“Waste Land”

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