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
Ge
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