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Karonga

What are we ready to cope with?

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?

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.

Ge

Perspectives

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

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!

Ge

To the blind man’s eye

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

Ge 

45 km from Tanzania

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

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:

1. Fill out the form in room 1 (8:45am)
2. 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.
3. Bring the form to room 2 to get another form to bring tp the teller to pay the application fees.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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…
9. 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

Ge

The things we take for granted

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

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

And up we go!

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

Ge

“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

The missing keys: education and leadership

“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

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?

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.

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