Contracts are sheets to start a fire with

As I was explaining in a previous post, I am now working at analysing the problems and challenges of a big water development project for rural communities in Machinga. About a month ago, the two contractors selected to do the drilling work and borehole rehabilitation started their work. Since then, a lot of problems were observed, some less important and some major ones. Here is a summary of the issues faced and my reflections on all this.

First I need to explain to give you background on the contractors selection. There was a tender document issued by the client (National Water Development Program) and the consultant. About 25 contractors applied some from Malawi. some from other countries. Two were selected by the NWDP based on prices probably and maybe politics and contacts! Both companies are from Malawi. Then a contract with the scope of work, specification and methodology for the different part of the work to be done (drilling, development, pumping test, water quality test, concrete work, pump installation and borehole remediation) was written and signed by all parties.
Now back to the problems.

• First, it seems like the actual contract was put together really fast by the NWDP. They certainly did a lot of copy and paste from previous contracts. Some section or specification of the contract do not apply to the present project, there are many contractions about the quantities, the material, the dimensions and the tests times, the pages are not numbered, the sections are in the wrong order (section 3.4.1 is before section 3.3.8 and after section 3.4.3). This contract is really hard to make sense of and be clear about what is expected, and it’s hardly possible to refer to something in it and have someone look it up as there is no page number and the sections are not necessary in the right place. I looks like this contract was put together by the NWDP because they were required by the consultant and the project to have a contract but not because it is important to them for liability and accountability of the contractors.  
• The contractor on site never saw or read the contract and specifications so they do their work as usual. They do the work as steps but they don’t understand why things need to be done. Their judgement and decisions are questionable. The consultant has supervisors on site but normally field supervisors in Malawi are not asked to interact with the contractors they are only ask to report the work, so they are not respected by the drillers who normally do their things the way they want and the way they always do without having someone on their back to check and do testing. It turns out that both the consultant and the hydrogeologist on this project are foreigners and have high technical skills and knowledge (they are both experienced to work in African countries). They are used to high standards, liability, accountability and rigorous methods, so they want their field supervisors to take the lead and decisions over the drillers’ work. This is not working so well and they need a lot of support and directions from the office as they are not used to do this.
• The project also targets the capacity building of the District members, so the Water Monitoring Assistants of each area (who were hired for this project specifically, so they are young and new to this job in most cases) are invited to go on site and learn how to do the filed supervision. Most of them are only going to get the field allowances and don’t really mind the knowledge. They often show up on site drunk (they have to get their on their motorcycle) or sit down in the shade and play games with the community. They are given a great chance to learn and develop skills, but they don’t seem to mind it, all they care about is the allowance money they get. Allowances are one of the worst things that some donors/development partners/NGOs brought to this country. Now they won’t do any work without it. It’s sad and frustrating.
• The contractors don’t want to follow the specifications and methodology that were in the contract. They keep arguing about everything that is slightly different then the way they normally do things. Their answer is that they always do it this way! No one seems to know how to supervise field work and understand the purpose of the work and good methods. Here are some examples of common practices that we are trying to break and change:
  • the hydrogeological survey is done improperly and only in the area where the communities would want their borehole. This leads to a lot of dry boreholes;
  • most of the time the borehole gets drilled using air rotary even if the soil is soft, unstable and saturated, they often don’t have a mud pump;
  • they don’t take conductivity measurement of the water strikes even though many boreholes i Malawi are salty or brackish water that communities can’t use;
  • they don’t use centralisers when they install the screens and/or install the pipes under tension;
  • they put gravel pack (that is normally un-sieved) all the way to the top or 3 meters from the surface and they eventually fill the rest with grout;
  • I say eventually because the grouting, when done, is taken care of by another team, the pumping test team or sometimes even later with the civil work team when they do the concrete apron around the Afridev pump. This means that the top part of the annular space remains unfilled for a few days or weeks sometimes. The soil sloughs back in and the grout seal becomes even thinner. This also means that they do the development and pumping test without having the annular space filled and without any seal. The development is done by blowing air for two hours using the compressor, this forces the water out of the borehole. The idea is to develop until the water is cleaned form the silt from the surrounding aquifer and gravel pack and sediments from the drilling work. The main problem here is that the development water is not being diverted anywhere so it falls directly around the BH (the unsealed and uncompleted BH) bringing all the silt and fine particles as well as the mud back into the gravel pack (see picture below). Also, static water level before and after development are often not measured and reported;
  • the pumping test is being done a few days later using a submersible pump and a generator. Some pumps can’t be adjusted or the gage is broken so they are pumping at a set rate. Most of the times, the problem is that the people doing the work don’t understand what and why they are doing this test. They lower the pump almost at the bottom of the BH, they set the pump at a high rate without taking into consideration the estimate natural flow rate from the fractures that was measured during drilling, they pump for 4 hours at the same rate, take water level measurements at a set time and hope that the borehole won’t get dry due to the crazy drawdown created by the over pumping. They don’t try to adjust the flowrate to get to the actual dynamic water level, which is where the drawdown would stabilize indicating that the rate of pumping is the rate of recharge of the aquifer. They do a recovery test, pack their equipment and leave;
  • they don’t want to take water samples to test the quality of the water (bacteria, metals, salinity, chemical fertilisers, etc.) because they don’t know how to send it to a lab and don’t want to pay the cost of shipping and analysis;
  • etc.

There are many other problems but this is to give you an idea of how hard, slow and frustrating field work can get here.

The consultant and the hydrogeologist on this project want the contractor to do the things the way that we would normally do them at home. They are negotiable on small irrelevant things, but not on more important ones. The consultant in charge works for a German firm and he doesn’t want to lower his standards, he wants communities to benefit from a good, sustainable BH with clean water. But this leads to an everyday fight and many challenges.

To add to the rest of the problems, there is a severe fuel shortage in the country over the last year, so getting diesel for the drill rig, support truck, compressor and generator as well as for transportation is more and more complicated so the contractors often complain that they can’t work because they don’t have enough diesel. If the rig gets broken they don’t have the money and/or fuel to get it back to their shop and fix it. They also say that because of the fuel shortage, it is really hard and expensive to get cement to grout and do the concrete apron around the Afridev pump following the specification and ratio.

The fuel situation also affects the supervisors and hydrogeologist. They have a lot of trouble to get on site, especially when the villages are far from Liwonde. The field supervisors try to get rides with the drillers or sleep in a tent on site, but the whole situation is extremely stressful and challenging. Sometimes there is no fuel for over three weeks and when it comes, it is often not a full tank, so not many people will be able to get it. Black market fuel is available but outrageously expensive (900 MK/Liter = 6 USD/Liters) and it creates a bad cycle to support this.

That’s it for now, but there would be so many other things that I would like to share on this, as there are a lot of things that are wrong and preventing change or better ways from happening. I only mentioned the contractor part in this blog, but there is as much if not more to be said on the client/national government’s side. Another time maybe.
To be continued.

____________________________________
Merry Christmas everyone and have a great holiday time. I’ll be on holiday for three weeks and won’t have my computer with me. Enjoy good food and delicious wine for me. I’m going on a kayak camping trip with some friends on the Island around Cape Maclear, then on a trip around Malawi with my friend Cath who will be visiting me for two weeks. I’m quite excited for this. I need a break. Working here is tough, frustrating and really exhausting. Plus it’s been so so hot lately that I can’t sleep at night and I have no energy the rest of the day. No rain yet, the people in Liwonde and other areas are starting to be worried about their seeds and growing seasons. For the temperature to cool down a little and for the seeds to not be wasted, I wish them rain soon!

Cheers,
Ge

Virtual world and business

Yesterday I was at the market having lunch and chatting with the 20 years old boy who cooks and runs the place. He saw me on my iPhone checking my emails and then he started asking questions about Facebook and internet and emails, confused and thinking they were all the same. I explained to him that the internet was like a library and Facebook one of the books you can look at. He asked me what else we can do on the internet aside from FB and emails. I mentioned that we can do research and read about almost everything, that we can plan a trip, read news, check the weather, that we can search and apply for jobs, that we can buy things and pay our bills online. Then he really got confused. I remembered having a similar discussion with my good friend Memory in Salima about the possibility to use internet to do payments and order things. Just like the boy at the market, she couldn’t really get how that works either. She is bright and educated, waiting to get her exams results to apply to university in South Africa, but like many others here, she never had access to a computer and doesn’t really know what to do with them and she is even more confused by internet. They write their papers by hand, just like we used to 15 years ago. Some people at the District level do use computers for their work but when it comes to sharing the report with others or editing it, they need to sit down altogether on one computer or with a projector to discuss the changes or the report. And when people need to send a report to the client, a contractor or someone else (sometimes in another city that can be many hours away), they need to deliver it in person as the internet is not reliable or the other party doesn't have an email account or a computer. 

But there is more to this story than the lack of access to a computer. I realized that over not understanding the possibilities that internet offers really well, they don’t understand credit cards. They don’t have this here. They have bank card, but can only use them to withdraw money at the ATM and most people don’t even have a bank account. Actually, credit cards are hardly accepted anywhere even in the touristic places. It brought me back to the fact that Malawians, like a lot of other people in Africa or developing countries don’t have access to money as easily as we do and their management of money is terrible. Borrowing money is tricky here, loans are rare and credit is practically inexistent. If you go to the tailor and need a zipper or material, you need to provide the money up front or buy it yourself because they won’t have the money to buy your zipper to complete the work. Same for the plumber that came to my place to repair the shower, he had no money to go buy the two pieces of metals he needed to do the repair, he needed money upfront. Most businesses in Malawi work like this, it seems normal and functional to them. Even drillers can’t fixe their equipment if it breaks, it usually takes a long time and they ask you to advance some money to assist them. If you buy something at the market or a small shop and return the next day to exchange it because it doesn’t fit, for example a light bulb or a socket, chances are they won’t have the money and will have to give you a store credit.

So imagine how hard it gets when it comes to asking communities who have boreholes or taps to open a bank account and raise money to do eventual repairs or maintenance. They often fail to do so and end up having a non functional waterpoint and prefer to wait for the next unorganized NGO or nice charity organization to come and fix it for them or install a new borehole right next to the other one. In the meantime, they either withdraw water from a neighbouring village's waterpoint or go to an unprotected water source. Way to go to distort the system, confuse communities and make them dependant of donors instead of learning how to be self sufficient! Once again, Malawi doesn’t just need more boreholes and superheros (ie. random unorganized donors who think that installing a few new boreholes here and there is the key solution), it needs to have follow ups and support to communities to help them raise the money and develop connection to an area mechanic to get their waterpoint fixed. They need to understand the value of having clean and potable water and that they need to contribute money for that to be sustainable because no my friends, boreholes and pumps are not good forever and are far from being invincible. Communities need to stop hoping and thinking that an organisation will come to their rescue all the time. Sometimes good intentions from donors who have a weak understanding of a system or too much money to spend undermine the efficiency and sustainability of this system. This especially happens with charity and religious organizations who can raise a lot of money, but will want to do the work to fast and themselves. If they had a better understanding and if more data on borehole location and functionality was being gathered, those organizations could spend their money in a more sustainable and equitable way to benefit the communities instead of weakening them. There needs to be a better way to organize how donors and organizations do their work here, there needs to be regulations from the National Government and the District Government need to get more involved on what is happening in the district. EWB is trying hard and on many levels to advocate for all this to change and for the water development and sanitation sector to improve. But for this big stormy, corrupted and slow system to face and accept their mistakes and change, there is still a long way to go! Although there is hope…

Hands up all at once

Dear readers,

it is the time of the year to raise money to support our work to act on root cause of poverty and influence the current system.

If you are reading this blog, you obviously care about my work here in Malawi and believe either in me or EWB. For our work to keep on going we need support from bigger donors of course, but also donation from our network. This is where it begins. Have a look at the link to my webpage and if you support my words, my thoughts, my work, if you have been inspired over the last year while reading me, please donate. Even small donation can get us go very far, but bigger ones are what we need to motivate other to donate more! ahaha, so they are very welcome.

Thanks, there is no way I'd be where I am now if it wasn't from all the support I got last year. This year I am asking you to support more than a friend, I am asking you to support my cause and EWB's work to pursue their amazing work in Africa.

Here is the link to My perspective

Ge

Is time the solution? –An update on my work

I moved to Machinga District about a month ago to work on a different project, which I find extremely interesting. This post describes the background to the project and my goals.

I’m placed with a consultant (3 weeks/month) and the District Water Office (1 week/month - although, this seems to be hard to make happen as the DWofficer is either sick or telling me he will meet me and he doesn’t, so I haven’t yet work with the DWO officially). The consultant’s office is in Liwonde, where I live, and the DWO is in Machinga BOMA, about 25 km from Liwonde. I have to take a minibus or get a ride to go work there and I haven’t been formally introduced to other people than the DW officer.

BACKGROUND
Machinga District got selected to receive assistance (funds) from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to improve water coverage of communities. This project, which forms part of the Capacity Building sub-component of the National Water Development Program of Malawi (NWDP) strategy, is one of four projects operating in four Districts: Lilongwe, Machinga, Mulanje and Zomba. The Project in Machinga District, is targeting the drilling of 193of new borehole with Afridev pump installation,  the rehabilitation of approximately 250 existing BH/pumps and the rehabilitation and extension of 10 existing piped gravity schemes within Machinga.

The client (NWDP), hired a different consulting company for each of the four Districts for the project management of the work to be done: design of GFS, manage budget and staff, write tender/contract documents to contractors/drillers (needs to be approved by NWDP), field supervision, report writing, etc. The consultant firm selected in Machinga is from Germany where as the others are Malawians. The consultant is also expected to do capacity building at the District level, which means train and use the staff, make sure they learn and participate throughout the Project at every step. But the DWO staff (most especially the Water Monitoring Assistants (WMAs) and the Community Development Assistant (CDAs) are in most cases responding and working not to gain knowledge but to get allowance money from the consultant. The simple fact that they would get better at what they do, gain credibility and respect, and would help the communities is clearly not enough and they are aware that the consultant has to involve them to do some of the work like the training of the communities before and after the installation/rehabilitation of their waterpoint, the field supervision of the contractors and the follow ups in a year from now. They take advantage of the system and in some cases, they went on strike to get more. The WMAs got, to work on this Project, a motorbike (to be returned at the end), they also get allowances on top of their monthy salary to do field work (training, follow up…), stationary for the trainings, and fuel for the motor bike. The District of Machinga normally has two WMAs, but for this project to be realized within two years, the Ministry hired or transferred ten new ones, most of them with no experience.

The Project must be finished within six years from the signature of the contract between AfDB and NWDP. The signature was four and a half years ago or so. The consulting company was mobilized to Machinga and allowed to start in October 2010. They understood that a baseline map of the District and location of the new BH and rehabilitation would be provided to them as well as the location of the existing GFS. No baseline map or survey had been done by the District or anyone, no location were selected either for the new BH to drill and the ones to rehabilitate. The DWO was expected to provide all this to the consultant, but this was not done and far from being started. The project was already running late when the consultants were mobilized and no one really knows what happened in the first four years following the signature. It is a fix cost and fix timeline project. This means that it needs to be done in time and if the project goes over budget, the consulting company has to pay as the client (using the AfDB funds) won’t allow more.

WHAT’S HAPPENING AT THE MOMENT
The pre-construction trainings of the communities’ waterpoint committee (WPC) are being conducted at the moment in the communities who will receive a waterpoint. A lot of problems are happening, most of them associated with the absence of fuel in filling stations and the expensive price to get it on the black market (with no receipt). The WMAs and CDAs are required to fill out forms of what they covered during the trainings with the dates and it needs to be signed by communities. These forms are normally not being filled, which makes it difficult to prove that the training was done. They cut one day of the training to save on gas. The WPC’s members also receive an allowance to assist to the training, and a significant one. Communities are expected to raise a total of 15000 Malawian Kwatcha (100 CAD) and put in a bank account to repair and maintain the BH later on. They have to raise it in three steps: MK5000 before the pre-construction training, MK5000 before the pump installation and MK5000 before the post-construction training. The training is not suppose to be done before the community raised the first 5000 and opened a bank account, but most WMAs will proceed with the training regardless, confusing the communities, because they need to be done all their trainings by January. Most of the problems I observed so far are due to a lack of time flexibility, everything is rushed and everyone is trying to take advantage of this to give less and ask for more.

The drillers’ contract were finally signed last week by the NWDP and they are expected to start this week, but it is the beginning of the rainy soon, which will make it harder to move with the drill rig on the mud roads of Malawi and also, may result in dry borehole during the dry season. Also Malawi is experiencing a big crisis at the moment and the country has a hard time to get fuel. The drillers will need a lot of diesel to move around, drill and use the compressor. It may be a big problem and may result in taking more time to finish the work or extra money to buy it on the black market at a ridiculous price. I went for an inspection of the rig (of one of the two contractors) the other day to make sure it was in good shape and that their equipment/material was adequate and were respecting the contract signed with the consultant.

• The air rotary rig was in good shape. It was smaller, less powerful and less heavy than expected. They may have problems to drill in the bedrock and down to 70-80 meters.
• They didn’t have a mud pump to drill in the sand or loose soil, they only had an air compressor, apparently they have one, but in Lilongwe, at least five hours from Machinga District.
• They had a terrible gravel pack (not sorted, angular, a lot of silt and big gravel, and of course nothing to sieve it).
• They didn’t have and didn’t know what centralizers are, they PCV pipes and screens were either under the cement bags, use as poles to hold tents or at angle on the ground.
• They had a water level but no conductivity meter, apparently they have one in Lilongwe.
• They only have one drilling bit and no spares.
• They don’t have anything to make a seal plug (clay) between the gravel pack and the cuttings, they normally are not specified to make a seal, and when they are, they use a really liquid grout.
• When I asked about the development, pumping test and water quality test, they explained to me their normal procedures: They fill the annular space with the gravel pack and stop  filling the hole. They then do a combination of blowing and development of the borehole until the water is clear. Then they fill the rest of the annular space with the cuttings and grout the last 6 meters to the surface. Right after they do a pumping test for six hours and a short recovery test. A few days after they build the cement pad and cement sinks around the BH and a month later they go back to install the pump.

The consultant on this project, in Machinga, is a foreigner and he wants to make sure that his standards are respected so that the BH is well constructed. It will be interesting to see if the drillers will break him and where they will try to cut corners to save on time and money. Hopefully he will be respected and will stand his ground to create a new standards for drillers here.

So this is a quick overview of the situation, the challenges, the problems and the relationship between the different stakeholders in this Project. It’s more complex than that but I can’t yet explain how yet.

MY OBJECTIVES
Clearly there is a redundant problem with big projects like this one. Projects for which donors expect to get a lot of infrastructures in with a side of capacity building of the local people (Districts government, communities), without knowing how and all this within a short time line. It is easier to report to the donors this way: the right amount of infrastructures were installed/repair, respecting the schedule and budget, so the main goal is achieved! I want to see what are the actual goals of those donors? Create a better, more sustainable and equitable access to potable water for communities or spend a lot of money to install those waterpoints without follow ups and without making sure that the communities know what to do when they need to service or repair their waterpoint so it can last for many years and not just one. How do they evaluate and what do they qualify as “success”?

I would like to understand what causes and leads to those problems in the implementation phase of the work. I want to evaluate the relationships between the stakeholders, their roles and responsibilities. I want to be able to retrace the tender document, the proposal and the contracts that were signed between the different players (AfDB, NWDP and the consulting company) to see at which level the fix cost/fix time project was discussed and agreed on (this is ambitious and I might not be able to access to all this info). I want to be able to get information/evidences/stories and build relationships with the different stakeholders so that EWB, with the help of other NGOs and player in the system can report, advocate and influence the National Government to set projects like this one differently (or define success differently) and/or influence the big Donors/Development Partners like AfDB.

I don’t think that I can do all this within the next few months, but I hope to get the wheel rolling, so that someone else can continue after I leave. I’ll be extremely sad to go and leave this awesome research behind though, but I guess I have to.
On a less ambitious, more realistic note, I want to help this project go smoother and better for what is left of it, so that communities can get the best of it: good knowledge and tool on how and why to raise money to maintain and fix their waterpoint and I want them to get a well constructed BH, functional during the dry season with good water quality.

I’ll keep you updated on my findings, challenges and successes.
Ge

Four corners

I’ve been in Malawi for almost 8 months now and I’ve found myself to be moving a lot through the country. Each of the places that I unpacked my bags to call home for a while had brought me a different view of Malawi, of its people, of its culture. Here is a summary and images. Enjoy!
Karonga
9 March – 14 April 2011
That was my first home when I arrived in Malawi. I stayed there for a month. I had my own small mud brick hut that I shared with a hen and her 11 chicks, scorpions, crickets and frogs. I was sleeping on a woven mat on the floor. There was no furniture in my hut or the family’s. It was a few minutes walking from Lake Malawi. Village house, no electricity, a communal tap, a pit latrine that collapsed due to the rain and a bathroom with only three walls and no roof. The cooking was done over fire in a side room or outside. We would go bathe and wash our clothes in the lake, but no one on this section of the lake really goes as tourist, all the women were bathing with clothes on, so I had to do the same. The family I was living with was great, only women!! The mom, was a 42 yrs old lady who was running an osipa business (small fishes, really bitter, but Malawians love them). She would buy them directly from the fishermen, dry them and sell them at the market. She was not rich, but she was doing ok. She was divorced. Her youngest daughter Pacharo (15 yrs old) and her granddaughter Gertrude (4yrs old) were living there full time. Pacharo and all the other older kids of the family were educated and all went to school. The mom felt it was important and was helping as much as she could. Little Gertrude’s mom, Christabel (25 yrs old), the oldest daughter, was living and studying management and accounting in Mzuzu, 4-5 hours south by minibus. She came and stayed with us for almost three weeks. She is amazing, I really enjoyed her company and friendship. I also became friend with Abell, a 28 yrs old pastor. The three of us had good discussions about religion, politics, economy, relationships. We were running a few kilometers every other morning. The mom was only speaking Tumbuka, no English. I had my first experience of dancing with the ladies on Saturdays and cooking nsima. It was really hot in Karonga at that time, so most women would eat dinner and hang out at night top less. The beauty of living with only women. It was hot and raining a lot. Almost every morning on my way to he field, I’d see another part of the District that had been flooded the previous night. And one night, it was our turn. Our village, my house, the main market and the road were under a meter of water. It was very troubling and very sad to observe. The flood corresponded to the end of my field research there, so I left, and never went back since. It’s too far north.
Salima town
19 April – 14 October  2011
I lived there full time for the first three months and I was there half the time for the last three months. I shared a mud hut with Maggie, a 35 yrs old woman and her 20 yrs old nephew Dew (he left in July to try to get scholarship to go to University, so he went and did the exams). He spoke English, she didnt’t. She was speaking Chechewa, the main language in Malawi. Maggie had no husband and no kids, she always took care of other people and for some reason never had a family of her own. Most women in there 30s with no husband and kids are being judge, but for an inexplicable reason to me (I never felt it was appropriate to asked), she is a well respected “aunty” around the village. For the first month, I share Maggies room, sleeping on my newly bought foam mattress on the floor. Then Lisa, my friend and coworker, moved in with us and we got the storage room and the neighbour gave us a bed frame for our bed. So I got my room, but I share my bed with Lisa, who was doing her field research in Salima. Haha! The house had furniture, real windows, a wood door and a lock. But still no electricity. There was a shallow well in the backyard for non-drinkable water and a borehole a kilometer away for potable water. A nice pit latrine and bathroom were in the backyard. We’d cook outside over charcoal using a small homemade metal mbaola. We’d do the laundry and dishes outside on the porch. Maggie is also a business woman. She buys charcoal and firewood, sells it during the rainy season, she buys bulk soap and sells it in small bags in the neighbouring villages. She is not doing a lot of money, but she can survive ok. She has a small crop land for maize only. She also built a house next to hers and rents it for MWK1000/month (less than 10 dollars). She is doing business with another woman and they have a loan from a local bank.
Senga Bay
14 July – 14 October 2011
The house in Senga Bay is a beach cottage that an older British couple living in Lilongwe (1.5 hr away) have been renting for the last many years. They were not using it a lot at that period of the year as it was cool. Plus they are working a lot and petrol is hard to find to do the drive. They let me use it, they were friends of friends. I shared the bills with them. I had my own place, a gas oven, a fridge, a flush toilet and a hot shower. Plus it was right on the beach. The running water was provided via a borehole on the property and piped to to the cottage, I never once had a water shortage. Electricity was unfortunately provided by the government, so I was subject to the random and frequent power outage. Beautiful old rustic cottage with rotting windows and infested by ants, but still quite charming. My roommates were two giant monitoring lizard living in the ceiling. I saw a few snakes too, but they would not stay. Otherwise, I was alone there. The house is really old and far from other people with minimal security (a night guard for the entire property). The risks were not high, but I was always scared of guys (from the fishermen village right next to the house) to break in at night, or being bitten by a snake, or getting sick and being alone. Hopefully, nothing happened while I was there, it was in fact pretty quiet and almost boring. Most of my stay there was during the colder season, so it would be too cold to swim in the lake, although, I enjoyed the cool lake during the last month of my stay. I was living there part time only, because, first, it was quite a commute to and from work (25 km in the back of an old, overcrowded pickup) and second, I was lonely, although I found a friend there a few weeks before I left and she would give me rides in the morning, so I stayed in Senga Bay more often then. There were other cottages on the property, all rented by older British couple living in Lilongwe. I saw some of them once or twice during weekends. There were a few men working as staff on the property everyday. Some were cleaning the other cottages, some were maintaining the garden and beach and preparing hot water at night for me to use. It was interesting to have staff around if I needed something, they were always helpful. Although, I never had to pay them or take care of all this crap, the landlord and other tenants were responsible for it since my cottage is the only one that the tenants don’t have staff.
Liwonde
14 October 2011– (projection March 2012)
As I mentioned in my last post (more details and pictures (can’t post more than a few pictures at the time as internet is not good enough, so to see pictures of this new place you’ll have to check the previous post if you haven’t already…haha, sorry), I moved to a small staff compound in Liwonde. I have a small two room place, one main room and one storage room. I share a cold shower (perfect these days as it is really really hot) and flush toilet with a family. We get our electricity through the government and our water through the Water Board, so we get a lot of shortages, especially at this time of the year, and best of all, they are normally combined as they pumps and turbines for water require electricity!! The family lives well compare to the other ones I’ve lived with. They have electricity and running water, they have furniture and a hot plate. Although they generally cook using fire. They built a nice food fire stove, never saw that anywhere before. It’s simple, but they are more organized. They are not rich at all though. I am not sure that all the kids go to school, for now I know the older boy does for sure, but the older girl (19 yrs old who just got a baby) doesn’t. Kids learn English at school and none of those kids know English well if at all. But I think they at least attend primary school, I saw some of them wearing uniforms. The husband takes care of the main house on the property (I live in a staff house!!), he cooks and clean and guard during the day. There is another guard at night. I haven’t seen the owner of the main house yet. They could be foreigner as the news paper that are in my bathroom are in English and I saw American movies in the theater pages and white people in the ads and article, it’s the Daily Times, but it’s from September 2007!! haha
I like this last set up better than all the others. It is not big, but it is mine. I am not alone but I can do my own things at my own pace. I don’t have much to cook with, but I can cook what I like and share if I want to. I enjoy the shower and the toilet, although I need to always make sure I have a few buckets filled with water in my room as you can’t rely on running shower. I enjoy having electricity. I bought a fan and a hot plate. Although the hotplate is South African (Malawi uses British plugs) and I seem to have problems with my power outlet. I saw smoke this morning coming out of the plug as I was making breakfast using the hotplate. I think the voltage is different and it needs more power or something. It seems to melt the socket a bit more every time, even when I use an adaptor with a fuse. I’ll figure it out, but if anyone knows about that, please let me know before I ruin my hotplate and kettle with are SA. I bought a new socket and I’ll change it when there is a power outage. Now that I want it to happen, the electricity is good! Of course.
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Anyways, in all four corners of my life in Malawi, I’ve learnt a lot from the different people who lived with or around me. I’m observing them, taking part of their tasks and daily life, and they are observing me too, sometimes laughing, sometimes wondering and other times learning. It’s amazing to be part of their lives, if only for a few months! It’s nice, it’s challenging but one important similarities, all those people I lived or live with, are all fabulous in their own way, they are strong, creative, smiling, helpful and welcoming. Ahhhh Malawi, you are the warm heart of Africa. You are certainly not recognized for your food, nor your landscape and scenery, but for your people!

Cheers, Ge

Liwonde here I am

I woke up this morning wanting to be nowhere else. I woke up completely drenched wet after a bad night of sleep (well into the hot season now) and a few days of being sick in bed, but somehow, I felt extremely happy to be here, to be in my new home in Liwonde and I was quite excited to up on my bike and go to work. Maybe it was the fever I had that was making me delusional, but I think I’ve reached a point of well being within this complex environment.

A lot happened over the last two weeks. I completed my placement in Salima at the District Water Development Office. I am now in Liwonde, about 250 km south of Lilongwe and 150 km north of Blantyre on the Shire River. It is nice, but super hot at this time of the year. The Shire River is full of crocodiles and hippos, and also delicious fishes. Having to move sucks anywhere in the world. It only gets better when you don’t have a vehicle to travel the 200 km between the two locations and even then, there is no petrol or diesel available, unless you are really lucky. Salima had had no diesel for four weeks, and the one time they had a delivery, the cues were two days long. People had to sleep in their car the night before to get in line to get something the following day. And most didn’t as the army, the hospital and the police go first and fill their jerry cans and barrels. It has been stressful to not be able to plan, but wing it and hope for the best. I don’t have many things, but enough to not be willing to move by minibus (I had to, but only for part of my things). I have a mattress, cooking stuff and containers, bags, a bike. But I would have lost a lot of money letting these things behind or even selling them. Until the last minute I was hoping for a nice Samaritan, with diesel and a pickup to give me a ride. And it happened. The consultant I’ll be working with in Liwonde had to bring a report and meet with the government in Lilongwe and somehow his driver magically managed to find enough diesel to come pick me in Salima (a 50 km detour). We couldn’t fit everything, but almost, the rest I took on the minibus the next time. And they didn’t charge me anything. AMAZING!!

I found a nice little place to live. It’s about 2 km from my office, and 1.5 to the market. It has electricity, a shared flush toilet and cold shower. I share a staff house with a family. Staff houses are small compounds at the back of a big house where the guard or gardener or house lady would live. Perfect for me. I have my own space (one big

room and a smaller one for storage) and I can do what I want. The family I share the compound with is lovely. They are 40 years old, have 5 kids, 4 live there, and the oldest just got a cute baby. I think the baby’s dad went away or something. The woman speaks a broken English, and I speak a broken Chichewa, but we can communicate. She took care of me when I got sick at the beginning of the week. We all cook together outside in the fenced veranda. I can do my own things if I want to, but we often share. At night, they make samosa and mdazi to sell around town the next day as a way to make money. But let me tell you that now that I have seen the process behind the confection of those delicious snacks, I can tell you they are not making a lot of money. So for the samosa they make the chapati one by one and prepare the inside stuff (potato, onions and curry), I helped, it takes a few hours. Then they have to put all this together in a samosa like shape. They work from 7:30 to 10pm on this. The next morning around 4, the mom is up, getting the fire going to fry the goodies. Each is K30, so about 20 cents. They make about 200 a night. The mdazi are like a doughnut hole. They make them late in the afternoon normally and fry them the next morning. K10 each, so 6 cents. CRAZY. The kids are selling the snacks at the road block, the market, the bus depot and they change shifts according to the school sessions. Boys in the morning, girls in the afternoon. The mom works around the compound, cleans and cooks, the dad takes care of the main house. I think they are fabulous. Different life than the village life, but really interesting to get to experience this side too. I really appreciate them and they have taken me with them as if I was a daughter or a friend. I try to help and I learn a lot. I pay about 40 $ a month. 

Ill explain in my next blog why I moved and what my new placement will be here, as it will be fairly different. I’m super excited to be part of this project.

That’s it for today. Hope all is good.

Ge

After the rain

I was invited last week by an Italian NGO called Cooperazione Internazional to assist one of their workshop in Lilongwe. It was about risk assessment and management of river flooding in Malawi. The causes, the impact and the mitigation methods were being discussed with a lot of different and important Malawian people from forestry, water, education, wildlife and more. It was really interesting to observe the reflections and discussions that came out of it. I was glad to be part of it, to be in the middle of it; I was intrigued about what refrains the changes and I wanted to understand the background from their perspective. How is the use of charcoal and wood important for cooking and wood also important for construction. How does the cycle of electricity shortage (mostly due to an accumulation of sediments and silt in the Shire River because of deforestation – electricity here in Malawi is hydroelectricity, but the Shire River becomes more and more silty every year due to runoffs it breaks the turbines and affects the flow) affect people’s behaviour and desire to use electricity for cooking instead of charcoal. How is selling and using firewood and charcoal a livelihood for many villagers and changing this part of the equation will take a long time. Breaking the cycle that currently prevents good, affordable, well distributed and reliable (hydro)electricity to more areas and more people is a complex challenge and is just one part of the problem that accentuates the floods in Malawi. Forestry industry and needs is part of the deforestation problem that leads to flooding, but so is over population that leads to change in land use, increasing the number of housing and cropland to provide food for this increasing population. And to make it even more complex, deforestation is only one piece of the puzzle. For things to change and for prevention method to be effective, there needs to be an increase in education and knowledge regarding the issues, a better harmonization of the policies and a more open minded communication between the different parties playing a role. But chances are that things will get worse before they get better, this is part of how change works…unfortunately.

The use of charcoal and firewood to cook combined with the dust and sand in the air leads to health problems like pneumonia, lungs cancers, burns and many more. The health system here is not so efficient and not so good and is often over capacity. But things are about to get worse, real worse. The British government has  removed all aid money and help system from Malawi a few months ago due to major miss alignment between the President of Malawi and an English Diplomat who was living here. The money that was given by the British government was mostly going to buying medicines (legal drugs) for the hospitals and health centers. which means that the government of Malawi now needs to buy the medicines itself, and they need to buy them with for-ex money. Malawi has been facing a lot of problems with the lack of foreign exchange over the last few years: the lack of diesel and petrol being the most known impact and became one of the main reason for the tension and protests that occurred a couple months ago. The President recently decided to momentarily fix the problem to buy time and peace. He took the money (for-ex) that was approved and needed to buy medicines to buy some diesel and petrol…but now the fuel is almost gone and there are no medicines available in most health centers. This means that a lot of people in needs of malaria treatment, pneumonia, cancer and HIV/AIDS treatment will be condemned if nothing is being done. I’m not an expert in this, so this is an oversimplification of the problem and of the situation.

Since I arrived in Malawi, I had many discussions with white Zimbabweans and Zambians who are now living in Malawi or doing business here. Most of them are saying the same alarming thing: this is all the trouble started in their original country, this is how things became really messy and revolt began. The same kind of problems that  Malawi is facing right now have happened in Mozambique, Zambia, then Zimbabwe before and these same problems were the flag, the tip of the iceberg that was coming their way. Through the years of revolt, frustrations and government changes in these countries, many lost their land, their family, their businesses and their dignity. It is pretty intense to hear about those stories, to think that Malawi could be going through many dark and tough years soon. When the balance of things changes, it is hard to fix it and bring it back on track, especially when there is no resources available. So to all of you who are asking me about the situation in Malawi at the moment, I say: I think this is the calm before the storm! I might be wrong, and I’ll be extremely glad to be, but at this point, I have a hard time believing that things will get better in the next few years. Let’s see and hope that it’s not too late to bring Malawi back to equilibrium.

I came here to realize that we, people who grew up in a rich and develop country, live a comfortable, safe and stable life in our own bubble. I came here to help the water and sanitation system, I thought tis was one of the biggest issue and problems Malawians were facing. I thought things here were complicated and difficult, but I would never have thought that they would be this complex. Where do we start, where do we put your energy and how do we focus on one part of the system when there are so many parts that we don’t understand or think about that create distortion and malfunction. I’m shocked, I’m troubled, I’m part of the problem and now too aware to just leave it as it is. Having stayed in Canada, even with my eyes wide open, I would never have felt how I feel now, I’d only see and hear what is being told. I realized that there is a major difference between being an informed, devoted but distant observer and getting your feet in the mud to experience a slight part of other people’s reality. I’m not even close to say I understand this reality and its problems, but I'm saying that I am questioning and slowly discovering the complexity that lies behind it. To fully understand the depth of the situation I’m into would take me way more than year, but this year gives me a perspective that I would never have gotten having only being a tourist passing through here. To be part of the change starts by changing ourselves and the way we think or view things. I know now that I will forever be changed, troubled and thankful for such an amazing experience, but I also know I will forever be looking for ways to get more, to do more, to give more.

Ahhh endearing Africa!

Have a good one my dearest friends

Ge

Suit up and go play

Have you ever asked yourself what happens of all those fancy clothes or dresses that we had to wear for special occasions when we were kids. You know the nice dresses that we were expected to have at weddings but were not allowed to play with or get dirty. Our parents would pay a fortune, we would wear it once, not be allowed to wear them on a regular basis, because, what if we get it dirty or damage it, then grow too big to even wear it a second time…and finally, our mom would end up giving it away to someone she knew or to charity. Well guess what? Guess where those little fancy dresses get a second life? Guess where they are used to play with and experience all the pleasure and problems of being wore by a kid? : in Africa!! All the little girls in my village, and else where around here are proudly suited up and playing in the mud or sand all day long.  Moral of the story…well two things: one, you can play in the mud and get dirty while being suited up and still look super cute, and two, if you are not going to wear it again, give to charity, it will be proudly played with as any kids’ clothes should be.

When life tips over and flips

This morning I woke up, made some rice, stopped at the market to buy a few bottles of Fanta, then before heading to work, biked to the hospital to visit my neighbour and friend. I wanted to bring her some food and drinks, and moral support, even if only in my broken chichewa! Her, her husband and two of their relatives had a big accident on Monday night coming back from a funeral a couple hours away in the box of a pickup truck (matola). My host sister went to the same funeral but luckily came back earlier. Apparently, the matola they were on was going fast on the narrow road when they met a car that was also going too fast. The matola tried to move on the side of the road to prevent a collision with the car, but the old and unstable vehicle couldn’t handle this sudden turn: it tipped and flipped a few times. Things would have been so much worst though if they would have hit the car. My friend has a broken arm, hit her head and has a bunch of scratches; her husband is worst, he has a dislocated shoulder, a broken collar bone, a broken jaw and a lot of scratches. He is still waithing for an xray of the sholder, but the power is not strong enough right now, even with the back up generator to de xrays!! ahhh, this is Africa. But no one died, lost a part of their body, damaged their brain or eyes, so in a few months they will both be back on their feet. My friend Flora is taking care of their three kids and people from the village are taking turns to visit them and bring food, drinks, wash their clothes and sheets and assist them. They should be out in a few days. 

It was my first time visiting people at the hospital. I was shocked. I already knew that the hospital does not take care of anything else than treating the patients, which means that family and friends need to bring food, drinks and help with showering and other stuff. There are many things about the situation that never crossed my mind before this morning as I was taking them for granted. Here is a description of the scene so you can better understand. First, it is really hot in Salima, and particularly in the building. Then no one as a room, the male are on one side of the hospital, in a sort of dorm room and the women on the other side, in the same type of room. I first went to the men’s dorm and saw a bunch of old metal beds with small mattresses. Then went to the women’s to realize that they don’t have any mattress or pillow, they are either on the floor or on a metal bed frame. There is no TV, no AC, no ventilation, no bug nets and no screens in the windows. Your visitors have to bring you blankets and pillows, otherwise you have nothing. This is sad. I realize that if it was me there, hurt and in one of those bed, I would be crying. I thought to myself that they were lucky that the accident happened close enough from their family and friends because it could have happened anywhere else and they would have been admitted in another hospital. It got me to think a lot. I travel a lot, so things like this could happen to me and then I would be on my sad little bed, with no blankets or pillow and no mattress, with no one to take care of me and bring me food. I’d eventually be transfer to a better hospital because we have insurances, but that wouldn’t help the situation, here in Malawi, and in many countries of Africa, you need a full time visitor to be with you and help you, otherwise, you don’t get food, drinks or showers. It made me feel far away from home. So next time you complain about the health system, realize that it could be worst if you were somewhere else in the world.

Ge

Playing your house on the stock market

Well into the dry season, a few weeks before the hottest months of the year in Malawi, the landscape is pale brown and dramatic. It’s hard to think that there can be life and that something can grow out of the dry sand. Many trees have lost their leaves.

Only a few months ago, I remember being in Karonga, during the rainy season, surrounded by beautiful leaves and greens, tall maize crops and big trees. I also remember my house being flooded and many villages in Malawi suffered from the same situation. A few months ago, I wrote a post about the floods, about the fact that some villagers build their mud huts and farms on flood plains. I said that they were risking a lot, that even though it was more rich soil, they would eventually get flooded and lose everything. This affirmation is still true, but I realized last Friday why they are ready to take that risk and go with it. They are not without knowing that there are risks of floods, they simply try to make the best out of it.

I was doing field work with a Water Monitoring Assistant, going far into the District to follow up on newly installed boreholes and make sure that the communities are using the water and that the quality of it is good enough. As I’m on the motorcycle, looking around,  driving through the dry and brown landscape, I wondered to myself how can there still be vegetables at the market, only few farmers here use irrigation systems. Then we went over Kamusu bridge, I noticed there is no river underneath, not even a stream, only a few patches of water where women were washing clothes or dishes and kids playing. I realized that there must only be water when there is a lot of rain during the storms, but the rest of the year this is farmable land, offering a soil rich in nutrients and water. There are farms and crops along the path of what seems to be a river bed. It is beautiful, green, flourishing, growing. It is like an oasis in the middle of the desert. I understood why those farmers and family take the risk of being flooded every now and then; this area offers them a chance to grow almost everything they want all year round, even at the driest of the year, without any irrigation system. They can sell there harvest for more money at the market as food is becoming scarcer and tougher to grow on most of the land. I think if I was in their situation, I too would consider the option. It’s a bit like playing your house on the stock market…if you are good at predicting the flow, you’ll get rich and prosper, but if you’re not, you’ll lose big!

All those little things

Today’s post will be dedicated to all the small things I see or experienced on a regular basis that help put a smile on my face. There are many beautiful moments and if I don’t capture them here, I fear I’ll forget them and they will be lost in my memory without making it to your imagination, so here we go…to beauty

First, the village women: They are splendid. They are strong and age much faster in country like this one, but they have wisdom. Most spend the day working, carrying a baby on their back while doing all their tasks and caring for their other kids who play around. They have an amazing smile and a lot of charisma. I truly am amazed by them. Every morning I observe them while doing my tasks. They are awake a 5am and work at home or at the market all day. Even when they are sick or when one of their children kept them up all night, they are friendly, gorgeous and strong. They remind me a lot of my own mother who grew up in conditions fairly similar. I see a lot of her in them, might be a reason why I love to be around them and why they bring me back on my feet when I feel sad.

The young kids: Once they are done with the “Muzungu Boooo” or “Helloooooo”, I love them. I love looking at them play together and fighting over a piece of plastic or anything. They don’t need much, they are so friendly. Kids here have to help their mom a lot, even at a young age. It is not rare to see a three years old sweeping the yard or carrying stuff on their head. The little girls will start carrying the other babies on their back, cooking and helping when they are about seven. Many more parents are sending their kids to school now a days, even their daughters, but there is a long way to go to improve education. They play, they laugh, they fight, they yell, they fall…then they get up and play again…

The markets with its bulk food, second hand stuff and small restaurants. I love to go their for lunch and wander around to get my food to cook at night, finding cloths in the piles of stuff while chatting with the ladies. Good way to observe the reality of the people living here.

The tailors and their patience. First they fix the clothes you buy at the market that need alteration, but they also make clothes for a ridiculously low price. I can design and draw my clothes and they’ll make them. Sometimes they look amazing, sometimes it takes a few try to get the right look, but I love, love that… don’t want to go back to Canada, tailors are too expensive! haha. Ok I could learn how to do it myself and get a sewing machine. I might actually.

The goats, especially the baby goats…. what else is there to say. I laugh every time I see a goat, they are clumsy and so so cute. They are every where around except  maybe in cities. Even my house in Senga Bay and my office are often visited by village goats.

The randomness of life here: the weekends that bring friends and activities that you didn’t know you could do here; the people you meet who are often really nice and have awesome stories to tell (not talking about the annoying drunk dudes or annoying men asking you a a ton of questions and won’t let go who I’m scared of); the food you are craving that you can end up doing if creative enough; the slow pace of life when you are not in a hurry, or if you are too stressed, it forces you to calm down; the generosity of people when you need them to help you; the lake…

Enjoy the little things, enjoy the beauty in them, and smile!
Ge

Global engineers or global friends?

So let me go back in time a bit and explain why our team left to go to Zambia: July 20 2011, riots and protests against the government in Malawi; another protest was planned for August 18, but the President got a court injunction on August 17 to prevent the demonstrations from happening. The protest is being postponed until September 17. Things are calm in Malawi now, but still unpredictable. There are still major problems with diesel and petrol and electricity. Bingu dissolved his entire cabinet and is now running the different ministries by himself. Not sure yet if this is good or bad news; is he trying to rebuild his government stronger and better or is he trying to become a dictator with all the power?? Anyways, we decided to evacuate the country just before the August protests, but it got cancelled at the last minute and we were already in Zambia having intense meetings. It was good though to all be together and have in depth discussions about our team strategy and culture as well as our future. It was also extremely enjoyable to take a few days to go discover South Luangwa. I went with Duncan, a friend and colleague who is based in Mzuzu, and his sister who was visiting from Vancouver. Being with them and hearing them talk about their childhood and memories as brother and sister made me realized a lot of things. First, I miss my family and friends from Canada; second, I will never be able to do anything similar and feeling that connected with the members from my family, and it made me miss my lovely sister a lot. I realized that I might never go back to Quebec City and will always have to live far from them, that we don’t enjoy the same type of life and trips so it will always be harder on our relationship, but harder doesn’t mean impossible, it will simply take more energy, understanding and love. Je m’ennuie de vous ma chere famille, mais c’est la vie, on devra s’y faire. Merci pour votre support et votre amour. Mel, s’etait cool de jaser avec toi dimanche et d’ententre la voix de Louis et Thomas! Je vous aime. I also realized that moving to Malawi was actually easier than moving to Vancouver. It took me a while to understand why that was, but now I get it. When I moved to Vancouver, I was alone in the city. I knew no one, I was having a tough time adjusting to my work and finding my place. Most of my coworkers were hard to connect to as they were eating in front of their computers and rarely going out or doing activities outside of work. It took me a few months to make good friends there, but eventually it happened and now I miss them tons. Arainn, Amber, Andrew, Erik, Krista, Brian, Shawn, Adrien…(too bad that Amber left Golder, it won’t be the same without you to chat with everyday). I had to change my day to day language and speak English all the time, which was extremely challenging. I had a knee injury and could enjoy winter sports at all. I felt so lonely, so useless. Eventually with time, I started developing good and genuine friendship. Thanks particularly to Lauren, Grace, Sarah and somehow Andrew for making me feel part of your life when I really needed you, doing so many awesome things together and introducing me to your friends and family. I thought for the longest time that I would move back to Quebec, but all of you guys made all the difference in the world and made me enjoy BC. Surprisingly, what I now refer to as home is Vancouver, I doubt that I’ll spend my life there (way to expensive), but I’m looking forward to being back. I was so scared to move to Malawi and have to go through this all over again: a long time on my own with no good friends. What I didn’t understand before coming here is that almost everyone I would meet is just like me, away from home. My team is incredible: smart, fun and awesome people…we work hard, but we also play hard. Although I’m alone in my district most of the time, I know that I can count on them. This tough, challenging and sometimes hilarious environment speeds up the process of building strong relationships (and makes good stories to remember down the road!). You need those friends and network to go through it, to go through the rollercoaster. I feel better now with the idea of moving through the world, I came to understand that I’ll eventually end up having great friends and creating a balanced life wherever I’ll be.

I have been here for six months now, I feel good, I’m healthy and happy with my decision of taking a year off from my life back in Canada to explore other avenues and push my thinking. I’m not doing exactly what I want and thought I would be doing workwise, but I am learning on a lot of things that I would not have learnt otherwise. I’m opening my eyes to a new reality, to new challenges and new ways.

Zambian Wilderness

I was in Zambia fro the last almost three weeks, I meant to write a post but I had bad internet connection and little time to myself. We had a EWB meeting in Chipata for most of the time but I took a few days off to go to South Luangwa after with Duncan and his sister who was visiting from Canada. Zambia is a nice country from what I’ve seen. They have petrol and diesel as they have mines, tobacco and cotton to bring for-ex in the country, but they have shortage of beer apparently!! Haha, nothing is perfect.

South Luangwa is a game park about two hours from Chipata (border of Malawi). We saw a ton of animals: lions, leopard, elephants, hippos, antelopes, water bucks, coudous, buffalos, giraffes, hyenas, crocodiles, monkeys, birds… it was amazing

I’m now back in Malawi. I’ll write a longer post probably on Sunday or Monday, but I wanted to say hello and show you some cute faces of the Zambian wildlife.

Talk to you soon

Ge

Unmentioned details

I was talking on the phone to my mom last night and I realized there are so many things  that I didn’t mentioned that are part of life here and things that are miss understood. Life here is simpler in many ways, yet much more challenging and complicated. Here are a random facts of life in Malawi :

• People do eat, they are not starving, it is just that they don’t have much and have no diversity. The end of the dry season is always harder for food as the vegetables get scarcer and the prices go up.

Breakfast is generally weak black tea without milk, with dry white bread or boiled potato. There always is nsima at lunch and dinner. It is made out of maize flour and water, cooked on the fire. It becomes really thick and is used to grab the food with. The eating technique is simple, you roll a small ball of nsima using your fingers, and with your thumb, you can shape it to form a spoon to get your food. They usually use it as a fork or spoon, just like some countries use naan bread or chipati. So yes they eat with their hands, previously washed of course. Some people will have rice instead of nsima, but it is more expensive. Almost everyone grows maize so they don’t have to buy maize flour, they make it themselves.

Any other food that is served with nsima (or rice) is called relish. It is always cooked in a base of vegetable oil, onions, tomato and salt.

1. There are vegetables available: cabbage, green pepper, carrot, potato, tomato, onion, eggplant and okra. They also eat leaves, like pumpkin or casava leaves. They sell them fresh or dry. They are good. Sometimes they will add groundnuts powder (a sort of peanut flour) to it to add proteins…yummy!
2. There also is a lot of different fishes from lake Malawi. Osipa is the smallest one (size of a finger). They eat it the whole thing. either dry or fresh. It is bitter and not really good, but it is a good and cheap source of protein. There also is butter fish, chambo, chibenje, and many more, some of them are big and delicious.
3. Meat wise, there is chicken, goat, cow and in some places duck. Every small market has a butcher. The cuts are not good, but the meat is fresh. It needs to be cooked in a broth for a long time to be soft enough, but it makes excellent stew and curry. Good cuts like sirloin can be found but only in supermarkets in the three bigger cities. They don’t really use milk to cook with or drink and definitely don’t make cheese or yogurt. Therefore the cows are raised for their meat, not their milk. The goats here are only raised for meat, they never use the milk. The milk they sell is long life or in powder (most don’t have fridge and even if you do, the power goes out often for many hours).

There are also seasonal fruits like banana, mandarine, orange, lemon, mango, papaya, pineapple and apple. And they grow ginger and garlic and hot pepper to add flavour, although they are rarely used.

• The public transport within the country is horrible.

The following transportation means described below have two speeds: they either drive dangerously fast or they brake suddenly! Perfect for a safe, peaceful and enjoyable ride. And they wait to be full (read overcrowded!) before they leave.

1. Minibuses also called life “shorteners” are almost everywhere and go almost everywhere. They can be fast or painfully long depending on how many stops they’ll do to take or drop people off. They are normally overcrowded. A minibus is an old medium size Japanese van where uncomfortable seats were added (loosely screwed in) in the back to carry passengers.
2. Buses. They are big, go fast and crazy overcrowded. The max capacity of the bus is 65 seating places and 25 standing in the aisle…this is in a perfect world. They normally have over 80 people seating and as many people as possible standing in the aisle. Especially true at the moment with the diesel and petrol crisis. They cut down the number of buses and minibuses. People carry their big bags of maize flour or fish or beans with them and put them on the flour of the aisle. They play awful music, in loop. The bus often stops to drop people with all their bags which may take a while. At filling stations or road blocks (many on the roads), all the passengers need to get off the bus for inspection and then back in. It takes forever and everyone pushes to get a better spot than what they had. Less expensive than the minibuses.
3. Matola (big solid pickup that should be used to carry goods) or back of a pickup truck. Those travel on shorter distances and go where the minibuses are not often going. There are many stops and they breakdown a lot or run out of fuel. Good enough for less than 50km. Be careful to cover yourself or put sun screen when it is daylight and bring water, there is no roof or shade to protect you.
4. There are also other ways to travel, but I normally don’t (hitchhiking) or can’t afford it (having my own car or motorcycle! or renting a cab on long distances). And right now, the fuel crisis affects everyone. Having a car or a motorcycle is awesome when there is fuel and if you know a really good and reliable mechanic (see my previous blogs!! They won’t have the right tools or part or simply won’t bring them when they come to your house after you paid for their transportation; they will drive your car around to run errands and go visit relatives because they don’t own a car and will bring it with no fuel left; might be drunk; will fix the problem momentarily, if at all…. lovely and never a frustrating experience!!). Cars, decent spare parts and fuel are outrageously expensive, so not an option if you are volunteering!
5. On short distances and locally, there are bike taxis… generally not too expensive if the land is flat. They are awesome. I love it! Too bad Canada is too stuck-up on laws to have a system like this to carry people around. It is fun, affordable, environmentally friendly and reliable.

Most roads are unpaved and uneven except for the few Main Roads that go throw the country and some roads in the cities.

• Computers and internet are not used by many people. They don’t learn how to use them in school. Just like 20 years ago in Canada when things were done by hand. It makes it hard and tedious to keep records and work fast. So you might understand that exchanging documents or editing a report is not an easy process. Although some people are technology friendly and eager to learn, like one of my coworker who has a laptop, and a nice phone. I helped him get internet on his phone and tether it throw Blue Tooth to get faster internet on his laptop even when there is no electricity in town. This makes his life much simpler when it comes to sending report to Unicef in Lilongwe. He used to bring the report in person (150km away) because the connections wasn’t good enough to send and receive documents. I think we quickly forgot how computers and especially internet drastically changed our life and productivity. If you are reading this it means you have internet, so enjoy your chance!

• Electricity for most of the country is coming from hydroelectricity. There are a few dams on the Shire River, a river running south of Lake Malawi. The problem is that during the rainy season (half of the year) the river becomes extremely silty due to the mud slides and runoffs. This is hard on the turbines. Also, the level of the water in the Shire River becomes much lower during the dry season. The government is aware of the situation and problems but has been saying over the last 8 years that they don’t have the money to dredge the river floor, so the electricity shortage are happening more often every year and last longer. They (I mean the President!!) clearly have no intention of fixing the problem. They are hoping that the situation will become bad enough to get money from an NGO or that the problem will magically fixed itself.

There is electricity available in the towns and cities. The villages don’t have access to it. To buy electricity, one can either get a prepaid card from a gas station and enter the code. You have power until there is no units left on the card, the user need to always check to make the usage and the units left. This works the same for phone time. You buy units, you enter the ridiculously long code and you use them until you run out, then go buy more. This is really annoying when you come from a place where you get a bill and you pay every month for what you used. This is also possible here, but most people don’t go for it because it ends up being a big amount of money once a month and they have problems managing their budget. Plus most people don’t have bank account and steady jobs making the energy or phone companies not willing to offer them a monthly plan.

• They don’t have access to credit cards. So they can’t do transaction on line or pay bill. Which means that they always use money everywhere to pay for things. Except in really fancy hotels, the credit cards will not be accepted. Sometimes, when a person has a bank account they might use cheques for bigger expenses like a 3 million Kwatcha car or to pay a contractor after installing boreholes. The biggest bill tha Malawi has is 500 Kwatcha (about 3 USD). The bills are huge, they don’t fix in most wallets. They have bank cards to withdraw money from ATMs, that is of course , when one has a bank account.

 

Ok, I’m done for now. Let me know if you have questions or things that you want to know. I’ll be happy to write a blog about it.

 

Cheers, Ge

Tension

I remember being in Canada a few months ago and watching the news. Watching how a simple protest in Tunisia turned into a huge and unstoppable riot. The same happened in Egypt and other places before: France, Algeria... Then I got here, and there was political unrest and riots in Burkina where I was supposed to be sent initially. I remember all those times, thinking to myself, selfishly, “I’m so happy not to be there right now, so happy to be safe and not afraid of going out or travelling”. All those times that I’ve seen something like this on TV, I’ve never realized how people there can feel, what happens in their mind.

When I was here in Malawi in June, hearing about the stupid riots in Vancouver on the night that the Canucks lost to the Bruins, I remember thinking “what a bunch of idiots, rioting, burning cars and looting shops for absolutely no good reason, just because they are a little upset. That is madness, that is unfortunately humankind”.

Now here I am in Malawi, at a time of protests, frustrations and political unrest. Malawi never had riots or protests before, even if they have been having problems for at least six years now. It started with electricity shortage, then water shortage, then lack of foreign exchange. None of these have been fixed, and on top of that, there has been for the last year, petrol and diesel shortages. All of the shortages are more and more frequent and lasting longer, sometimes they are planned, sometimes they just happen randomly. The President made a new law that people are not allowed to fill up their jerry cans at the gas station. He wants to prevent people from buying fuel and selling it on the black market when there is a shortage, which kind of makes sense at first. But when there is no electricity, people, businesses, groceries, mills, and others need to have backup generators to keep working. Guess what, those generators use petrol or diesel, and the owners need to fill up jerry cans at the gas station to have their generators working when the electricity fails. Right now Malawi is not on the right track due to all these problems. Things need to change for it not to fall apart.  Here is a great article summarizing the events of the last year that led to the protests that are happening now in Malawi (Situation Report Malawi).

There was a scheduled demonstration/protest on July 20th 2011. The President did not agree with it and it led to a lot of frustrations. The protest took place. It started by people walking and chanting. Then the President made a public announcement in Lilongwe (during which the power went out!! haha) that made the crowd really upset and the policemen started using tear gas to disperse the crowd. The people took shelter in shops, breaking into them, then some started to steal, leading to policemen shooting people… There were bad riots and protest in the main cities. from south to north: Blantyre, the business capital;Lilongwe, the Capital; and Mzuzu. Although some other district towns also protested, like Karonga. The riots got out of control, especially in Mzuzu. People were burning buses, government vehicles and buildings and police stations. Young men were going in the streets with machetes and scaring the non rioters. It lasted for at least two days, and at least 18 people died with many more injured. Then things calmed down. There is another protest scheduled for August 17th. Protesters and organizers are hoping for a change in the situation before then and they also request the President to resign his mandate. I doubt that any of this will happen. It makes the situation here pretty unstable and scary. Who knows what is going to happen then and how bad things can get. Hopefully, things will not get worse and they will be well controlled this time. But so far it seems like the tension is rising on both sides of the fight, and no one is moving outside of their initial position. We will see. If the situation gets any worse and is still precarious, EWB and other NGOs will have to evacuate their employees. The protests are not targeting expats, but it is hard to predict the reaction of the road blocks policemen and other people in the cities and towns if the riots keep happening and worsen. We stand out, we appear as has having a lot more money and bribing unfortunately happens too often in this country. Even though we are not a direct target, we can easily become prey. Ah, but don’t worry, these are only my personal thoughts and concern for the future weeks, as there is no real threat for now. The situation is unpredictable and unstable but not unsafe.

On my end, things have been going pretty smoothly. I’ve stayed home in Senga Bay. I’m in a good and safe spot. I cooked, I cleaned, I worked, I slept in, I swam in the lake, had some sachets and coke, drank some wine… waiting for things to calm down and go back to normal. Now they are, so I’m back at work.

That’s it for now I guess. I hope that you are all enjoying your summer as well as the peace and freedom that we all take for granted.

Much much love to you my dear friends and family. I’m glad I have you to support me and send me messages when things get tougher like it was last week.

Ge