When the curtain falls

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.

Ge