A little girl in the world

Water usage and other tales

2012-02-02T05:52:00.001-08:00

Here I am in my office, trying to get work done but I can’t. It’s about 40 degrees and the power has been out all afternoon now, so no fan to help me concentrate. I’m drenched wet from the sweat and humidity. It should be raining, it’s the rainy season after all, yet it’s not. Actually the rare times it rained in Liwonde it was more like a storm, too intense to help the crops, it caused flash floods and my office’s ceiling to leak right over my desk and computer and my colleague's.

The running water is out too and we have been having tons of problems with it over the last weeks. The water in Liwonde is pumped from the Shire river. The Waterboard has three pumps normally but two of them are broken and the one that is running is not 100% functional. They asked the Ministry to buy spare parts and a new pump in July 2011, but no pumps or spare parts have been ordered yet apparently. The main reason for this is the lack of foreign exchange available in the country, possibly combined with the lack of interest/urgency to help the Waterboard before they actually have their three pumps not working. There is only water a few hours a day, sometimes only after 11 pm until 4 am, with a really bad pressure. I had a ride from someone working for the Waterboard a few days ago and he said the current pump can’t withdraw sufficient amount of water for the needs, so until they fix the other ones or get a new pump, Liwonde will keep having water shortages.

This forced me to think about the current use of water on a daily basis: drinking, flushing the toilet (I miss the latrine), showering (even a bucket shower requires a few liters), washing clothes, cooking and washing dishes. I have a few buckets to store water but when the shortage go on for too long and we only get water while I’m sleeping, it makes it really difficult to have enough for my laundry or even the dishes. I need to think about the usage of every drop and how I can recycle it. We have a friend that lives by the river, so maybe I’ll have to go there and get water from it directly but it’s complicated and it’s not really allowed.

Also, the people I work with are not being paid by their employer (the malawian consulting company). They are rarely paid in time, those people don’t make a lot of money and they need every Kwatcha of it to buy food, soap, pay their rent and their bills, send their kids to school, etc. Their employer has always had problems to pay them in time, lack of good management skills I suppose, but recently the problems have reach a different level. The client of the project, the National Water Development (the Ministry) is not paying the project right now for various, unfair reasons that I’ll explain in a later post, so there is no money in the consultant’s account to reimburse the salaries and expenses from the project. But the most amazing (or silly) thing is that those employees are still coming to work every morning and working hard, all day long. Can you imagine for a second not being paid by your employer? Can you even imagine not being paid in time? And those things happen all the time here and people cope with this. This is although very problematic. Malawians are proud and so nice but won’t stand up for unfair treatment and situations. How are things suppose to change when everyone who are upset by it won’t raise their voice to speak up? They get upset but don’t target the right problems for their situation to change, they get impatient but at the wrong people. That is one of the many reasons why this country is both fantastic and frustrating.

So while I’m sweating, in my office, with no power and no electricity, surrounded by people who haven’t got paid for the last two months, in a country with no foreign currency and a clear lack of fuel, where the prices of goods and transportation increase every week because of the instability of the Malawian Kwatcha and fuel availability, I can’t help but think about how shocking it will be to be back in Canada in a few weeks, how shocking it will be to hear people’s concerns and complaints. I’ll have to be able to appreciate the difference and respect it. I am not saying that western countries have no problems, we also have our share of it, we also have people dying and crimes, we complain that our salaries are too low for the prices of living, and it is true, we get burnt out by working so much, we have depression and cancer; but the problems I’m surrounded by at the moment seem on a different dimension, they affect everyone, on every level.

I am happy and excited to go back to the western world, but I’m also sad and afraid by it. I feel like I have an exit, a way out of this unstable and difficult situation Malawi’s in at the moment. I am leaving right when things get tough and might get worse, or for all I know, better. I would like to know what makes a country straighten up from going down hill. I can’t help but wish Malawi will be able to get back on a more stable path, but I won’t be around for that.

I will try to write one or two more posts about my work and life here before I leave. I have so much to say but I’m not sure where to start and how to explain things yet.

Cheers,

Contracts are sheets to start a fire with

2011-12-16T05:26:00.001-08:00

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

2011-12-11T23:50:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-22T05:14:00.001-08:00

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

2011-11-14T06:23:00.001-08:00

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

2011-10-26T00:04:00.001-07:00

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

2011-10-21T08:16:00.001-07:00

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.

After the rain

2011-10-04T03:26:00.001-07:00

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

Suit up and go play

2011-09-22T09:31:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-15T07:08:00.001-07:00

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.

Playing your house on the stock market

2011-09-12T06:55:00.001-07:00

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

2011-09-07T02:36:00.001-07:00

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?

2011-08-29T02:23:00.001-07:00

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

2011-08-26T06:33:00.001-07:00

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

Unmentioned details

2011-08-08T04:55:00.001-07:00

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

2011-07-25T08:37:00.001-07:00

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.

Rice and ocra or plain rice, that is the question?

2011-07-19T02:26:00.001-07:00

Or the beauty of misunderstanding …

It was Lisa’s birthday on Tuesday and I wanted to do something fun in the village for her. As I told you before, Lisa has been living with me in the village for the last month. She was doing her field research in Salima District. Celebrating a birthday is not a Malawian tradition…at all. In fact, most people here don’t even know when their birthday is. Anyways, I was trying to plan a big dinner with duck and african cake (banana bread!), me and some neighbours were rehearsing a birthday song and were talking about making something fun for Lisa. So I thought everyone was clear and that things would work well. I got Lisa (and myself) super excited about that duck feast! We went back home earlier that day to be able to help with running errands at the market, killing the duck and cooking. We got home, Maggie was apparently gone to the market (said the neighbour), so we decided to go meet her. We couldn’t find her as the market is a labyrinth. Since we didn’t know what she bought and what was needed, we walked back home without buying anything. It was now almost dark. I couldn’t see a duck anywhere, or any sign of delicious meal anywhere, but Maggie always hides things really well. Eventually, she started cooking rice…which we never have as it is more expensive than nsima, so I was getting exited. An hour later, the rice was ready, but we didn’t prepare anything else yet. Lisa asked Dew and Maggie if she can prepare the relish and they said that there is nothing to prepare. So she left and got the pot of relish that was already prepare in the storage room (Dew’s room!!), but Dew said no, we don’t eat this with rice. She asked what was in the dish, he answered “ocra”. Now both me and Lisa are a bit confused. A few minutes later, came our plate… plain white rice…and a huge portion of it. No duck, no relish, nothing else…ah, and water to drink. Where was the fanta, the feast that we talked about?? Most boring meal I’ve ever had so far in the village. So Lisa asked to see the ocra relish wondering why this couldn’t be served with the rice. He said it is because they cooked it a different way with soda…baking soda??…yes. We tasted, it was ok, but cold. Verdict, both me and Lisa would have totally eaten this relish with rice. But why not them?? After a long discussion and laughter, we realized there was no clear reason except that they don’t eat this type of ocra with rice and we would. This was a nice proof of cultural difference and a big misunderstanding!

I invited Lisa for a big meal at my house in Senga Bay to make up for the failed birthday dinner. We went to the market and got a bunch of food. We prepared burritos and carrot cake! And got some cheap wine. Good times. It was awesome to have Lisa around in the house.

So I moved to Senga Bay, in a rustic cabin that I rent from a couple living in Lilongwe. They rent it from a Malawian but with the fuel crisis, they never go, plus it is cold right now, so I use it in their absence. It has a gas stove and a fridge, a hot shower and a flush toilet. It is on the beach. There are many cracks in the floor, walls and ceiling, so a bunch of bugs. So far I saw spiders, ants (big and small), a few giant whip scorpions, a bunch of geckos, a black snake, and a big monitoring lizard (probably a few meters long. I thought it was a big snake on the beams of my ceiling (inside the house), but then we saw a leg…ouff! I can live with a giant lizard, but not with a snake. Andrew has been in Senga Bay for the last few days trying to help me settle in and try to make the house a bit less bug friendly!! haha. We went hiking over the weekend and had some fun adventure discovering my new neighbourhood. Apparently there are hippos around, but I didn’t see any yet and we didn’t feel like walking to the hippo pool an hour walk through the wood, villages and beaches. Next time maybe! I found a bike that I can borrow from one of the gardeners/staff where I live. So I might take it sometimes to go explore. It is exiting! I’m a bit worried to live in such a remote place, but I’ll get use to my new environment and will be less and less scared of it. I quite like it. I can cook whatever I feel like, I can watch movies, read, do my own things whenever I feel like it. It’s great to have some space and time for myself as the last many many months of my life had been quite busy and I’ve definitely lack some alone time.

I’ll see how it goes, but I have decided to stay part time in the village (Salima) and part time in Senga Bay. I really appreciate my host family and I don’t want to make them sad. The village is 3km from the office where I work. Plus I want to be there with them once in a while. Life in the village is interesting and fun, I feel at home and I don’t want to lose this. My house in Senga Bay is 20km from my work and getting there is a bit of an adventure. I either hitchhike or take a matola (back of a pick up). Then I have to walk 1.5 km or take a bike taxi to get home.

Bye for now, I have to go back to work

I’ve added some pictures on my flicker page, have a look!

Note: I got all my gifts from Canada, the same day…haha, it felt like a real birthday (2 months later! yay). Thanks you so so much you guys, this is priceless. I had a delicious coffee on the beach on Sunday and I thought about how amazing my friends and family are. Big big hug to all of you. Everything will be much appreciated. The book was also a great idea, especially now that I’ll have more time to read. And my favorite…the small bottle of Espresso Vodka…haha, you are awesome. I’ll keep it for a though day. Fred, the DVD of our family videos from the 90’s was also ridiculously funny, what a great idea to make me laugh. We have a fantastic family dude. I love you guys and thanks for supporting me out here in my crazy adventure on the other side of the world. I feel loved and it is an incredible feeling. xx

Honk once to let me know you’re around!

2011-07-07T09:21:00.001-07:00

To follow up on my last post about cars, buses and roads in Malawi, here is something ridiculous that happened to my friend Lisa. She is using a motorbike to go to the field but the horn is broken. The horn for a vehicle on the roads of Malawi is like the mirrors on a car back home, really important! People use it when they go too fast and don’t want to brake but let you know they are coming, or simply to advise or even better, to say hi to someone on the street. If you don’t honk, goats, chickens, cows, pedestrians and bikes will stay on the roads, so not having a functional horn is a safety issue here. Lisa, decided for safety reasons to go to the mechanic shop to get it fixed. She was in Salima, and there are no real big mechanic shops. She went to one of the small shops, explained the small problem, took an appointment for the afternoon and gave the dude K500 so he could buy the stuff needed to fix the bike. When she got back from the field around 2pm, she left her translator/driver at the shop to check things out and call her when it was ready as she had work to do. Around 4:30, she called him and asked if the bike was fixed, the translator said no, and that she should come. When she arrived at the shop, the bike was in pieces on the ground and the mechanic was drunk trying to fix other stuff. He took the money she left for parts and went and got drunk!! The translator never thought of calling Lisa because he knew she was working and didn’t want to disturbed her. This is a typical Malawian problem…so frustrating! Anyway, she was out of her mind and asked the mechanic to put the bike back together because she needed it. After arguing a bit, the dude did what she asked him. But even after all this, the horn was still not working. She took off without paying him. The next morning, the motorcycle wouldn’t start. She had to push it to another mechanic shop. This mechanic eventually fixed the new problem (collateral damage!) and the horn.

Mechanics in most small towns are not well trained and they make judgement mistakes. They often fix things momentarily until they break again due to the lack of tools, spare parts or knowledge of the actual problem. They are limited in a lot of ways. And costumers don’t like to bring their vehicle to the repair shop because they will often come back unfixed, worst and/or without any fuel left as the mechanics will take it to run errands or visit family. When you find a good mechanic, you hold on to them as they are rare.

This problems also applies to drill rigs. When they break, they take a long time to be fixed because the drillers don’t have enough money for the repair and the spare parts are hard to find. This will obviously affect projects and delay everything.

Maintenance is not something Malawians are used to do. Maintenance of their vehicle, their borehole or mostly anything. Therefore, when breakdowns happen, they are often important ones that could have been avoid if the vehicle (or borehole) would have been serviced properly. But why would you want to spend money on something that is not broken??

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Malawi is now well into the dry season. The sun took over the clouds. The beautiful green luxurious landscape has been replaced by a brown layer of soil. The crops have been harvested, the trees are losing their leaves. The wind is slowly picking up and the nights are getting colder as we are entering, at a strangely fast pace, the cold and dry season. It is still warm during the day, but really cold at night. In some parts of the country (further inland), it gets close to the freezing point. Houses are not insulated and most don’t even have windows to prevent the cool air from getting in. It feels like September in Canada. I was not expecting this climate, so I’m often cold. Grace, I should have brought with me the cute tuque you gave me for Christmas! I regret it now. But the cold weather only last a couple of months. Everyone says that September to November is unbearably hot, even at night. I find it weird that the coldest and hottest months are right next to each other. Then will come January and the rain will start again, making the warm air extremely humid….

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I’ve been feeling sick this week, hopefully it is nothing serious. I’ve also found a place to a stay in Senga Bay. I’ve only seen the outside of it while walking on the beach a month ago. I’m getting the keys tomorrow, so I can move sometimes next week. It is a small and rustic cabin by the beach. It has electricity and a toilet inside, but the best of all, is that there is a kitchen, small, but with an oven apparently! Yay, I will be able to bake and cook my own food… I can’t wait. I can stand living in a village, having a latrine and an outside bathroom. I can stand sharing my room and even my bed. I can wash the dishes using sand and wash my clothes by hand. I thought I would have problems with integrating and making friends in the village, I thought I would find it hard to do the tasks, but it turns out that what I miss most is to cook. Ah, don’t get me wrong, I cook in the village, but I have to cook the things they like (nsima and some kind of relish) the way they do it and when they want to do it. Since wood or charcoal is expensive, I don’t feel like I can cook my own things if I feel like it, which would probably be impolite of me anyways. I’m excited to go to the market, find stuff that is in season, be creative with it and cook something! Pho, burritos, crepes, pasta, apple crumble, cake, oatmeal…and coffee! I’m also happy that I’ll have more freedom and alone time. Time to read, reflect and write, I miss this tons. I thought that electricity and running water would be the things I miss most, but they aren’t. If anything, they make you dependant and when there is a shortage (which is often), you rely on them and can’t do much. I’ll have the best of everything now: power, running water and the lake right in my backyard if I need water (I have a good water filter now, so I can even drink it…thanks Andrew!). The cabin will not exactly be mine, but I am renting it out from an older expat couple, who Andrew knows. They live and work in Lilongwe. They only go to the lake one day every six weeks or so. The deal is that I live there, can use all I want, keep it nice and clean, and go spend a night somewhere else when they are coming. I think it is a pretty awesome deal as housing in Senga Bay is hard to find and pretty pricey. I’ll try to arrange transport with someone living there and working in Salima, but for the moment I’ll commute using a motola (back of a pick up truck!!). It is only 20km away and costs K100 each way ($0.75). I’ll let you know more about my new life by the lake in my next post, I’ll try to send pictures, but it is quite hard to upload them through Blogger. Sorry!

Now, I have to tell my family in Salima that I will be moving. It makes me sad and breaks my heart a little. But I’ll visit them; I’ll go for lunch every week. I just know that they will have a hard time understanding that I’m moving. ahhhh, if only they could read my blog! haha…

Ok, that’s it for now

Stories from the road

2011-06-27T07:54:00.001-07:00

I’ve been on the road a lot lately, traveling to Senga Bay, Nkhata Bay, Nkhotakota, Mzuzu, Lilongwe. I haven’t taken the time to write in the last month, I apologize. I feel like many things happened since last time I posted a note, but I guess I didn’t know what to write about and where to begin. So let’s start with some thoughts I had on the minibus this morning on my way back from Lilongwe where I spent the last week.

There is no easy way to travel within this country…

If you are lucky enough to have or rent a car, it is very expensive to drive, as petrol and diesel are not cheap in Malawi. Plus every other week there is a fuel shortage for a few days, even sometimes for weeks. This is caused by the lack of foreign exchange and a fix currency on the world market. There is NO fuel in gas station, no trucks coming to refill the tanks. It is the case at the moment throughout the country, most fuel station have empty tanks, and the ones that do have fuel, have limited quantities and it creates insane cues as everyone is trying to get some fuel before it runs out. This means you never know when you go on a trip if you are going to make it back. You might get stuck somewhere for days if there is a fuel crisis. There are often people selling it on the black market for a ridiculously high price though. The same problem applies to buses and minibuses, but they have priority on fuel in most towns. They reduce the frequency and make sure the buses are full or over packed before they leave.

Then if you have to change a tire (or many other parts) anywhere else than Lilongwe or Blantyre, it gets pretty challenging. There are no real shops to repair cars or sell parts (used or new), they only have small shops on the side of the road where they sell a ton of other things too. I was on the road the other day with my friend Ron who was visiting from Vancouver, and we had to change a tire on our friend’s car we borrowed for a short trip. We got stuck for 4 hours trying to find a tire that would fit. A normal size tire for a car! They had one that was too small and one that was too big. We had a lot of kilometer to cover and didn’t want to damage the car or get in an accident because of an unfitted tired. So after arguing that it was the wrong size, one of the 15 guys who were working or standing around the shop, staring, went to look in the town, on his bicycle, to find a suitable tire. He finally came back with one. It was a used one, of course and we needed to buy a tube inside, just in case. Jacking the car and changing the tire was not an easy process either. But after four hours we were back on the road, laughing at the situation. What else can we do?

Minibuses and buses are definitely not better! OMG, they are horrible. First, there is no set time, they leave whenever they are full, so you might be waiting for a very long time if you just missed one. They are crowded with people, luggage, chickens, huge flour bags or groundnuts. No alternatives, only one type of bus or minibus…all shitty. They stop every where, sometimes every 5 minutes to drop people off or to take someone at random location on the road. Nonsense! Most times the driver is playing music on the radio, which in theory sounds awesome, but Malawi doesn’t have a lot of songs and they play them until they are beaten to death. So you’ll hear the same 5 songs with a very similar rhythm. Otherwise they play a lot of Acon and Justin Bieber, over and over again. Sometimes, there will be a preacher, yelling stuff for an hour, or women signing. It’s never relaxing, never enjoyable. And this is a straightforward ride, I’m not even talking about the problems that often happens: breakdowns, flat tires, lack of fuel, accident. Just this morning, I saw 2 minibuses on the side of the road that were destroyed. This happens often, it’s pretty scary. Drivers are going way to fast on super narrow roads, passing when they can’t see in front of them, interacting with other crazy drivers, motorcycles, pedestrians and bikes. I’m terrified every time I’m on the road.

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On a different note, my life in Salima is ok, still living in the village. Lisa, my colleague, is now living with us for a few weeks while she is doing a field research in Salima. Pretty awesome to have her around. We are sharing my 3/4 bed, but at least we got our separate room and some girls in the village gave us a bed frame…great. I cooked chilli the other night for all of us and they liked it. Chilli and nsima, not a bad combination. It breaks my heart every time I go and have to sleep somewhere else, as my family and neighbours will be sad and miss me, I’m like a TV to them, it’s exciting to have a muzungu around. It’s hard to explain why I have to travel for work or why I want to go to the lake for the weekend with my friends. My Chichewa is not fantastic as I’m often gone and I speak English at work. But I can understand.

I’m looking for a house to rent in Salima or Senga Bay to share with my good friend Andrew. He has to go work out of the country and will be coming back to Malawi during his rotation. So hopefully we’ll find something safe, nice and affordable, which is not easy. It’s exiting, but might not work out, so let’s see.

My work is stating to change a bit. Lisa’s research has shown us a different perspective and gave us a ton of information on how Salima District works regarding borehole siting and decision making. It seems to work fairly well, so I don’t feel like I want to change the process, but help it cover the blind spots or biases. To get a new borehole, communities need to apply, raise money to cover future repairs and open a bank account, then there is a selection and verification process done by the District Water. Only major problem so far in this method is the miscommunication. A lot of communities don’t know about the process, so they are being left out or helped by other NGOs. The District Water Officer asked UNICEF, the main funder, to allow budget to have a workshop about water issues with the Group Village Headmen. The District thinks that if they get traditional leadership involved and aware of how to help their communities, they would help solving part of the communication problems. UNICEF, after many discussions finally agreed. I can’t wait to see if this workshop will lead to more applications from different villages. There are many other problems associated to more applications for a limited amount of borehole to install, but it is a start. Some of the issues are that more communities will be raising money and putting it in a bank account. This is not a big problem until they get rejected and need to redistribute the money. Most communities don’t know how to keep record or simply don’t want to keep records of who contributed and how much, leading to fights and stealing when it comes to giving the money back. This can ruin further projects and have communities never applied again, or worst, not want to raise money for borehole repair, as they will get frustrated. This is one of many issues, but most of these things can be fixed if the workshop is done properly. Working in the aid sector is challenging, slow and frustrating. Salima seems to be doing well on their own, they are busy, but have good judgement and they are a good team. Also, I’ll hopefully get to work with other NGOs who are working independently from the District to see how they do things regarding borehole siting and area mechanic networking. I’ll also be evaluating the last boreholes installed by the District over the last two months (20 BH). I’ll check the salinity, the yield and the general location, to see if there are ways to do things differently in the next round of siting. I’ll evaluate the logs and data that were given by the contractor to the District and the salinity test results. No one in the water office can analyse this information, so I’ll have a look and if I see if there are any issues, then I’ll try to see how to manage this differently or who to influence to change the contracts so the boreholes are safe, working and being used by communities. I’m really happy and exited about that as I have being pretty demotivated by my work recently. Especially now with Andrew leaving Malawi and not working for Water for People, as it was great to be having awesome discussions with him about hydrogeological work and issues in Malawi. I was helping him develop strategies to prevent contractors from cutting corners and help communities get better boreholes. My other friends and coworkers all have completely different background so hydrogeology is rarely part of my discussion with them. I’ll hopefully find other side projects to keep my motivation high. I’m pretty sad to lose my friend though; it was good to have someone to exchange ideas back and forth with, and do fun random stuff with every other weekend or so…I’ll miss you Andrew, but you already know that! haha

It was great to see Ron here, kind of surreal though. Erika, bien sur que tu es la bienvenue, j’ai hate de te voir. Deux semaines est bien en masse, tu pourras meme visiter le Mozambique ou le Zambie un peu si tu veux. Je suis pas certaine c’est quoi tes plans de voyage et ce que tu veux decouvrir. Dis moi quand et je m’organise pour prendre un peu de vacances. Je t’aime et je m’ennuie de toi, tu peux pas savoir a quel point j’ai hate qu’on ouvre une tres mauvaise bouteille de vin pis qu’on jase, ca fait la vie que je t’ai pas vue il me semble, puis on a un tas de choses a se dire. Essaies de convaincre Cath de venir aussi…ca serait malade. Grace, let me know if you are still planning on seeing me when you come to Africa and what you want to do if so?

Lindsay, Arainn and Andrew, I hope your birthday parties back in Vancouver were amazing and I wished I could have been there with you guys. Miss ya

Ok, bye everyone

Late afternoon scene from Chipse Village

2011-06-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

Here are some pictures from my daily surrondings, just wanted to share them with you. Amber this is to answer your request. It's really complicated to upload pictures from Salima, as the internet connection is generally not so great. Sorry for the lack of visual support, and also it's tricky to get pictures of me as most people don't know how to use a camera. I'll keep working on the project though.

All is well here. No I didn't have a birthday cake, but I had a a great time. I'll write a longer post soon.

My home

Late afternoon scene in my village

By super cute purple bike (need to be fixed every other day as it's too old and shitty!)

An hint of randomness

2011-05-27T01:34:00.001-07:00

Salima, cute small town somewhere between lake Malawi and the Capital. This is my home now. My village, Chipse, is about 3km from Salima BOMA. I’ve been living there for a month now. So far, things are between awesome and tough, it just depends at what point during my day you ask me.

The mornings are though most of the time. Villagers wake up at 5:30, if not before, and start sweeping the floor of the house, than the backyard. They go fetch water, do the dishes, wash the floor, take a bath, then eat. By 8am, they are done with everything and they rest and chat for a couple hours. This is so different than my normal life. I find it hard, not so much the waking up at 5:30, but the having to rush to do all the tasks. Mornings were normally, back in Vancouver, a quiet, relaxing time. I’d wake up, shower, eat, then if I have time, clean a bit, then bike to work. I enjoyed sleeping in, walking to the market and cooking a good breakfast on weekends. Cleaning the house is not first on my list of priorities, that, I realized! It seems like they start resting the minute I go to work!

I miss having time and space to reflect, read or listen to music, time to be on my own without having to talk. The only time I have is when I take my bucket shower in the morning and at night. By the way, I’m starting to manage really well at washing using a bucket and I’ve found a good system to wash my hair! haha

Work is good and bad: a mix of learning and training; an eternal fight between holding my thoughts and sharing them; juggling between going my pace then slowing down to fit theirs. So far, I went to trainings with traditional authorities, meetings with UNICEF and my counterparts from the district, I went to the field to observe borehole repair done by the water district and also borehole drilling, development and pumping tests. I also went to team meetings with EWB in Lilongwe, went with a Junior Fellow I’m coaching to set him up in Machinga. I’m still working on my research report from my first month in Karonga. I’ve been working long hours and sometimes on weekends too. The district water officer and my other counterparts at the district are extremely busy. When people are good and motivated here, they are being asked to do everything, and they get super busy. UNICEF, who is their main funder, is asking them a lot of reporting these days. They are off schedule due to floods during the wet season a few months ago. They have to supervise and contract local entrepreneurs to build latrines for schools, supervise the borehole installation, do training and exploring for CLTS (Community Led Total Sanitation). But all this got delayed because of the rain. Funding from any donor is tricky and requires a lot of reporting. UNICEF gave money to Salima District in January to do the work of the first quarter. They have 3 months to complete the work and report in order to get money to do work in the next quarter. So now, they need to work twice as hard and fast to catch up if they want to get the funding for the next phase of work. It puts me in a tough spot, because they will need my help on the next phase of work (siting and installing borehole) but they don’t have time right now for me to really start the work I’m suppose to be doing.

I had to come all the way to Malawi, to start wearing heels at work. People here are super well dressed, so I decided to do the same and brave the sand, the dust and the unpaved roads. I went to the local market to looked for some clothes. I found great outfits for less than a few bucks, plus I made friends with some girls at the same time, because finding clothes here takes a long time, so you have a lot of time to chat!

Life in general is ok. I can’t wait to have the weekend off to go to the Lake with my friend Andrew, who’s coming down from Mzuzu today for my birthday weekend! Yay. My plan: relax, sleep in, swim, paddle, drink wine, chat and recharge my batteries.

Another great thing, my friend Ron from Vancouver is suppose to come visit me in a couple of weeks. I can’t wait. If anyone feels like coming to Malawi, let me know, I’ll be happy to find you a place to stay in my village!

Talk to you later dear friends

NOTE: I’ve posted some new photos on my flicker page, check it out by clicking on the link on the side tab.

Out of sight, out of mind?

2011-05-16T07:16:00.001-07:00

This morning, while having breakfast with my host brother (20 years old), I saw how smart he is, and it made me believe that Malawi have the potential to change; Malawi has amazingly bright kids. The only problems is that most of them can’t afford to go to university. He is waiting, crossing his finger to get a scholarship. He wrote the exams and applied everywhere. He is keen. I hope he gets in, in fact I wish that all the smart and motivated teenagers would have an easier way to go to school, so that they can bring their perspective to the table, so that their point of views and ideas can be heard. I was talking to him about the lunch and learn meeting I’m preparing for my colleagues from Golder back in Canada; he asked what I was going to discuss and I listed some of the issues. I talked about my work, both here and back home and when I expected him to lose interest or not understand, he kept asking super relevant questions. We ended up chatting about the environmental issues that Malawi will be facing in a few years from now, and also about the boreholes and shallow wells issues related to installation, geology, hydrogeology, water quality. He also mentioned the salinity of the groundwater in some places and asked why that is and how contractors can avoid installing boreholes in brackish water. He was particularly interested to know about the use of fertilisers and latrines next to the boreholes and wells. He is concerned that a lot of the mutations and diseases that people in villages are facing might come from that type of contamination. He also wonders how can people stop throwing their garbage away anywhere without caring, because this is what most people do. Everything is put in a plastic bag, even alcohol shots, and often individually wrapped, once done with it, they throw it out the window and forget about it. Out of sight, out of mind! The problem is that it is not really out of sight as the garage are everywhere, but they seem to not see it, or maybe they just don’t know any better, so they get use to it: Alcohol sachets (shots that is put in a sort of ketchup sachet); the phone units (you have to buy airtime by units, the code is written on a piece of paper that is sold on the street; you buy, scratch, enter the number in your phone, and you have a few minutes of airtime!); chibuku cartoon container (beer that is fermented in a sort of milky texture. They wrap it in a container similar to the one use for milk in Canada), beer and soda’s cap, plastic bags;…everything that is not refundable will be found everywhere on the ground. Although Diew (my host brother) had never studied or read about the problems and the solutions that we use in developed countries regarding the above issues, he was blowing my mind with his ideas. He was saying that the government should get involved to regulate before it gets too late; he was suggesting that finds should be given by the government to manufactures if they dispose of their waste in the rivers and lake; he was saying that there should be communal dumps and people should pay to have someone to pick up their trash to the dump, otherwise people would be given fines; he also said that the use of fertilisers should be better supervised and that farmers should be educated about the impact of their behaviours.

My village is really awesome though, they have a holes where they put the dishes, and when full they burn and then bury. It’s not perfect, but it is better than having wrapping and food waste all over the place.

I was in the bus the other day, coming back from Machinga and I was standing up, as usual. So a nice lady offered to share her seat with me. We talked about our work and I realized that both her and her husband work in water quality and environment for the government. She works for the water board in Blantyre, Malawi. Her husband works for the national government in Botswana, with the intention of learning how they do things there to help Malawi. He went to university in Canada, in Ontario. At some point during the bus ride, she asked a man who had just thrown his plastic bag by the window why he was doing that, if he knew the impact of doing that? I was impressed by how much environmental conviction she had. I high fived her and it gave me a big smile.

…So I had a big smile on my face until the bus hit a little 5 years old boy on the side of the road. That was pretty dramatic and terrifying. We stopped to help him. Both his legs were injured, he was bleeding a lot and he also hurt his head. We took him and his father (I assume), in the crowded bus, to the closest hospital, but there were no doctors as it was Saturday, so we went to the next town. To get admitted to the hospital in case of an accident, the injured person needs to have a police report, so we had to go to the police first (weird !?). Drivers here are crazy, the roads are narrow and there are no lights at night, a lot of drivers are drink (beers, chibuku or sachets) and drive. There are a lot of pedestrians and bikes on the side, and sidewalks are inexistent. Accidents are frequent in Malawi and often deadly. But, one problem at a time… a lot of things need to change here. I learn about them everyday. One clear trend that can be drawn though, is that there is a lack of regulations and a lack of enforcement when existing.

I guess that’s it for now on the dramatic side of things. I also have good news. I’m starting to settle in my new village. I really like it. My neighbours are nice and helpful, so is my family. It’s challenging though to have to relearn everything, like :

doing the dishes on the ground outside, using sand, soap, a cloth and a bucket;
washing my clothes by hands, once again, on the ground in the backyard;
learning how to cook on the fire (on the ground of course!), with no handles or oven mits; or,
taking a shower, using a bucket, on the ground, outside. Washing my hair is really challenging let me tell you.

But I enjoy my daily bike rides. I enjoy discovering the neighbourhood, the market, the language (most people in the village only speak Chichewa), the food, the culture! I like to go see them play football or basketball on Sunday afternoons. I like to hangout with the girls on the porch while washing our clothes. I miss a lot of things from home, I think about it everyday, but I also realize everyday all the things I’ll miss from here when I go home…I’ll miss all of this, even if it is not always easy. There is just something fantastic about this lifestyle, this culture, this language, this food, these people, their smile and joy for life…I’m slowly starting to adjust to this new life and make it my reality! Today is a holiday, and we are having Jordan and Tessa for dinner. For those of you who don’t know who I’m talking about, they are from EWB. Jordan was with me during the training in Toronto, we arrived here together. Tessa is another EWBer, she just joined our team a few weeks ago. They spent the weekend in Senga Bay. Forgot to mentioned they are a cute couple!! haha. Can’t wait. I went to the market this morning and got some fish, rice and veggies. I’m exited to have my first visitors.

From the bottom of my heart, I miss you guys. I do. Every day I think about you and all the things we use to do, especially on weekends.

Living out of a backpack

2011-05-10T03:27:00.001-07:00

Since December 1st, I haven’t had a place to unpack my bags and settle, I haven’t had a place to call home. I’ve left my apartment in Vancouver on Dec 1st and I’ve been moving from places to places ever since. I spent some time between Vancouver and Quebec, crashing my parents’ and friends’ houses until February, then went to Toronto until March for the training. I arrived in Malawi at the beginning of March, almost two and a half months ago and since, I’ve been moving almost every other week, if not everyday. It’s great cause I got to meet a lot of people and discovered many places, but I’m exhausted and sick of living out of my bags. It’s now time to unpack and finally start making a life here.

I’m in Salima, working at the District Water Office. I moved last Thursday to a village about 3km (on dirt roads) from the office. My new house, well let’s be realistic, hut, is great. We have windows, a door and a real lock. The floors and walls are still made out of mud, but the floors have been polished, so it’s a bit cleaner and less dusty. It almost look like cement. We even have a table, some chairs and few couches. I got myself a mattress because I didn’t want to sleep on a carpet on the ground for the rest of the year. I was suppose to have my own room, which was quite exciting, but it turns out that I have to share a room with the owner, 35 years old lady. The room is big enough for both our mattresses, but this means I’ll have no privacy. I don’t have a lot of place, so until I have a small shelf build for me (when I find the time and money to do so), I’ll still be living out of my bags, which sucks. What happened is that the room I was suppose to have, is the storage room, so it means that if I take it, there will be no place to store the maize flour bags, water containers and dishes. They realized that when I moved in…ahhh, Malawians have big hearts, but they have a poor planning sense! haha. Anyway it’s ok and cheap for now, but I’ll keep an eye open on other options down the road. I don’t think I can stand sharing a room for the rest of the year. I live with Maggie, 35 years old, and her 20 years old nephew (Diew). She is a business woman, she sells soap at the market and also firewood during the rainy season. She’s not rich, but she lives well. She, as most women, doesn’t speak English, only Chichewa. I met a few 18-25 years old girls whose English is surprisingly good, well good enough to have a conversation. Maggie is taking care of Diew until he can get a scholarship to go to university in medicine, engineering or agriculture, depending which faculty accepts him. He is a brilliant kid, who speaks English fairly well and also a little bit of French. So our deal is that he helps me with Chichewa and I help him with French; sounds good to me! He has a lot of patience and he’s well articulate; he’d be a great teacher I think. He asks me interesting questions about life in Canada and the work I was doing. He also asked me what I was thinking about the environmental condition of Malawi, which is normally something that no ones even consider as being an issue. People throw their garbage everywhere, there are no sewer and garbage collection system, except for bigger cities like Lilongwe, Blantyre and Mzuzu. I was quite surprise and happy with his questions and thoughts.

My village is nice and really clean. Every house has a latrine, a hand washing station and a pit to dispose of the garbage (WOW, this is quite rare and impressive). People are proud, welcoming, helpful and friendly. Our house has a sitting/dinning room, plus three other rooms that are: me and Maggie’s bed room, Diew’s bedroom and the last one, as I mentioned, is a storage room. There is no kitchen, although, there is a small hut in the back yard where we can make a fire to cook when it’s too cold, too windy or raining; most of the time the cooking is done on the front porch. The bathroom and latrine are separate huts in the backyard, both really clean and well taking care of.

To answer Amber’s question from the last post, my village has about 350 households (a household has an average of 5 people). In general, there is a shallow well for every 125 people. There is also a borehole, about a kilometer and a half away from our hut, where they get their drinking water. Boreholes are generally deserving 250 people, but it’s often more people than that due to breakdowns (see previous posts about my research). I got my family a filter so that we can drink the water from the shallow well (which is located about 25km from the latrine), which will save Maggie the trouble of waking a long distance, caring water on her head (she has to do this a few times to get enough water for the day). She is quite excited and happy. I just need to get two plastic containers and a stand to make the set up, but all this is a bit expensive (850 kwatcha per container and K1500 for the stand-the ceramic/silver filter in itself was K1800 ($US1=K150)), so I’m working on it and I’m trying to find cheaper alternatives. I know it doesn’t sound expensive to you, but it is here in Malawi, when you think that a meal at the market is K200 or a new pair of trousers is K500. My daily salary is about K2800; it is the salary of my colleagues at the district. It needs to cover my cellphone and internet fees (expensive), my travelling, my rent and my food. I also had to buy a mattress and a bike, which were both expensive, as they are considered luxurious goods that most villagers don’t have.

My daily routine on weekdays is to get up when the sun rises (5:30), greet a lot of people, wash the dishes from the night before (as it was too dark then) while Maggie and Diew are sweeping and cleaning the floors of the house and the yard. After, I take a warm bucket bath, get dressed (with a patterned and colourful skirt and a nice shirt), have breakfast (sweet potato or pumpkin or white bread, always serve with sweet tea without milk). Then I hop on my old, purple, single-speed cruiser bike and head to work. At the office, so far, I’ve been doing a lot of reading, I assisted to a training last week and I also went to the field to do maintenance/repairs of boreholes. I go to the market for lunch once in a while. I think it’s nice to walk around, observe people and interact with them in Chichewa. I get whatever they have, which is normally goat or beef with rice or nsima. I bring my Chichewa book to learn and practice. Then I go back to work in the afternoon and I try to ride back home before the sun set, around 6pm. When I arrive home, there are a few chores to do. Right now is harvest time, so my family is drying out the maize in front of the house and getting it ready to send it to the mill, so everyday, we have to put it in bags to store in the house over night. After, I usually have a shower bath and help preparing food, which is nsima and some kind of relish (depends on the season and what they sell at the market, but lately it has been beans, or ocras, or osipa). After dinner on the porch, we chat for a bit with some neighbours, then go to bed around 8:30.

The weekends are a bit different, well at least for me, as I don’t go to work. I help a little more with the chores. I go fetch water, I wash my clothes, I go to church (I won’t go every Sunday, but I’ll try to make an effort as it is a big deal for people here), I go to the market and learn some Chichewa with the teenagers of the village, while Maggie goes to the market to sell soap and other stuff.

Here is my life… and even if it sounds simple, every day is a new challenge. Sometimes I’m struggling with the language, sometimes with the dust and sand, sometimes with the lack of privacy and alone time or the people invading my space, sometimes with work and the busy schedule of my coworkers, or their lack of commitment (you learn quickly that “yes” in Malawi often doesn’t mean yes, but rather acts as an acknowledgement that one said something!).

Ahh, I forgot, this morning, from my village, I was able to Skype via my iPhone, with Nina in Vancouver. The connection wasn’t too bad, we had a good conversation. So if anyone wants to call me via Skype, you are welcome to try, it’s definitely not perfect, but it’s still better than nothing. My user name is Gennparent, just add me in your contact and tell me when you are available. We are 6 hours ahead of Quebec time and 9 hours ahead of Vancouver time. My phone is often turned off as I don’t have electricity in the village and the town often has power shorage, making it hard to charge it.

Bye now

When knowledge gets in the way of creativity

2011-05-09T00:23:00.001-07:00

Dawn asked me to prepare a lunch and learn meeting over Skype with my colleagues at Golder in Vancouver (Canada), so as I think this is a great idea and really exciting opportunity, I decided to write this post for them. Although, I’ll try to make it interesting for everyone else who wants to learn about the drilling/pumping challenges encountered here in Malawi.

My actual work with EWB is not really directly involving the followings topics but I made it a side project as I get asked a lot of questions on different hydrogeological issues by people from the district and different NGOs. Hopefully you guys can help us find solutions or push our understanding.

Every district here has a main town, called a BOMA in which the water is distributed by the Water Board. Some districts have a few other cities with water distribution and electricity. The rest of the district depends on boreholes, shallow wells or gravity fed pipes (taps and protected springs) to get safe water.

The shallow wells, as their name states, are pumping the shallow source of water using different types of pumps, like the elephant pump (rope and washer system). These shallow sources of water are obviously more susceptible to surface contamination from latrines located nearby, livestock or fertilisers. This is what my village is using right now, and the latrines are located about 20 meters from the well I’m fetching water from. Nobody knows if the latrines are up or down gradient from the well as there is no hydrogeological mapping done here.

The boreholes are in general drilled by a drill rig but can also be done using manual percussion drilling when the time and soil conditions permit it. They are often installed in fractured rock, with a maximal depth of 40-60m as the Afridev Pumps (the pump that needs to be used in borehole) won’t withdraw water over this depth. The Afridev started life in Malawi in early 1981. From the start, the aim was to produce a deep well hand pump that was very easy to maintain at village level and could be manufactured in countries like Malawi, where industrial resources are limited.

The problem is not the actual pump, but the contractor doing the work or in many cases, the drillers. They cut corners short and somehow, they are able to get away with it; they don’t do proper pumping tests, they often install the pumps during the wet season and do not take into consideration the water drawdown in the dry season which can sometimes be lower than the pump capacity, so even if the community were to add extra rising main pipes and metal rods (which is rarely done) during the dry period, the pump wouldn’t be able to withdraw water. The rising main is made of PVC pipes that are clued (solvent) together using a connector as the pipe are not threaded and can’t be screwed together. This means that to do maintenance of the rising main or when it brakes and needs to be fixed, the pipe sections are cut and clued back together afterward using new connectors. This is a complicated process.

Aside from siting the waterpoints (well/borehole) in the right location and where they’d be needed, other problems that are encountered are the access to good filter pack, the development method, the pumping test and water quality test.

Filter pack

A filter pack is the material that surrounds the well screen to filter the water coming from the aquifer in the PVC pipe. It is supposed to be fine enough to filter the smaller soil particles of the surrounding aquifer, but coarse enough to not be washed away through the screen. To get filter pack here is complicated. The contractor needs to go buy it from a quarry or get it directly from the river bank (cheaper). The material is often too angular, not uniform enough in size. Good contractors will sieve it to get the adequate size, but must won’t and the filter pack will wash away or clog the screen preventing water from being pumped.

Development

The development of the well and borehole is done to wash out the sediments that were created during drilling in order to bring the conductivity and connectivity of the aquifer back to its original (pre-drilling) status. This is a really important step that is often not done properly, if at all. The drilling is done with mud, the lithology is often clay and silt, and the gravel pack contains varying amounts of fines, thus the need for proper development.

The development is normally conducted using a rope and washer pump. This type of pump is only targeting one section of the screen and does not disrupt the aquifer enough to get rid of the unwanted sediments. There is no electricity near the waterpoints to be able to use an electric pump to develop the well and generators function with fuel, so it makes them non reliable due to fuel shortage, and expensive to use as fuel or diesel is expensive.

Pumping test

As I just mentioned for the development, the use of electric or fuel pumps to do the pumping test is not possible in most cases. The pumping tests are done to ensure that the waterpoint will be able to supply sufficient amount of water per day for the number of users. In Canada, the pumping tests are done using a powerful pump that pumps for an extended period of time (12 to 48hrs), more water, at a faster flow rate than needed in reality. The pumping test is usually followed by a recovery test, which gives an idea of the recharge rate. The pumping tests here are done using a hand pump, meaning that someone has to pump by hand for hours. Therefor they are often just run for an hour or two and there are no real analysis of the data to make sure the well will produce enough water. There are no loggers or water levels available to check the drawdown or the recovery.

Any ideas on how we could do the pumping test more efficiently or at least get data on the water level. Remember: lack of fuel, lack of electricity, no western pumps, water level or logger available. Please help me on this one!

Water quality test

A lot of boreholes in Malawi have brackish water or dissolved metals in the water. The contractor should do a water quality test to ensure that the water is potable. The shallow wells often have pathogens and fecal bacteria problems associated to them. The water quality tests could prevent a lot of diarrheal diseases. Most contractors skip this step as they don’t want to have to redrill the borehole. The water analyses in Malawi are pricey and there are not that many labs that run them.

Ok, I think this is it for now. I hope some of you will be interested to help us find solutions or at least throw some ideas out there. Let me know your thoughts and feel free to send the link to everyone who might be willing to help.

Bye and thanks

Updates

2011-05-01T12:43:00.001-07:00

Wow, I think I wrote my last post almost a month ago. Time flies. I’ve been here for two months now and it’s seems like I just arrived.

I’m now living in Salima, which is about 120km east of Lilongwe and 20km from Lake Malawi. It is uncomfortably hot and humid in the town of Salima compare to many places in Malawi, like Mzuzu, Dedza or Lilongwe where it is right cool at night, and even during the day sometimes. I have a hard time sleeping at night, it’s too hot. I moved there about 2 weeks ago now and had been slowly settling in. I’ll love it. I found a place to stay in a village, a few kilometers from the town of Salima, where I’m working (District ater Development and Irrigation Office). I’m moving in sometimes next week, so I’m super excited. It’s a super cute village and I’ll be leaving with a small familly in a 3 bedrooms hut. I actually didn’t see the house, but I met with the mom, she seems great and she’s happy to take me. They don’t speak any English, so it will be a good way for me, or at least a nice incentive to learn Chichewa (now that I was getting better in Tumbuka). I also found a tutor to help me. She is a teacher, she lives 5 minutes from my work and she charges $1,50 (K250) an hour. GREAT!!! I got myself an awesome tanzanian bike last Friday: a cute purple, single speed, with a basket in the front…a sort of old and really authentic cruiser bike! haha. I know. I’m exited to go back to Salima tomorrow and fix the tires, do some maintenance and bike around my new town, with my new bike…this will be where I’ll be staying for at least the next five months, but probably the rest of the year. I can’t wait to have a day off to bike to the lake for a swim, bring a picnic and a book, and bike back. This will be something I’m planning to do every other weekend…Let’s see how I feel after I do it once (remember I said the bike is old and single speed! so it will be a couple hours to get there), but it will be so woth it. The people I work with seem to be really motivated and clever. They have my age and are using smart phones and like technology a lot. They are extremely busy, but I have a good feeling that it will be a perfect fit for me to work with them. They have to install 40 boreholes over the next year and hopefully I’ll be able to help them with the sitting. About half of the villages in the district don’t have borehole, they share it, and quite a few boreholes have brackish water. It will definitely be interesting to work here, I’ll be learning a lot and hopefully will also be able to help and have a good long tem impact on how they make there decisions. So far, I’ve been going to the field to see how the maintenance/repair of boreholes was done by the district office to help villages; I’ve also been invited to go to a few WASH meeting with UNICEF. I got introduced to a lot of people. Overall, I’m super happy about my new life here and I’m looking forward to get a little bit more settled and know more Chichewa.

Last weekend, for Easter, I went to Nyika Plateau in the north of the country with some friends from Mzuzu. We went camping, saw monkeys, zebras and different types of antelopes. Lovely! It was epic.

Terra, Lisa and Kristina, our new APS just arrived in Lilongwe from Canada and Tanzania this weekend. I came to Lilongwe on Friday to start processing my working visa and spent the weekend here with them. I went hiking Dedza Montain today with some people who work for UNICEF. It was amazing, plus we stopped for the infamous home made cheesecake (the only place where they even know that cheesecake exist in Malawi) at the pottery shop coffee. I had a fantastic weekend.

My last week in Salima was interesting. I was staying in a small, somehow dodgy guesthouse close to the office. There was no power for five days in the town, and no running water for one and a half day. Hard to get work done. The lack of water made it even harder to sleep at night as I couldn’t take a cold shower before going to bed. And the lack of electricity made it really complicated to get food. I realized that leaving in a village is not so bad after all, as they don’t depend on running water and electricity.

Anyway, I’m going to bed now, but I wanted to give you guys some news and let you know what was happening in Malawi.

My next post will likely be about my work and how boreholes are installed and how Afridev pumps are working. Stay tune…hopefully there will be power so I can charge my computer and have access to internet. Also, I got my iPhone (thanks Arainn, you have no idea how usefull it is here) set up to receive my emails and tether my computer from almost anywhere. Crazy how internet time and airtime is expensive in Malawi and the networks are not working well most of the time! Ahh

Here is my phone number and address in case someone needs it, if you send me mail, please write the phone number as well, in case there is anything. Also, I don’t have to pay the customs fees for the first six months, so go ahead and send me some birthday gifts (May 31st)!! haha, but no pressure.

Genevieve Parent (+265)992210444

C/O District Council Office

P.O. Box 15, Salima

Malawi

Galerie de La souris mini

2011-04-11T04:16:00.001-07:00

La souris mini photostream on Flickr.

Karonga

What are we ready to cope with?

2011-04-11T01:51:00.001-07:00

I’m sending this post from Mzuzu, where I’m back for a few days until I head down south on Wednesday for a team meeting and eventually to my new placement in Salima. I left Karonga on Friday morning. I was suppose to go camping over the weekend with a friend and head back to Karonga on Monday but the whole town of Karonga, including my village, was under water on Friday morning. The market, the bus depot, the streets, the guesthouses, the houses, the gas stations, the banks, everything was flooded. Plus it was raining in my room the night before so I had to leave and find a new place to stay. The hut I was living in collapsed on Saturday and my family had to move to another place. Most houses and huts are made out of mud cement or bricks and weak mud cement, so when it rains for an extended period of time, they eventually collapse. I think the main problems with the construction of these houses, is in most case not the leaking roofs made out of plastic and branches (compare to metal sheets roofs), but the weak cement holding the walls together, the weak fondation also made out of weak mud cement and the lack of drainage around the house and villages. Deforestation of the land is certainly not helping the floods, as there is nothing to keep the soil to be washed away, but this is another issue.

Since my field research was done, it made more sense for me to stay in Mzuzu to write the report as power outage happens less often here than in Karonga. Although there was a water shortage all Saturday and there is no fuel in the city for the last week. Anyway, I’m crashing a friend’s house with a real shower and a kitchen, I can sleep in a bed and I even had crepes with maple syrup and an espresso on Sunday morning! I’m not going to lie, it’s good to have all that for a few days before I go and live in a village again.

Although as I was leaving my village Friday morning, I was feeling sad and upset that I had an easy escape when they don’t have this chance. I had a place to go to and I felt like I was running away when things were getting messy. I felt so much like an outsider. It’s crazy all the things these people have to cope with in life. And yes, they were still smiling throughout this shit… How can they do this?

Here is a link to a great article talking about Karonga floods and showing some pictures. I felt like it was my time and place to take picture of the disaster, so out of respect, I didn't.
I got on an over crowded minibus to Mzuzu, one of the few that was going to leave Karonga that weekend because of the lack of access to fuel (constant problem in Malawi). They over charged us because they knew they could, and over packed it, because they always do. Anyway, it was really hot and uncomfortable, as usual, and there was a little girl in front of me, sitting partly on her sister’s lap, partly on mine. At some point, she started throwing up on me and the two guys next to me. There was no way I could move out of there, as we are over packed. I was so upset at the driver for letting this situation happen, for over charging and over packing the damn minibus. He eventually pulled out and stopped so we could go clean up our clothes. There was obviously no running water, so we all went in the ditch to get some muddy water to wash our clothes. It worked out fine, we were not too smelly. I realized that the other guys were ok and not upset at the situation. They were just washing their things. Why was I finding this situation crazy and they were not? Why was I upset? So I asked one of them who was super nice and he looked at me and said: “it’s Malawi, that’s how things are, always a mess and people cope with it, without saying anything. You know better, most people here don’t, that’s why you see craziness when we just accept to live in shitty conditions”. We both started laughing at this nonsense, high fived and got back on the bus as if nothing happened. It’s my life now. That’s how things are.

My reflection: Are we complaining too much or are they accepting too many things? Am I trying to fight a system that is not willing to see problems or am I starting to accept things as they are? Are they smiling through adversity because they have no choice or because they simply don’t know better? If only I could answer these questions, if only I could understand… haha…I’ll get there eventually!

Also, on a different note, April 6th was " A day without Dignity". Here is a link to a video about wrong perspectives on what is really needed (A Day Without Poverty Video). Three of the pictures with proud business owners and their stand of shoes toward the end of the video are mine. Thanks for taking a second to look at it and share. Thanks for helping us make a difference.

How does it work?

2011-04-07T06:29:00.001-07:00

As far as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to discover the world. When I was a kid, there was a TV show I loved and would religiously watched every week, called: “La Course Destination Monde” (“The Race Around the World”). It was a few young journalists who where sent in the world to get stories of whatever they wanted, to interview people, film them and broadcast the news in 20 minutes or so. They had to have a different story every week and they needed to be in a different part of the world every other week. Each journalist had the choice of where to go and what to report on; they had only a small budget to make it happen. They were competing against each other, so they had to be awesome, and most of the time, they were, at least to the eyes of a 7 year old like me. I was inspired and I remember I wanted to be part of it when I’d grow up. Unfortunately, after a few years, the show stopped for a lack of funds, and I was never part of it. So I guess my being here, my writing this blog is my own way of reporting about what I see and sense in a world far, in so many ways, from the one I left behind.

I’m excited to be here, to live in a challenging and different scene, to be part of the change that is slowly occurring. I humbly recognize that I’m not going to be the main reason why things change, but I will always be proud of myself for working hard at trying to make a difference, for being here on the front line and if anything else, for bringing more awareness to the Western world and hopefully changing your views and perspectives on what needs to happen, my dear readers.

I’ve been in Malawi for just over a month now, and I’ve already realized a bunch of things. I’ve had great discussions with people open to change and some frustrating ones with people who don’t want to be part of it. Change is at the door step of conventionalism, it’s waiting for people to let it in. A great example of this is what is happening right now in some universities in Malawi. The president had three excellent teachers fired a few weeks ago because they talked about the government in a negative way. I’m not quite sure what they said to their class (if anyone knows, please comment on this blog, I’d love to learn more), but the President of Malawi got upset and scared of the effect of such discussions about them on the students who are the next generation of decision makers. This is a clear evidence that freedom of speech is not yet part of Malawi. But what is surprising and different than before, and what shows a hint of willingness of student for change is that, by firing these teachers, the government created a lot of frustration at the university level; the students and some other teachers are now on strike, in the street, showing their desire for a different type of leadership. For the time being, such a behaviour will certainly be accused and reprimanded by the government, but the fact they are they are ready to cope with that to push boundaries is fantastic. I’m curious to see what is going to happen next.

I often wonder what made our society change. Not so long ago, I’m thinking about my grandparents’ generation, people in Canada use to be poor and underdeveloped. Schools and governments were under the influence or power of the Church. People were being told by the Church that they needed to procreate otherwise they were going to hell, so families would keep expending. Parents were poor, farming in some cases or working in some dodgy industry with no regulations for a small pay check. A lot of kids were not sent to school because they were too far and the families did not have the money to afford sending their kids to secondary schools, especially the girls. They would eventually get married and stay at home to raise their kids and do cores, so why bother? The road system between villages and towns was terrible. Electricity was not affordable or not provided at all, so people were using candles and fire oven. Women were washing clothes and dishes by hands. Computers were not being used and internet did not exist. And community sense was way more developed, people less selfish and individualistic. Not so long ago in Canada, things were not that different than they are here in Malawi. Even my mom grew up in such a reality and she’s only 60 year old.

I can’t help but wonder what happened, what are the steps we took to change the behaviours of an entire society. I’m not saying that all the changes we made in Canada are for the best and should be applied here, not at all, but I’m curious to see what triggers change in mind sets. The reality and culture in Canada over the last 40 years have dramatically being modified, in so many ways. What was the catalysis to all this or what were the walls that needed to fall for the rest to follow: what it religion?; what is education?; was it desire for equality and equity? was it getting better system, regulations and laws to help people?; or, was it the use of computers and eventually internet? What happened exactly, who made it happened? Can we learn from these things to help changing ways, mind sets and behaviours here in Africa. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think the same exact things should occur here, I believe some of the habits and values that followed the changes we had in Canada are bad and are restraining us to evolve towards a right and sustainable direction. All I want is to be able to see if we can learn from the mechanisms, from our experience to help drive changes here. So if anyone has good thoughts on this subject, feel free to let me know.

I’ll leave you to your reflection on this, but I’m asking your feed back on these questions. What do you think was good and bad in the changes we made? What do you think was the catalyst reaction to change and/or what walls had to fell for the rest to follow?

Thanks and have a great day

Hope this can lead to some fantastic reflections and discussions with you guys.

Perspectives

2011-04-05T03:34:00.001-07:00

I woke up Friday morning around 6am sick with a cold. I had slept horribly. I didn’t feel like going to work at all, but I got up and went at 7:30. My Malawian coworker (translator) was once again late! He showed up around 9am and said “sorry Gen, my house got flooded last night, so I had to move my stuff to a different place over night and this morning”. I felt so bad for him, if my place in Canada would have been flooded, I would not have gone to work the next morning. But he did, because he knew this was important for me. I was glad to see him and know that he was ok. Even if he was tired, he was still enthusiastic and positive so he said: “Let us move now”.

Then we left to go in the field. As we were riding, I realised that most of the villages we were passing by, got flooded the night before. The water was up to half the height of most houses. The crops of maize, rice, cassava and all their gardens were submersed by muddy water. All of a sudden, by cold, by bad night of sleep and my complaining about it, made me feel selfish. Seen in a different perspective, with another lens, my problem was not really a significant one. These people whose houses were mostly ruined by the water, had lost all of their flour, grains and seeds. They were washing their clothes by the side of the road and drying them on the ground. They were sitting on the street, meters from their houses hoping the water would dry so that they can go back. In some cases, their house are ruined. The houses in these villages are built out of weak mud bricks and even weaker mud cement. That’s it. So I’ll let you imagine what happens when the rain comes and washes away the mud cement holding the house together… It was a very sad morning and I was somehow troubled and I spend the entire day reflecting about the challenges of the villagers, their poverty and willingness to pay for things (like waterpoint repairs!). I once again was facing the difference in the challenges to overcome here in Malawi.

The soil gets really dry during the day as it is hot, so when it starts pouring rain at night, the top part of the soil gets saturated really fast and no water can get in. It creates a flash-flood and water eventually either infiltrates slowly or runoffs to the flood plain. The soil found in Karonga is a fine sand to sandy silt, so the drainage is poor. Some people decide to build their houses and plant their crops on the flood plain as it as it is richer in nutrients and better for farming. Plus people need to live somewhere so they often settle where ever there is land available. Most of them are not well educated and don’t understand the impact of living on a flood plain and there is no one to tell them the risk of doing so. It rains a lot here during the rainy season (hence the name!), sometimes for many hours, sometimes with violent intensity. They don’t get flooding like this one every time or every year, so people forget about the risks. This is a well know fact, it does not only happens in Malawi. People forget the risk of their surroundings: they build houses on the beach, at the top of a cliff, on or near a volcano, too close from a river with digs or too close from a nuclear power plant! Studies are done by statisticians about security perimeter that should be established in risky places to keep people safe and out of trouble, and also to keep insurance companies from paying if something happen within the set perimeter. Perimeter inside of which, people should not build houses or buildings. In most cases I’ve seen, the perimeter is established by the 100 (or 10 depending on the risk and situation) year cycle recurrence event that will lead to a catastrophe. By the way I’m far from being a statistician, so don’t quote me on this, as I’m not sure how these studies are made. In the case of a flood plain in Malawi, there is no need for a statistical analysis to know that this will happen again in a few years from now. People are people, they tend to forget the risks or are willing to live with them, it’s a gamble game.

Most people don’t have insurances here to cover their things, so when something happens, like a flood, an earthquake, etc., they lose everything. They rely on their community to work together, roll their sleeves and start all over again. Anyway, some villages had to be abandoned that day, most were ok at the end of the day, but hundreds of families lost their food reserve for the year to come. This will be hard on them. They can rebuild their houses, but not replace the flour and crops they lost. This is reality, this is how things work here, this is Africa!

Will power

2011-03-30T07:18:00.001-07:00

Truth is, outside of the main cities in Malawi, most people don’t have running water in their house and have to walk sometimes long distance to fetch water. The waterpoints that are considered safe and protected are either a borehole, a shallow well, a tap or a protected spring. Most villages have at least a few protected waterpoints, if not many, that have been installed over the last 25 years by NGOs or government or someone else. Some remote and hardly accessible areas are less lucky and don’t have any safe water to drink. But in general, one of the problem that we see, is that waterpoint users (villagers or communities) are not willing to pay for the water (taps) or to repair their boreholes. When NGOs come to install a borehole in a community, they set a waterpoint committee. They train them to fix some of the smaller breakdowns and to do the maintenance, they also tell them that they will need to have the users raise money to cover for the expenses. This fails in most cases. The majority of the committees don’t raise money on a regular basis, but decide to ask contributions only once there is a breakdown. This leads to water shortage, sometimes for a few days, sometimes up to over a year. In some cases, people don’t want to contribute and decide to go use a different functional waterpoint further instead of contributing money to buy spare parts and get their borehole fixed. The committees don’t have enough motivation or authority over the other villagers to enforce payment. They don’t really keep track or record how much money was spent, who contributed and how much they have. They normally don’t have a bank account, so the treasurers need to keep the money at their house. Right now, I’m doing a research to see if the traditional authorities (village’s chiefs) are taking responsibility of the waterpoints to help the committees with raising money. I’m trying to see if bylaws exist and if so if and how they are enforced. In Malawi the waterpoints in villages outside of the BOMA (city), fall under the responsibility of the community, not under the responsibility of the government or traditional authority. So if the communities are not ready to take care of it, chances are they will run out of safe waterpoints to draw their water from. It is a concern, it is a key and it is an important place to spend energy trying to find solutions to help them.

In Canada, if I didn’t have to pay my bills because no one was enforcing the laws, and if they would let me go and I would still have gaz, electricity and water even if I don’t pay , I would probably not pay. Would you? Even if I consider all these things really important to have and would not want them to break. People in villages have money, not a lot but sufficiently to cover for the amount of money that the waterpoint committees are asking them. The problem is that they prefer to spend this money somewhere else than raising money for the next repair. And when comes the next repair, they might not have the money right away because it’s the dry season and they are broken, or simply because they don’t have the will to pay, knowing that someone else in the village will eventually cover for them. No one really enforces or keep track of the payments. It’s so frustrating. I’m trying to see if bylaws and fines, or punishment exist in some villages to see if these community have a better functioning rate (waterpoint) and less water shortage. So far, I’m disappointed with the way that most villages work. It would be so easy and so much better if someone was putting their foot down and making people pay. In my interviews with chiefs and waterpoint committee’s chairmen, I’m hearing a lot of lies and non sense. It’s hard to get a good and accurate idea of what is really happening and what they trully think of their system. I saw some great chiefs though, with a lot of leadership who care about the well being of their community. These chiefs have, on the side, a development fund to assist the village. They’re either raising money on a regular basis to save in a bank account or they have small communal businesses to raise money. Example I’ve seen are: moulting bricks businesses. Some men are making them and selling them to contractors outside of the village. The money goes to the development funds. I’ve also seen a village where each waterpoint had a communal garden to take care of and the money from the sells were going to the development fund to offer assistance for the eventual repairs. Men and women were taking turns to work on it. Communities with such cooperatives seem to stand out and be a bit more self sufficient. Is this a key on how to help communities raise money? Who knows, they are not frequent enough right now for me to draw conclusions. Although it seems to be working well and it is inspiring. Could we have every chief starting such a thing, would this work in every village? Does it take a certain type of leader to have these businesses or coop running well? I’ll try to push this idea and answer these questions through my research. I still have 25 villages to visit and two or three weeks to go.

To my coworkers, think about a bad day of fieldwork or a badly managed project…this is like my everyday work here! Thinks are very poorly organized and management is definitely lacking. The main problems: Malawians seem to have a vague idea of the concept of being in time. Everyone is consistently late, and I mean up to a few hours late! Malawi has a fuel shortage, so every now and then, there is no fuel available to go in the field with the motorcycle. Other days it’s the rain forcing us to start late. Right now is the wet season, so people are busy in the field harvesting, it makes it hard to meet them. Most of the time it is a combination of all of the above and more. Some odd days are going surprisingly well though. Most days I go back home with maize, a few pumpkins, eggplants, some unknown and delicious fruits or veggies and yesterday I even got a watermelon. The people we meet are super nice and are generous. I think they are glad to be heard, to be considered in my research. Hopefully we can someday find a way to help them help themselves!

Ok, I’m done for now. I’m going to the lake now. Good way to end the day and wash the sweat away!

To the blind man’s eye

2011-03-28T02:37:00.001-07:00

Sunday morning, I’m done with washing my clothes, I went to church at 7am, because that’s what people do here. My mon and dad will be so proud of me. I sat my the choir by mistake so I had to get up and sing. I realized I don’t know any of the prayers in English, but it was still easier to follow than last week as it wasn’t in Tumbuka and it was a catholic church not an African one. Thanks to my parents for sending me to a catholic school went I was a kid, so I at least knew what to do and how to receive the communion without looking too too stupid.

Religion is definitely one of the most important things in Africa. It seems to hold a lot of falling pieces together; it seems to give them hope and light in a really though place on earth. I’m not sure where I stand on this ground, but I know that having faith in whatever is a way to ease the pain and suffering of one’s. When the think they’ve been abandoned and left behind, they still have the faith that God is with them and in them, that he will save them. Part of me thinks that religion can be a really powerful and dangerous way to take control over people, sometimes leading to war and abuse. I’m not sure that each and every preacher who exists is necessary a good voice to lead people who, in most cases, blindly believe. I was in the bus the other day coming from Lilongwe and there was a preacher yelling stuff about how sickness will be cured by God, that God will save us and deliver us. He was in a twisted way taking about HIV and AIDS. He was saying that if you believe in Christ, you will not suffer, that he will protect you from it, that he will save you if you have it. I still believe that protection should come from using condoms, and I think it’s misleading to use religion to such a tangible and huge problem. I believe in spirituality and in karma, but I fear the church and the interpretation it has made to explain things. Anyway, religion can’t be that bad when it brings people together like it does here in Malawi. It gives them a reason to dress up and get together to pray for things to get better. From where I come from, we pray to get a better life as well, but I realized this morning that we have good lives, we have everything we need and so much more, what can we really wish for. What can we dream of, when a big part of this world we all share is praying for health, water and a good harvest so they can have food to survive. I’m questioning how can things be so different. It makes me sad and reflective. I don’t think I can comeback to Canada without considering my life and the way we act in a different light. We hear about people’s misery and reality, but it won’t touch you until you actually live in it and see what it means to be poor, to be sick and to fight for survival. And somehow there is so much to be learn about their internal strength to go through this with a smile, pride and courage.

I had a long chat yesterday with my friend Abell, the pastor, about beliefs, religion, relationship, culture, differences and life. He is 30 years old, has a beautiful wife and two kids. He was asking me questions about Canada, about snow, washing machine, oven, electricity, comfort. He was also interested to understand our views of parenthood and marriage, my views on relationships as well as religion. In a way I was feeling super connected to him and at the same time, so far. I think he understands and respect my differences, but can’t completely understand what I’m describing. He is well educated and open minded for a Malawien. We are good friends I think; we go running every other morning and go swim in the lake every now and then; he is also helping me learning Tumbuka. Contrary to many people, he sees me as someone just like him, not as a muzungu and he is super kind and fun. It’s good to be able to talk with someone even if there are many things I can’t tell him.

This morning I woke up to my roommate, the hen, chatting with her new born chicks. We are now 12 of us in my room: myself, the hen and the 10 chicks. I’m not counting the unwanted visitors like the scorpions, the spiders, the crickets, the termites, the ants and the frog (I kind of like the frog though as it eats the others!). Then I got dress and on my way to the latrine realized that the rain over the night destroyed it. It makes me doubt the stability of my own room as it’s made in the same way! I also learnt that my “Mama” was badly sick. Then I went to fetch water for my bucket shower.

In my next post, I’ll tell you about the findings of my research project so far. I’ll describe my work in the field with Malawians, its complexity and challenges.

Have a great Sunday

45 km from Tanzania

2011-03-23T00:11:00.001-07:00

I’ve now been leaving in a small village a few meters from the lake and a couple kilometers from de town of Karonga. When I say town, it really means the size and convenience of a village in North America. The village does not have electricity, but it is connected to the water system, which means that they have a tap available, with water running only in the morning, to get their water from. At 5:30 am every morning, the women gather and chat around the tap while waiting in line to fill their buckets. They bring the buckets on their head, back to their yard. Then they wash the dishes left from the evening before as it was too dark. They start boiling hot water to make some tea. Breakfast is normally a few slices of white bread (with nothing on it), tea and sugar. On the weekends, they have maize porridge with salt and sugar around 9am. After breakfast, they clean up the house, swipe the sandy backyard and porch, wash the clothes by hand and themselves using a bucket or directly in the lake (awesome option, but you need to keep a shirt and a skirt on to bathe!). The rest of the day is relax, they work at drying osipa (small local fish, not so good and cooked with the head, too small to take the bones out, so you have to eat the whole thing. It tastes really salty, just like everything else, and it is bitter, but it is the main source of proteins for most family. People here love osipa). They also farm maize, cassava and other stuff. Lunch and dinner are the same thing: nsima (a super super thich porridge made of water and maize flour), white boiled greens (leafs from anything, taste a bit like spinach, I love it) and a some kind of relish made out of beans, boiled eggs, boiled meat or boiled fish with some tomato and something that seems like onions (normally not bad). Basically, there is almost no diversity in the food, everyday is pretty much the same thing here, but it’s cheap and filling, so why bother, they love it this way. I came to understand that people in Malawi are extremely simple, they don’t have much, they do with it and they don’t seem to need more. In a way, having no options and not much makes them more satisfied with what they have than we are and probably will ever be. At night, the kids play while the men and women hang out, generally in separate spaces, but not necessary. They listen to the radio (working with batteries) and tell stories until someone yawns and decides to go to bed, normally around 9-10pm. The men’s job here is mainly fishing during the night or farming and some of them work in the town. I haven’t seen many of them in the village as they normally hang out on the beach or in town during the day. Most of them are more educated and speak English, so they come and talk to me.

Most houses don’t have any furniture. The house is made out of mud bricks and weak cement. The roof is made out of a plastic sheets and branches, unless you have a bit more money and can afford a metal roof (way noisier when it’s raining, but at least it’s not leaking and it’s not eaten by termites). People sleep on a hay mat, directly on the ground, surrounded by a mosquito net. I can’t say that it is confortable, but people are use to it and prefer this to stinky (rain, humidity, pi) mattresses which attract bugs (like bed bugs an other). Most people don’t have tables, couches, chairs or dressers. The house is a few rooms made for sleep. There is one storage area to put the dishes at night. There is only a few open windows, so it’s cold and dark. The yard is playing many roles: kitchen, living room, dinning room, laundry room, playground. It’s a cool place to hang out.
Once in a while people gather in a communal open space and the women dance and sing while the men drink, watch, chat or play drums. I had the chance to see that on Saturday. It was awesome, man can these women dance.

On Sunday morning, they go to church. African church. Not sure what religion it is part of, but I went to see and make them happy. It’s definitely more fun than ours, as they dance and sing a lot. The women are seating on the ground on one side with the kids while the boys and men are sitting on benches the other side. The part where they talk is normally done by men, and they are yelling, like a preacher would do. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s still church, it’s two hours and it’s not that fun. But people are really religious and they feel like it’s required, so I might make an effort to go, even if it’s painful and in Tumbuka, so I don’t understand much of what is being said.
That’s about it for the life in a village. Hope you enjoyed the story. So far I'm feeling lost a bit, tired from all the learning and the heat. Life here is definitely different than my normal life use to be. Everything is more complicated for me even though they live a really simple life. I wake up with a smile every morning so it's not that bad.
Friends please email me stories of your life or ask questions. I miss you guys, tons.
Ge

Les 12 travaux d’Asterix

2011-03-20T07:35:00.001-07:00

Change of plans, instead of Rumphi, I ended up in Karonga, in the north of the country, by Lake Malawi, 45 km from the border of Tanzania. We decided to change the research project to investigate on the existing bylaws in villages regarding the waterpoints and their effect on the money raised for the repairs.

Karonga is the district where Duncan use to live for the last year before he moved to Mzuzu. I’m staying with his “family” in a village by the lake, just a few kilometers from the town of Karonga (that’s where I am right now to use internet). I’ll be going all over the district on a dirt bike with Patrick, my translater, friend and also, on the side a prince of a tribe here! haha, how cool is that. He is a carpenter and past rastaman, he must be about my age.

I’ll tell you all about my life in a village as there is a myriad of things to say (sleeping on the ground, leaking roof, bucket shower, learning to speak chetumbuka and cooking nsima, church on Sunday…), but I’ll do that on my next post. For now, I really want to share something else: my trip from Mzuzu to here and also, how to get a learner’s motorcycle licence.

Keep in mind that all this happened in one day…

On Thursday morning, I woke up in Zolazola, a slum of Mzuzu, at Duncan’s. We left from there to go get my learner’s motorcycle licence. It felt like being part of my favorite cartoon Asterix et les 12 travaux. For those of you who might know what I’m talking about, think about “la maison qui rend fou” challenge. Something that would normally be taking 15 mins, took over three hours, the priviledge of being white and Duncan’s collar shirt to get through. Here are the multiple steps to go through:

Fill out the form in room 1 (8:45am)
Bring the form to room 3 to pass the test with the senior examinator. But this includes 1.5 hours of waiting in a not so clear line up…apparently, the principle of the line up is inexistant here. So everyone just goes in when they fell like it, but it took me a while to understand how it works and who to go see. Anyway, I finally made my way to the examinator, but he didn’t want me to pass the test as I don’t have my working visa yet, nor a letter from my organization to explain why I need a licence now. So Duncan stepped in and pretended to be my supervisor (thank you collar shirt). We had to meet the big boss and explain the situation in order for me to pass the 5mins test and get a form saying that I passed.
Bring the form to room 2 to get another form to bring tp the teller to pay the application fees.
The tellers gives you a receipt that needs to be brought back to the lady in room 2 for her to print you a form.
Then you have to go to room for to get your picture taken. It was 12:15 at this pint and it’s unbreakable lunch time until 1 or 2pm. We needed to go to a meeting and then be at the minibus station for 2pm.so we had to force the process using the white priviledge and once again, the collar shirt. We convinced a guy to take my picture, my finger prints and then print my licence. Apparently I have bad quality pinkies and they had to adjust the scanner to my pale skin tone! haha.
You need to bring the licence to room 2 fro them to put it in the computer, go figure, they just printed it! But anyway, they give you another form.
Then you need to bring this new form to the woman in room 3, who will give you a form to bring to the teller to ge pay your licence fees.
Guess what now? the teller gave me a form for the lady in room 3 and there it is, a print of my official learner’s licence…
Now that I have the licence, I need to learn how to drive the motorcycle (dirt bike)though, and that on the opposite side of the road.

Mission accomplised, I got my licence. Now we have to rush to a meeting and up on (or squeeze in) the minibus for a four hour ride on windy roads to Karonga with chickens, fishng gears, luggages and a ton of people. About 30mins from Karonga, we ran out of fuel. There is a fuel shortage in Malawi due to their fixed money in the floating market. Plus most people don’t have a ton of money to get fuel even when there is no shortage in the city! Anyway, the closest place to grt fuel is far and the driver ups on a bike to get there. At least an hour after, it’s dark and we decide to hitchhike instead of waiting. Another minibus stopped and picked us up. As soon as we arrived in Karonga at the bus depot, an unstoppable thunderstorm started. Since the village is not reachable by taxi and the bike taxi don’t want to ride the muddy path in the storm, we decided to stay at a cheap and dodgy guest house for the night.

That was day one…it’s now way more peaceful, but not easier. I’ll tell you in my post next weekend. My access to internet is really restrein and I need to be in a cafe for to get it, that is, when they don’t have an electricity outage.

Bye for now my dear readers, thanks for following me

The things we take for granted

2011-03-14T03:57:00.001-07:00

Everyday, I realize at least one new thing we take for granted in the western world. All those things make our lives so much cozier, easier and certainly more efficient...but do they make us happier at the end of the day?

I’ve been warned before coming here about all that, but it really means nothing until you experience the absence of these convinient things. I’m talking about simple stuff: toilet paper; toilets, either attached to a building or at all; electricity; running water; fuel and transportation; internet connection, especially for work; access to education; access to a repair shop; non-corrupted government and authorities; opportunities and choice; diversity; health system; entertainment; money; credit and debit cards; real juice; cheese; pets without rabies; silence and time to reflect alone; schedules; and so many other things.

I’ve been here for two weeks now and I can’t tell you how many times the power went out and that, even in Lilongwe (the capital). This means that the ATM machine won’t work, that you can recharge your electronic devices, you have no light, the restaurants can’t cook most of the stuff on the menu. I’ve heard that it often extends for a few days, so the food that needs to be refrigerated go bad, etc. I’m only talking about the power outage in the cities or town, but remember that most villages in periphery of the towns don’t have electricity at all.

Same for the water, the other day, I was in a small hostel in Lilongwe and all of a sudden, none of the taps were functionning. I realized soon enough that the entire neibourhood did not have any running water. It took a few days to fix the problem. Breakdowns like this happen all the time in Malawi, for different reasons. Once again, it is to be noted that there is no running water system, nor sewer system outside the cities and towns. Villages’ water is coming from a protected drilled borehole or a shallow well when they are lucky, otherwise, they get their water from an unprotected waterpoint such as a creek, a river or a puddle.

…

On the other hand, here are the things that makes Malawi so special and that our western culture does not prioritize:

One thing I love and respect about the Malawian culture is how they make the best of the situation. Since they can’t be efficient because of logistic problems, they take the time and actually make a point of socializing and helping each other.

At the end of the day, there is one thing we rarely take for granted although this thing is what really matters here: the people around you, your community, your familly and friends. Even though they have close to nothing, they will go out of their way to help each other. They are caring, welcoming, genuienely friendly, smiling and I want to say happy. Think about it next time you pass a coworker or neighbour and you look down instead of smiling and greeting them. I honestly think this strength is one of the most amazing force of Malawians. Even though they don’t have much and can’t dream big, they are more happy and way less depressed than the average north americain. There is a lot to learn from being more community oriented than individually oriented.

I can’t say if one world is better than the other as we all have our flaws, and the main difference are huge, but I know that a combination of both would be fantastic.

When the curtain falls

2011-03-11T10:38:00.001-08:00

This is probably going to be the only descriptive post of an entire week, but I thought you’d be interested to know what life is here behind the curtains and what I got to do on week one. The first week is always an in country training and followed by a shadowing experience of someone else for a few days, it felt a bit more like a trip than work, but my work starts next week. I’ll write another post soon with a little more reflection. But here you go for now. Enjoy! Ah, I also added some more pictures on my Flicker account (go see under the photo tab for the link)

I left Lilongwe on the 6th to go observe Devon’s work for a few days at the district in Nkhata Bay. Let’s just put it this way: there is no such way as easy and fast way to travel in Malawi if you don’t have a car. I travelled with Anna who was going to Mzuzu to meet Duncan. We actually had no problems, it was “sort of a perfect trip”, I think it can only go worst from here. It took forever though. In Malawi, the buses won’t leave before they are FULL, completely full. So even though we got on the fullest bus, we had to wait for two hours. It is hot, humid and the bus is packed with people, bags and chickens…haha, imagine the odour! Lovely. Anyway, we finally left and the trip was fine but slow, oh yeah and they are praying and singing on the bus which makes it really interesting. I got to Mzuzu around 8:30pm; it was pitch dark, so Duncan put me on a cab to Nkhata Bay as it was safer than the bus. On the way, we stopped a few times for various reasons: buy cigarettes, gaz, check the price of tires and the best of all, to pick up one of the driver’s friend…a fisherman friend, with all is smelly gear. He was going fishing at night on Lake Malawi in Nkhata Bay, something really common apparently. Devon as a great place by the lake, I had my own room and got to sleep with his kitty! Yay.

We had a meeting at 7:30 with the district water officer (DWO) who is also the district environment officer. It was a good meeting, partly in Tumbuka (which I’ll also have to learn since I’ll work in the North of the country for a month), partly in English. After the first meeting, we went with DWO to his other meeting. It got really…humm, how to decribe it… interesting: First, he didn’t have a projector, then a power bar, so he went looking for it, in the meantime, people were leaving the room. After two hours, the meeting finally started. It turns out it was a meeting about editing a report on sustainable environmental and health practices. Since we were in the room they ran the meeting in English. I realized how easy internet and/or printers made editing our reports. Instead of sending a copy of the report through internet to our coworkers, like we do to get feedback on, they were having a meeting. I’ll let you imagine how chaotic and long editing a report the way can be. They were arguing a bit, but seemed to be having fun. For snacks we had a woman bringing Fanta and chips; I note this because the refreshments and allowance are the most important incentives to have a meeting happening! Since it was a meeting organized by the district and not an NGO, they had to discuss who was paying for the lunch and finally agreed that everyone would pay their own meal. NGOs, over the years and by giving allowance for people to meet, distorted the system, so now, it is really complicated for district (with not a lot of money) to have meetings happening as everyone expects money. After lunch with them, we decided not to go back as we didn’t have anything to bring to the conversation. So we went in a cafe to get access to internet and send some emails for work. That night, we got a ride back to Devon’s place on a small boat, so we paddled on lake Malawi, it was fabulous.

I stayed one night in a village near Nkhata Bay with an amazing family. They did not speak English but were super welcoming and they treated me like a princess, I had my first butterfish and nsima meal, hummm!

The next day, I was on my way to Mzuzu, were we meet with Jim and Andrew from Water for People for a talk about the projects they are working on. In the afternoon I went in the field with a local entrepreneur who runs a sanitation business. He is a visionary and he is certainly not afraid to take risk in order to make things happen. It was really inspiring. Me, Devon, Anna and Duncan took a bus back to Lilongwe that night as we have a team meeting this weekend, so I’ll finanlly get to meet everyone on the team.

Duncan brought me, Cath and Anna to the village of Chikandwe where he used to live. We took a few mini-buses and then rented bikes from a bike taxi stand to get all the way down the 2km muddy path in the maize crops that would lead us to the village. Thanks Duncan for doubling me on the bike! Good times. We met his family, spent the day there and had lunch with them. We walked in the field to see the crops they are growing and the new borehole they installed 8 months ago, big improvement as they use to only have a few non protected shallow wells; we also met a lot of people and had to greet all of them along the way, as this is what people do here. My greeting in Chichewa is getting way better. Ten minutes after we left the village, the chain of our bike broke. Then, out of nowhere, two guys offered their help. They took an axe and within a few minutes, the chain was fixed and we were on the go. Thank you kind strangers! We ended our day by going dancing at a bar, called Zanzi Bar.

For those of you who are interested to know, I’m heading to Rumphi on Tuesday for a month. Before I get sent on my official placement, I’ll be doing a researsh project on the communities willingness to pay for their waterpoints repairs. I’ll be going to about 60 villages to run interviews and see how things work to get a better understanding on the amount of money that the communities should be able to raise and have for repairs. There seems to be a treshold amount over which they can’t get to fix the major issues, like a broken pump or corroded rods. Right now, most communities, don’t do the regular maintenance of their boreholes or wells properly, so the approximated time between failures is around 8 months. Most of the time, they won’t get together to raise the money to get an area mecanic and the spare parts to fix it, they’ll wait until an NGO comes and does the work for them. In the meantime, they’ll use an alternative source of water, which is most of the time unprotected. Clean water, even though values, does not seem to be something the communities are ready to spend money on as it is where most NGOs are investing money, so they often prefer to wait. We are trying to see if there is a way to break that circle by having the NGOs help after the community has raise the trehold amount of money. Therefore, the NGOs would save some money that could be invested in other communities to fix more waterpoints. This research project will be done with the partnership of Water for People. The willingness to pay and ownership of the communities seem to be an important key to more sustainable habits. I’ll keep you updated on my findings.

Ok, I guess that’s it for now. Hope you are enjoying your day, wherever you are.

And up we go!

2011-03-06T00:46:00.001-08:00

Morning number three, beatiful sunny day. So far, I got to the hospital for minor problems, got biten by bed begs, got a sun burn, got a hot shower and had a lot of fun during my in country training. I even had few lessons of Chichewa, I’ll have to learn and most importantly remember what I’m learning. It is not an easy language, or I should say that the structure of the language is completely, completely different than any language I know.

Anyway, I don’t have a ot of time to chat with you guys this morning, but I just wanted to give a quick update so thay you know what’s happening.

The flights and lay over were long but good and nothing happened. We’ve been in Lilongwe since Thursday. We had training and dinner with our team members. Today, I’m leaving for Nkata Bay by bus (or mini-vus, not sure!) until Wednesday. I’ll be shadowing Devon (another EWB staff) in is day to day work and life. I’ll also stay in a village for a night or two! Yay. Oh, yeah, and just so you know, Nkata Bay is by Malawi Lake and it is suppose to be warm and gorgeous, I might have my first swim. On Wednesday night there is a meeting in Mzuzu with Duncan (EWB) and Jim from Water For People, shall be interesting. We’ll be back for a team meeting in Lilongwe on Friday. Then sometimes next week, I’ll be heading north for a month to do a research project. I’ll have to learn Tumbuka (language spoken in the north). The project is about the willingness of the communities to pay for their water and waterpoint repairs as they are suppose to, but it is so far not working well and not everywhere. I’ll update you on that later. I’ll have to go on the field with a motorcycle (and my helmet!), talk to people and everything. I can’t wait. After that month, I’ll be placed somewhere else for three months at least starting to work in my placement. And, sorry folks, I still don’t know where this will be as there are many possibilities, I’ll know next weekend I think.

Ok, so I have to go, I have a morning meeting with Owen.

Talk to you soon

“Waste Land”

2011-03-03T07:13:00.001-08:00

Here I am, in the air somewhere between Toronto and London, somewhere between my past and my future… I’m still not sure if I’m terrified or excited about my adventure in Malawi, but I’m ok with both feelings.

My month of training gave me the oportunity to open my mind on the complexity of the development system. I realized that every step forward to change things required many failure and step back. I know I’ll be facing a significant amount of challenges and frustrations over the year, but hopefully, I’ll be able to do some good moves leading to success…not sure how I’d define success, but in one sentence, I hope to make things better, not worst.

It’s now 2am on March 2, I’m exhausted, but can’t sleep. I just watched a really interesting documentary called “Waste Land”. It was done in the biggest landfill of Rio de Janeiro. It’s about the poor people living and working there, called the “pickers”. To make some money, they started a picking recycling buisness. Basically, they are in the landfill, collecting whatever is worth selling to recycling compagnies. An artist, born and raised in a poor neighborhood of Sao Paolo, decided to to hear their stories, photograph and document their activities. He gets attatch to the pickers and decides to make them help him create the artwork he’s trying to make. It’s super interesting to see how people can find ways to organize chaotic and dramatic situations. These pickers found a way to make a living out of something that most people prefer to have out of sight. It was extremely inspiring to see some of the great leaders that started the idea and developed it, even without money, without support, they saw it was one way out of poverty and/or drug dealing and/or prostitution. I can’t wait to meet people like those in Malawi and work with them, learn from them.

Hense, I know that the system will be complicated to improve to its sustainable state, but I know that I’ll be surrounded by good people, maybe some leaders that only need a little bit of training and support to achieve great things.

That’s it for now. Next time you hear from me, I’ll be in Malawi. Yay!
Have a good one, wherever you are
Ge

The missing keys: education and leadership

2011-02-27T15:15:00.000-08:00

“Malawi doesn’t have a water problem; it has a hydrogeologist problem” says Owen Scott, a long term staff for EWB in Malawi on a blog post dated from May 2010.

According to him, there is a lot of bad siting in Malawi and a lot of bad hydrogeological practice. This post identifies the general practice currently undertaken and the main issues associated to such practice. It also provides some reflections and avenues on how to improve the hydrogeological practice in Malawi and how such new practices would be helpful to improve the access to safe water.

Here's a story

“Yesterday I was reading a report about water access in one of Malawi’s lakeside districts. The district has a major hydreogeological split – close to the lake it has a shallow water table, further from the lake it has a deeper water table. This means that close to the lake you can use hand-drilled boreholes and shallow wells, while further from the lake you need to drill boreholes with a rig.

The report examined a GPS survey of the waterpoints in the district, and found that despite the shallow aquifer close to the lake, many organizations were still using drilling rigs to drill boreholes, each at over twice the cost of hand-drilled boreholes, and over six times the cost of hand-dug shallow wells.”- Scott, 2010.

Current practice and main issues

lack of technically qualified professionals to manage and make informed decisions in the water sector;
lack of good data from past work due to the lack of communication between the different NonGovernmental Organisations (NGOs) and the government of Malawi leading to poor siting of the newly installed borehole;
most boreholes are drilled using a drill rig regardless of the depth when some location could be hand dig, leading to an important loss of money;
a lot of the boreholes are drilled dry, run dry, have an insufficient yield and/or a low recharge rate, making them useless;
recurring hydrogeological challenges (like salinity in the water); and,
the donors and NGOs are more focused on funding “basic needs” like a program drilling wells instead of program providing university scholarships or teachers in Malawi, or to a lesser extent, a good and strong training of the decision makers.

What could help improving the efficiency and sustainability?

By having more informed, up to date and educated professional leading and managing the water sector in Malawi, the decision making and planning would be significantly improved. This could empower the government (either at the National, Regional and/or District level) to better regulate and help the NGOs to do more sustainable and better planned work.

If appropriate technologies were used for each section of the water table (drilling vs digging), than the cost of bringing water access in the district up to government standards could be halved and the money saved could be used for training, maintenance or more waterpoints.

The supply aquifers are mostly low yielding, discontinuous and heterogeneous and the cost of exploration tend to be high relative to the return. Therefore sharing the data and reports could lead to saving precious time and money when planning borehole/hand dug well siting, but for this to happen, the district water officer need to be able to analyze and understand the data to make better informed decisions.

Conclusion

On paper, many of these recommendations are already in place. NGOs are already supposed to go through the district. Boreholes are supposed to be drilled, subjected to a pump-test, and then re-drilled if they fail the test. Hydreogeological information, is supposed to be collected after each drilling, reported to the governmentt, and then added to a database.

The problem is that very little of this happens. Water offices are understaffed and underresourced, can't always do drilling or pump-test supervision, and also most of the time don't always know how to do it even if they have the resources. Contractors, like anywhere, are always trying to cut corners and get away with the minimum standard of work they can....and they get away with a lot in Malawi.

The hydrogeological and geological work done concerns almost wholly the well siting. There is little to no time available or budgeted to observe and supervise drilling, correlate the logs recorded by the field staff with the predicted sequence, analyse, interpret and use the data recorded or carry out more hydrogeological assessments.

If the planning and managing of the waterpoints would be more efficient, a lot more work could be done with the time and money saved.

There is certainly hope, but the questions that remain are not different than before: are people in the field sufficiently well trained and knowledgeable to record and report the data properly? Are the decisions taken in the field approved by someone with sufficient understanding? Are the data analysed and interpreted properly and are they use to modify the drilling program and decisions? Until the answer to these questions is yes, the water sector in Malawi will remain unstable and inefficient.

Reflection Time

2011-02-16T15:19:00.001-08:00

Here are some questions for you guys, some time to think for yourself and feel free to share your reflections with me though.

What were the motivations that brought us to become who and where we are now? Why did we study a certain subject or decided not to go to school, how do we choose a job, and also how do we decide who we want to share our life with? We are surrounded by external elements or influences and we have so many options, what are we basing our decisions on?

Do you consider yourself influenced by others (parents, partners, employers, mentors, teachers…publicity…) when it comes to important decisions? Most people will say yes to this question. If it’s the case, how does it affect your present life? Are you happy with your decisions, satisfied with your situation? This question comes from the fact that if we choose to go a certain way because someone influenced us to or told us to do so (ie. go into engineering because a teacher or parent told you so, vs you really wanting to do it because that’s your way of getting where you want to be, or; get a job you’re not passionate about, but there is a great salary, or ; choose a partner because all your friends have one and it’s pressuring you to settle down, or; …), we might or might not come to a dead end and reconsider our path. And when our decisions are internally driven, what makes us change our path sometimes?

When you think about your job or occupation where do you position yourself most of the time:

1- Apathic, 2-Bored, 3-Anxious, or 4-Flowing.

I guess our objective is to be in the flow zone, when you are pushed just enough to learn and be motivated, but not too much that you feel like it’s way over your capacity. How would you define that zone? When and how often does it happen? Can you, simultaneously, be dancing on the stage and be looking at yourself dancing from the balcony?

What makes us bored, what can we do when it happends: for exemple when things are not going fast enough for you, try to understand why that is instead of assuming that someone in the system is either evil (not doing the job) or stupid (does not know how).

On the other end, what makes us anxious, what can we do then? Are we too afraid to show that we don’t know everything, that we don’t know enought to do the job perfectly? Are we just too afraid to fail? When we feel that our capacities are limited to overcome the challenge, there are many options to feel better: one is to divide the problem into smaller pieces and deal with them separately; another option is to try something, see how it goes. If it does not go perfectly on the first try or even on the tenth try, step back and realize that even when we fail, the world didn’t stop revolving on its axes! And then try something else…life goes on.

If your interested here are my reflections of the last few weeks:

I realized that I’m internally driven and I strategically position my powns in the direction toward where I want to go. I’m not quite sure I have clear vision of where my end goal is, so I sometimes change my way, but I definitely have a good idea, so I rarely make my decision based on someone else’s judgement. My passions, my feelings and my reflections are triggering my actions; when I have something in mind, I’m hard to stop. I also realised I’m a dreamer and I’m really idealistic, so I might not always make good decisions and might not always be happy, but I only have myself to blame when it comes to that. Is this good or bad, I don’t know, but it’s who I am.

Here is what led me to the path I’m on right now:

I did my college in English cause I wanted to be able to go work somewhere else on the globe. My parents and friends thought I was crazy. I went into geological engineering cause I wanted to become an oceanographer. I worked in that field (oceanography) for a bit and realized that it would not be a good fit if I wanted to have a familly someday (so I changed my path based on my values). I’ve always wanted to make the world a little better, so from there, I did a Masters in environmental hydrogeology to work at figuring out solutions to environmental issues. I ended up working in the environmental buisness but not for the environment and realised my vision of the world was probably too idealistic! I love my job, but I definitely find it challenging sometimes to not be able to act on the bigger picture, to act on modifying the regulations and the laws instead of being restreint by them. So here I am, in Toronto doing the training for an oversea placement in Malawi for EWB to go work at the district level in the water and sanitation sector. I know I want to be able to make a difference in the world, not sure where (internationnally or locally) and how (changing my career or influencing the way things are done), but I know this placement is going to get me a step further on my path to success. No one asked me to go there, I was not even involved with EWB before I applied, I just felt like it was the right place and time to do this. Why now and not after university? I feel like I have a little bit more to offer, I think I gain a bit of perspective and maturity over the last years and I definitely went outside my comfort zone.

Hope you are and will continue reflecting on these things, and please send some thoughts back at me if you will.

Now back to work
Ge

Are Circles too Strong to be Broken?

2011-02-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Our assignment last Thursday was: going in the community to find out about what is the relationship between poverty in Toronto and the "informal lending sector"?

This assignment was also a great way to get us out of our comfort zone, a way to make us explore and create contact with the community, a way to open our eyes on poverty surrounding us… a way of bridging the gap and realizing that their reality is not so different than ours, that their reality could be ours or someone’s we know and love.

So we broke into three teams: Binnu and Jordan went to small bars, alleys and money marts; Don and Lisa explored the mysterious world of pawnshop and chatted with people on the street; while Bernard and I visited shelters. What an amazing day it was. After many hours outside, we met back home and talked about our days and shared our reflections, trying to see the trends and connections.

Here is a summary of our findings:

“My view of pawnshops prior to this assignment was solely as a place to unload stolen goods. Admittedly this was a narrow-minded view and based off of zero first-hand experience and the reality of the situation is obviously a little more complex. We spoke to both pawnshop owners and people living on the street to get different perspectives on the issue and the opinions we received were varied. While the view from the homeless people we spoke to fit more into my previously held view, the owners all felt they were just providing a much needed service to community members. Some usage highlights that I'd never considered:

Using a pawnshop as a storage facility: If someone is going on vacation for a few weeks, they sometimes sell valuable items to a pawnshop to keep them safe while they're away. Apparently this is a cheaper alternative option to safety deposit boxes at a bank.
Using a pawnshop as a loan center: By using material goods as collateral, people are able to get small, short term loans at much lower interest rates than credit card companies, banks, or other lending institutions.

Overall, I've realized these shops aren't inherently good or bad – they're just a tool that can be used by people in whatever manner they wish – and they do provide a needed service to different parts of a community. Do they contribute to the vicious circle of urban poverty in Toronto? Yes, they can, but so do all the major financial institutions in the city. It's really about how they're used that's important as opposed to their actual existence.”

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Don and Lisa

“We started with a naïve and simple hypothesis: Places like money mart make people go deeper and deeper into poverty. In just a few of hours of roaming around some sketchy neighborhoods we found amazingly resilient people with powerful stories and a strong community with so many layers of connections that it made money mart seem insignificant.
One of the people we met – let’s call him Dan - was standing outside a bar and reading a book. He had run bail and was living on disability payments. Talking to him there on the sidewalk, and watching him wave to all the passersby and have short friendly exchanges, I felt like the community had taken him in and he was part of this tight family. He talked about how he could get ten bucks from anyone on the street there and not worry about any interest. Then Dan showed us some scars from when he didn’t pay back, “… and this was for only three dollars…” Money mart seemed like a distant insignificant reality.
On the other extreme, we chatted for an hour with a former Oxford school of economy graduate who mentioned how the mafia are also lenders in the community, and how they make sure payments are made with the threat of broken bones.
Our day ended with an amazingly resourceful man who would buy things that homeless people had scrounged up, and then sell those items on the street. What a one-man economy generator! He helped the homeless get an income, while making money for himself and providing the residents cheap alternatives to buying phone chargers at a Bell store!
I came away with a feeling of awe. There are so many transactions and support systems invisible to a person who lives in the safe confines of a 9-to-5 job. I know my emotional high is just the honey-moon phase of getting to know a really rich community and I’ve still only seen the positives on the surface. But I am really glad that it has shaken my simple assumption that money mart was one of the very few options that people in these communities have.”
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Binnu and Jordan

“I got up on Thursday morning not quite sure what my day would be like, turn my computer on and read the assignment…then thought: what were we going to do with this, which approach should we use to get some answers? I wanted to know if the shelters were offering an alternative to borrowing money. So we started our quest by trying a few things, like inviting someone on the street to come have a coffee with us, going to a couple of shelters and asking questions, we even bought cigarettes to be able to bond. Man are cigarettes expensive!! It’s -20 deg Celcius outside and it’s quite windy, so the shelters are super busy and the people on the streets are trying to get some money, so we realize fast enough that our approach was not the right one. We ended up walking to another shelter and offer to help instead of simply asking questions. We met three women working there, had great talks with them, had a visit of the building and volunteered at night for a few hours. One thing I realized is how genuinely nice and friendly everyone was. Throughout the day, we asked a few questions regarding our assignment. We found out that the main link between poverty cycles and money is often a lack of education or knowledge on managing it, how to do a budget and respect it. We all have more needs than we can afford, we all have debts, either for a mortgage, a car or because of school, we use our credit cards and sometimes can’t pay them…we are no exception to this vicious consummation and false needs circle, but one main difference is that we have the ability to work more and get out of it, we have the ability to realize at some point that we can’t spend our monthly income in a few days…they often don’t have that chance: Drug addiction, mental problems, having no family or friend supports, no one to help them out, loneliness, repeating patterns, are some of the root cause of poverty in Canada. The shelters are offering mentoring, friendship, support, trust, food, showers, beds… they can’t force or impose anything, but they can help finding the weak link in the vicious circle to find a way out of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t; truth is vicious circles are hard to break. I’ll go back next week to volunteer, I was touched and want to get more involve within my community, there is a lot to be done and we both had an amazing time.”
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Genevieve and Bernard

What conclusions did we draw?

We came to the conclusion that poverty circles and informal lending sectors are linked to a certain extent; money mart, pawnshops, the mafia are certainly opening a door to vicious circles (steeling, violence, borrowing more) but at the same time they are offering a way out of it. I guess that just like anything else it depends on how and why they are being use.

If nothing else we learnt a lot on how to approach strangers and ask them intimidating and personal questions on how they deal and manage their money. All this will be pretty useful in our placement.

So that’s it for today, we have the weekend off, so we went out last night and had tons of fun, we danced and laughed… slept in this morning and had a great breakfast. I’m on my way to discover Toronto.

Please go under this link and vote for EWB everyday for the next 23 days so we can win the 50000$ price. Right now we are second. We need your votes! Thanks
charity challenge

How do you define your comfort zone and push yourself outside of it?

2011-02-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Here is and update on where I stand after my first week in Toronto for pre-dep training. I decided to take some time to write while am in a good space.

Body space: I went running with Jordan today after work and it felt great, it's nice and cool in Toronto. I needed some reflexion time and some physical activity. I put my headphones on with my iPod on shuffle and every new songs brought me to a different place in my mind. I'm lacking sleep; I'm sharing my room with two other people and we have bunk beds with noisy plastic sheets! haha. We are working a lot and I'm trying to get assignments done at night on top of getting to know my team mates and doing some other stuff. We're eating super well so far, making family dinner and we make sure to have some drinks together everynow and then (like tonight). 7/10

Heart space: Hummm! I'm starting to disconect from all the things that were holding me back...I think it's a good place to be at. It feels better anyway. I'm leaving my initial fears and hopes behing to replace them with brand new ones; it's complitely uncomfortable but pushing my borders and extending my comfort zone a bit more. I'm missing my friends a lot, but they are super supportive and I appreciate it tons. 6/10

Head space: Although it was a though week because of a lack of time and lack of space to self reflect on my learnings and experience, I had an amazing time. I'm having ups and downs: it's hard, uncomfortable, overwhelming and fantastic at the same time. I had a great day today; I got to learn more about our programs, got a coaching session with Boris about my self development and my role in the team, then got a four hour insightfull session with the CEO of EWB about leardership...WOW. Best day so far! And to make it better, had a a great night with my teammates/housemates. We laughed and talked, it's good to get to know them and work on building trust. I'll need their thoughts, perspective and support over the next year as they'll go through the same things I'll be going through. I appreciate that we are all coming from different places and that all of us had our different life experience that brought us to apply. None of us is a new graduate.

I'm not always sure of the purpose of every session or activity, but at the end of the day, when I look at the outcome or the big picture, I've learnt tons. I'm in a happy place, uncomfortable, overwhelmed and tired, but definitely positive. 8/10

So far we had learning sessions about rural livelihoods, frameworks, systems and root causes of poverty, leadership, meeting, coaching, behavior chages, buisness approaches in development... almost every session is presented by a different person and in a different way; we have workshops, assignments, role playing, participatory learning activities...It's a great place to be. I particularly appreciated the buisness approaches in developement session. It connected my reality at home and my consulting background to the agriculture and developement world. It gave me a few ideas on how to make a buisness, even here in Canada be suistanable on a social and global point of view without changing the actual profits, but on changing some the objectives in the decision making process.

On the side, I'm learning about myself: what triggers me, what challenges me, what motivates and demotivates me, how I react to all of that, what is my role in the team now and where I want to go. It's like stepping outside of real life for a month to learn about myself and the world. It's helping me define and extent my confort zone and knowledge skills. Great opportunity, what a lucky girl am I to be here!

I'm exhausted, so I'll go to bed now, but before I do that, I'd like to challenge you to define where you stand, what your comfort zone is and how can you extent it? I'll be more than happy if you feel like sharing it with me.

Night...

Ndi funa phunzira Chichewa -> I want to learn Chichewa

2011-02-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Pre-departure training has officially started. Here we are, in Toronto for the past few days, having a looooooot of work and information being throwned at us. We are seven people, all really amazing. Seriously we have a good team and we’ll be having fun. Four of us will be working in Malawi, two will be going to Ghana and one will be sent to Burkina. Although I’m learning tons every day, it’s quite overwhelming as we have learning sessions and workshops during the day and assignments at night. On top of all this work, I still need to read other documents about our WatSan projects in Malawi and learn to speak Chichewa…which is not easy, it sounds like nothing I know. Thanks to Jordan and Lisa for their motivation. So far, I think we’ve been learning about 4-5 words a day… haha, at this pace, I’ll be leaving for Malawi knowing less than 150 words. We’ll have to come up with a better strategy. So I’ll go back to work now, I just wanted to give you guys a quick update. I’ll try to write more about our learning sessions and my thoughts this weekend; I need some time to digest the information and what I’m getting out of it.

Also, on a very exciting note, my plane ticket is booked. I'll be leaving on March 1st at night, arriving in Lilongwe on the 3rd, via London and Johanesburg. CAN'T WAIT

Night

From where I've been to where I'm heading

2011-01-21T18:19:00.000-08:00

… I was back in Vancouver for a few days and it felt good, it felt like home. As I was walking down Main Street this morning on my way to the airport I couldn’t help but thinking about sequential moments of my life there over the last two year or so. I was picturing our crazy nights out, our gathering for brunch, our bike or snowboard trips, my foolish heart breaks, my biking to work all year round, our barbecues on the beach… It made me smile, but a bit nostalgic as well. I realized how much I’m going to miss it. Not only the amazing city and its beautiful playground, but most importantly the people I’ve met, the people I’ve come to know and love. I arrived in Vancouver two years ago and never thought I’d find it so hard to leave now. I arrived in Vancouver never hoping to make my life what it is now. I arrived in Vancouver with a guy, who is no longer in my life and no longer in Vancouver for that matter, but thanks Nate for having been part of it, for having made me go out of my way, out of my comfort zone to go live in Van. I’ve learnt a lot about myself over the last two years, I went through many mood swings, to finally end up happier than I’ve ever been. I know myself a little better, I’ve managed to live, work and love in another language; I’ve managed to be part of an incredibly dynamic group of people at work and outside of it; I’ve managed to understand that I can’t have everything I want, but that I need to appreciate the things I have; and, hopefully I’ve managed to be a little more humble, and accept the step backs that come my way… and if not, well I’ll learn it the hard way in my upcoming adventure.

Moving to Vancouver was certainly one of the best things that happened to me, even though it was far from being the easiest. A close friend of mine says that nothing worth comes easy and that what you want most won’t come cheap… I think he’s right, sometimes struggling and going through a rough period makes you appreciate more what you’re fighting for. I remember how scared I was to move at the other end of Canada, with no friends, no home, no family but eventually, with a bit of patience and some tears, everything worked out for the best. Having this in mind makes me feel confident that no matter how much I’m going to struggle in Malawi, things will eventually settled and I’ll be having the experience of a lifetime and the biggest smile on my face…

Cheers

A little update about the projects we're working on in Malawi

2011-01-20T12:12:00.000-08:00

Good morning,

today is my last day in Vancouver, for real this time. I’m heading back to Quebec City for a few days, then Toronto for the pre-departure training…then we’ll be leaving on February 27th.
A lot of my friends keep asking me what I will be working on in Malawi. I guess I can’t say for sure until I get to my town (and I don’t know where yet, there is a placement in the north and one more in the south) and see by myself, but I can try to summarize our projects. From my understanding, my co-workers in Malawi have been working mainly in four different areas:

1- Helping villages that decided to become open-defecation free within a district. The project is called CLTS (Community-Led Total Sanitation) and focuses on reducing the number of children dying from diarhea or other poor sanitation related problems. Basically the role of EWB for that work is to explain to the people of the community involved, without lecturing them, how their “shit” gets in their food and water by cross contamination, so that they decide to build latrines and enforce the use of them. It seems obvious to you and me, but some villages in Africa have a long way to go.

2- Helping with the de-centralisation of the government which is starting to give more power at the district level. The problem is, that they are dealing with a really heavy political system and even if the district has more roles to play now, they are not free to make the decisions they need to make, and they still depend on the funding from the head government. It’s like if the director of the water and sanitation in a municipality, anywhere in Canada, would want to repair/update their sewer system or water station, but would need to have the approval of the director of public works as well as the approval and money from the federal government. It‘d take forever for things to be done and for problems to be solved. Well, this is part of the myriad of problems that Malawi is facing at the moment.

3- Helping with the development and of better information management system at the district level regarding the water point locations and functionality. This means, facilitating and training how to use a “user friendly” standardize data base (in Excel) in which the location/village of the wells can be found and mapped, and whether this well is functional or not, and if it’s not, why is that. This database, as simple as it seems will be useful to know where to install wells next time they get funding for that, instead of blindly drilling/installing new wells.

4- Helping with understanding/fixing the broken wells and pumps. Why can’t they be used? Is it because they are in an inaccessible area (swamp, bush, too far); is it because the spare parts to fix it are not easy to get or are too expensive; or is it because the district has no money available to hire an area mechanic to repair the wells?

All this seems so easy for us here in Canada to fix those problems and move on to something more challenging, but it gets really tricky in a political system that is too complicated, to strict or sometimes corrupted, and in a country where money is a real concern. Malawi, as many other countries in Africa, is extremely poor and using the villagers’ money or asking them for more money to fix a well might be too much for them as they have problems to get food or send their children to school.

EWB understands that the solution to many of those problems is not in us doing the work and holding their hands, but by facilitating and coordinating the work with them, by finding a leader in the district to help motivate the community and take ownership of the solution.

I hope this makes sense to you.

Also here is a link to Duncan McNicholl's blog that explains more in details the WatSan team projects in Malawi:
http://waterwellness.ca/about-watsan-malawi/

Goodbye Vancouver....and all of my dearest friends here, I'll see you in 2012!

Cheers

EWB National Conference

2011-01-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

"How can we evolve and create with experience being in the way of imagination?" - George Roter

__________________________________________
I'm back in Vancouver for a few days after having spent the last week in Toronto for the EWB National Conference.

EWB has been created 10 years ago by a few engineers, who just graduated and wanted to do something better with their knowledge and passion. They were young and inspired, they were naive and full of opinions, they thought they could create an organization to help changing the world. Well, they did it. They started it and now it's ten years later and they keep expanding and doing positive changes across Canada and Africa. They had something that not enough people have, they had a vision, a lot of balls and the courage to act.

Now EWB is way bigger than those few guys. It's a national office in Toronto with 15 full time employees, university chapters, professional chapters and some people working in Africa. Their work focuses on behaviour changes, leadership and global engineering. The chapters are mainly active locally, in their own community. For exemple, my Vancouver Professional Chapter worked on making Vancouver a Fair Trade city, they are organizing "Bridging the Gap", a yearly conference in Vancouver. They coordonate and participate in the "Run to End Poverty" event to raise money. I haven't been extremely involved with my chapter since I had a lot of preparation to do on my own, but I got a chance to meet about 30 active members last week in Toronto. I must say that I got inspired and I'm glad to say that I know and collaborate with people like those.

I'm glad I went to the conference. I learnt about the vision and mission of EWB, but I also learnt about so many other subjects: social enterprise, behaviour changes, why does aid matters and how can we fail forwards, distributed leadership, the impact of China in Africa, policies restraining international development, governance, advocacy... WOW. On top of it all, I had the chance to meet most of my team members, the people I'll be working with in Malawi. It was great hearing them discussed the different issues they are facing, their roles and the different projects they are working on.

With that being said, I'm more prompt than ever to embark my adventure in Malawi. I'm inspired, motivated and extremelly glad to have been selected to work with such amazing people...only a few weeks to go.

Here is a link to an article posted in the star regarding the conference and EWB mission. It's quite interesting:

Canadian Engineers Test Problem Solving Skills in Africa

The Destination is Set

2010-12-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

MALAWI here I come...
I will finally be going to Malawi (East Africa) to work in access to potable water and sanitation. I'm so super excited and happy. This project is the reason why I applied to EWB, so knowing that I'll have the chance to be part of it is fantastic. If you want to know more about the projects that EWB is working on in Malawi, check this link:
http://www.ewb.ca/en/whatwedo/overseas/projects/wateraccess_malawi.html

My friends Grace and Dawn, both traveled in East-Central Africa and said that Malawi, was one of the most charming and beautiful places. What blow their minds is how inviting and genuinely friendly people were. I can't wait!
Here are some pictures taken by Grace in Malawi, just so you can have an idea of what it looks like...it's a pre-departure tease!

Here is where it all begins

2010-12-13T21:03:00.000-08:00

So here I go!

It took me many years to apply to it, many hours of filling out the application form, then two long and tough interviews, but guess what...I got selected for a long term placement with Engineer Without Borders oversea program or should say, the adventure of a lifetime.

Not sure exactly where I'm going yet, but somewhere in Africa. Probably Burkina Faso (West Africa) but it could also be Ghana, Zambia or Malawi; the former three placements having to to with agriculture and the latest, with access to potable water.

Date set to go: End of February 2011, after a full month of training in Toronto. But before that, I have a ton of things to read and learn and I've got a couple of months to get there!

My goal with this Blog, is to keep my dear friends informed of how things are. I also, I'm curious to see the progression of my experience, before, during and after. Not sure exactly where this will bring me and what comes alfterwards though... go back to environmental consulting, work in international development or back to school to become a science teacher. Eitherway, this is a fantastic opportunity and I'm jumping in with the biggest smile on my face.

Have fun reading "A little girl in the world" and I'll try to do my best to do my best to entertain you guys, make you learn and maybe motivate you to do something similar someday.

Sometimes the blog will be in French and some other times it will be in English. Sorry for the inconvinient, my life being split between the two ends of Canada and soon, Africa.

With luv, Genevieve