19 April 2010 (youth training)

About a month ago I had the local Youth Area Development Coordinator come to me with a bit of a problem. It seems that the district youth workers have done nothing to help in the coordinating of the groups in our area. Thus, we have tons of clubs which are not functioning, unsustainable, losing members, and unorganized. He wanted a solution… so we started from the beginning.

I got about 100 USD to have an one day training with two members from each of the 11 registered youth groups in Nkhata Bay North. There were some hang ups as the day got closer in regards to accommodation and transport costs, but with a little money out of my pocket we were able to make all the ends meet. The day of the training we had 20 youth arrive (half being girls which was a amazing to see) and we spent the whole day looking at everything I used to think was silly when I was in Leadership Fellows at Elon. Things I used to assume as basic common knowledge were completely lost to these people, and I found myself looking back on notes from college to help explain things like: group dynamics, leadership styles, and communication barriers. I taught them games to play with their groups to better know each other, how to write reports to the Area Development Council, and linked them to other groups in the area working on similar projects.

In all the day turned out to be a bit overwhelming, but much needed and hopefully appreciated by all those in attendance. In a month we are requiring community assessment reports, group constitutions, and successes/ challenge reviews. I really hope that in the next year I can help these kids to really make some difference here and that the rest of Malawi will see them as model community members. From this point I plan on access more resources from Elon to create a manual for each club in how to function more efficiently including: forms to have on record so they can report all their activities, grant and funding advice, how to organize meetings and events, and lists of resources they can tap into. With all of this information at hand they will hopefully be more empowered to really do something here.As I said before, little by little (pachoko pachoko) I am seeing where I will make a difference.

April 21, 2010 (the great package chase)

This evening while waiting for my peer education group to gather (running late like usual as the members claim their African heritage makes it so they can't be on time for anything) I got a call from a friend in Nkhata Bay. Max, a really great guy from the UK who helped build the community hall in my community picked some packages for me from the Mzuzu post box. He said he put them on the Nyawoyiya and that I should be there to pick them when the boat arrives….

So, I figured the boat would take about 5 hours, this put me waiting on the beach for it at 6:30 pm. By seven I had a group of school boys gathered around me chatting, and since their English was worse than my Chitumbuka we used the vernacular. It was great to get some practice in, and while there were still a few things lost in communication we were able to discuss everything from culture to family to what they liked to do to fishing. They were a good group of kids and I was happy to spend the evening hours chatting (one I had seen the prior day at the health center suffering from an asthma attack and was simply happy to see him healthy). Half an hour later you could hear random woman voices calling them home for supper, so I decided to move on to the area that I was told the boat would go to (Petronix lodge).

At the 'lodge' (a term used loosely) I found the librarian from Temwa and proceeded to get into another hour of chatting and watching a small light come across the horizon (which was the small torch on the boat). However, after sometime we noticed that the light was moving away from us and would not be coming to shore where we thought. By this time it was 8:30 and way past my village bed time so I was getting a bit frustrated. My eyes were beginning to hurt from staring into the dark at a little light playing games with my site and putting off the mirage that it would actually come anywhere near me. We guessed that it would come to the other lodge (again a term used loosely) which just so happened to be on the other side of the village.

So, I put on my head light and biked through sand as quickly as I could without flipping over the bike into some random pot hole. I went through cassava fields, a marsh, and almost hit a few barnyard animals. In the end, though, I made it to the next destination and was once again greeted by a group of guys happy to chat. They sent one boy down the lake to retrieve the packages while we chatted about the fact that I was not married and why I had chosen to be in such a state. Culture can be exhausting at times, but I think it's really important for men here to hear how women need to wait to finish school, and that love is the reason to marry instead of procreation. Finally, I go meet the boat and kid who had collected my four packages. I ran over the return addresses (Bridget Christie, Sam Sledd, Chelsea Finch, and Brenda Harvey), got excited, and decided that the pieces from home were completely worth everything I had been through. The men helped me carry the boxes to my bike and then became very busy using my rope to strap on the boxes so that I could get them all back to my house. It took four attempts, the removal of my bike seat, and a lot of unnecessary rope to get them on in a fairly secure manner. The image reminded me of Dad when we'd take long car trips and we had so much stuff that in the end he would talk under his breathe while tying extra (and usually unnecessary) things to the roof of the car. Mom would then come out and have him redo it a couple of times, but in the end somehow everything would fit.

In this case I made it about 200 m from the lodge before things started slipping and the trip turned into a balancing game. I had my hip securing the back two boxes as they rested on my weight, and my elbow holding the front two boxes on the cross bar. I did this for about 3 km back to my house (UGH!) as I had to go through gardens, a swamp, and up hills. I made it home, somehow, with everything intact and sweat pouring through my shirt at about 11:30 pm.

In the end, it was like Christmas as I tore through the boxes and found all the amazing goodies. Food, toys, art supplies, puzzles, candy, magazines, and letters from home quickly covered my floor. At one point I got so caught up that I managed to catch some papers on my desk on fire with the candle which I was using to put light on the scene. I quickly put it out and went back to scavenging through the prizes. You all are amazing, and I can't wait to return to you in a year! These pieces of America are what get me through the low days, so thank you! Letters are coming your way soon, even though they can't fully cover how happy you all have made me. Yewo chomene (many thanks)

April 28, 2010

Sometimes as we pass through our lives there are certain people that our souls grab onto. For unknown reasons we connect with others in a way that they will never be forgotten, no matter how much time passes. For me, Malawi has shown me my neighbor, Wellington Kalua. He is the Medical Assistant at our little health center and only real trained medical personnel in employment here. He was born on October 26, 1936 and shows his age only in the slow gate which takes him to and from the clinic. He stops by to check on my well being like a concerned father and lights up every time I stop by his place just for a quick chat. We don't talk much, as we have little in common, but our conversations are always pleasant and warming.

He is planning to leave in June for retirement to his home village, and I will be very sad to see him go. After his wife's passing you can see that he is lonely and wants nothing more to put aside work and do what he likes best, farming. He loves to chat about his animals, how troublesome goats can be, hunting for his turkey's eggs, and the planting seasons. He reminds me so much of my own grandfather, Joe, that I think I am drawn to him for conversations I can no longer have with my own farming relative who passed away two years ago. He would have gotten along very well with my grandparents, and I know that if given a chance they would have been good friends. Go-Go would have ranted about chickens and taught him how to shoot a be-be gun to chase off goats; and Joe would have swapped planting stories and taught him how to use more modern equipment. I am sure they would be happy to know that I have one of their kindred spirits close to me, and have reconnected with gardening and animals as that was what they always loved.

The next two months I plan to waste no more time alone, but rather getting to know Kalua better before he departs from Usisya. I take time for granted and need to really use the seconds I have to learn more about people's lives. Maybe I'll pull on some ethnography and interview Kalua, write up a bit of his life before it to is forgotten in the hills and lakeshore like so many before him. I want people outside of this valley to know about the amazing people who reside here, and have done so much to shape what Usisya has become. This will be my own personal project, an oral history of my little village, told by the people who have shown it to me, and written by an outsider who grows respect for it more with each passing day.

4 May 2010 - ADC Meeting

Once a month the Area Development Committee (ADC) meets to discuss happenings in TA Mbwana's catchment area and what Village Development Committees (VDCs) are doing. I have been invited to attend these meetings the last few months and have been interested to see how things are going. In a nutshell, I always leave confused and tired.

Today's meeting only had two agenda items but I was there from 9 am to 2 pm!! You see, everyone wants to have their voices heard, and every little point must be debated. I sat in a room of old village headmen with nothing more to do with their day than debate the littlest points about each item, and why their areas were not getting equal distribution of resources. Each would raise his hand, be called on, the stand and pay respect to those present, and proceed to give his opinion at full length. I am all for democracy but the proceedings were a bit ridiculous and absolutely exhausting.

The second agenda item was to elect a Health Center Advisory Committee as laid out by the district committee. We were given the task to choose members from the committee, make positions (i.e. treasurer, secretary), and set when they should meet. This was odd to me as no one was there to accept their placement in the group, or to say they were comfortable holding a position. I am used to people accepting such thing prior to the group being set and also that they would be the ones to select positions. Another point which I raised was that no person from the health center was selected to be on the committee. How is in the world would the group know what the health center needed is there is no member on it connected in any way to the health of the community. The response to this question was that they didn't want and health employees on the committee because they would have biased and would corrupt it by pulling funds into their respected areas of work. I kind of understood this, but heck anyone in the group can have biases; one member could have a family member with HIV and insist on money going toward the HCT (HIV counseling and testing).

In the end I at least got them to elect a fair number of women to the committee, but no health staff as they all feared corruption. It's awful how years of seeing money laundered into the wrong hands has caused the people to become so scared of its continuance. There is no trust in the community, even an individual will pass money along quickly so that they are not tempted to spend it incorrectly. Morals are hidden behind poverty and greed. A teacher knows that school fees should be given to the district for development, but pocketing a few Kwacha is too hard to pass up when his family is lacking enough food for a proper diet. Civil servants are paid so little that it seems corruption is the only way for their families to get by.

LIFE!!