise, when I arrived, he fetched me two from one of the boxes of 100 and kindly put them in a box, which he put together for me. After, I took a bike cabbie to the street leading to the Magazine Marketplace in the compound where I have been working all year. I patted by citenge bag, feeling the metal brim of the hand held hoe I had bought for this occasion, and felt happy knowing that it was securely stuffed in my sack. I noticed a bag of cornmeal being sold at a stall near the entrance of the street. Concerned about whether or not the chicks would have food at their new owner’s home, I acquiesced to buying a small bag of cornmeal before proceeding onto the house. The price was a mere ZMK400. 

Granddaughter of household beneficiary

          The household nice enough to participate in this food security project was happy to receive the day old chicks. Greeting me with a smile, the granddaughter listened patiently as I explained where I thought she should put the plots. Drawing squares in the air to demonstrate elongation and size and gesturing to the open locations around her yard, she agreed and we set to work. We exchanged hoeing and planting, sharing the work. Within minutes, two other men from the compound arrived, asked us what we were doing and proceeded to help. One of the men, the household’s neighbor, got his larger hoe from his house and helped us plow the soil to make sowing easier on our backs. It was hard work – not exorbitantly – but hard enough to make me light headed. 

The task would only take two people – one to plant and one to sow – but as a group of four, we finished in less than two hours. It turned out to be a community affair and became fun. 

This project follows the model of City Slickers Farms, but includes two day old chicks to help the family start a poultry farm. As the chicks get older, we hope they’ll procreate and produce more chicks. I also used the inter-cropping model commonly used by organic farmers. I tried to explain to my helpers that with clay soil, fertilizer may not be needed because clay tends to retain nutrients. I realized while trying to explain the virtues of organic gardening that this might be another level of discussion, entirely, here because growers tend to rely so heavily on fertilizer – they may even swear by them. I’m not sure if the value of organic farming registered in the brief way I described it, but for the future, it might become a more popular method of gardening for the locals.

Once all the seeds were planted on each plot, we created borders out of string held together with sticks to signify to people that seeds had just been put into the ground. Finally, we were finished. The end of the project soon transgressed into that familiar discussion about needs. The needs of poor people here are pretty basic – a need for me to buy a pair of shoes, so I buy to help them with their business, or a loaf of bread so they can eat for the day – and on it goes. In the case of this day’s discussion, the need is a hose. The cost is a whopping ZMK110,000 because hoses here are all imported (very few goods are manufactured here). In dollar terms, this amount is quite small, but VSO volunteers – as do other volunteers – get paid in kwacha rather than in the currency of their home country. I’m not sure if I’ll have enough for the hose, but I might be able to buy him a steel or plastic watering can.

Inflation in Zambia is quite high; wages are low and volunteers get just enough to live on, but the perception of volunteers among the locals is that we’re all rich, when in fact the opposite is true. Local professionals working here do better in Zambia than some of the volunteers living in their home countries. In Zambia, those earning ZMK2.8 million can buy a house – even have a new one built. In volunteer’s home countries, the equivalent value of the same income may not even purchase a home. Outsider’s perceptions of Zambia – or even Africa – fail to take into account the class inequality that in my opinion is the basis of economic problems for many Africans. It is also often forgotten that the inequality is exacerbated by the social competition and marginalization that are evident between African groups. Discrimination between African groups are not always introduced into studies examining the causes of poverty or inequality. 

          Two days later, I walked with my colleague, Mr. Banda, to his home inside the Old Jim compound to help him plant tree (chico, soursop, date, and lemon) seeds.  I also bought a bag of bean seeds and purchased some vegetables for his family because I knew he, as a casual worker, was paid little. The food would help them with the evening meal on that day. 

While pounding the soil with his old hoe, it broke. Three days later, I bought him a new one to make sure that he can continue to farm his much-needed vegetables for relish as the growing seasons mature into the end of the year.

 The food security project went well. Two and a half weeks later, I returned to the first house to check on the plants. I was pleased to learn that the seeds had already germinated and that some had grown to about 20 centimeters tall. The family there will have okra, beans, and pumpkin to eat and corn to sell. 

Small corn patch

bean, okra, and pumpkin patch

Bean and corn patch

Another corn patch

Another pumpkin, corn, and okra patch

           

RAINY SEASON

Neighbors and friends - the street vendors

The skin on my finger tips exhibit tight, scrunched up lines, like crinkled potato chips, an outcome of all this rain. Webs are starting to develop in the skin between my fingers and toes. Several days of straight rain, not the soft, London sprinkles, but the hard, jovial – sometimes angry – type that sounds like people are dancing on the metal roof top in black, Mary Jane’s. When this kind arrives at night on the tails of silent lightening rods that approach the valley, like sneaky, field mice at dusk, light up the bluish grey skies, I remain sheltered in my room. I love these moments in Chipata, the noisy clattering of rain drops intermingled with the earthy smell of after-birth, which sets the mood for contemplations or a quiet evening reading. 
 

One motel guest complained about all the rain, which leaves large brown puddles of mud along the sides of roads. He explained that several days of rain, one day rhythmically ensconcing into another day, is unusual for Chipata, even for rainy season. If my calculations are correct, I believe there have only been three sunny days in the last three weeks.

On the bright side, all this water is good for the dams and for the maize, which surely love it, judging from the rate at which they’re growing. One large patch of maize on Lundazi Road grew three-fold over three weeks. Ndelema (mushrooms) have also popped up from out of the ground – miracle mushrooms I call them because of their size. White and tender in texture, like Japanese shiitakes, they fetch a mean price on the market – ZMK10,000 for a bundle. I was told they can be gathered from deep in the forest, where the soils smell dank and where the earthen worms like to feast on plant decay. When I expressed the desire to gather them myself – even commemorating the event by purchasing a shiny, green basket – I was warned about the snakes that lie in waiting for mushroom predators, waiting to strike. Apparently, the snakes like them, as well. Truth or lore?

On the 10^th of January, I am happy to report that the HIV/AIDS testing was successfully done at Magazine Squatter Compound. My gratitude is extended to Baby and the Corridors of Hope III people for following through. I hope to make it a regular cycle in the upcoming years by writing to USAID for funding the training of more outreach testers and for the portable HIV/AIDS kits. Diane Sawyer reported that conducting HIV/AIDS testing is cumbersome for many rural areas because blood does not keep for hours and the blood samples have to be ridden in on horseback into the nearest testing site. With these portable tests, they are done on site and are completed in about 20 minutes. 

Unfortunately, the family planning workshop I also scheduled the day before with the Society of Family Health and Family Planning was a no-show without a word of warning. This outcome, unfortunately, has been consistent in my efforts to work with the public. And, often times, there is no written or verbal feedback from the social planners, who normally do this type of outreach work, about scheduling and planning. As such, I had to coordinate these programs myself. I waited at the Hope Campus Basic School, but no one from the SFHFP showed up. After an hour, I gave up and headed back to the office.

There have been other progress this month, albeit slowly, in relation to my placement at the Council. I managed to get a meeting with the Director of Planning to discuss the contents of the Integrated Development Plan, which will surely result in productive revisions to the document. As far as a response from the deputy directors, there have been none as of yet, but I continue to follow up with them. I anticipate this meeting on Wednesday with the Director, however, will be productive and help to move the Council one more step closer to acquiring an IDP for Chipata District.

Sleepy, lazy snail

Chipata has many different wildlife and not all languish at the South Luangwa Park in Mfue. In the Old Civic Center building, where I work, snails come out in droves. The rain seems to coax them out of their hiding places, wherever those nooks and crannies are. They sit on the underside of the leaves of flora plants, sometimes unfurling themselves out of their conch shells to glide from one branch to another. I found a green clump on a plant stalk on this day, when I decided to observe their movements, and realized it was snail dung. After observing one sleepy snail, I realized that they release dung from the middle of their soft undersides, through a tiny hole that’s barely visible to the naked eye. 

On this same day, a small group of Ngoni people made their way to the parking lot to the right of Barclays Bank. A passerby told me they were performing a dance normally performed at the N’cwala Ceremony, which takes place for three days beginning on the 28^th of February. I will just miss them again this year, as I did last year. But, on this day, I was treated to their dance. I video taped them on a digital camera; I can’t upload it to this blog, but will eventually post all the videos on my Facebook page as soon as I learn how to do it. In the meantime, readers will have to settle for just the photos. 

Child dancer - N'cwala Dance

Female dancer

Ngoni Warriors

Fundraising reminder – please keep in mind that volunteering anywhere is rewarding, but doing so in the Global South is an experience irreplaceable by any other experience, despite the undulating emotions that are normally attached to living in another country. Please send in your donation to help me meet my goal of US$2,000. I realize that some of you have opted to send your donation by check, so that will not show on the list of contributors on the My Fundraising Page. If you haven’t received your receipt, please contact Tara Henderson, whose contact information is found on the CUSO-VSO site (please see link on this page). You may also contribute with a credit card, which can be done easily and safely through the My Fundraising link. Again, as always, zikomo to those who have already done so.   

A New Year and a Fresh Start

Welcoming in 2012           

           The morning breeze snaking its way in through the open windows of my room beckoned to me, coaxing me out of sleep. The clock on my cell phone read 8h29, a late start compared to my usual waking routine of 7h00. Today felt different to me, not in the way I unfolded my form from my bed, but in my senses.

            Breakfast was the same - English – consisting of two fried eggs, a sausage link, and canned, baked beans. I brought with me the dark, Frisco coffee because the brand the motel serves isn’t quite strong enough to suit my palate. I lingered over breakfast, reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, a novel about life in Afghanistan, written by Khaled Hosseini, the same author who penned The Kite Runner. Over Christmas weekend, I had borrowed other books from Alan’s and Frances’s collection, from whom many volunteers in and around Chipata also borrow. Reading gives us something to do on many slow days. I have to return the others that I have already completed.

            When Judith, the cleaning lady, greeted me with a jovial, “happy new year”, I realized that today was the birth of 2012, a future I had been anticipating since the beginning of December. I greeted her back before discussing the minor detail of cleaning my bathroom. I like to help her with the cleaning because it gives me something to do and pleasantly passes the hours away. Sweeping, wiping my work desk, washing my dishes, and doing the laundry . . . weekends are usually uneventful, lazy days, perfect for tending to my chores. I usually hand wash my clothing every other weekend. I’ve devised a way to soak them overnight in my water tub and then rub them clean after breakfast the following morning. I do this to protect my fingers from being rubbed raw and so I don’t have to work my arm muscles so hard. The best part is dumping out the brown water, knowing that the red sandy dust and grime have loosened from the fiber of my clothing. Seeing the brown water go down the drain makes me feel like I’ve cleaned out the clutter from my life and victorious, knowing that I’ve tackled and won the battle with the dirt embedded in my clothes.

            Since the start of the rainy season, laundry has become something of a guessing game. I’ve had to start reading the skies for signs of rain showers. Today, dark stains marked the bottom of the clouds, which signify that rain is hovering, ominously, waiting expectantly for the brush with the right temperatures to dissolve the mingling of hydrogen and oxygen gases, which patiently keep the rains at bay. The handy man said that it will start at 12h00 today, so I keep my watchful eye on the sky, ready to bolt out the door to retrieve my drying laundry at the first drop of rain. 

           In comparison to this season, summer was great for hanging clothes. The savannah heat meant that I could work outside in temperatures that would dry my clothes in a mere hour, and on most days, on the hottest of days, in even less time. Dragon flies and grasshoppers keep me company as I bent and hung each item on the line. I loved the predictability of it.

            Nowadays, the unpredictability of rainy season puts me a little on edge as I never know when the sky will open. Sometimes, the cool breeze preceding the rainfall is the only clue. Today, the humidity that keeps licking at my face, my forearms, and neck mislead me into believing that my laundry will be safe. I still don’t know.

            Christmas came and went for me this year. There wasn’t the usual anticipation of a hearty meal that I had the last two years as Christmas approached, although I did have the option of joining other volunteers to celebrate the holidays with a Christmas lunch. One of the volunteers from Katete, Lynie, who is temporarily staying at Michelle’s house, cooked up a huge meal. I learned later that she made various Filipino dishes; their celebration was attended by other volunteers in town and the vicinity. I ate cream lasagna at Protea Hotel, instead. That’s my plan again today – to treat myself to an expensive lunch with, of course, sweet red wine, and then come home and allow my body to absorb the delectable fatty cheese and cream.

            Two Friday’s ago, I finally finished the rough draft of the integrated development plan. This past week I spent hours polishing it, going home early on some days to circumvent the distraction at the office, and stay on schedule. Today will be the day of completion before submitting it on Tuesday to the powers that be. I am thinking about trying to do the comprehensive planning training in January. My effort to conduct it last month was politely deflected purely by the Council’s ignoring my requests for a lunch budget. I think that once the planners go through the training, they’ll start to piece together the different elements of urban life and see the value of integrating tasks, such as business development trainings, to those wanting to start a business here and planning for economic clusters and corridors. In the training manual, I’ve also included guidelines for planning ecologically, which I have observed isn’t really done carefully in Chipata. One planner explained that urban forestry isn’t incorporated into the normative process of parceling land, selling, and developing. There seems to be reluctance, too, from the planning leadership to shift the planning guidelines towards an integrated plan. In fact, this IDP is one of the reasons, if not the reason, planners were brought here in the first place. Although everything happens more slowly in Chipata, I’m starting to think that there is the conventional manner of avoidance accepted and tolerated by locals and I wonder how much of it has to do with other social complexities that Zambians are privy to, but I’m not. I plan to do a departure presentation and leave the next volunteer with a description of goals accomplished and areas where planning may continue to progress in Chipata. The presentation, I hope, will allow the Council planners to see the value of building on work that has already been done and the value of seeing how important concepts, such as inclusiveness and integration, are to improving planning in Chipata District.  

          One of the jobs I'm quite proud of is the completion of the monitoring of the water kiosks in Magazine squatter compound, where I have been planning and attempting to map with GPS coordinates for the last few weeks. Hopefully, the town clerk and I can agree to do land valuing there and give legal title to the residents.

16h00 Same Day

          I just returned from a two hour hike up the same mountain on which I usually trek on days I need to think. The air was nice today - after bouts with grey clouds, the day gave way to a beautiful sunny later afternoon. Next time, I'll upload photographs of the view from the top. In the meantime, I thought I would add some of the views and faces of Chipata.

Children of Magazine Squatter Compound

Kalongwezi Neighborhood facing the gorgeous Chipata mountains

Itinerant food trader

Another view of Chipata Mountains in Kalongwezi extension

My colleague, Namakau Maambo, one of the social planners, extraordinaire!

Another fundraising appeal

        Just a reminder to you reading my blog pages - I am still fundraising for my placement. I believe I am closer to my goal of US$2,000, so if you haven’t done so yet, please contribute today with US$10.00 or more either through the mail or through the “My Fundraising” page link to the right of my blog. Your contribution allows CUSO International to keep sending volunteers overseas to support capacities in needy countries.