Kim's Ramblings

A bit on my work in resettled communities

2009-09-28T11:37:00.000+02:00

When I arrived in Cambodia just over a month ago, one of the first things I set about doing was selecting study sites. When I began doing research into the peri-urban areas around Phnom Penh a number of months back, my interest was piqued by the extensive resettlement programs that the government has been undertaking. In the end, I chose two such resettled communities as the basis for my study.

Land tenure in Phnom Penh is complicated. A document put out by the United Nations Human Settlements Program entitled “The Challenge with Slums” (2003), presents a good summary of the situation.

There is no clear distinction between legal and illegal occupancy/ownership. As a result of this lack of clear tenure rights, eviction is a constant threat to the majority of Phnom Penh’s low income settlers. Most of these residents are officially considered squatters, although ‘…at least 75% consider themselves owners of the plot that they purchased from the local authorities or previous owner, who themselves may not have had ownership rights,” (UN, 2003). In recent years, entire communities have faced eviction – often violently and without compensation or support – by the Municipality of Phnom Penh (UN, 2003). These evictions are particularly common with more centrally located settlements which have been cleared away to make way for commercial development. As a result, “…while squatter settlements developed primarily in the city centre until 1998, recent massive relocation programs have contributed to establishing peri-urban zones of poverty,” (UN, 2003).

Photo 1: A central squatter community in a dilapidated building, slated for evictions (so I’m told – I haven’t investigated the matter further)

Many of the former slum communities have the primary advantage of location – residents have relatively easy access to the city for work. Relegated to areas far away from the city, many resettled individuals suddenly find themselves with no source of income.

One of my study communities was evicted earlier this year. The government couldn’t find a suitable location to move the residents to, so they sought help from an NGO. This NGO contacted a pastor who owns land just outside of the city. The pastor agreed to let the community have a parcel of land. Eighty-three households were moved from a settlement in central Phnom Penh to this location out in the country.

Photo 2: House in one of my study sites

Photo 3: Source of surface water in the community. It was once considered a usable source of water (after treatment by filtering or boiling) but since the new residents moved in, it has become so heavily contaminated that no one uses it.

Back in Phnom Penh, most of the community members had access to piped water in their homes. During the rainy season, nearly all households harvest rainwater for use in their homes. However, few people can afford storage vessels large enough to make rainwater last more than a few days after rainfall. So, for the long dry season, they must choose between heavily contaminated surface water, arsenic contaminated shallow well water, and expensive bottled water. So, their water supply situation has, for the most part, declined substantially.

Photo 4: Bucket used for harvesting rainwater

Photo 5: View of one of my study sites

The other community I am working in was relocated several years ago. The land the community is on now floods, since a government agency blocked the drainage system. The households there are more established and wealthier – as evidenced by larger houses and rainwater harvesting systems with significant capacity (enough to last several weeks into the dry season). When rainwater is not an option, the majority of residents must purchase water from a vendor who brings a tanker truck of water to the community. There are 2 deep wells present, but no one dares to use it for drinking – while past water testing (I do not have my own data on this yet) has shown that the wells produce water safe for human consumption, elevated manganese and iron levels make rice change colour when being cooked, causing residents to be very suspicious of the quality of the water.

Photo 6: Flooding in the community

Photo 7: Rainwater harvesting jars. The water is routed from the gutters to the jars using a hose (you can see a pop bottle being used to funnel water from the gutter into the hose, which is directed into one of the jars)

Photo 8: Deep well. Due to high iron and manganese levels, people only use this well for bathing and clothes washing water.

I will be spending a lot of time in these two communities over the next few months. More on what I’m actually doing there in a future post!

Settling in . . .

2009-09-10T12:50:00.005+02:00

Two weeks have passed since I arrived in Cambodia. Two weeks down, only 14 left to go. I’m here doing the field work component of my thesis research for me Masters degree in Water Resources Engineering at the University of Guelph.

So much to do, so little time to do it in…

My first couple of weeks here have been spent getting settled in, and getting things going with my research program. Things have gone well on both fronts!

My work is based out of a local NGO here called Resource Development International Cambodia. The two facets of the organization that I am most familiar with are the ceramic water filter factory and the water quality lab. RDI runs the largest ceramic water filter factory in the country. RDI also has one of the best equipped water quality labs in Cambodia – one of the reasons that has brought me here to work with them.

Photo 1: View from my room at RDI

Photo 2: My first home here was a shipping container at RDI. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds …

RDIC is located just out of Phnom Penh, in the neighboring province of Kandal. I am living in Phnom Penh, approx. a 35 minute drive away.

It was a major relief when I found myself feeling at home in the city almost right away. It is a hectic and a little rough around the edges, but after a year in the sleepy little city of Guelph (and a year before that spent in the even sleepier city of Lilongwe), it is a welcomed change of pace. The streets are busy with motor bikes flying from every direction (rules of the road don’t seem to apply to them…), food carts of all sorts (from noodles to waffles!), monks wandering in and out of wats (temples), families playing badminton . . . such energy!

Photo 3: Need to take some photos of the city . . . For now, all I have this photo of some rooftops

My house hunting experience was an absolute joy, compared to the ordeal I went through in Malawi. I hit the pavement in an area of town I was interested in living in, and within a couple hours, I had successfully found myself a great little apartment.

Photo 4: Outside view of my apartment. I’m on the 3rd floor.

Photo 5: My awesome patio

I live in the neighbourhood of O’Russei. I very much enjoy it.

I am a 5 minute walk from the biggest, busiest, and most disorienting market I have ever had the pleasure of getting lost in. My little bit of Khmer came in handy when I explored it last weekend to find some household items to make my little apartment a little more homey. You can find just about anything in that market, from electrical supplies, to salted fish, to gemstones, to suspicious North Face backpacks.

As I type this, there is something that sounds like a choir practice going on in a building across the street. I hear the honk of motorbikes whipping past and children laughing. I am actually on a relatively quiet street for the area as I have a bit of a buffer between the many restaurants and bars in the surrounding streets, so I sleep soundly in relative silence.

I am working on learning Khmer. I am well aware of my (limited) capacity to pick up new languages, but I know how important it is for me to learn as much as I can! I am taking lessons when I get the chance, offered by an audio engineer at RDI. He is a good teacher, and I am picking some up.

Khmer is not a terribly complicated language, however, the pronunciation is a major challenge for me. For example, in my lesson today we spent a few long minutes going over the difference between “p” and “pb,” - Apparently, I kept saying “pbaan” as opposed to “baan.” My Canadian ears could only barely tell the difference . . . I have never before had to focus so intently on how we make the sounds when we do when we speak. How do we make a “p” sound vs. a “b” sound? How do I make something in between: “pb”?? I end up completely tongue tied by the end of a lesson.

Things have been moving along, research wise. I won’t go into many specifics here, but I will talk a bit about the general area of interest, being water supply and sanitation in resettlement areas around Phnom Penh. My first steps have been to scope out determine my study site locations. I've had some success, and will hopefully start ramping things up next week!

Photo 6: Scoping out a potential study site

Photo 7: Another study site.

New journey = new blog name

2009-08-01T05:03:00.002+02:00

It has been over a year since I've done anything to this blog.

Almost one year to this day, I returned home from my year long stint in the wonderful little country of Malawi. Since then, I started working on my Masters degree at the University of Guelph.

In a little over 3 weeks from now (!!!) I will be leaving for Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where I will be doing the field data collection stage of my thesis research.

As such, I decided that it was time that I dust off the old blog, give her a bit of an update, and prepare to get back into this whole blogging thing.

Here we go again!

Kim

More photos

2008-07-23T16:00:00.016+02:00

If all goes as planned, I shall be leaving this lovely country of Malawi tomorrow. I'll spend just under a week in Lusaka before flying home from there.

Just thought I'd share some assorted photos from my last month in Malawi . . .
Photo 1: In May and June I went on many field visits with the cassava project. We talked to farmers, checked on progress, visited fields, etc. In this photo I'm standing with Mr. Chamaza-Banda, a TLC field coordinator, and a girl whose name I quite unfortunately have forgotten, but who works as a volunteer on the project. Volunteers assist the field coordinators in providing support to the farmers.

Photo 2: In early July, I had a series of EWB meetings to attend. Here I am holding a session by the lake - not a bad spot to spend a week.

Photo 3: Near the lodge we stayed at for the meetings was the Malawi cichlid centre. Malawi cichlids are collected at a few key points on the lake, and brought back to the centre where they are sorted and then kept in tanks until being sold. If you go to the centre directly, you can buy any fish there for 200Mk ($1.40), but no one would give me an indication of how much they cost when they're shipped overseas, which is where the majority of the fish are sent.

Photo 4: My tour guide at the cichlid centre

Photo 5: I have undoubtedly seen more stunning sunsets during my time here than I had in all my life previously.

Photo 6: Supports from an old pier (that's what I assume they area anyway) in Senga Bay, Malawi

Photo 7: The Southern Africa EWB crew

Photo 8: A couple weekends ago I joined a fellow EWBer, John Paul Portelli, on a short village stay. John Paul was rather intrigued by how strongly the children took to me - as a guy, he had never had nearly as much success interacting with the women and children as I am able to have. Quite unfortunate, really, as anyone who knows me knows that I'm a little hopeless in interacting with children, while he is fantastic at it!

Photo 9: Hanging out on top of a hill

Photo 10: My village host family

Photo 11: Kabindiza village

Photo 12: John Paul making mud bricks. The bricks are formed using the mould (as shown) and then left in the sun to dry for sometime before being "burnt" in an oven, to set them. Burnt bricks use a lot of wood to be produced, and are therefore yet another strain on Malawi's meager wood resources. Nevertheless, burnt bricks are much more popular than the alternatives (such as concrete blocks or other options, which are vastly more popular in neighbouring countries) because the first president of Malawi, Kamuzu-Banda, put in place policies to promote small scale burnt brick production as a means of increasing incomes in the rural areas.

Photo 13: A woman with her child. The little boy is munching on sugar cane.

Photo 14: Some cute kids with their toys.

Photo 15: Last week I went to visit my housemate Bon at his work - the National Food Reserve Agency. Malawi's national grain (i.e. maize) reserve stocks are kept in a few different silo complexes around the country. Bon works as a Quality Control Officer at the main depot in Lilongwe, where 48 silos are located.

Photo 16: Bon standing by a conveyor belt that brings the maize to the silos

Photo 17: As I've mentioned many times before, Malawi's main export crop is tobacco. While some tobacco farmers work on contract with the leaf buying companies (an intermediate step between farmers and the cigarette manufacturers) the majority sell their tobacco at one of 3 auction floors located in Malawi. The auction floors in Lilongwe are the biggest. It is a rather chaotic place! Edgar works for a leaf grading company, and kindly brought me for a tour of the facility.

Saying goodbye

2008-07-23T11:16:00.010+02:00

Continuing with the theme from my last post . . .

I’m looking forward to seeing my friends and family back in Canada, but I’m going to miss my wonderful friends here . . .
It was really difficult to leave my friends, family, and boyfriend when I left for Malawi last summer. A year seemed like an impossibly long time to be away.

Now, the year has nearly passed.

I continue to be astonished by how quickly time has flown by. In a week and a half I will have arrived back in Canada, been welcomed at the airport by various loved ones, and whisked up to the cottage for a few days of relaxing and readjusting.

While I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone when I get back, I’m really going to miss so many people that I’ll be leaving behind here.

I have met some really amazing people here - some of the most kind, generous, and welcoming people I’ve ever known. It is hard to say goodbye, especially since I don’t know when or if I’ll see them again.

Some photos from a couple going away dos I've had in the past week . . .

Photo 1: Me being presented with a gift at my office going away party

Photo2: Last Sunday, I went to see some afternoon jazz at Chameleons, a bar in Lilongwe with my 2 house mates and a few friends (from left to right: Khala, George, Rex, Annie, and Bon)

Photo 3: The EWB crew (from left to right: Me, Megan, JP, and Heather)

Photo 4: After jazz, we went back to Heather's place for a delicious dinner

Some things I'll miss, and some things I miss less

2008-07-16T15:08:00.011+02:00

My departure date is approaching at an alarming rate.

I’ll be leaving this lovely little country of Malawi in just over a week from now, and will be flying back to Toronto from Lusaka on July 31st.

I really do feel at home here, so it is startling for me to consider how far away I will soon be from what have become normal elements of my life here.

While there are things that I’m not sad to be leaving here or that I am looking forward to returning to at home, there are just as many (and probably more) things that I will miss very much. I started jotting down a little list - I may add more to these later.

I look forward to regular hot showers, but I’ll miss bucket showers
There is something about a hot shower with good water pressure that is just so fantastic in so many ways. I don’t think I ever appreciated showers quite enough before. On the rare occasion that I get a good ol’ fashioned shower – water spraying down from an overhead nozzle with just the perfect amount of water pressure - I just revel in its wonderfulness.

That being said, I am also a fan of my usual bathing method – the bucket shower. My daily bucket shower requires just a small bucket full of water heated up on the stove (I’m too big of a wimp for cold showers) – so efficient! I have really gained an appreciation for just how little water is actually necessary to get oneself nice and squeaky clean.

I look forward to the way garbage is dealt with in Canada, but I will miss how little garbage is generated here in Malawi.
My Canadian self was initially rather horrified by the way that garbage is handled here. Take littering, for example. Since I was a wee child I have had the concept of littering being a very bad thing drilled into my head. So naturally, I would cringe at the sight of bottles and wrappers being chucked out of minibus windows or over one’s shoulder while strolling down the street. But, then I thought of how trash is really managed here. It is not like in Canada where there is a system for garbage collection, and where you can often find trash receptacles on street corners and elsewhere. In most cases, garbage is swept into a pile and occasionally burned. At my house, for example, we have a garbage pit in the backyard. In town, all the litter is swept into an open storm sewer and occasionally burned. The burning takes place indiscriminately – whatever happens to be in the pile is burned. Plastic, batteries, paint – whatever!

However, I love how much less waste gets produced here. At my house, so little of what we use comes packaged. The vast majority of our food comes from the market or a family member or friend’s farm. The consumable items we use most often – candles, toilet paper, etc – have minimal packaging. We produce a small fraction of the amount of garbage an equivalent household would consume back in Canada.

Photo: Pile of garbage in the parking lot next to my office. It gets burned every so often when it reaches a certain size.

Photo: Burning trash in the garbage pit in my backyard

I look forward to the wide range of vegetarian friendly products in Canada, but I’ll miss Tasty Soya Pieces and all the wonderful green veggies in Malawi.
Tofu, tempeh, legumes (chickpeas, lentils, beans – yum!), veggie burgers, TVP, etc. . . the list of vegetarian delights that await me upon my return in Canada are nearly endless! For dinners here I mostly alternate between eggs and soya pieces (beans take tooooo long to cook!).

I do love “Tasty Soya Pieces” though. Tasty soya pieces are a magical Zambian product and are the best dried faux meat product I think I’ve ever had! I’ll fill up any extra luggage space with packages of ‘em! Plus, here there is an abundance of wonderful options when it comes to green vegetables - mustard, rape, pumpkin, sweet potato, and bean leaves, not to mention all the cabbage, Chinese lettuce, etc etc. It is glorious!

I look forward to leaving behind the cockroaches in my kitchen and mice in my ceiling, but I’ll miss house geckos
Even as I write this, I hear mice scurrying around my ceiling. I know that if I step into my kitchen, I’ll be greeted by cockroaches of all sizes scuttling about the floors, counters, and cabinets. So goes life in southern Africa! One kind of critter that I will be rather sad to no longer have lurking around my living spaces are house geckos. House geckos are cute little critters that you often find dotting the walls inside buildings here. They roam around with their handy little suction cup feet, and feast on mosquitoes and other annoying creatures which are seemingly omnipresecnt. Cute AND helpful – awesome!

Photo: My resident house gecko

I look forward to no more rainy seasons, but I’ll miss the predictable weather here.
Oh, the rainy season. How I was not sad to see it go . . . From December – March you can expect at least one sudden downpour a day. The open storm sewers in town become raging rivers while paved roads become flooded pools and dirt roads become muddy, impassible, messes. It is also the time of year that mosquitoes are out in full force, resulting in peak malaria infection rates.

I will, however, miss how predictable the weather is here. You pretty much know what you’re going to get. Back in Canada, for much of the year we have to rely pretty heavily on weather forecasts, as who knows what it will be like outside on a given day. I remember the last winter I was in Canada and living in Waterloo – I’d be in a parka one day, and fine in shirt sleeves the next. Plus, during the dry season here, you can expect beautiful sunny days practically every day - not bad :)

Photo: Ah, the perils of rainy season driving

Photo: A "road"

More to come next time . . .

Visit to the Chia Lagoon

2008-07-11T09:48:00.000+02:00

A couple of weeks ago I visited one of TLC’s major projects – the CHIA Lagoon Watershed Management Project. A delegation from the Norweigan government, the current funders of the project, were in town, so the visit was largely meant to show them some of the project sites, and to launch a new initiative. Basically, we were trying to show off what we've done so far . . . Other guests included government staff and members of the media.

The Chia project is a big one for TLC. It includes a whole whack of activities – forestry, soil and water management, fisheries, enterprise development (helping farmers earn income from little specialized business endevours such as honey production or fish farming), etc.

Some background:
The Chia Lagoon is a sizable lagoon of Lake Malawi, a couple hours north east of Lilongwe. The watershed encompasses both a forest and a game reserve, and supports the livelihoods of 55,000 people.

The natural resources of the Chia Lagoon watershed – soil, water, flora and fauna – have been under threat from poor land use practices over the past 20 years, which has resulted in severe problems of erosion and water runoff. The lagoon suffers from major sedimentation problems, which have resulted from these practices and have significant negative impacts on the area’s rich biodiversity and the livelihoods of local communities.

The major problems causing natural resources degradation in the watershed include:

opening new land for agriculture
cultivation on steep slopes and stream banks
poor farming practices
uncontrolled cutting of trees for wood
setting of bush fires

Impacts on the watershed’s natural resources include:

Soil degradation
Degradation of natural vegetation
Declining water quality and quantity in the Lagoon
Reduced abundance and diversity of fish resources in the Lagoon

The project itself has several different components, trying to mitigate some of the key problems facing the watershed and their impacts. These components include forestry (requiring the raising and planting of tree seedlings), crop diversification, fisheries, conservation agriculture, and enterprise development. I’m just going to touch on a few of them here, the activities I visited with the delegation last week.

Improved Land and Water Management Practices

Photo One: A field under “Conservation Agriculture.” Conservation agriculture (CA) aims “to achieve sustainable and profitable agriculture and subsequently aims at improved livelihoods of farmers through the application of the three CA principles: minimal soil disturbance, permanent soil cover and crop rotations,” (http://www.fao.org/ag/ca/). It offers opportunities to produce higher and more stable crop yields, and to reduce labor, time and production costs. This photo shows a field under conservation agriculture; the stalks from last year’s corn harvest have been left in the field, rather than being burned off which is what the usual practice would require. By doing this, the farmer will receive multiple benefits – top soil will be protected from being washed away; ridges in the field will be maintained, reducing labor time next season; biological activity will be encouraged, which improves soil quality; etc.

Photo Two: Dr. Trent Bunderson (4th from the left), the Regional Director of TLC, speaking to the Norweigan delegation

Photo Three: Another means of improving soil fertility is by intercropping (cultivating two or more crops together) your main crop (in this case, cassava) with legumes which fix nitrogen from the air and enrich the soil (in this case, Tephrosia candida is being used)

Photo Four: This tree has nothing to do with the project, I just liked it . . . the bunches of grasses you see leaned up against the trunk are used for thatching roofs.

Photo Five: A fisherman drying his catch of fish from the lake out in the sun. The project is working to improve the management of the fisheries in the lake and the lagoon to increase the sustainability of the fisheries.

Photo Six: The delegation and other guests paddling (the engine wasn’t working) out to the lagoon to check out fish cages where fish are raised. I feared disaster, but they managed to not tip! Fish cage culturing is used to subsidize fish populations in the lake and lagoon.

Photo Seven: Cute kids hanging out on dug out canoes on the shore

Enterprise Development

Photo Eight: An incomplete fish pond. Raising fish in fish ponds is becoming a popular income generation option for farmers in the area.

Photo Nine: Fish pond construction

Photo Ten: Woman with rice. TLC promotes the production of a certain kind of rice; the rice farmers in the project have a buyer who is happily buying all their rice at a good price.

Photo Eleven: rice!

Photo Twelve: more rice!

Photo Thirteen: Bringing in rice from the rice paddies

Photo Fourteen: Jars of honey for sale. Honey production is another practice we have going on in the project. We were told that the farmers had just recently collected honey, so the bees were annoyed and aggressive, so we were unable to check out the hives. Each jar of honey went for 300MK (approx $2.10).

The major event of the visit was the grand opening of a fish market. The idea for the market came from the project fish vendors through the Association who approached TLC for assistance. In the past, the fish vendors have been selling their fish by the roadside under no formal structure and with risks of road accidents. The market is expected to provide improved fish handling, processing and storage with reduced losses, improved hygiene and sanitation, and reduced risks of road accidents. There is also expected to be a diversification in terms of fish products offered (e.g., fish fillets, roadside restaurants). The fish market also has the potential to provide a stronger and more consistent price for fish sales with healthy competition between vendors that is based on product quality.
Photo Fifteen: The fish market

Photo Sixteen: Preparing dried fish, step one. Fish are split open and left to dry in the sun (under a netted screen) for 3 hours, after which time an oil/tomato mixture is applied to them prior to smoking.
Photo Seventeen: Preparing dried fish, step two. Laying out the fish over embers.

Photo Eighteen: Dried fish, ready for sale.

Photo Nineteen: Dried fish sellers

Photo Twenty: The fish market has the advantage of offering refrigeration, to allow for the sale of fresh fish.

Photo Twenty One: Fish market grand opening

Photo Twenty Two: Young girls selling little smoked fish to parked vehicles. They can be eaten as a snack (very tasty!) or cooked further.

Some photos…

2008-06-27T08:13:00.012+02:00

I’ve done a horrible job at posting regularly…I have two posts that are sitting on the backburner, but I don’t have time to polish them off before heading off to a week of EWB related meetings/trainings, so I’m just going to throw up some photos for now.

Photo 1: Learning to prepare okra with my housemates’ mum. A couple of months ago I went with my housemate Khala to visit her family an hour or so outside of Lilongwe. Khala’s mum was very excited to teach me how to properly prepare okra. Okra is generally prepared one of two ways here. There is the traditional way, where the okra is cut into thin slices and cooked with tomatoes, oil, pumpkin leaves and some baking soda – the baking soda gives the okra a rather slimy consistency. It isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea . . . it is a little snotty for me. It is also very hard to scoop using a lump of nsima! The other way is the “azungu” or “European” way. In this style, the okra is sliced lengthwise and cooked in tomatoes and onions – delicious!

Photo 2: Khala’s mum is an ophthalmic nurse at the district hospital.

Photo 3: At the end of May, we held a launch for the cassava project I’ve been working on. The launch took place at a field site just outside of Lilongwe, in one of the participating villages. Even the set up, which took place the day before, attracted quite the crowd, including this group of young girls, all diligently carrying younger siblings around.

Photo 4: I live a few minute walk away from a war memorial which opened this past November. It is a rather curious site, as there is a large 4 lane road leading up to it – what must be one of the nicest stretches of road in the country – that doesn’t continue on to anywhere else. It seems like a bit of overkill at present, as the only people that use this road are visitors to the war memorial; that is, of course, except for one day earlier this month when the 2nd annual bed race in support of the Rotary club of Lilongwe was held.

Photo 5:A census takes place once every 10 years here, and it has been going on for the past couple of weeks. This rather reflective, fluorescent fellow is a census worker out in the rural areas.

Photo 6: While tobacco is by far the major cash crop grown in Malawi, cotton is also grown in certain areas.

Photo 7: Cassava! This lovely lady was happy to show off her lovely, well fenced (to keep the pesky goats away) field of cassava.

Photo 8: A local maize mill

Photo 9:Me trying out a dug out canoes. Dug out canoes are constructed out of trunks of wood. They are pretty tippy – manageable with one person, but very difficult to operate with 2.

Photo 10:Hanging out with Megan (another EWB volunteer) in a hammock by the lake.

The Wonderful World of Cassava…

2008-06-01T14:48:00.018+02:00

…everyone’s favourite root vegetable!

(Source: http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j14/biopact/biopact_cassava_biofuels.jpg)

Well, perhaps not everyone's favorite root vegetable. After all, it is quite starchy and fairly tasteless...

However, cassava is also pretty awesome for a bunch of reasons. First of all, it can be used for many purposes - it can be consumed raw or cooked, made into flour for baking, turned into starch, etc - and therefore has potential to be both consumed by farmers and their families and sold in a growing and largely untapped market for cassava and cassava products, increasing household incomes. Cassava is drought tolerant, requires no fertilizer, and the roots can be harvested years after planting (i.e. they can be stored in the ground until needed). So... all in all, pretty handy in a country of cash and resource poor small scale farmers, who are vulnerable to environmental shocks (such as droughts) which can devastate their maize harvests, lack money for fertilizer, and who lack ways of storing produce for future sale (when prices may be higher) or consumption.

Photo 1: Close up of cassava leaves

I recently started working on a project that promotes the cassava industry in Malawi. We aim to get farmers growing cassava, processors to purchase cassava from farmers and process it, and buyers (e.g. milling, confectionery, and packaging companies) to purchase cassava from the processors.

The cassava project is quite unique among TLC’s projects. While the bulk of TLC’s agricultural projects focus merely on increasing production levels of small scale farmers, this project takes a more sophisticated approach by addressing weaknesses at points throughout the cassava value chain within Malawi.

I realize that to most of you the term “value chain” may be a familiar one.

What is an agricultural value chain exactly?
Agricultural value chains encompass the full range of activities and services required to bring an agricultural product from planting to sale in final markets.
Value chains include input suppliers, producers, processors and buyers, and are supported by a range of technical, business, and financial service providers.

A “typical” value chain is presented below:
In the development, we generally aim to make sure that small scale producers are getting a fair deal out of this system.

For example, in an ideal scenario . . .

The input market is both accessible to small scale farmers (e.g. inputs such as seeds and fertilizer available in the rural areas) and provides the proper types of inputs (e.g. the type and quality of seeds required)
Purchase of produce from farmers by buyers - whether it be by traders who buy raw products, or processors who perform some kind of process which adds value to the goods - is done fairly; farmers and buyers/processors have a mutually beneficial relationship, where farmers receive a fair price for their produce, and buyer’s market demands are met.

Ideally, these types of relationships would happen naturally, but this is often not the case – this is where NGOs come in.

Looking at this model, the majority of TLC’s work has so far been focusing on the level of smallholder farmers, helping them to produce more. Our small scale irrigation programs are based on the following assumptions:

Access to irrigation will result in increased production levels
Increased production levels will lead to increased income
Increased income levels lead to better lives for small scale farmers

However, a major problem that we’ve encountered time and time again is that our farmers are having major problems moving from the “production” to the buyers - the processing/traders level. That is, farmers are having trouble actually selling their produce; produce often goes to waste or is sold off at low prices. The value chain for their produce is either poorly functioning or they lack access to it. What good is producing bumper crops of, say tomatoes or maize, if farmers are unable to sell it?

Why Cassava?
Cassava is a crop that has great potential in Malawi. This fact is especially true now, given some challenges that are being faced by maize, the current staple food crop. These challenges include low yields due to erratic rainfall and increasing prices of important inputs such as fertilizer and improved seed varieties. Cassava is a drought tolerant crop which not only has the potential to increase food security in many households, but also has great potential for sale – both of cassava and cassava products at the domestic and international level.

Photo 2: Walking through a big cassava field during the project launch

Several products can be processed from cassava such as cassava flour, chips, confectioneries, animal feed and starch. Cassava flour is of particular interest recently due to dramatically rising wheat flour prices – the cost of brown bread has gone up by up to 40% since I’ve been here!

At present, very little of the cassava being grown in Malawi receives any degree of processing – it is generally consumed at the household level, or is sold in raw form. Lack of processing of cassava close to the farmer level has been blamed for the poor prices that farmers receive and wastage of unsold produce.

There is a market out there for cassava, but there is a break in the chain. Farmers complain that there is no market for cassava, while potential buyers complain that no one is producing it. Farmers want to grow a crop that they can sell, and companies are looking for a supply of cassava. So, why isn't this already happening?

We're trying to kickstart this value chain by helping to link up different parts of the chain. Our job is not done once we have farmers growing cassava. If farmers don't have somewhere to sell their cassava, they'll stop growing it - they need to see the benefits of growing cassava. For these benefits to happen, we need to make sure that processors and buyers are in place. I'll try to explain a bit more, but giving a bit of an overview of what we're doing at the different levels of the value chain:

Input Market:

Production:

Traders/Processors:

National Markets:

In addition, we’re tackling some of those support services I mentioned earlier: transmitting information along the chain, providing loans, setting transportation requirements for processors and buyers, etc.

We’ve got our work cut out for us.

Photo 3: Cassava fields are generally fenced because goats enjoy feasting on the leaves

This is probably a bit of information overload . . . I'll be surprised if anyone gets around to reading this whole entry! So, I'm going to cut myself off here, and perhaps elaborate on some specific elements of the work I've been doing within this project in a future entry!

A glimpse into my every day life

2008-05-07T15:19:00.022+02:00

It seems a little late to have a post on this, given that I've been here for over 9 months already.. . . I started writing this blog entry way back in November. I kept putting off posting it because I wanted to take some corresponding photos, but I just never got around to taking them. I have yet to take all the photos I would like to include; However, I have received a couple of recent requests for a post such as this, so . . . here we go . . .

The details of my day to day life here are different from what I’m used to in Canada, but not to the degree most people probably think. At the end of the day, I’m doing the same kind of stuff – it’s just the details that are different.

The hours I keep here are quite different. While back in Canada – especially during my undergrad – I wouldn’t make my way to bed until 1 or 2am, here I try to get to bed by around 10:30pm – even then, that’s pretty late by Malawian standards. My roommates are often in bed by 9:30, and in the previous place I stayed my roommate was generally in bed by 8pm. Still, 10:30 is early for me, but necessary, since my day starts at 5:30am.

While I’ve historically been very reliant on my snooze button, here I generally wake up unassisted sometime between 5:15 and 5:30 every morning (when I “sleep in” until 7 on the weekends, my housemates make fun of me for sleeping in so late!). I crawl out from under my mosquito net on my foam mat on the basic wooden frame bed I had made by a nearby carpenter.

One of my preferred breakfasts is phala – a porridge made of roasted maize and soya flour – with bananas. My roommates either don’t have breakfast or eat chips (fries) or rice porridge.

I leave for work around 6:45am. A short walk down my street brings me to the nearest minibus route. I generally have to wait no more than a few minutes before I see a white minibus come peeling around the corner with a man hanging out the window shouting “town! town!” indicating the vehicle’s final destination (the bus station in “old town”).

Photo 1: View down my street

Photo 2: A little shop across from my house

On certain days, I just don’t seem to have luck catching a bus from my usual spot. So, I have to walk through my area’s trading centre area to the main road. I take a shortcut which has me tromping through maize and cross an open storm sewer which serves as a bit of a garbage dump. Solid waste management leaves something to be desired here . . . storm sewers often become mini dumps which are burned occasionally as trash accumulates. This particular spot is close to a few tailors and a couple “saloons” (salons) so it is inevitably filled with many colourful scraps of fabric and LOTS of spent hair extensions (as a general rule: if a lady has a lovely head of long hair, it isn’t hers).

I pass a couple of carpenters, who work in open air shops using old hand tools. I bought my bed from such a carpenter.

Photo 3: My carpenter

Up a little further I pass a maize mill where ladies from all around gather to earn a little money by offering sifting services outside the mill.

Photo 4: Ladies at the maize mill. Those woven baskets there are used to sift maize.

Entering the market, I’m always greeted with a jovial “Muli Bwanji!” (how are you?) by a man running a little fruit stand. No matter how many times I respond with the appropriate “Ndili bwino, kaya inu?” (I’m fine, and you?), he always seems to be entertained, and has a good laugh at my expense.

Photo 5: Fruit seller

Vendors sell bags of charcoal. Charcoal is produced by slowly burning huge piles of wood in soil packed ovens. Charcoal is a very commonly used fuel for cooking in town, and is a significant contributor to the deforestation problem.
While production of charcoal is technically illegal in Malawi, it is still very common being one of the non farming related income generating activities available to the rural poor.

Photo 6: Charcoal seller

A row of ladies sell used clothing just outside of the market walls. The used clothing is shipped over from North America and Europe in shrink wrapped bails. I see all kinds of familiar shirts walking around town, from little kids in Montreal Canadians Jerseys, to big guys in purple “red hat society” shirts, or ladies in “world’s greatest dad” t-shirts. The used clothing market is largely attributed to killing any chance of sustaining textile industries in Malawi and other African countries.

Across from the used clothing ladies, chip sellers line the path.

Photo 7: Chip seller

Continuing on, I pass men laying fish out to dry in the sun, and ladies running little phone booth stations. There are tyre fitters and car mechanics who set up simple shops as well.

Photo 8: Tyre fitter
Photo 9: Car mechanic

Within a 20 m radius, one gets to experience almost the entire meat production process. It is pretty interesting, really. First, there is the heard of goats that is always gathered next to the filling station. They seem to be shipped in every morning by pick up truck; they have their legs tied together and are lain down on the bed of the truck for transport. A short distance away is a tree that I pass on my way to the bus stop. Each morning I walk by they seem to be a different stage in the slaughtering process: sharpening their knives as a goat nervously stands nearby; tying a goat upside by his/her ankles; slitting the throat; draining blood; skinning . . . etc. Sometimes one goat, sometimes two. A short distance away from the tree is the butchering table – a small table, completely in the open (and generally completely covered in flies…) There is always a goat carcass or two strung up, and one being chopped up into bits using what appears to be quite a dull knife. Across from this table are the men with the chip stands. While most are cooking up chips in pools of oil on metal tables, a couple sell fried goat meat and goat “offals” – mmmm.

Photo 10: Goats awaiting their turn
Photo 11: Goat slaughtering tree
Photo 12: Goat slaughtering tree in all its glory
Photo 13: Butcher

Now, continuing along my walk . . . passed the goat slaughtering tree, is another tree of note. On the weekends, the second large tree I pass serves as a barber shop. A man puts up a little cardboard sign saying “barbershop” and pulls up a chair. He seems to have quite the steady stream of clientele, there is always a row of people sitting on stumps by the tree, seeming to be waiting their turn. Across the street, I arrive at the bus stop.

Photo 14: The barber (no clients around at the time!)

I flag the bus down and squeeze myself in. It wasn’t so long ago that it was a much tighter fit. A recent law was passed restricting the number of people allowed per row to 3. Previously, 4 people were squished into rows really meant for 3 – not too comfortable. However, fewer people per ride means higher prices.

A minibus trip to most parts of the city costs 90MK (65 cents). That doesn’t sound like much, but when you compare it to average wages people make in this city, it is huge! Let’s say you need to take a minibus 2 times a day, 6 days a week, 4 weeks a month – that comes to 4320MK per month. Compare that to some typical wages . . . My watchman is paid 2500MK per month, office clerks at my housemate’s work (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) make 8000MK per month. Transportation in this city has become cost prohibitive for many.

By minibus it takes approximately 15 minutes to get into town from this point. It isn’t a terribly thrilling ride . . . We pass a couple of nicely landscaped traffic circle – traffic circles here are amongst the most nicely landscaped places in town. On Saturdays you often see wedding parties using traffic circles for photo ops! Traffic circles are the norm with traffic signals only found at a couple of T-intersections. Traffic signals are called “robots” here. I recall being a little confused overhearing a conversation on the new robots being installed in town when I first arrived…

Photo 15: War memorial. I went to check it out in December, a month after it was officially opened. Even then, plaques were already falling off . . .

Photo 16: Pedestrian bridge over the major road which brings me by minibus (the stop for which is just past the bridge) to work. No one really uses the bridge – the only time I see it being used is by people jogging up and down for exercise.

I crawl out of the minibus (it takes some technique) at my stop which is near the Shoprite and main People’s trading centre (PTC) Old Town. Shoprite is a big South African grocery store chain, while PTCs are a Malawian chain.

My office is a short walk away, and I generally arrive by around 7:15am. I’ve been spending much time in the office recently. I’ve actually moved on to working on a different project now, one which I’ll be writing about soon.

I often get a little peckish around mid morning, and dash out of the office for a quick snack. What I pick up for a snack is often quite seasonal. At present, my current favorite things are: boiled ground nuts (peanuts), which I purchase from ladies that carry basins of them on their head; guavas or green tangerines, which I purchase from men who walk around town with boxes of them for sale; and roasted sweet potatoes, which I purchase from men who roast them on charcoal stoves in the markets.

My lunch hours are busy times, filled with errands. There isn’t much time available in the week to do shopping and the like – stores open and close within normal working hours during the week (typically open between 8 and 5), close around 1pm on Saturdays, and most stay closed all day Sunday. It is pretty frustrating; I don’t know how people get anything done! I’m lucky though; my office is located centrally in the heart of Old Town which is pretty handy. I know my area like the back of my hand, and I have my preferred shops to get pretty much everything I need.

I usually bring leftovers for lunch (the day we got a microwave at my office was very exciting for me), but a day or two a week I’ll go out for lunch. One of my most commonly visited spots is a restaurant in the market called “the Silver Spoon.” I will usually get nsima with vegetables and beans – approximately $0.80 (the price went up recently!).

Photo 17: The Silver Spoon

It gets dark pretty early now, so if I want to get home before dark (which I do!) I need to leave the office by 5:30.

By the time I arrive at home, my watchman is sitting at his post. Most everyone in this town seems to have a watchman. They are key in reducing opportunistic criminals – our watchman has scared off would-be robbers who have lurked by my window on a couple of occasions.

At home I’ll hang out with my roommates for a bit. We usually make supper together – some combination of rice or nsima with veggies and eggs, meat (or tasty soya pieces for me!), fish, or beans. I’m generally in charge of preparing the veggies – my housemates used to squawk about my not using enough oil in my cooking, but they’ve gotten use to it!

I usually bathe during the evening, even though my housemates seem to think this is weird (they always bathe in the mornings). We lack a geezer (a hot water heater) so I put on a big pot of water to boil – I’m not a fan of cold baths! I fill up my trusty red bucket with the warmed water and head to the bathroom where I use a plastic saucepan, a loofah (which grow locally here), and a bar of soap to get squeaky clean before starting my day. I dry off using a piece of chitenje fabric which I wrap around me before returning to my room.

And then . . . off to bed!

Kim's Parents in Malawi!

2008-04-25T14:59:00.030+02:00

My parents recently descended upon Malawi. While I don’t think either of them could have imagined that they’d ever visit the African continent, my being here served as enough of an incentive to draw them over!

For their first evening here, my house mates and I had my parents over for supper. We whipped up some Malawian delights – pumpkin leaves with ground nut flour and chicken with nsima. My parents got to try their hand at eating nsima; it requires some technique – my dad was a natural, my mum . . . well, she needed some further instruction (sorry mum!)

Photo 1 – Khala and I whipping up dinner

Photo 2 – Mum and Dad’s first nsima

I rented a car for their visit. I feared being quite the hazard on the road, having not driven in 8 months and needing to drive on the left hand side of the road. Not to mention the fact that driving here poses some interesting challenges, including some potholes that seem large enough to swallow the teeny Toyota Starlet I had rented.

Wanting them to dive right into things, on their first full day in Malawi we headed off to spend a little time in a village. We visited the village I stayed in when I first arrived in Malawi. When I had traveled to the village before, I used a motorbike or Land Cruiser; as such, we were able to drive right up to the village. With our little car, however, we had to do the last bit of the journey on foot. We were told that it was a 2 km walk, but from what I remembered, that didn’t seem possible . . . in fact, it was at least an 8 km walk, and took quite some time. My dad learned the wonders of using one’s head to carry things, he’s a fan!

Photo 3 – Dad showing off: no hands!

The village stay was quite fantastic. Too short, but my parents did get a good taste of Malawian village life. The whole family seemed very happy to see me again, and they were thrilled that I brought my parents.

Photo 4 – Mr. Chisamba showing my parents his groundnut (peanut) field

We stayed in a newly constructed mud hut. I had prepared my parents in advance for the fact that they would have to sleep on a reed mat. I assured them that it wasn't too bad - after the 2 weeks I spent sleeping on one the last time I was in the village, I was almost convinced that I didn't need a mattress at all (though I did end up picking one up when I returned to the city). However, while I had the same bed frame + reed mat combination I slept on last time, my parents were totally spoiled – they had a full bed, mattress and all!

Photo 5 – our hut

We spent our time in there sitting and chatting with people, helping (well . . . we tried to help anyway) with or at least observing various tasks, visiting, etc. My parents learned how to do tasks such as preparing pumpkin leaves for dinner, cooking nsima, pounding maize, taking dried kernels off of corn cobs, etc. There was plenty to fill our time.

Photo 6 – Dekernelling maize

Another major activity was eating . . . In the morning of the day we left, Mr. Chisamba, the head of the family, asked when we’d be needing to leave, and when we’d like lunch. I told him that we had to be off by around 1pm, so, lunch any time before that would be fine. We had had breakfast sometime around 7:30 – 8 in the morning, consisting of big “scones” (buns), biscuits, and tea. Around 10:00 a tray of food was brought to our hut; low and behold, it contained a full meal, consisting of rice, and relishes of tasty soya pieces and vegetables. It was a little early to have such a big meal! After eating what we thought was lunch, we packed up our things. My dad was standing by the doorway when I heard him exclaim: “oh no!” I thought something bad might have happened, so I rushed over to see what was wrong – there I saw Ellis striding over with another tray of food. So, at 11:15, we had our second lunch of the day! This time, nsima, tasty soya pieces, vegetables, and chicken. My parents were still stuffed from the previous meal, and didn’t think they could eat another bite. However, I informed them that it wasn’t really an option - by rules of Malawian etiquette they at least had to have a few bites! This really is just one example of incredible Malawian hospitality – this is not a terribly well off family, but they were so kind and generous with what food they had.

No one in the family asked anything of us; I have heard stories of volunteers returning to rural host families, and finding themselves bombarded with requests for money, cell phones, etc. I came with a bag of staple food items as a thank you for putting us up. We gave them a small gift of cash when we left – the least we could do considering how generous they were with food and everything – but I don’t think it was even expected.

After leaving the village, we were headed to Cape Maclear. We were told that the drive would take us around 2.5 hours. It went well enough for the first hour or so. I drove, and managed to avoid hitting any of the pedestrians, bicyclists, goats, etc that serve as obstacles on the roadways here. Then, we turned onto the M10 highway – which, according to the map anyway, is supposed to be a major highway – for the next 70 km towards Cape Maclear. However, as soon as we turned onto it, the lovely paved roads I had been enjoying abruptly ended, and I found myself crawling at 10 km/hr on a horrible dirt road. I’m still not entirely convinced we were even on the correct road, but I don’t know what else it could have been! The drive from this point took another 4 hours. It was BRUTAL. I was driving the smallest car I’ve ever driven on the worst roads I’ve ever driven on! There were definitely points along the journey I just didn’t think we were going to make it.

The following morning we headed to Mumbo Island, which is an island privately owned by a safari company, a couple kilometers offshore from Cape Maclear. It’s beautiful, bilharzia (a nasty parasite that inhabits the waters along much of the shoreline of the lake) free waters and beach tout (annoying guys that pester tourists relentlessly to buy stupid crafts or use their tour services) free beaches sounded like an excellent part of the lake to bring my parents. We stayed in swank safari tents. It was a lovely little island escape, offering great snorkeling and kayaking, nice walks, and good food.

Photo 7 – Safari tents on Mumbo Island
Photo 8 – My parents and I
Photo 9 – Nice view
Photo 10 –A smaller island just off the beach, where 5 of the 7 tents were located

Our next stop was Liwonde National Park. We participated on walking, and sunset drive safaris. We saw lots of various antelope type creatures, warthogs, birds, and hippos, but sadly the elephants eluded us.

Photo 11 – Hippos!

Photo 12 – View of the river

Photo 13 – Warthogs

Photo 14 – Ungulates galore!

From Liwonde we traveled just a short distance to Zomba. We had meant just to pop up for a cup of tea at a nice hotel on the plateau, but as we were leaving I spied a poster for a nearby stable which offered trail rides on the plateau. We called them up and arranged for an afternoon ride, and checked into the hotel.

Photo 15 - The lovely gardens of the Ku Chawe Hotel

The ride was quite lovely! The stables had been open for a year, but they had only recently started advertising, which is probably why I hadn’t heard about it before. They had 5 beautiful horses; the stable owner said that all but one came from Zimbabwe, rescued after being abandoned when the white farmers were forced out. We went on a ride lasting a couple of hours, through old stands of pine trees and some indigenous forests, passing a few illegal logging camps along the way.

Photo 16 – We had to cross a dam at the beginning of the ride
Photo 17 – It was nice to be back on a horse again!

Photo 18 – After the ride, we were invited back to the stable owner’s home. She had a ridiculous view from her garden.

We then headed to Mulange Mountain, the highest peak in Central Africa. It is a nice spot, a picturesque mountain, especially with the tea plantations at its base.

Photo 19 – Buying dinner supplies in Mulange town. Here I’m buying oil – you can buy oil in little baggies, quite handy for our purposes!

Photo 20 – Mulange mountain with tea plantations in the foreground

I went for a hike to a waterfall – it’s too bad I didn’t have time to hike up to the highest peak, a trek which takes a couple of days by most. After the hike, I went for a dip in the Likhubula pools, a great swimming spot in a mountain stream. We stayed at a nice little chalet, and used the surprisingly well equipped kitchen to prepare a tasty dinner.

Photo 21 – Waterfall on Mulange
Photo 22 – Lukhubula pools

The following day we drove through the tea plantations of Thyolo on our way to Blantyre. Tea is the second most important export crop in Malawi. It is grown mainly in the southern region, particularly in the areas around Thyolo. The tea plantations result in a landscape quite unlike that elsewhere in the country – the tea growing in low shrubs, harvested by workers wearing large baskets on their backs.

Photo 23 – Tea fields in Tyolo, with tea pickers hard at work.

In Blantyre we did some fabric shopping and went out for a very nice dinner. The next day we returned to Lilongwe, stopping in Dedza for pottery and cheesecake along the way.

Photo 24 – St. Michaels and all Angels Church
Photo 25 – My mum picking up some tailoring in Blantyre

Photo 26 – By far, the yummiest dessert I’ve had while in Malawi! Mmmm . . . meringue + macadamia nuts + vanilla ice cream + chocolate and caramel sauce = heaven.

Photo 27 – Emerging from the chaos, as I picked up some produce, somewhere between Blantyre and Lilongwe
Photo 28 – I love the strange combinations you find for businesses here

The following day we went to the Mua Mission and cultural centre, where we learned a lot about the culture and history of Malawi, and purchased some carvings for which the centre is famous.

Photo 29 – Kugoni Cultural Centre

I then sent my parents off on a safari in Zambia, to South Luangwa National Park for 4 days. They did pretty well – they saw the usual elephants, giraffe, zebras, impalas, hippos, crocodiles, etc. As a bonus, they saw some other quite cool things – 2 leopards (beautiful yet elusive creatures!), honey badgers (apparently very rare…), and a python!

We had a couple days of running around Lilongwe before my parents were shipped off to Canada. I'm so glad that they had the chance to come and check out this lovely little country of Malawi, as it is a place that will hold a very special place in my heart long after I leave.

Easter Weekend on Chizumulu and Likoma Islands

2008-03-26T08:59:00.028+02:00

I just got back from a lovely Easter long weekend.

Here in Malawi both Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays, so I wanted to make the best of my extra long weekend. I decided to go to a couple of Lake Malawi’s islands: Likoma Island and Chizumulu Island. I managed to convince my friend Heather to join me on the trip.

Likoma is a small island, 8km long by 3 km wide. It is located in Mozambican waters, but is territorially part of Malawi. It is of historical note in Malawi because of the Scottish missionaries that set up shop there. Aside from that, the main draw for travelers is the island’s isolation and mellow vibes. Chizumulu is smaller than Likoma and even more remote. It has some lovely beaches lined with ancient baobab trees, and great snorkeling along the shores.

For budget minded travelers, it is a bit of a trek to get to the islands. The only “budget” option to reach the islands is by taking the lake ferry, the MV Ilala. The MV Ilala has run up and down the lake once a week since 1957. It is notoriously slow and often late. However, I’ve heard wonderful things about the trip itself, and been told it is something not to be missed, so it is something I had to make sure I got around to doing before leaving!

On Friday morning, Heather and I headed off to catch the ferry! A couple hours by minibus brought us to the town of Salima, from which we grabbed a matola (an unofficial shared taxi, in this case, a small lorry) to the town of Chipoka. We weren't sure how long we were going to have to wait (we arrived pretty early because not only is the ferry often late, it is also sometimes early!). Soon enough, the ferry came into view.

Photo 1: The Ilala

The ferry pulled out of the dock at around 4pm. Our first evening on the boat was quite pleasant – we made some new friends and sipped beer on the deck, and enjoyed a lovely sunset. After a quite delicious dinner in the “saloon” we tucked ourselves into bed for an early night.

Photo 2: Me hanging on the deck

Photo 3: Heather and a fellow traveller Jesse, enjoying a beer
Photo 4: The sunset

The level of comfort with which one travels on the Ilala varies greatly depending on the type of ticket you spring for. Second class is on the lowest level of the ship, and is cramped and chaotic. People and cargo are piled on top of one another, and theft is apparently a significant issue. Not so pleasant . . . weighing cost vs. comfort, we opted for first class deck tickets.

The first class deck wasn’t very busy; we were two of 6 people camping out that night. Heather and I managed to rent the last available mattress. It was a little cozy! Sleeping out on the deck was less unpleasant than I thought – I managed to sleep despite the constant grumble of the engine and the mighty breeze that blew across the lake. Poor Heather opted not to bring her sleeping bag, so she woke up every so often to add layer upon layer, as it was quite chilly that night.

Photo 5: nighttime on the ferry deck

The next morning, the ferry slowly (it is not the swiftest of boats) tugged along the Mozambican coast. It is beautiful, and much less developed than the Malawian side. We stopped at a couple of ports along the way.

Photo 6: Baobab on the shore

Photo 7: Despite how patriotic this photo looks with the Malawian flag blowing in the wind, the land behind me is actually Mozambique

Photo 8: Metangula, Mozambique

Many of the ports the ferry stops at are too shallow to dock at. In these cases, the ship’s lifeboats are used to ferry people back and forth between the ship and the shore. It is a slow process . . .

Photo 9: Lifeboat
Photo 10: Filling the boat with people and goods
Photo 11: Picking up and dropping people off at the shore

It was a long day of ferrying. It takes a lot out of you!

Photo 12 : Napping

It wasn’t until we were already most of the way to Likoma that Heather and I decided to make a slight change in plans, and head to Chizumulu Island (we were originally just going to Likoma). It is a stop further along on the ferry route; we didn’t arrive until around 9:30pm on Saturday evening.

As we boarded a lifeboat to be brought to shore, the thought suddenly occurred to me: how exactly are we going to get out of this thing without getting completely soaked? Just as I pondered this, the dude driving our boat informed Heather and me that we were going to have to jump. As we neared the shore he started shouting “jump in! you must jump in now!” The crowd which had gathered on the shore to board the boat soon swarmed around and people frantically began loading in. I hopped off and found myself waist deep in water. Heather and I, both sopping wet, glanced at each other and started laughing hysterically about our soggy conclusion to 30 hours of ferry travel.

Dripping, we dragged our weary selves 100m from where we were dropped off to Wakenda retreat, a backpacker resort which, save for a couple local rest houses, is the only available accommodation on the island. We were greeted by the lodge’s proprietor – an Englishman named Simon. He was surprised to see us; it is uncommon for the lodge to receive guests coming from Northbound ferries (more commonly they receive guests on the southbound journey, as the island is only a few hours away from some larger Malawian towns in the north).

We were the only guests at Wakenda. It is an isolated place, depending almost exclusively on the Ilala for the transportation of guests. Some also come on a local transport boat that runs between Likoma and Chizumulu almost daily. Wakenda also relies on the Ilala to bring in all supplies – food, building material, etc. The manager hops on the ferry on Saturday evening on its trip north, and returns late on Monday on the southbound journey. Since we arrived at the end of the last food run, we were warned that supplies were running low.

Our time on Chizumulu was wonderfully relaxing. We swam and snorkeled in the crystal blue waters surrounding the resort, went for some nice walks around the island, watched local football games, sampled some local wine (brewed from water, tea leaves, sugar, and yeast), and read magazines (a rare treat for us!) while basking in the sun or lounging in hammocks.

Photo 13: Some fish I saw while snorkeling in the waters just in front of the lodge (making use of my waterproof camera!)
Photo 14: More fish
Photo 15: Our grass hut (with Dopey, one of the very cute resident dogs of Wakenda)
Photo 16: There was no cell reception right at the lodge, so we had to walk a little distance away to a hill for signal. We were followed by this group of kids, who started to sing and dance (with dance moves simulating a cell phone conversation!) for us – quite cute!

Photo 17: A view of one side of the island from a hike
Photo 18: The Wakenda retreat shoreline at dusk

As nice as our time was there, we intended to spend just one day on Chizumulu before heading to Likoma. We were told that the local transport boat between the two islands would not leave before 10am, but may not leave until as late as 1pm. However, when we arrived at the beach at 9:20am on Monday, we saw the boat sailing off into the horizon. So much for never leaving before 10am…

Photo 19: Our boat, sailing away without us

Oh well, there are worse places to get stranded . . .

Photo 20: Got some good hammock time in!
Photo 21: Yet another lovely Malawian sunset

We had to make it back to Likoma for Tuesday morning, to make it back in time for our flight – we had managed to score stand-by tickets for a chartered flight to Lilongwe (the ferry was great and all, but we didn't need to repeat the experience only a couple days later!). We were unable to take our resort’s boat because it was out of petrol (and wouldn’t be getting more until the return of the ferry!), so, the only other option was to hop on the ferry as it made the return trip to the south. The ferry wasn’t due back to Chizumulu until 12am. Once the power cut for the night at around 10pm (the island is powered by a big generator, and only has power available for 14 hours of the day) Heather and I headed for a couple of lounge chairs on the beach. We napped until woken up by the sound of the boat’s horn, as it pulled up into the bay.

Back on the ferry, we staked out suitable sleeping spots and hunkered down for a couple of hours. The ferry sat in the bay until 3am, and arrived in Likoma at around 4:30. Needless to say, we didn’t have the most restful night’s sleep.

Photo 22: Being ferried to the shore as the sun rose

It was nearly 5:30 by the time we got off on shore. So, we had some time available to run around the island before catching our flight. Our first stop was the lovely St. Peter’s Cathedral, built by missionaries and completed in 1905. It is huge, similar in size to Westminster Cathedral, and quite lovely!

Photo 23: St. Peter's Cathedral

The rest of our time on Likoma was spent exploring the market, wandering around aimlessly, and hanging out by the beach. We met some lovely people, and had a nice time.

All in all, quite a well spent long weekend I'd say!

Trip to Tanzania!

2008-03-20T09:58:00.020+02:00

I was recently given the opportunity to join a team from my office - consisting of our Regional Director, the head accountant, and a project coordinator – heading to our TLC office in Tabora, Tanzania. There were a few goals of the trip there, including checking on project progress, providing management and technical support, and hiring a new manager. My main objectives were to deepen my understanding of our projects there, and to apply the M&E system that we have been developing in Malawi to our projects in Tanzania.

The trip to Tanzania started with a flight on the private plane of a tobacco company (we get much of our funding from the tobacco industry). We flew at a much lower altitude than I’m accustomed to on commercial flights, so we enjoyed quite the fantastic view of the country.

Photo 1: Likoma Island from above (I'm headed there this weekend)

We landed just across the border in Tanzania to go through passport control. It was a funny operation, with a group of border guards just setting up shop beside the plane to process us.

When we were up in the air again, we were in for a special treat! We would soon be flying over the Selous Game Reserve, the largest in Africa (bigger than Switzerland!). The majority of the park is inaccessible to anyone but some rich hunters during the hunting season. Since it wasn’t the hunting season, we were able to fly at a low altitude, following the path of a river which was frequented by all sorts of creatures. So, we got quite the incredible aerial view of hippos, elephants, zebras, waterbuck, impalas, water buffalos, etc. It was really amazing!

Photo 2: Water buffalo (just off to the left was a huge herd of them, which I unfortunately missed-it is hard to take photos out the window of a moving airplane!)

Photo 3: Elephants

We spent the night in a city an hour or so west of Dar Es Salaam, before continuing on to the city of Tabora, another couple hours away by air.

Photo 4: Scenery on the way to Tabora

In Tabora, much of our time was spent conducting field visits. We visited several of our field coordinators, checking on progress in the field. It was really interesting for me to see just how different things are in Tanzania compared to Malawi.

Malawi, as I’ve indicated in past posts, has suffered tremendous deforestation, and the availability of land is a major issue. In this part of Tanzania, it was a different story entirely. There are vast expanses of forest, and ample land for cultivation. However, the forests are being depleted quickly in certain parts, and the use of tonnes and tonnes of wood for tobacco production is a key cause.

In our Tanzania projects, we’re working more closely with Tobbaco companies, who approached TLC to help decrease the impacts that their tobacco farmers were having on deforestation. In Tanzania, nearly 95% of tobacco grown is “flue cured,” which means that they are cured by heat in what are called “tobacco barns,” which use vast amount of wood to create heat (in contrast to Malawi, where the majority of tobacco is of the “burley” variety, which is air cured).

Photo 5 :a "rocket barn" - an improved design for tobacco curing barns, which drastically reduces the amount of wood required for the curing process

Photo 6: Farmer showing off a tree he planted in his maize field. Tobacco farmers are required to grow 500 trees per hectare of tobacco.

Photo 7: Farmer standing in a field with naturally regenerating trees. In the past, farmers were taught to chop down all trees in a field, based on the incorrect belief that trees and crops cannot be grown together. Not only is this untrue, but growing trees along with crops can have benefits, such as increased soil fertility.

Photo 8: A farmer showing off the natural woodland he manages. Natural woodland management is a major component of our programs in Tanzania. By applying a few management techniques to existing wooded areas the long term sustainability of the wood source can be ensured.

Photo 9: That big pile of wood will be used in his traditional (not rocket!) barn to cure some of his tobacco. All that wood was gathered during maintenance of the natural woodland area he manages.

Through our work, TLC is hoping that Tanzanian farmers do not soon find themselves in the situation of Malawian farmers . . .

Photo 10: Checking out a farmer's woodland

A common sight when we were driving around were beehives hanging from the trees. A local method of honey production involves setting up beehives, in the form of short pieces of logs, and hanging them way up in the trees. The honey of the area is apparently quite good, and my coworkers bought litres and litres of the stuff to bring back to Malawi. They packed it up well in a big box, and joked about how important the honey was, how all they cared about was that the honey successfully makes it back to Malawi.

Getting back from Tabora was a long process. Our schedule forced us to take commercial flights back to Lilongwe. We flew to Dar Es Salaam on Friday morning, arriving around midday. Spending the afternoon in Dar was pleasant enough. We explored the huge market there, and bought excessive amounts of fabric (much cheaper there than in Malawi) and other stuff. We had a fancy dinner by the ocean, enjoying the cool ocean breeze after a very hot afternoon exploring Dar.

Photo 11: Cloth for sale in the market

Photo 12: Dinner by the ocean (myself with Vicky, the head accountant, and Glynwell, a project coordinator and M&E guy)

We were originally to fly Air Malawi from Dar to Lilongwe, which should have taken a couple of hours. Unfortunately, Air Malawi was experiencing some problems, so we had to take a much longer path, stopping over in Johannsesberg. So, what should have been a 2 hour trip, turned into a 9 hour one. It wasn't all bad though - the Jo'burg airport had some excellent shopping ;)

When we finally arrived in Lilongwe, we waited by the luggage carousel. My bag was the first item to make its way out, followed by the box of honey. In the end, that was all the luggage that made it from my group of 4. My three coworkers' luggage had been lost. I blame the powers of jinx, because of all the fuss about their precious honey!

Cattle herds and the hungry season crime wave in Lilongwe

2008-03-19T16:25:00.003+02:00

On my way to work a couple weeks ago, I came across an interesting sight. Herds of cattle being led through the city. I’d never seen a single cow in Lilongwe, nevermind several herds! There are men from the city who earn money by heading to the far north of the country, where cattle are cheap, and then walk them to Lilongwe for sale. The journey takes 5 solid days of walking, stopping only in the evenings to rest. The cows are then fattened up for a month or so before being slaughtered.

I was told that this is a common practice at this time of year, when food reserves from last year have been exhausted, but before the next harvest. Prices are also at their peak for other key foods such as tomatoes, which along with maize also make an appearance at every meal. So, people have to use some different means to earn cash to buy food.

It should therefore come as little surprise that it is also a peak time for crime here in Lilongwe. I guess you could call it “subsistence theft” as desperate people start supplementing their income in less savory ways. Break-ins and car jackings become more regular occurrences at this time. Certain roads are best avoided, and I even heard that at one intersection police are advising motorists to run red lights at night, as multiple people have been carjacked while waiting for the light to turn green. Even I have had would-be thieves chased away by our watchman on a couple of occasions.

Thankfully, harvest time has begun. Tobacco sales have started at the auction floors, where the majority of farmers sell their tobacco, and prices are at record highs – over 400% higher than last year, which was already a very good year. Soon all the maize shall be harvested too.

Perhaps some day, as Malawi continues on its slow path to development, this phenomenon of hungry season crime waves will be a thing of the past . . .

An article on a treeless Malawi

2008-03-07T17:15:00.013+02:00

An article I wrote recently...

At this time of year, Malawi’s landscape is dominated by cultivated fields of maize and tobacco – the maize stalks tall and a brilliant shade of green, the tobacco plants with their many layers of large broad leaves. The fields stretch as far as the eye can see, across plains and hillsides, dotted by the occasional tree. Nearly every available patch of arable land in the country has been cleared of trees for use as agricultural land.

Photo 1: Field of maize

Photo 2: Field of tobacco and maize

Yet, every so often one comes across a dense patch of indigenous tress. These patches of forest serve as a reminder of what the countryside once looked like, and survive now only because of what they contain: cemeteries. These trees are only protected by the belief that if one cuts them down, they will be haunted by spirits.

Photo 3: A cemetery as viewed from above

Malawi’s dwindling forests are heavily relied upon in both the cities and rural areas to satisfy energy and building needs. In the rural areas women emerge from every direction, some coming from great distances, carrying massive bundles of firewood on their heads. On the roadways, countless trucks and bicycle vendors transport loads of logs and firewood into the towns and cities – most often from poorly-policed forest reserves. In the towns, large depots sell firewood, and in every market, vendors sell charcoal.

The majority of wood consumed in Malawi is used to generate energy for homes, mostly as fuel for cooking. The production of tobacco, Malawi’s largest export crop, is also a considerable culprit, consuming vast quantities of wood to cure the leaves.

Photo 4 : A pile of wood ready to be used for curing tobacco leaves

The demand for wood is largely met by the many rural Malawians who rely on the sale of firewood and charcoal to support their families; trees are regarded as a free resource for all, and the sale of firewood is one of the few non-farming related income generating activities available to Malawi’s rural poor.

The mass deforestation of Malawi’s forests has important implications for agriculture, affecting the vast majority of the national population who are farmers. Forests play an important role to improve soil fertility, maintain effective soil hydrology, moderate stream flow, and provide soil erosion control - all of which contribute to the long-term productivity of the land. And as wood supplies are depleted, women and girls must spend more time fetching firewood at the expense of more productive activities such as farming, child care, and education.

As an EWB volunteer, I am working in partnership with a Malawi based non-governmental organisation called Total Landcare (TLC). TLC implements agro-forestry and natural resources management programs in rural communities throughout the country. Our primary focus is to help groups of farmers set up nurseries to raise tree seedlings to be planted as community woodlots and on their own properties. A variety of species are targeted for different uses including firewood, building material, timber, fruit production, shade, medicines, oils, and animal fodder. On a smaller scale, we also promote bamboo planting to replace wood for certain building uses.

Photo 5: Tree seedling nursery

Photo 6: Community woodlot

However, the benefits of planting trees and bamboo--promoting a decrease in deforestation and improving lives of the farmers--are not immediately realized. In response, TLC also takes action that has more immediate and dramatic effects, such as supporting farmers in the use of improved kitchen stoves and tobacco barns and the improved management and use of natural forests and trees.

My specific role at TLC is within the Monitoring and Evaluation team. To determine if we are achieving our goals as an organisation, we need an understanding of our impact on communities. My role is to make sure that information is gathered and used to help TLC reduce poverty more effectively.

When visiting rural communities, I can tell when we’re approaching a TLC site. Unlike their barren, treeless neighbours, these villages are green and lush. Wood can be harvested in a sustainable manner from village woodlots and beautiful stands of maize are grown amongst trees that enhance soil in the fields. Interest is often sparked in neighbouring villages, and farmers are approaching TLC, wanting to be involved, having seen the positive impacts experienced by their neighbours.

It is TLC’s hope that rural communities throughout the country will develop the capacity to sustainably use and manage their forest resources, leading to reduced environmental degradation, and increased long-term agricultural productivity. Perhaps some day, it won’t just be the spirits that are able to enjoy the shade of Malawi’s trees.

Sidetrip to Victoria falls

2008-03-07T15:27:00.013+02:00

I was in Zambia a couple weeks ago for an EWB retreat. Before the retreat, a couple of us went to check out Victoria falls - one of the 7 wonders of the natural world - which is situated about 6 hours west of Lusaka, on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Photo 1: Victoria Falls!

While neither the highest nor widest waterfall in the world, some claim that it is the largest on the basis of having the largest “curtain” of falling water in the world . . . The point is that it is pretty damn huge.

Photo 2: Luke, Trevor and myself

The local name for the falls is “the smoke that thunders.” During the flood season, the spray from the falls rises to a height of over 400 meters, and sometimes even twice that, and is visible from up to 50km away.

Photo 3: The falls from another vantage point

No matter how many times I was warned that I was going to get soaked, somehow I was still not prepared for just how ridiculous it was going to be! I was expecting something like a moderate rainfall, whereas in reality it was more like standing in a shower full force (no water saver low flow shower head version!) or having someone standing several feet away with a hose aimed at you. We got thoroughly soaked to the bone, and I was very happy to have a waterproof camera!

Photo 4: So much spray!

Photo 5: The bridge from which you viewed the falls

Photo 6: There was a point on the bridge where everywhere you looked you saw rainbows!

Photo 7: The Victoria falls bridge

Photo 8: In the gorge beneath the falls is a deep pool called the boiling pot, where at high flow the water swirls turbulently

On Irrigation and my work with M&E at TLC

2008-02-17T14:25:00.009+02:00

The rainy season is upon us in Malawi. The fields, dry and barren just a few months ago are now green and productive with tall stands of maize, the staple food crop. Despite the crops presently maturing in the fields, this is the time of year, after last year’s food stores are depleted and before this year’s crop is ready for harvest, when rural farmers all across the country find themselves hard hit by food insecurity. That’s why this time is also known as the hungry season.

Photo 1: Nkhoma Mountain with fields of maize in the foreground

Sixty percent of Malawian small holder farmers live under the poverty line. Many of these farmers are food insecure for up to 6 or 7 months of the year, meaning that they often go without eating or will only have one or two meals per day. Most farmers get by using income earned by labouring on the fields of others. As a result, many farmers have chronic labour shortages on their own farms at this, the peak period for farm work. They produce less of on their own land, and are sent deeper into a poverty cycle.

Irrigation projects are promoted in Malawi to increase dry season productivity. Under irrigation, farmers are able to grow high value crops for both sale and household consumption. The goal is for farmers to become food secure, have increased access to cash, and improved nutrition through a more diversified diet.

The NGO I’m working with here, Total Landcare (TLC), promotes small scale irrigation technologies. We deal mostly with treadle pump and stream diversion irrigation. Treadle pumps are little Stairmaster like contraptions which pump water from a well or river, and a stream diversion system diverts water from a stream by gravity into a hand dug canal. In both cases water is directed to a high point on a field where it flows by gravity through a series of channels to planting basins.

Photo 2: A farmer operating a treadle pump

Photo 3: A farmer standing by a stream diversion irrigation channeoperating a treadle pump

In my role as a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Officer, I’m interested in exploring what is really happening on the ground. Are we having the results we expected and intended? Are there ways we can improve the impact we’re having? I recently spent some time in the field interviewing irrigation farmers on their work during the past irrigation season.

One such farmer was Grace Ulaya. She has a household of 5, and supports a total of 8 people. She started treadle pump irrigation last season, and grew maize, tomatoes, onions and beans. She sold half of her harvest, and kept the rest to feed her family. In the past, her family was food insecure for 5 months, and they covered this shortfall through labouring. Since starting irrigation with TLC in June of 2007, her family is now food secure. Her family has been able to further improve their livelihoods by using profits from irrigation to engage in other income generating activities; her husband buys household items from the capital city for sale in the rural areas around their home, and she has constructed a chicken coop and will soon start raising chickens for sale. Once they finish paying off the loan for the treadle pump issued to them by TLC, they will start purchasing other livestock, such as goats.

While Grace’s story is indeed one of success, there are ways that we can improve and adapt our irrigation program to further increase the impact that we are having. I am working to achieve this by improving the capacity of TLC’s M&E system.

Much of the work I’ve been involved with so far falls in two categories:

Improving existing and developing new M&E tools (e.g. reporting mechanisms between field coordinators and head office, M&E database, survey templates, questionnaires)
Conducting field work with the key goals of filling in information gaps and cross checking results, followed by reports on findings and presenting recommendations to management

So, as an example of a recent activity I’ve been involved with, I’ll expand a little more on my most recent field visit I mentioned above.

Photo 4: Hanging with a farmer and assorted children

The M&E team spent a week in the field to survey farmers on some elements of the previous irrigation season (which lasts from March until December). We gathered information on their sale of irrigated produce, details on the repayment of their loans with TLC (we distribute irrigation equipment on a loan basis), and general impacts they’ve experience in their livelihoods. We use a survey template to gather this information, but it goes beyond simple check boxes and yes no answers. We are sure to use many open ended questions and try to get to the root of how and why things are happening as they are. We are trying to fill in the gaps of information we currently get from the field, which tend to be all numbers, therefore adding to existing quantitative with qualitative data.

I have taken the information we gathered form the 153 farmers we visited and have presented them in a report which will be given to all management staff, and to field coordinators upon request. The information contained in this report will be used to guide some changes that we will be making to project strategy to improve our impact on the ground.

There are some interesting things coming up for me soon at work so I’ll be back in touch about these things soon. For now, I’m about to head to Zambia for an EWB retreat! So, I’ll be back in a little while!

Yet more photos...

2008-02-06T16:08:00.000+02:00

I'd love to hear some of the questions you have about what life is like here, what I do what I'm up to at work, or about EWB, TLC, Malawi in general . . . whatever! If you can think of any please do send them to me and I'll answer them either directly, or in an upcoming post!

In the meantime, here's an assortment of recent photos...I'll have a more substantial post up soon!

Sunset – A stunning sunset, as viewed from the window in my room. You can see our little garden of maize and pumpkins in the foreground.

Chameleon – My first wild chameleon spotting! This little critter was crossing my street onto my front lawn.

Lilongwe River –This is the Lilongwe river, as it runs through the old part of town. In a previous post I included photos of the wooden bridges that span the river at this point, providing a more direct route between two sides of the river. I mentioned how these bridges wash away during the rainy season, and from this photo you can see why (those large trees aren’t usually in the middle of the river…). At least a couple times this year the banks have flooded and knocked out many of the little restaurants and other stalls that are built on the banks, forcing people to rebuild time and time again.

Kasungu – A random street in Kasungu, a sizable town an hour and a bit north of Lilongwe.

Shops in Kasungu – Shops here often have somewhat amusing names. They often have Christian themes, but not in the two examples I've included.

Field of Tobacco – It is the rainy season now, so the farmers are busily tending to their rainfed crops, which, in general, may be one of two things: tobacco, or maize. Maize forms the basis of the Malawian diet while tobacco is, by far, the most significant export crop in Malawi. Last year, few farmers grew tobacco, so the sale prices were very high and these lucky farmers did extremely well. Other farmers made note of this, so this year, EVERYONE is growing tobacco. We’ll see what happens with those tobacco prices this year . . . I'll write more about tobacco in Malawi in an upcoming post!

Rain! - It is the rainy season now, and on any given day you can expect rain for some amount of time - not so convenient! This shot was taken at the tail end of a birdwatching walk I attended at the Lilongwe Wildlife Centre, which is located in a swath of woodland that cuts through the centre of the city.

Back from vacation!

2008-01-21T15:09:00.000+02:00

I just got back from a bit of an extended vacation. My boyfriend Mike arrived on December 27, having left Canada on Christmas day (but at 11pm, so he was still able to do all his traditional Christmas stuff!). So, soon after I returned from my Christmas celebrations at the lake, I was off to the airport to pick him up!

Mike was here for just under 3 weeks. We kept ourselves quite busy with some adventures in Malawi, a trip to Zanzibar, and a safari in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia.

We started off his time here by visiting a couple of different places in Malawi. Since I stay in Lilongwe, the capital, I wanted him to at least get a taste of a smaller town in Malawi, so we headed off to Dedza, a town just south of Lilongwe. It is known for its pottery (there is a large pottery workshop just outside of town) and the mountains and forests in the surrounding areas. We took a particularly uncomfortable minibus there, and, sure enough, it broke down en route. At least he was getting an authentic experience!

Photo 1: Our broken down minibus, somewhere between Lilongwe and Dedza.

We checked out the pottery place (and had some of the cheesecake it is apparently known for - quite yummy!), went walking around the rural areas and hiking up Dedza mountain, wandered around town and visited with a local family. Mike also got to sample some typical Malawian cuisine (some very tasty fish!).

Photo 2: Cute goat

Photo 3: Row of shops in Dedza

We continued on to Blantyre, where we spent a bit of time before flying to Zanzibar Island, just off the coast of Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania. We spent a week on the island, splitting our time between Stone town and by the beach on the north shore of the island.

We arrived in the evening and our first stop was Forodhani Gardens, where a long line of food stalls set up each evening. They serve such things as fish (including king fish, red snapper, barracuda, swordfish, etc) and meat kebabs, grilled seafood, samosas, chapattis, falafels, root vegetables, etc. You fill up a plate with what you want and they grill it for you. The prices are great and the food tasty! For refreshment, you can get a big mug of freshly (right before your eyes in fact) pressed sugarcane juice (spiced with some ginger) – delicious!

Photo 4: A table of food at Forodhani Gardens

Stone Town is a recently declared UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is quite an interesting place, blending Middle Eastern, Indian, Swahili and Moorish traditions and architecture. We spent days wandering around the narrow streets and busy markets, visiting the sites and doing a lot of eating!

Photo 5: Central market

Photo 6: Background – Anglican cathedral built over the site of a former slave auction floor, from the East African slave trade. Foreground – a “dala-dala,” which are converted lorries used as the main public transportation vehicles on the island

Photo 7: A beautiful door in Stone Town – many of the buildings have elaborately carved doors, adorned with brass studs

We spent New Years in Stone town with some friends of mine who visiting from Zambia. We had dinner at Forodhani Gardens, appetizers at a beautiful beachside restaurant, and drinks at a New Year’s Eve party on an ocean view patio – no champagne, but still a pretty fabulous way to celebrate!

Photo 8: Our table right on the beach (Ka-Hay, Thulasy, and Mike)

We then moved on to spend some time staying at a beach resort. We stayed in a beachfront bungalow on the North Shore of the Island. The beach was probably the most beautiful I’ve seen – beautiful fine white sand and a gorgeous blue sea. Just lovely.

Photo 9: Sitting on the beach
Photo 10: Beautiful sunset view from right outside of our bungalow

Photo 11: Mike and I on the beach

Mike got his scuba certification while there, so on our last day at the beach we went on a couple dives together. The diveshop used specially converted dhow sailing boats, made by local ship makers, to transport us to the dive sites, which was pretty neat!

After a magical time on Zanzibar island, wandering around Stone town, lounging on the beach, and eating amazingly well all the time, we had to make our way back to Malawi.

In an effort to save a bit of money, we decided to take a coach bus from Dar Es Salaam to Lilongwe. I know others that have made the journey, and it didn’t sound too bad. The trip was to take between 24 – 30 hours total.

Long story short, the trip was a bit disastrous. Due to breakdowns, border chaos, and other ridiculousness, it took many more hours than anticipated. If you're ever making this same trip, whatever you do, DON'T TAKE Mohamed Coach lines! In fact, at the Tanzania-Malawi border, we ended up jumping ship , and found alternative transportation to Lilongwe, getting ourselves there at minimum 12 hours before that god-awful coach bus would have arrived.

Photo 12: Coach bus from hell – it even looks a bit evil, doesn’t it?
Photo 13: We don't look too bad for having spent the past day and a half on a bus! (The view is of Lake Malawi in the Northern part of the country, when we had to get off the bus for it to manoeuvre around a tight curve because of a breakdown)

We had to quickly recover from our journey, as after a day of running around Lilongwe, we headed off on safari in Zambia. We went on a 4 day safari to South Luangwa National Park, which is widely regarded as one of the finest wildlife reserves in Africa. It was kind of nice to spend a few days where all details were taken care of for us, though we did encounter a couple hiccups right off the bat. First, Mike had to bribe a Zambian border official (who are generally known to be difficult and corrupt) because he lacked a yellow fever vaccination card – the Zambian official claimed it would have been fine if he was simply coming in from Malawi, but it was a problem since we were just in Tanzania (oddly enough, the health official when we were entering Malawi directly from Tanzania had no beef with him…). In any case, the bribe was much less than the vaccination would have been, so, it wasn’t the end of the world. Soon after this, our Land Cruiser broke down in the middle of nowhere after we passed through the border. That’s right, our 3rd breakdown in as many weeks. It took quite some time to get us going again, but we managed!

The safari itself was just great! Despite it being the rainy season, we didn’t get rained on once, and the game viewing was fantastic! We stayed in a lodge just outside of the park, right on the river where we could hear hippos grunting, and lots of baboons ran around the property. On the first night we had a hippo come strolling through the property, which was neat.

There were four of us on the safari and we went on 2 game drives a day for 2 days, one in the morning from 6-10:30 and one in the evening from 4 – 8 (a night drive for the second half). We drove around in a specially modified land cruiser, which was open at the back with 2 rows of seating.

I took a ridiculous number of photos, but here are a select few:

Photo 14: Giraffes, Impalas, and Zebra – oh my!
Photo 15: Hanging out with some giraffes during a tea break

Photo 16: Hippos messing around
Photo 17: 2 Lionesses and their cubs, lounging on the road

Photo 18: Elephants!
Photo 19: A hippo mum and baby emerging from the water during a night drive

Right after returning from the safari, Mike and I headed to the lake for a quick visit. We relaxed and ate some fantastic food, and it was a good wind down from the trip.

Now, Mike is back in Canada and I’m all by my lonesome again. It has been a bit of an adjustment settling back in my old routine again! It was wonderful having him visit me here. While we spend much of our time outside of Malawi, I think Mike still got a good glimpse into what my life here is like.

I now have to start trip planning for my next visitors – in a couple months my parents will be coming to Malawi to visit!

My Malawian Christmas

2007-12-27T09:49:00.000+02:00

I just finished celebrating my first tropical Christmas. It was definitely a big change from every previous Christmas I’ve experienced!

I was invited to spend Christmas this year with my housemates. I initially assumed that they would be spending Christmas with their parents and the rest of their family, so I had expected to be a part of some large family gathering at their parents’ home in a town near the Zambian border, an hour and a bit outside of Lilongwe. However, I soon found out this was not going to be the case. In fact, the plan was to spend Christmas at the lake with some friends.

In the afternoon of Christmas eve, my housemates Khala, Bon, and I got picked up by a minibus that was rented by Khala’s friend Isabel. The minibus was packed to the brim with people (a number of Isabel’s siblings and cousins were also joining us), lots of luggage and food, as well as extra mattresses and a braii.

We stayed at a place called the “Beach Villa” which was actually a complex of 20 or so “villas” (which make them sound fancier than they are . . . they were really just 2 bedroom cinderblock chalets) by the beach. There were 12 of us and we took up two of the chalets. We set up the braii (bbq) and so started a weekend filled with meat. It seemed like that braii was constantly loaded up with piles and piles of chicken, beef, or sausages. Not a vegetable or carb to be seen! I came prepared with a package of my trusty soya pieces so I made my own supper that first night.

Photo 1: Braii by one of our chalets

On Christmas eve evening we sat by the lodge eating, drinking, and listening to really loud music when someone informed us of a performance of gulewankulu (big dance). The Gulewankulu is an important traditional dance here, performed by “chilombo” or “moving spirits” who dress in masks and costume. No one has been able to give me a satisfactory answer as to what these moving spirits do exactly, but they are from the rural areas and dance at functions and celebrations, and otherwise just run around and cause mischief. If you’re not careful and especially if you disrespect them in some way, they may put a curse on you – so watch out! They also perform their dances for general spectators, such as what was happening by the lodge.

A large crowd gathered by the beach where the performance was taking place. The place we were staying at was filled with Malawians and I was the only Muzungu there, and in the crowd of spectators. The musical accompaniment was provided mostly by 5 or so drummers, who used wooden dug out drums with goat skin – they would frequently tune their instruments by placing the drum in the flames of a fire. The chilombo wore costumes ranging from a woman’s dress (though the dancer was more than likely a man), to coveralls, to big smocks covered in scraps of various fabrics. The masks ranged from being very plain to being huge and elaborate. The dancers went up one at a time (there must have been around 10 in total) and all had different styles, mostly depending on their costume - some were lots of hips, others lots of twirling and rolling around in the sand, and one danced with fire while another wore stilts. People in the crowd could go up and give the dancers money and then get them to do something for them. Typically they might want them to do some particular dance move, or dance with them, or have a photo taken. One little girl, who couldn’t be over the age of 7, went up and seriously busted a move in a dance off with one of them, and the crowd roared in approval. Someone I was with, without my knowing, gave one of them money to take a photo with me, so all of a sudden I had a crazy dressed dude come barreling towards me and pull me towards him for a photo op – I was slightly mauled but the crowd certainly l loved it!

Photo 2: Chilombo Dancer

Photo 3: The drummers

Once the show (which went on for at least a couple of hours) was done, we returned to the braii for yet more meat (I must admit to feeling a little left out!). All of a sudden we heard screams coming from nearby, followed by a herd of running children coming tearing past us. I went over to investigate the situation. Turns out, a black mamba snake (well, that's what I was told it was - they are quite poisonous apparently) had slithered into one of the chalets, in pursuit of a toad that had hopped inside. A group of men wielding pieces of PVC pipes came to take care of the situation. The snake was hiding under a bed so then men proceeded to jab it to near-death and then triumphantly came outside with the snake dangling at the end of the stick. The crowd shouted out instructions for them to chop its head off – the only proper way to do away with a poisonous snake apparently. So, they proceeded to chop the snake’s head off with a stick.

Photo 4: The snake being . . .um, done away with . . . (sorry for the slightly graphic image!)

The next day was filled with swimming and barbequing. I bought some fish (fisherman just wander around the beach and up into the lodges with bunches of fish tied with string for sale) so I got to participate in the festivities a little bit more which was nice!

Photo 5: Isabel, myself, and Khala on the beach

The dancers returned so we watched a few more performances – one of the dancers had a remarkably santa claus like mask on, the closest I came to seeing Santa on Christmas this year!

Photo 6: Dancer twirling

Photo 7: Santa?

In the afternoon we headed over to the nearby Livingstonia beach hotel campgrounds. We packed up the braii and set ourselves up right by the beach. It was quite a nice place, and absolutely hopping, filled with people. So, we spent the rest of Christmas swimming and eating. I received many phone calls from home, which was very nice!

Photo 8: Our prime location by the beach

Photo 9: Someone bought fish to bring back. You'll often see buses and cars around the lakeshore area with fish hanging outside - they do this because the airflow keeps the fish fresh apparently (plus I imagine that without a cooler, the fish would stink up the inside of a vehicle pretty quickly!)

Malawi is a predominantly Christian country, so Christmas is a widely celebrated holiday here. I’ve been doing a bit of an informal poll with people I’ve talked to over the past few weeks, trying to figure out what a typical urban Malawian does for Christmas. Most don’t seem to have any particular traditions – sometimes the lake, sometimes dinner with the family, and often nothing in particular.

My Christmas this year, while very enjoyable, definitely didn’t feel to Chrismasey to me! What with the bbqing, swimming, fireworks, etc it felt more like a Victoria Day or Canada long weekend to me!

People often asked me what Christmas was like back in Canada, so I told them about typical Christmas traditions. Upon hearing that people usually celebrate with a big dinner the typically reaction was to express disappointment with how dull our Christmases are! I would hardly call my usual Christmases boring, so I tried to elaborate on how fun things usually are, but still, the fact that the weather is cold and most things happen inside was enough for all Canadian Christmases to be deemed boring by the Malawians I was with. Oh well, I’m still very much looking forward to Christmas back at home next year!

Seasons Greetings from Malawi!

2007-12-20T12:39:00.000+02:00

It seems that the Christmas season is upon us. While my friends and family back in Canada are busy with parties, family gatherings, last minute shopping and tree trimming, I find myself feeling very far away from it all . . .

This will be my first Christmas away from home, and I won’t lie – I’m pretty bummed about it. Though, I keep having to remind myself that it is already late December and that Christmas is just around the corner –the usual signs signalling the arrival of the Christmas season for me aren’t here to nearly the same degree! There are few Christmas parties, no crowded shopping malls, no Christmas lights, no snow. It is probably the warm weather that throws me off the most! Some of the grocery stores are decked out in Christmas decorations, and the Shoprite has been playing Christmas carols since the beginning of November, but aside from that, it is distinctly unfestive here, compared to what I’m accustomed to!

To get myself into the Christmas spirit, I've decked out a small portion of my room with decorations - much to the amusement of my roommates!

Photo 1: Posing by my decorations

Photo 2: My room

As far as Christmas celebrations go, I believe I'll be spending a few days at the lake with my roommates. Festivities here are kept quite low key it seems, and my roommates aren't even going to be spending the holidays with the rest of their family (who are all within a couple of hours of us).

Spending Christmas day by the beach will be quite a dramatic change from my usual celebrations, which take place at the farm of some wonderful family friends (I'll miss you guys this year!!!!).

Photo 3: Christmas dinner at the Monkmans' place

In other news, my boyfriend is arriving in Malawi on December 27th, and we'll be doing some travelling around together, which will be very nice!

In case I’m unable to post for a little while, I wish you all the merriest of Christmases and the happiest of new years!

Some photos . . .

2007-12-07T07:55:00.000+02:00

I can hardly believe that I’ve been here for over 4 months - here are some photos from the last couple of 'em!

Photo 1: Boys with mouse bashing sticks – this charming group of young men are wielding mouse bashing sticks. I’m not sure of the exact process, but somehow they entice mice to leave their holes and then bash ‘em to death (kind of like a real life whac-a-mole I guess!). Mice are eaten in some of the rural areas around here. One common way of preparing them is to dry them – mice are lined up and held between sticks and then dried over coals for a few hours. Once they’re done they’re eaten whole – fur, teeth, the whole bit!

Photo 2: Out in the field - I spend much of my time (30+%) doing field work, which typically involves doing surveys and assessing site conditions.

Photo 3: An unusual well - In the rural areas many communities are equipped with boreholes that have hand pumps to draw the water out. This well, however, was a little different . . . The water flows freely 24/7 from the pipe as it is an artesian well.

Photo 4: Dog in tobacco nursery – This cute little guy is relaxing in a tobacco nursery. Tobacco is a very important crop here, and it is raised in nurseries during the dry season before being transplanted in fields when the rains come.

Photo 5: Ladies in field - This photo was taken last week in the Southern Region of the country, where the rainy season has started. Farmers in this region have started cultivating their rain fed fields, such as can be seen in this photo where the fields are green with maize.

Photo 6: Cute kid with WFP cans – A very cute little kid hanging out with some World Food Program cans of oil now used as planters.

Photo 7: My new home - I moved into a new place little over a month ago. I’m now living with 2 roommates, a brother and sister . Various siblings and family members of theirs always seem to be passing through to stay here too. I am much much happier here than at my last place!

Photo 8: Hair salon in the living room - my roommate Khala getting her hair done by her friend Penelope from down the street. I feel like I have extremely boring hair here; ladies have their hair drastically changed ever few weeks. Meanwhile, I get my hair cut like once a year and keep it in a perma-ponytail. . .

Photo 9: Khala in doorway - my new roomie hanging out in our back doorway. After work almost every day we hang out on the back stoop eating popcorn enjoying the cool evening air.

Photo 10: Rickety bridges – The main market in town is divided in 2 by a river. If you want to get from one side to the other you have 2 options; you can walk a ways out of your way and take the main bridge, or, take a much more direct route across one of these private bridges. For the low low price of 7 cents (or 3.5 cents if the guy in charge is feeling generous) you can take a thrilling, death defying stroll across one of these rickety bridges!

Photo 11: Rickety bridge 2 – we made it safely across! During the rainy season (which is nearly upon us here in Lilongwe) these bridges get washed away, so the owners have to rebuild every year.

Photo 12: Bday at lake – I spent my 24^th birthday with some friends at the lake.

Photo 13: Bday at the lake - brownies lit with birthday candles, decorations, balloons, and noisemakers, what more do you need for a complete birthday?

Let the rains begin!

2007-12-03T17:08:00.000+02:00

It has been quite some time since I last posted . . . I have found myself to be quite busy lately – work has been hectic and I’ve been out of town a lot recently on field visits. A few other unexpected things have also come up, all of which have conspired to keep me from writing. So, I shall fix this situation with just a quick post today, and the promise of a more substantial one soon!

My most recently field trip had me visiting Blantyre district, in the south of Malawi. It seems that the rainy season has hit there in full force, adding a new, fun, and muddy dimension to field work!

The problems we encountered made me realize the challenges that the rainy season poses to conducting field work, and reminded me of one of the 6 biases that Robert Chambers (1983) describes as impeding outsiders’ contact with rural poverty, particularly the more extreme cases.

Spatial biases: urban, tarmac and roadside (attention focused on communities with better roads leading from major cities
Project bias: attention and funds beome ever more foccussed on increasingly atypical pet communities
Person bias: views of a few key informants (the most articulate and therefore atypical) become recorded as representing the entire community
Dry Season bias: visitors typically schedule visits during most clement weather; many of the more severe problems go unobserved
Diplomatic biases: prevent real problems from being exposed and confronted
Professional biases: specialization of interest resulting in tunnel vision, discourages an understanding of linkages

I find myself thinking about how these biases apply to the work that I do, and what steps we can take to minimize them as much as possible. As one example, we use random sampling techniques to select the sample of clubs we visit during our surveys, so we don’t choose villages based on ease of access, distance, etc. However, this becomes more difficult to stick to during the rainy season, when many routes become impassable…Indeed, getting heavily stuck in deep mud not once but twice in less than 18 hours, I could see that bias number 4 will undoubtedly play a role in the field work I participate in for the next few months, over the course of the rainy season period.

On our first afternoon of work, we started down one fine looking road before the field coordinator we were with informed us it had just been newly constructed. Normally it would be fine, but it rained for a couple hours earlier in the day . . . Before we knew it, the tires were bogged down with mud and we weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. The nice new road was a mess!

Photo 1: new road

We tried turning around and heading back the way we came, but ended up quickly sliding into a ditch, requiring the help of people from the neighbouring villages to get us out.

Photo 2: push!!!

We attracted quite the crowd!

Photo 3: Our crowd of onlookers

No sooner had we made it out of the ditch and we ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road . . .whoops!

Photo 4: ...and again!

Back on a solid road, we managed to get to a few more sites . . . along the way we passed this group of gentlemen at a dam washing their bikes clean of mud.

Photo 5: bicyclists cleaning mud off their bikes

The very next day we set out bright and early in the hopes of a productive day! However, just as we rolled up to the first village we were to visit, rain came pouring down in sheets. Due to the nature of work we were there to conduct it wasn’t practical to head out in the rain. So, we sat in the vehicle, and waited it out. Nearly an hour passed with no end in sight, so we decided to revise our plans and return later in the day. We couldn’t go back the way we came because of flooding, so we were directed up a path we were assured was a much better road. . .

Photo 6: The awesome "much better" road, or so we were told

Sure enough, we got very stuck.

It was pouring rain out, and we had no one else around to help us out. We sat and waited for the rain to let up for a few hours – we needed help from people from the surrounding villages, but no one was out and about in the pouring rain! After a few failed attempts we were just about ready to give up and make the 10+km trek in the rain back to town on foot, with the hopes of somehow getting the vehicle out the next day, when a group of people showed up, ready to help!

I didn’t end up getting any photos which truly captured how ridiculously stuck we were, I was shocked that we actually got ourselves out – in involved the help of several farmers, and some creative use of rocks and planks to get ourselves out of a gully.

Photo 7: another audience!

Photo 8 : final shove!

We gave up on our workplan for the day, and returned to the village a couple days later to conduct our surveys.

Yes, I have little doubt that this whole rainy season thing is going to present some complications in the work we want to achieve…should be interesting!

A hectic week of moving, training, and retreating

2007-10-31T14:40:00.001+02:00

I’ve had a bit of a hectic past week and a half.

It all started a couple weeks ago when things at home started going downhill in a hurry. People started acting strangely towards me, and one of the sisters started being downright mean. Long story short, I made the decision to move out at 10pm at night, and had moved out by 7am the next morning.

Part of the reason I moved out in such a hurry was the fact that I was soon going to be out of town for a week anyway with a couple of EWB related activities. In the evening of the day I moved out Thulasy and Nina, two of the girls I came to Southern Africa with. who are now based out of Zambia, were coming to Lilongwe. After I picked them up, we all got settled in to my old stomping grounds, St. Peter’s guest house.

Thulasy, Nina, Heather, and I – the 4 new EWB volunteers that arrived in Southern Africa in August – headed to Senga Bay on Sunday for our first quarter training. First quarter training is meant to be a time to allow us to reflect on our first few months of our placement, to develop a plan to focus the rest of our time on having maximum impact, to provide training on various professional development skills, and to give us time to relax, recharge, and have some fun together!

Our training was held at a lodge by the lake. It was quite a nice spot – a beach, a bar built over the lake, a nice restaurant, and tents with beds – what more could you possibly ask for?

Photo 1 – Most of our sessions were held in a pleasant covered area right by the beach.

Photo 2 – Ordering drinks at the bar from the lake . . . it took a few attempts (and some help from up above!)

Photo 3 – Group shot! Clockwise: Me, Thulasy, Levi (Director of Overseas sending – based out of Toronto but in Malawi and Zambia for a few weeks), Heather, Nina, and Dave.

After a few days of basking in the sun at the lake, we shipped out of Senga Bay, changing venues for our Quarterly retreat. Every few months the Southern Africa team, consisting of volunteers based out of Zambia and Malawi (there are 10 of us in total at present) get together for a long weekend of sharing, reflection, analysis, and good times. Some main goals of the retreat were to help transfer learning between volunteers, to create a future vision for EWB’s overseas work, and to build on knowledge of our sectors together as a team. Our days are spent in sessions on various things, but we did have one free afternoon for group fun times.

Our retreat was held at the Zomba plateau. Zomba was the capital of Malawi until the mid-1970s, and it is still a sizable, busy place. Overshadowing the town is the Zomba plateau. The Zomba plateau is divided into two halves by the Domasi Valley. The southern half has a road to the top, and is where we stayed at – get this – a trout farm, of all places!

The trout farm provided a surprisingly good venue; there were 3 lodges in which were exactly the number of beds we required. One of the lodges was essentially a log cabin and had a lovely view. It was bizarrely different from any place I’ve seen here so far – staying in the woods (with pine trees and all!) in a log cabin in 10 degree Celsius weather, we all felt like we were back in Canada!

Photo 4 – It was really quite chilly! Most of us spent the majority of the retreat wrapped up in blankets because we didn’t bring enough warm clothing! From Left to Right – Trevor, Thulasy, Levi (shirtless and basking in the African heat, of course, having just recently arrived from Canada), Danny, Me, Heather, Dave, Brett, Ka Hay, and Nina.

Photo 5 – It was quite damp while we were there, and for the first couple days there was an incredible amount of fog (and a bit of rain in the evening to go along with it!)

Photo 6 – A “cultural energizer.”

Photo 7 – I didn’t lie when I said we stayed at a trout farm! Here Nina and Heather – bundled up in blankets of course – are inspecting the trout farm ponds.

Photo 8 – Levi and Dave putting on a skit for us. Most of our sessions were held in that covered deck area in the background, which jutted out into a trout pond.

Photo 9 – Out on a morning walk we were happy to discover a big berry patch (though we later realized that berries could be found absolutely everywhere!). Strawberries, blackberries, and orange raspberries (my favourite!)– yum!

Photo 10 – Nina, Thulasy and I on the balcony of the main lodge

Photo 11 – On our first sunny day we decided to do a no-rain dance to keep the clouds away!

Photo 12 – On our free afternoon we went on a hike to a waterfall and to a lookout point. Much of the first part of our walk was done in the river – not the most efficient path possible, but it was fun!

Photo 13 – View from the top!

What exactly am I doing at work anyway?

2007-10-14T15:16:00.000+02:00

It is about time I give some details about what it is that I’m doing at work!

Photo 1: A Malawian farmer and myself after a survey

Background!

Before I arrived, Total Landcare (TLC) had a previous EWB overseas volunteer staff (OVS) member working with them. Her main role was to help TLC develop a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system to better understand how they are having impact with their programs and how they can more effectively have impact in the future.

Photo 2: Surveying a smallholder farmer who is involved in one of TLC’s forestry programs

What is M&E all about?
Monitoring = Regular information gathering and frequent checking of short term progress with analysis
Evaluation = To judge the value or worth of something

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) publication “A Guide for Project M&E” (2002) gives a great overview of project M&E in development projects.

M&E is used to learn about five main aspects of the project (IFAD, 2002):
1. Relevance
2. Effectiveness
3. Efficiency
4. Impact
5. Sustainability

Effective M&E can:

provide managers with information they need for day-to-day decisions;
provide key stakeholders with the information needed to guide the project strategy;
provide early warning of problematic activities and processes that need corrective action;
help empower primary stakeholders by creating opportunities for them to reflect critically on the project’s direction and help decide on improvements;
build understanding and capacity amongst those involved in the project;
motivate and stimulate learning amongst those committed to making the project a success; and,
assess progress so enable accountability requirements to be met (IFAD, 2002).

The data used in M&E this can be collected using a variety of methods including interviews, surveys, group discussions, transect walks, matrix scoring, and so on. Some involve individuals, some involve groups; some gather quantitative information, while others are gather qualitative information.

My Role!
The previous OVS helped improve the system of structures in place to deal with the flow of information between the field and the head office. These structures help to better capture lessons from the field and make sure that this knowledge is available to the decision makers at the head office.

My role now is to refine the system. I want to make sure it is sustainable and effective, and that the information gathered using it is being transformed into better decisions that lead to better and more sustainable impact.

Some of my basic goals are to help:
1) improve TLC's ability to collect, translate and deliver information;
2) internally allow TLC to monitor and evaluate their programming and impact so that they can maximize their future impact; and
3) improve internal communication.

In the past few weeks, my main tasks have been working on a set of standardized surveys to gather quantitative and qualitative information on all of our projects. This week I will be attending training on the use of Microsoft Access, after which I will construct a M&E database so we have a centralized system to store and access all of the data that has and will be gathered.

Photo 3: Checking out a forestry club’s tree seedling nursery

Photo 4: Surveying an irrigation farmer

My role here will evolve as time goes on, so I will provide updated details in the future!

Lake of Stars Music Festival and Mother's Day

2007-10-11T07:36:00.000+02:00

Lake of Stars Music Festival
While all my friends and family back in Canada were gathering together last weekend to eat turkey and pumpkin pies in celebration of Thanksgiving, I was at the Lake of Stars Music Festival.

The Lake of Stars Music Festival is an annual event (this was its 4th year) held at a lodge on the lake, approximately 4 hours north of Lilongwe.

I headed to the festival with Monica, the other EWB volunteer based out of Lilongwe, and two of her friends. We left on Friday afternoon, and arrived at sunset.

Initially we stayed at a nearby cottage, camping out in the yard. Getting to the festival required either a 45 minute walk along the beach, which could only be done during daylight hours because of a dangerous combination of rocks, hippos and crocodiles (when Monica and I did the walk during the day the only creatures we encountered was a herd of cattle being directed down the beach), or a short drive. The people we were with showed surprisingly low interest in spending much time at the festival, so Monica and I decided to jump ship and camp at the festival grounds instead. It was definitely the right decision!

Photo 1: Cows being herded along the beach

Photo 2: Festival main stage

Photo 3: Harry’s beach bar

The festival was a fun time. It was, however, a bit different than I anticipated. I felt like I was at a festival back in Canada – the set up, the acts, the food, the crowd – it all reeked of a European or North American festival. From what I gathered there, it seems that the entire planning committee was British. The level of Malawian musical content was also lower than I expected, which was disappointing. There were a few acts from Malawi, and a few from Southern Africa, but aside from them, the rest were flown in from the UK or the US. The demographics of the crowd seemed to suggest that every 20-something Muzungu (Westener) in all of Southern Africa was in attendance. There were a fair number of Malawians, but they were the minority. It is very unfortunate that the festival was so inaccessible to the average Malawian. The ticket cost alone was more than I pay for rent in a month.

Photo 4: Malawian fisherman in the foreground, with the tents of festival goers in the background.

Despite the guilt I felt about being an extravagant muzungu going away for the weekend to an expensive music festival, I had a good time! When not watching shows (there were some pretty fantastic acts there!), I spent much time lazing on the beach (a stone’s throw away from the 2 stages), chatting with people (Monica is a social butterfly and seemed to know pretty much everyone!), and eating the surprisingly good food. All in all, it was a very nice and welcomed break from my usual routine.

Photo 5: Lounging on the beach with a couple fellow Canadians and a Brit

Photo 6: Monica and myself

Mother's Day
I arrived back in Lilongwe on Monday, which was a National Holiday - Mother's Day.

Mother’s day at my household, however, had a bit of a sombre mood.

My host mother suffered a stroke early last week. At first, I didn’t even know that it happened. She spends most of her time in her room, so not seeing her up and about didn't seem unusual to me. I did, however, notice a distinct change in the moods of the sisters. It wasn’t until 2 days after it happened that my roommate told me.

She stayed at home to convalesce for a few days, but due to dangerously high blood pressure levels, she was hospitalized from Thursday until last night (Wednesday). My roommate, Gee, camped out at the hospital with her.

So, my house mum spent Mother’s day in a hospital bed. Her daughters prepared a big dinner at home and brought it to her to celebrate Mother’s day together as a family.

Everyone is back home now, and my host mum is recovering. She is paralysed on one side, and is going to be starting physiotherapy soon. I haven't seen much of her as she has been keeping to her room and I don't want to intrude. I feel like a bit of an extra burden at the moment, and am just trying to stay out of the way.

A weekend at the lake

2007-10-03T15:07:00.001+02:00

Lake Malawi is kind of a big deal around here.

People are always asking me if I’ve made it up to the lake yet and raving about how nice a place it is to go for weekend getaways. So, I was thrilled when I was invited up to a cottage on the lake at Senga Bay (an hour and a half away from Lilongwe) last weekend.

Lake Malawi is the 3rd largest lake in Africa. The Lake dominates the geography of the country, following the contours of the Great Rift Valley for a distance of 585 km, reaching a width of 100 km at points. In all, it covers over 15% of the total land area Malawi.

Source: http://www.aquaria.info/graphics/misc/malawi.jpg

The shores are lined by sheer mountain cliffs and seemingly endless sandy beaches and the lake itself contains more freshwater fish species than are found in all of North America and Europe combined. Most of the fish are endemic to the lake.

Many of the cichlid species found in the lake are very popular in the aquarium trade. I hope to go scuba diving to check them out at some point while I’m here!

Source: http://www.vagabonding.com/photos/malawi/DSC01998_lake_malawi_fish.jpg

The majority of the animal protein in the Malawian diet comes from fish, and traditionally, Lake Malawi has supplied it by the boat load. However, wild populations have become increasingly threatened by over fishing and pollution. There was a lot of fishing going on near where I was staying, and I heard a few stories which reflected just how much smaller the catches have been in recent years.

Many of the photos I took at the lake came from a walk I took on Saturday afternoon. We passed bathing men in their briefs getting very sudsy (no photos of them though!), women laying out their freshly washed clothes and linens out to dry on the sand, and many men fixing their fishing boats (which ranged from dugout canoes to 25+ ft long wooden motor boats) and tending to their fishing nets.

Photo 1: View down the beach

Photo 2: Fabric left out to dry

Photo 3: Fishing boats

Photo 4: Fishing Nets

Photo 5: Solitary fishing boat

The cottage was a nice and relaxing time. In addition to hanging out on the beach, I spent much time monkey watching (lots of monkey mums with their babies!), climbed a hilltop for a gorgeous view of the surrounding bays, and watched as some car repairs happened on the car we broke as we drove in . . .

Photo 6: Fixing the car

Photo 7: Monkey mum and baby

Photo 8: View from the hillside.

It was really good to get out of the city for a little while. This upcoming weekend I will be making my return to the lake, but I'll be going to a place a few hours further north. I will be attending the Lake of Stars music festival, which features a wide array of Malawian and international acts. I haven't quite worked out how I'll get there, but I shall find a way . . . I hope!

Kim

My new home in Lilongwe

2007-09-23T15:11:00.000+02:00

I have moved into my new home in Lilongwe, and have been here for nearly 2 weeks now.

I’m living with a family consisting of a mother, 4 of her daughters (she has 9 daughters in total), and 2 of her grand daughters. The daughters range in age from 18 to late 20s. The 2 grand daughters are both 7 years old.

While the original agreement was for me to have a room to myself, long story short, I now find myself sharing a room with a woman my age named Gee. While I wasn’t thrilled by the sudden change in plans, I haven’t minded sharing a room so far, and otherwise I really like the place, so I’ve decided I’m willing to live with this situation for the time being!

My new place is located in a part of town called “Falls Housing Estate” though I’m not entirely sure how it got the name as there are no falls of any sort in the area. I’m a 25 minute walk from work (which is about as good as I could have hoped) and am nicely situated near the bus station, a market, and many shops.

Photo 1: The house
The house consists of a sitting room, kitchen, shower area, toilet, and 4 bedrooms, all accessed down one long hallway.

Photo 2: The street
I live on a very bumpy dirt road!

Photo 3: The sitting room
Many an evening is spent chatting away in the sitting room, listening to Christian radio stations on the stereo. Though, much like back home, the kitchen is where people tend to gather to socialize!

Photos 4 &5: The kitchen
Most of the cooking takes place on a charcoal stove, or a fire outside, though that has changed a bit with my recent purchase of a hot plate. We regularly have a little 2 year old boy over to visit, and I get extremely nervous having him in the kitchen with all those hot surfaces and pots of food cooking away right down at his level!

Photo 6: The shower room
While there is a working shower, there is no hot water. My preferred method of bathing is the good ol’ bucket shower, with water warmed using a charcoal stove.

We have running water most of the time, but it shuts off every morning between 5:30 – 9am. The morning, before work, is the time when the dish washing, floor mopping, bathing, and clothes washing tends to take place, so this is rather inconvenient timing! We fill buckets of water every evening in preparation for this.

Photo 7: My room
My room is low on the frills, but comfy!

Photo 8: Out behind the house is an area that is essentially our garbage dump . . . The way that garbage is dealt with here is very different from the municipal waste, recycling, and compost collection I’m accustomed to back home! Not much waste ends up getting produced, but all the kitchen scraps, cardboard packaging, etc, is tossed in an area back there. The chickens from the neighbourhood come by to peck at what they can, and the rest gets burned on occasion.

Village Stay

2007-09-16T15:03:00.001+02:00

I have arrived back in Lilongwe after my 12 day long Village stay. The purpose of my time in the village was to gain a better understanding of rural Malawian life. Small scale farmers are the main beneficiaries of TLC’s projects, so an understanding of the realities they face is important for me!

The village was located about an hour east of Lilongwe. It was 11km away from the nearest town and paved road. 34 people lived in the community I stayed in – 2 of whom speak some English.

For the first few days of my stay, Sabo, my father for the stay, was in Northern Malawi. As a result, the other English speaker, a woman named Ellis, became my go-to person.

Photo 1: Ellis and I

My Village

Photo 2: The village. On either side of a dirt path were mud huts and beyond those were a variety of storage structures (for maize and groundnuts mostly) and animal enclosures (chicken and pigeon coops, rabbit hutch, pig and goat pens), bathing stalls (with reed privacy shades and stone floors), and a latrine.

Photo 3: The village was located in a hilly area. Malawi has a densely populated rural area (as far as rural areas go anyway!) and this was evident where I was located as the countryside was dotted with many communities.

Photo 4: I stayed in Ellis’ hut. It is a simple mud hut with a thatched roof, divided into 2 rooms – a bedroom, and a sitting area. I stayed in the bedroom, sleeping on a reed mat placed on a metal bed frame – it was surprisingly not uncomfortable!

Photo 5: All of our cooking took place over open fire in the outdoor kitchen area. Most took place in the mud walled wind screen area. In this photo, I’m busily stirring sweet beer – a non alcoholic drink made from maize, served by the vat at weddings.

The Irrigation Site
The village I stayed in was located at one of the sites TLC works in, a large stream diversion irrigation site.

Photo 6: The “garden” is a site that receives stream diversion irrigation (as described in my previous post – it is the same site in fact). The area is divided into 15m x 72m plots, rented out by various farmers. The types of crops grown there include paprika (peppers), maize, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, radish, Irish potatoes, cabbage, and a variety of other crops. Some, such as paprika, are sold, while others are consumed by the villages.

Photo 7: Sabo and I by the gardens.

Day to Day Life

Photo 8: A Meal
Both lunch and dinner consists of nsima served with a relish. Nsima is the Malawian staple food, made out of maize flour. Relish consists of any number of dishes consisting of meat (goat, chicken, or pigeon mostly), beans, vegetables (which include many different kinds of greens – pumpkin, radish, and sweet potato leaves to name a few; Chinese lettuce; cabbage; etc), tasty soya pieces (which really are very tasty!), or fish. In this case, the relish is simply egg and tomato. You roll the nsima into a little ball in your hand, make an indentation with your thumb, and then use it to scoop up the relish to eat.

Photo 9: Cooking Relish
Most cooking takes place over a fire, using three stones to prop up the pot.

Photo 10: School
The kids went to school from 7:30 – 12. The school was a 2 km walk away along a dirt path. Elementary school runs from standard 1 – 9, and high school consists of form 1 – 4.

Photo 11: Collecting firewood
Fire wood provides an important source of fuel, used for almost all cooking. The firewood is collected in the surrounding areas by the women. They go out and chop down small trees, leaving them to dry for a month before returning to gather the wood. The branches are lashed together using the bark of a certain type of tree, and then carried back on one’s head.

Photo 12: Football field
Boys playing football in a field located nearby. The ball used was constructed by the boys out of plastic bags and string.

Photo 13: Pounding Maize
Pounding maize is hard work (I have the blisters to prove it!). The dried maize kernels are pounded using a mortar and pestle to remove the outer layer of the kernels, done prior to grinding into flour.

Photo 14: Sifting corn
After pounding the maize, it has to be sifted to separate the kernels out. The kernels were then brought to the nearest maize mill, which was located a few kilometres away at the nearby army base, to be ground into flour for use in making nsima and porridge.

A Village Wedding
During my stay I had the opportunity to attend a wedding at a nearby village.

Photo 15: Wedding – cooking nsima
Lots of food gets served at the wedding. A ridiculous quantity of nsima gets made, as well as relishes of different kinds of meat (no veggies available!).

Photo 16: Wedding – dancing
A common scene at a village wedding is a crowd gathered round a group of dancers. There are traditional men’s and women’s dances, both performed to the beat of a drum. Anyone may participate, and a large crowd develops to watch.

The bride and groom didn’t actually make their grand appearance until the end of the event. The festivities began at 1pm, and the bride and groom emerged at around 5:30 pm. They were fetched by a crowd of jubilant partygoers, but the couple themselves walked towards the rest of the guests with heads bowed, looking rather solemn. The groom wore a tuxedo, the bride wearing a white gown. They were led to a pair of chairs, which they were sat down on, with female relatives standing behind them. A few speeches were made, then presents and money were presented to the couple. My family left to return home before the end, so I’m not sure what happened at the end!
***

I'm now getting settled in to my new place in Lilongwe, and work is quite busy - but more on that next time!

Kim's final week of training!

2007-08-26T10:53:00.000+02:00

My partner organization, Total Landcare (TLC) works in Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Mozambique. Last week, field coordinators from the Tanzania office were invited to participate in a full week of training held at the head office in Lilongwe.

The training program was composed of a combination of in class presentations, field visits, and practical exercises, and served to introduce TLC’s programs, project objectives, and criteria for site selection, and increase the knowledge and skill of staff for better management of improved agricultural practices and management of the natural resource base. It was very helpful for me!

Malawi is a country which is highly dependent on agriculture. The majority of the population is involved in farming, but in recent years, crop yields have been declining. Sixty percent of smallholder farmers live under the poverty line. Soil fertility has been diminishing and losses of top soil are very high. Deforestation is a very serious problem, with 54% of forest cover being lost between 1972-1995. To address these problems, two of TLC’s main focus areas, and the focus of our training this past week, are best bet practices for small scale irrigation and sustainable agriculture through the use of agroforestry principles.

IRRIGATION
TLC promotes the use of 3 different irrigation practices: treadle pump, stream diversion, and drip irrigation. We focussed on the first two options due to cost restrictions associated the third.

Treadle pumps are used to draw water from a shallow well or river to a high point on the field where it is then directed by gravity through a series of channels to planting basins. The pump itself is operated by a single person, while a second one directs the water in the field.

Photo 1: Farmer using treadle pump

Photo 2: Flooding the field

Photo 3: A treadle pump irrigation field

Stream diversion involves diverting water from a stream by gravity using a hand dug canal to direct water to the fields. This technique can only be used in hilly areas, as it requires a change in elevation to convey the water.

Photo 4: stream diversion irrigation system

AGROFORESTRY
Nurseries are set up in villages to produce seedlings for use in a variety of agroforestry techniques. The nurseries provide the seedlings protection from pests and animals, rain and sun, and temperature extremes until they are ready for planting.

Photo 5: Tree nursery

Agroforestry involves the planting of trees within an agricultural setting; a variety of tree planting techniques are promoted, some focused on improving soil fertility, others focused on the production of wood and other products. TLC promotes both the planting of tree seedlings and the improved use and management of natural forests and trees. Tree planting occurs around the homestead, along property and field boundaries, and in woodlots/orchards. The improved management of natural trees promotes natural regeneration of trees, retention of natural trees on farmland, and the management of natural woodlands.

Photo 6: Planting of trees on field boundaries

Photo 7: Agroforestry practices result in women spending less time collecting firewood, giving them more time to complete other tasks

Photo 8: Alley cropping of trees within a field

During the field visits, I had my first experiences visiting rural Malawian villages. The people we met were very welcoming, and very proud of their work. We had the opportunity to speak to many of the farmers about their experiences, and they were happy to oblige.

Photo 9: A farmer (on the left) telling us about his farming practices while Glynwel (on the right), a project coordinator, translates.

Photo 10: A group of children and women who sang and danced while we visited

Photo 11: A pair of farmers and me

Photo 12: Group shot!

I’m going to be heading out to stay in a village for a little while starting on Monday. I will have limited internet access until I return to the city. When I return to Lilongwe I will find a place to live, and finally settle in to life here, something I am very much looking forward to.

Until then!

Quick update from Lilongwe

2007-08-23T12:25:00.000+02:00

While my grand entrance into the country didn’t exactly go as smoothly as one would have hoped, things since then have been going well!

I wrote this post a few days ago, but have had limited time online recently. I've been up to a fair bit since composing this, so hopefully I'll have a new post shortly!

***
My first week in Lilongwe was been spent becoming familiarized with the city and starting work. Heather and I have moved hostels, and are now staying at St. Peter’s guesthouse, which is part of St. Peter’s Parish. I’m writing this entry on Sunday morning, so I hear the voices of the congregation singing hymns in the church 100 yards away.

Photo 1: St. Peter’s Guesthouse

In general, I have found people in Lilongwe to be less aggressive and more warm than they were in Lusaka. This difference is most clear to me when comparing my experiences in the 2 cities’ main markets.

In Lusaka’s central market, I would find myself feeling rather on edge. The market was an intense, crowded place. While most of the time all was well (I really did enjoy the market) at times we would attract hordes of men who would follow us around, wanting to talk. They were generally harmless. There is novelty associated with talking and interacting with “Muzungus” it seems, to a degree that is a bit alarming at first. It is hard to not take the attention the wrong way at first. Sometimes people would just want to shake our hands and say hello; other times, we’d be surrounded, and people would try to get to close for comfort. Heather luckily avoided getting a big ol’ kiss from a guy. Needless to say, it got pretty uncomfortable at times!

In Lilongwe’s central market, which is still a large (though smaller than Lusaka’s), bustling, crowded place, I haven’t encountered the same degree of forcefulness here. People run up to say hello, or call out from their stalls, but we’ve had none of the near mobs that would develop in Lusaka. Wandering the streets of the city, we are still frequently greeted and stopped to chat, but the people are far less aggressive about it.

Photo 2: The main market in Lilongwe

While I find Lilongwe to be a friendly, pleasant place that I feel completely comfortable wandering around in during the day, the evenings, however, are a whole other story. It is ill advisable to walk alone after dark, and it gets dark here early. I get off work at 5, and it starts to get dark in a hurry around 6pm. The minibuses stop running around that time, so once night falls your only option for transportation are taxis, which are expensive – as much or even more than back in Canada. A short taxi ride can easily eat up much of my daily living allowance of around $15 CDN. As a result, Heather and I have been at a bit of a loss as to what to do with ourselves during the evenings.

I have started work now at Total Landcare. I’ve only had a couple of days of actual work so far, so I’m still just getting myself familiarized with everything. I will be spending all of this week in training with people from TLC’s Tanzania office. After that, I’m going to be heading out for a village stay. In essence, I will be heading out to live in a rural village that TLC does work in. I will stay with a family, and during my time there will try to gain a greater understanding of the realities faced by the major beneficiaries of TLC’s programs. I look forward to the experience! After that time, I will be returning to Lilongwe to resume work at the head office.

Until next time! I shall post again soon!

Finally in Lilongwe!

2007-08-14T10:36:00.001+02:00

The power just went out.

I write this, my first official blog entry from Malawi, on my bunk at the hostel I’m currently staying at. The power typically goes out once or twice a day for a couple hours, generally at particularly inconvenient times, such as the early evening. The door has been left ajar to provide some dim light for my two British dorm-mates to pack in. Insects of various sorts dart back and forth at my computer screen, attracted by the light.

Heather and I have finally arrived in Lilongwe. The trek in from Lusaka is not a straightforward one. The journey takes anywhere from 12 – 16 hours, and involves a bus, 2 taxis, and a minibus.

We left our Lusaka hostel at 5:30 am and made our way to the nearby bus terminal. As we emerged from our cab we were faced by a chaotic scene with men trying to bring us to the buses they were recruiting for, our desired destination a seemingly unimportant detail. We managed to find Dave who directed us to our desired coach bus and got the tickets.

The first part of the journey was an 8 hour bus ride – assuming no breakdowns of course. I had been feeling a little off, health wise (nothing serious!), for the previous couple of days. While I wasn’t bad off, an 8-hour bus ride when feeling queasy and generally ill is not an appealing concept. I started feeling worse and worse, and spent the first few hours of the trip feeling like death. At about the 5-hour mark, I miraculously started feeling a-okay, making the rest of the trip pretty bearable.

Our final destination of the coach ride was Chipata. When we got off we were confronted with another slightly chaotic scene, this time a bus stop filled with men offering currency exchange services and taxi rides. We hoped on a shared taxi to the Malawi/Zambia border. We squeezed 6 people, plus the driver in the taxi, and Dave, Heather and I all had our sizable daypacks on our laps. It was cozy.

We passed through immigration in Zambia and customs in Malawi with no problems. Finally, at long last, Heather and I had arrived in our home for the next year. I whispered to her excitedly: “Guess what! We’re in Malawi!” and skipped a few steps happily. Unfortunately, my first moments in Malawi didn’t go as smoothly as one would hope.

Finally having arrived in Malawi, it was now time for another shared cab ride. As we approached the cab, I noticed how full the trunk already was. I voiced my concerns about our stuff fitting in there, but Dave assured me “they always find a way.”

As the cab driver strapped the bags in, I remained sceptical about my bag actually making it through the 15 minute journey. Nevertheless, we squeezed into the overfilled taxi, and as I sat uncomfortably with Heather and my daypack sharing my lap, I soon forgot about the state of peril I left my pack in.

When we arrived at the border town, I hopped out and checked the trunk.

Dave’s pack? Check.

Heather’s pack? Check.

My pack? Oh, dear . . .

My mind started to race: WHERE IS MY BAG??? I looked around frantically to see if it had been set aside anywhere. I tried to remain calm. I announced that “My bag is gone!” and someone calmly replied that it had simply fallen out and that the cab driver was about to return to get it. Leaving our stuff with Heather, Dave and I hopped in the cab to speed back in an effort to find my pack.

I remained calmer about the situation than I would have expected. I reasoned to myself that anything I really needed was in my daypack anyway . . . right?

We sped back to the border, the cab driver occasionally pulling over to ask pedestrians if they’d seen the bag. No one had. Dave tried to be reassuring and said that someone probably found it and was just waiting for someone to return to fetch it. We had nearly returned to the border when a couple guys on a bicycle started wildly waving us down – I turned back and saw the guy on the back of the bicycle had my pack on his shoulders – I could practically hear angels singing. We gave them some kwatcha (the local currency) for their help, and sped back to rejoin Heather.

My pack is now looking a little worse for wear – I guess that’s what happens when a pack gets ejected from taxicab at what must have been 70+ kph. All in all though, it held up reasonably well. There are several tears and rips, one of the handles is nearly falling off, and a clip broke. I’ll bring it to a tailor in town to get patched up and it’ll be as good as new. I was worried about the contents, imagining that I’d open it up to find exploded containers of sunblock and shattered bottles on bug spray. At the hostel I did a thorough investigation, and the only fatality I’ve identified is my soap dish.

Back in town, we ended up in a bit of an argument with our taxi driver. He did not seem to agree that we shouldn’t have to pay him for his services, due to the damage caused to my bag as a result of his shoddy strapping. Dave did all the talking. A bit of a crowd developed, and I was feeling a tad uncomfortable, though I wasn’t sure what side they were on. When the guy started insisting that we deal with this at the police station, Dave gave in and gave him a portion of the fare.

Next stage of the journey was minibus. To clarify, minibuses are basically large vans with bench seats into which as many people as can possibly fit (the Canadian and Malawian perceptions of “fitting” are dramatically different) are squeezed. In Malawi, these are used both within cities and for intercity travel. There are no schedules; the busses simply leave when they are full – extremely full.

I don’t now how many people were in the minibus we took to Lilongwe, though in hindsight I should have counted. Suffice it to say, there were more people in that thing than I would have thought physically possible. I didn’t exactly have the most comfortable spot for the hour or so ride to Lilongwe. I sat on an unpadded fold down seat with no back. I had my heavy daypack on my lap, and the conductor practically sitting on that. There was a chicken by my feet, a baby pressed up against my back, and some kind of piping wedged against my leg. I could barely move my arms, and could not move my legs. I could only move my arms enough to prop myself up awkwardly to avoid sliding off the seat entirely (I was half hanging off of it as it was). While minibuses are not known to be the most comfortable mode of transport, I had a particularly unappealing seat.

It was around 6 in the evening by the time we reached Lilongwe, so we actually made reasonable time. We caught a cab to the hostel, which is just outside of town. I didn’t think the car was going to make it, I really thought it was going to rattle into pieces en route. When I opened the door upon arrival, the interior of it fell off with a thud. Oops!

At the hostel we were greeted by a few of the Junior Fellows (short term volunteers with EWB that go overseas for 4 months, typically during the summer months) who were staying there on a short term basis. We grabbed dinner (the first meal we’d had all day), chatted a bit, and then went to bed. It was an exhausting day.

My first full day in Lilongwe was spent exploring the city. Dave brought Heather and I for a tour of the rather small city. Exploring by foot, minibus, and taxi, we actually saw quite a large part of the city. I already feel more at ease here than I did in Lusaka. It has more of a small town feel, and the level of hustle and bustle is lower. We checked out the “old town” where my NGO is located, and where much of the shopping and market areas are found.

Next we headed into the city centre, which is a short minibus ride away. Between the old town and the city centre is a wildlife and nature reserve, which splits the city. The city centre is small, and where many office buildings are located. We had lunch at a great restaurant with a very attentive manager that assured us that his goal was to “exceed expectations,” and at the end of the meal came to check on us to check and make sure that our expectations had indeed been exceeded.

After lunch we grabbed a cab to Kawale, a residential area that Dave suggested would be one we might consider finding a place to live in. It was a nice area, with lots of kinds running around calling out to us “how are you? How are you?”

We visited the family a couple of past volunteers stayed at. We were welcomed in by the Gogos (grandparents) who welcomed us into their home, showed us photos, and talked our ears off. Dave later received a phone call from the grandpa who wanted to make sure that we knew we could stay there for free anytime we wanted to.

That pretty much sums up my Malawi experience up to this point. I’ll report back again soon!

Kim

Some Photos

2007-08-14T10:30:00.000+02:00

My 5 weeks of training seem to have flown by in a blur. I shall not bore you with the details, but here are some photos of our goings-on’s for the past several weeks . . .

Photo #1: “Question and Answer” session with George Roter and Parker Mitchell, EWB’s Co-CEOs, back at our training house.

Photo #2: EWB OVS Summer ‘07

Photo #3: My farewell dinner at my parent’s place a mere few hours before departure. My dad made his specialty: vegetarian lasagne. It was deeeeelish! Featured in the photo from left to right are Erin Jones, Mike Weaver, Grandma, Christa Olie, Me, and Laura Banducci. If you’re wondering where my boyfriend Mike Maier was, he left earlier that morning for a wedding in Mexico.

Photo #4: Doing yoga (a theme for my group) in a public space in Amsterdam during our several hour long stop over.

Photo #5: Many many hours later, we finally touched down in Lusaka, Zambia.

Photo #6: Me chatting with some ladies during a scavenger hunt in an area outside of central Lusaka.

Photo #7: A session on integration with Jenn Dysart (an OVS based out Monzi, Zambia) and beautiful “Mutinta” (her boyfriend Slady).

Photo #8: Dave teaching us how to cook like a Zambian!

Photo #9: Dave running a session on the front porch of a dorm in our Lusaka Hostel

Photo #10: Spectacle!! Motorbike lessons in a busy school yard in Lusaka. The photo does not adequately capture the sheer number of children running around and kicking footballs with reckless abandon, which little regard to the fact that there were 2 motorbikes speeding around.

We have arrived!

2007-08-07T09:10:00.000+02:00

After many consecutive hours in transit, in a journey that took us (Team Southern Africa Summer '07, consisting of Heather, Thulasy, Nina and myself)from Toronto to Amsterdam to Nairobi to Harare, we have arrived in Lusaka, Zambia.

Our days here have been filled with additional learning sessions on the region, development practice, and practical exercises. The first major activity was a scavenger hunt in an outlying town - it was a great way to get our feet wet!

I'm currently at an internet cafe next to our hostel which has a bit of a finicky keyboard and mouse combo, so I'll add a more substantial post later.

I should be heading to Malawi sometime this weekend, so I look forward to reporting back from there soon!

Quick Update!

2007-08-01T22:01:00.001+02:00

Just a quick update - finished up our learning sessions yesterday. Had a Farewell BBQ last night, and now I'm shipping out to Africa in a few short hours.

First stop is Lusaka, Zambia, where myself and the rest of Team Southern Africa will have a few days of training, before Heather and I take a bus to Lilongwe.

Hopefully I'll be able to make my first post from Africa shortly!

"Learning" in Toronto

2007-07-20T04:26:00.002+02:00

Hi Everyone,

I write to you today sitting in the EWB house in Toronto. I have been here for the past couple of weeks participating in EWB's month long intensive "learning" program.

Photo: Levi busy at the blackboard

There are 9 of us living and learning together at the moment. We hail from various parts of the country, from BC to Quebec, with one genuine Frenchman in our midst. We come from a range of backgrounds and experience; there are a few fresh grads like myself, one from industry, a few from consulting, an academic, and an elementary school french teacher. We're all heading to one of the 4 countries in which EWB currently works: Malawi (the coolest of the 4), Zambia, Ghana, and Burkina Faso.

The 9 of us live in the EWB house with 4 National Office interns. It is surprisingly manageable! On our first weekend we got kicked out of the house and shipped off camping to clear out some space for the 25ish Professional Chapter exec members that were here for their annual meeting, so the place is practically empty in comparison! Here's a photo from our camping trip at Emily Provincial Park:

From Left to right: Alanna (Burkina Faso), Me (Malawi), Simon (Burkina Faso), Trevor (Ghana), Heather's forehead (Malawi), Melissa (past volunteer), Boris (Ghana), Levi (our fearless leader - otherwise known as the Director of Overseas Programs), Sarah (Ghana), Thulasy (Zambia), Jason (past Volunteer).

**new**
and here's a whole album of the weekend

We have covered a wide range of topics during our learning sessions, ranging from basic development theory to health and safety issues.

The sessions are pretty intense, but we take time out of our busy days for the occasional yoga or hand stand session.

I'm leaving in less than two weeks . . . CRAZY! I'll post more about the joys of "learning" soon.

Cheers,
Kim

Welcome!

2007-07-19T00:46:00.000+02:00

Welcome to my Blog!

I begin my foray into the blogosphere with this first post, coming to you from the EWB training house in sunny Toronto, Canada.

I suppose I should start with a bit of an overview to bring you up to speed on just what the heck I’m doing here anyway!

Who?
Me!

I recently graduated from Environmental Civil Engineering at the University of Waterloo. After five years alternating between school and a smattering of different co-op terms I’m about ready to move on to the next phase of my life!

What?

A 13 month overseas placement in Malawi with Engineers Without Borders Canada.

Here’s a bit about EWB’s approach overseas:

“At first glance, the role of western engineers in development may appear to be the identification of solutions, followed by a trip overseas to implement them. Often this takes the form of drilling a well, building a school, or installing a new technology developed in western labs.

EWB believes that sustainable development requires more than the simple installation of technologies however. To have the greatest impact overseas we focus on building capacity rather than the delivery of technological goods.

Our volunteers work in partnership with local organisations that are already helping communities gain access to appropriate technologies. By strengthening the extent and effectiveness of the organisation's response, EWB is helping them become better at helping communities.”

I’m going to be working with a local NGO called “Total Landcare” based out of Lilongwe, Malawi.

TLC is a local Malawian NGO working to increase production and income levels of small-scale Malawian farmers through improved agricultural practices with sustained conservation and management of the natural resource base.

Where:

Malawi

Malawi is located in south eastern Africa. It is a landlocked country situation between Zambia, Mozambique, and Tanzania. The Great Rift Valley runs through the country from north to south, and in this trough lies Lake Malawi, the third largest lake in Africa.

Malawi is among the world's poorest countries. High population density, rapid population growth, and erosion due poor land management practices is resulting in severe pressure on the agricultural industry, which employs the vast majority of the population.

The tourist sites refer to Malawi as the “Warm Heart of Africa.” I look forward to being your connection to this part of the world over the next year!