My Work

My working partner asked me to post on their blog, and I thought I'd add it to my own too. There is some overlap, but it summarizes things a little.


Hi, I’m Ben Campbell, a volunteer for the NGO Engineers Without Borders Canada. I’ve been working with MTZL and Dunavant since the end of March and it has been an absolute whirlwind! I was just going to write about paying Dunavant's distributors commissions because we just finished the first batch on Monday, but there is so many other things to talk about that I thought it would be a shame to leave them out.

The first project I worked on was setting up an online payment system for Dunavant to use when buying their cotton crop. Without giving too much away, the advantage was, as with many things, that MTZL made their payments “safer, faster, easier”. Not to say that at times it wasn’t slow and difficult! The other thing that we did was set up their rural offices, 3 schools and one coop as MTZL agents. This was such a challenge because it had never been done before and was in places that were up to 2.5hours by bumpy village road from the tarmac. After one day of sensitizing farmers in Msoro, Edwin and I rode to Katete in the back of a Toyota Hilux. It was 18:30 when we started off and as soon as we got in the back of the van, it started raining! The “road” was very narrow with elephant grass on both sides and as soon as the grass got wet, it leaned onto the road, which meant that for the next 2.5hrs Edwin and I were being poured on with rain, hit in the face with grass and freezing cold. The next day I developed a very serious rash in reaction to the grass and the right side of my body was incredibly itchy for the following week!

Despite all of those “field worker” troubles, there were some big successes. We processed hundreds of millions of Kwacha worth of farmer payments, set up 8 successful rural agents, a school (the famous St. Lukes in Msoro next to the Cathedral) and signed up lots of farmers for MaKwacha accounts. Two of the sheds went on to be the top sellers of air time in all of Zambia! A personal highlight for me was visiting the Mgubudu shed and meeting a farmer that used to have to travel all the way to Petauke every school term to pay his school fees. It took him 2 days and cost k150,000 round trip to do this and his school fees were only k150,000. Now he can send a money transfer from the Dunavant shed for only k8,000!

Another highlight was filling in for Edwin at his Champion shop one day and a gr.10 schoolboy came and deposited k20,000 into his personal account. The new balance was k40,000. I asked him why he was depositing the money, thinking it was for buying talktime or sending to a relative, but he just replied “I’m saving for my future”. This was a real inspiration because he was thoughtful enough to save and not just waste his money on daily things. He wouldn’t be able to save such small amounts if it were not for Mobile Transactions.

My last highlight has been getting to know all of the staff of Mobile Transactions over these months.

The head office staff, who are always working so hard. We share an office with Dunavant, which keeps regular office hours. The last staff from our office show up for work before most of the Dunavant staff come and our first staff to go home goes home after all the Dunavant staff go home. The security guard gets mad at us for making him stay so late before he’s able to lock up the building. Our staff have “learning lunches” which means they eat while working and discussing MTZL, and often people just get take away and bring it back to the office to eat while working. The last practice, although demonstrating hard work, I’m not too happy with, because it promotes our good looking young staff to eat really unhealthy foods!

The local staff, Michael, Msozi , Alex and Edwin have been such an inspiration to work with! Being mostly field staff, they are willing to be anywhere anytime, whether it’s on the back of a dirtbike on their way to some remote area at 0500 or get in the back of a van at 2100 for a 3 hour journey home. They can think on their feet. They see a problem, make a solution and execute it and before you even know what’s going on they’re explaining the solution to you!!
I guess it’s the people, not the systems that keeps me motivated. If it’s Mobile Transactions helping rural farmers or just our own staff keeping me motivated, it’s always the people!

Mobile Transaction Blog

Just a note if anyone wants to read the blog for the company I have been working with, check out the link below!

http://mobiletransactionsinternational.blogspot.com/

South Luangwa Park

Described by lonely planet: For scenery, variety of animals, South Luangwa is the best park in Zambia and one of the most majestic in Africa. Impalas, pukus and buffalo wander on the wide open plains, leopards, of which there are many in the park, hunt in the dense woodlands, herds of elephant wade through the marshes, and hippos munch serenely on nile cabbage in the Luangwa River.

It was totally amazing! We went for 3 game drives, two during the day and one at night. We got ridiculously close to animals, probably too close for their comfort, but still really nice. Even the place we stayed at was absolutely filled with animals. There was strictly no walking at night without a guide, like between the restaurant and your tent, because it was filled with hippos, elephants and giraffes. They would come within 1m of tents at night! We could watch animals all day from the pool. Yesterday morning I was having breakfast in the open air restaurant, no walls, just pillars for the grass roof. My toast arrived and I went and washed my hands. As I walked back I saw a monkey jump on my chair and I shouted in futility as it grabbed my toast and egg, even though 3 other people were sitting at the table, and ran up a tree to enjoy it’s treat. They restaurant gave me another piece of toast and I started eating, watching for monkey’s this time. Preventing a “Fool me twice” incident. Suddenly a teenage elephant walked up about 5 m away and started eating plants. The staff shot it with a slingshot and it faced our table and started to come towards us. The staff shouted “RUN INSIDE!!” as they attempted to defend us with slingshots. As we ran I saw the monkey coming back, so I jumped back to my table, grabbed my plate and ran for cover. The elephant never came to our table but walked around so we could safely finish our breakfast watching it and 4 others, including a baby!

After a morning self drive (our friends from the hospital took us there so we went in their vehicle) we returned home. Just before entering the camp, there was a small pond with an elephant drinking water. We stopped and watched it drink, so quietly and peacefully. A nice ending to a wonderful morning. All of the sudden, 5 meters and maybe 1,500lbs of Nile Crocodile explodes from the water and grabs the elephant mid way up the trunk! The elephant ‘jumps’ back, lifting the croc out of the water, prompting the croc to let go. The elephant ran off with a sore and cut trunk and we saw a once in a lifetime attack!



The rest of the trip was really nice, but not as exciting. We saw most things you would hope to see, so rather than list them, I’ll list what we didn’t see. Cheetah, rhino, leopard, wildebeest. We even saw a pair of lions mating. During which a dumb tourist got out of the cab of their private pickup, walked to the back and got in the box…We were only about 80m away and apparently they are very dangerous when mating. The male half got up and really looked interested in that lady. I also liked seeing the birds of prey, we saw a few types of goshawks, harriers and eagles, including the Martial Eagle, which is the biggest species in the park. Apparently it has been recorded to prey on a 32kg (71lbs) Duiker!! (source Wikipedia)

The place where we stayed was right on the river. We could watch hippos, crocodiles, elephants and giraffes all from the swimming pool! An elephant even came one morning and drank from the pool, but not while people were inside.

All in all it was a great trip and we really enjoyed ourselves and our friends from St. Francis who joined us there.

Things need changing

This is my opinion of things that would be beneficial to change about Zambians.

1. Handouts



Things given out for free for too long and it’s total BS. Three people came up to me yesterday and said “Give me money”, not because they had done anything but simply because they are Zambian and I am white. Even children shout out to me as I ride by on a bike “Give us money!”

You can’t even hold a free training session without basically paying people to come (giving food and drinks)! People won’t do anything for free, even learn, if they think they’re entitled to something for their time. An expectation exists now that white people bring stuff for free, and it’s true, and it’s bad. It makes sense from the Zambians perspective though. Why would I go and spend my own money on an irrigation pump if I know that someone will come and give them out in my area?

The result is dependency syndrome, lack of ambition and a lack of association between hard work and results.


2. Pride in Work



I don’t understand this well right now. There is an idea that you should do work, like people will go and plant a crop of sunflower seeds just because you should be planting crops. People do work hard, especially women. The thing that is missing I think is a pride in working hard and in quality of work.

My grandparents wake up, and start working, cleaning, gardening, etc. just because they get a satisfaction from working. My mom will tell me how hard my grandmother is working and I’m expected to be impressed (I am). My brothers will call me lazy if I don’t work as many hours a day as they do and I’m expected to be embarrassed. Someone in school that answers every question in the textbook even though they were only asked to answer the odd numbered questions is regarded as doing something good. Something important to realize here is that all of these beliefs are cultural, not factual, hence the differences between Canada and here.

I think the reason there is a difference between here and Canada is that here, everyone has to do a lot of really hard work out of necessity, and the ones that are really respected, the rich, don’t have to do very much work, or it’s at least it’s perceived as being easier. In Canada, all of that respectable work that I just described is voluntary, or going above and beyond your job.

The result is low quality work.


3. Vertical Power Structure



There is a very absolute power structure here and it’s so important. Everyone needs to know what their place is so they can act accordingly. I’ve even seen people discern between two people in the same position of power by what type of company vehicle they drive. The one with the nicer vehicle is “higher up” than the other one.

It makes things more difficult to do because you have to work within this power structure, so to get your equal or someone below you but on a different power ladder to do something, you have to get their boss to tell them to do it.

There is so much respect that people also take crap when they shouldn’t. For example, I bet I could go to anyone that thinks they are in a lower position than me and just tear a strip off of them, berate and belittle them and most people would just sit quietly and take it. In Canada I think most people would stand up and tell me to go to hell or that I’m way out of line.

This is part of something bigger that relates even to how people think on a daily basis. In school a lot of emphasis is put on memorization, treating teachers like the holders of knowledge and students like empty vessels waiting to be filled. This passive learning leads to passive thinking. I don’t have full thoughts so it’s hard for me to put this into words but it’s different from the way I think. I think that there is often more than one correct solution to a problem, even many possible correct solutions with varying degrees of success. The world is an endless place of opportunities and possibilities to be explored, things to be discovered, maybe by me.

Does this make sense? I need to clarify though, because I’m describing a trend, not an absolute. There are lots of independent, creative thinkers here. My friend described it to me well. “We have been taught several different ways of thinking, thought processes, etc. It takes a genius to develop a new way to think, but anyone can learn it. We have just been exposed to so many different things”

If your boss tells you to do something, you don’t argue, you just do it, even if you don’t know why you’re doing it or you think it’s wrong. Under this structure it’s not your job to think for the boss, or help them think, just do your job. If there is a problem but you did what you were supposed to do, then it’s the boss’ fault, not yours. A lot of bosses complain of having to explain every little thing to their workers and having to think for them. They can’t just give them a job and let them figure out how to do it.

The result is a lack of responsibility and thought.


4. Trust



Not trusting the person you’re doing business with requires you to do so many things that hinder productivity! I’m not even going to explain this one. Just think about all the business interactions that you do on a daily basis that require trust and what you’d do if that trust was gone. You trust that your bank isn’t going to close shop and move to another country with your money. You trust that your doctor isn’t prescribing you medication just to get a commission. You trust that the medication you buy isn’t fake medication made in china (seriously, there is fake medication!), you trust police officers, teachers, friends and family. Imagine how differently you would act if you thought that everyone interacted with on a daily basis was a thief and was in the process of figuring out how to steal from you. Things aren’t that bad here, but they’re not good.

The result is slow and inefficient means of doing business.


5. Too resilient (will put up with too much crap)


Resilient Wanderer ?!?

Zambians are so hardy. They can put up with just about anything, which is amazing, and helps them in a difficult environment, but holy crap, they put up with some stuff that shouldn’t be put up with. I have been in so many situations where I’m steaming mad, in disbelief of “how ridiculous this is!” and everyone else just shrugs their shoulders and takes it.

This results in a lack of will for change.


6. Confidence



I’m starting to understand the dangers of paternalism. Zambians tell me “We’re poor. We’re struggling”. Of course it’s true, but what a terrible self image. I showed some pictures of modern farming from home, explaining that one field that can be cultivated and seeded in a portion of a day is what 10 families take the entire season to care for by hand. “These Whites. They have figured it out. Now if we can just do that.” The problem is, that attitude doesn’t breed creativity. Instead people wait for Whites to deliver a solution.

Example:
I tell a farmer that he should grow sorghum as well as maize because it is better to grow a variety of crops. He grows sorghum instead of maize in some places, but it doesn’t do that well. He blames me for telling him to do something that didn’t work. He doesn’t feel responsible to figure out why it didn’t do very well, what to change to improve it or whether it was just a bad idea to begin with. All of that is my responsibility. This is the epitome of dependence.

As a child your father is your hero. He can do anything, fix a car, build a house, maybe even lift a car! As you grow older you are shocked as you find out that, yes he can a lot of that stuff, but he can also make mistakes. If he’s wrong sometimes, how do you know when? At this point you are forced to start thinking for yourself. Every decision you make needs to be analyzed and the responsibility is yours. You made the decision, and if it fails, you need to fix it. As you become an adult, you realize that you needed to go through the learning yourself.

The result is a lack of responsibility for actions and lack of wiliness to create the solution.

p.s. Yes I just typed in the heading into google images and put pictures in

Kulamba, Nyau and Juju

At the end of August there is a festival called Kulamba held in Katete, my home town. It’s one of the biggest cultural festivals in Zambia and is often attended by the Presidents of Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique.



I’ll start by saying that I don’t actually know anything. I went and asked questions and took a lot of pictures, but what I’m going to tell you is just what I gathered from asking friends and observing, so there’s a good chance that a lot isn’t true. That being said, it would be interesting to see how far off I am, since Zambians are very reluctant to say “I don’t know” and prefer to offer their best guess, I could be WAY off!

Every year for a few hundred years chiefs from all over the Chewa fiefdom would bring some of their harvests and reports of the year to the Paramount Chief, Kalonga Gawa Uni ( something Divider of Land) a retired engineer for the government run electricity company. They would tell the paramount chief about all of their troubles and if some areas had small harvests he would redistribute from other areas. I don’t think this really happens anymore because instead of harvest being brought, money, coffee tables and LG washing machines were brought. Then after their reports comes the Nyau, traditional dancers, representing religious spirits. It’s technically against the law to say that they are people dressed as animals, they are animals. I thought they were just regular people who would come and dance on special occasions, but they are full time Nyau, some taken from as young as seven years old! They live separately and don’t have jobs and apparently, if you go to where they train, they will either kill you or make you become a Nyau for the rest of your life. They sleep in graveyards and have something to do with witchcraft, leading to missionaries enforcing a total ban of the Kulamba festival from the 1930’s to 1984, until it was restarted by the current Chief Gawa Uni. There are no women Nyau, just men.

The Nyau dancing was pretty cool. Rarely always coordinated as a group or rehearsed, they come onto the stage and dance for about 5 minutes to drums and then they’re off. There are people who lead them as they walk and dance, I didn’t know why until I saw how small eye holes were in masks, if they even had eye slits! Some would just come and dance, some climbed tall poles and danced on the poles, balancing on their bellies on top! Some were full animals, goats, cattle and unknown things. Then the real highlight for me was when one Nyau climbed a pole and got on a metal wire tied between the pole and a nearby tree. He sat on the wire, straddling it between each legs, making me and about 4,000 other people really cringe as he flossed. Then another Nyau got on the other side of the wire and that’s when it really got interesting! They both lay down on the wire facing each other, then slid towards the middle until they were face to face where they paused. This is where I thought it would end. Much to my surprise, one animal smoothly slipped underneath the wire and then they continued moving, climbing over, past and through (?) each other until they had switched sides on a 3mm metal wire!! Pretty incredible to see!



There was one more excitement before the end of the festival. Zambians are afraid of snakes, REALLY afraid, and for good reason, Steph has seen lots of people lose limbs to snake bites, but it’s more than that to Zambians. They are also associated with evil spirits. Well all of the sudden a snake appeared somewhere in the crowd of several thousand people and all hell broke loose! Everyone stood up meaning no one could see anything and everyone starting shouting “SNAKE!!!” and trying to move, but of course you couldn’t because we were all packed like sardines in the arena. Nobody around me knew what was going on, and I guessed that a wild snake had accidentally found it’s way into the ceremony. It turned out it wasn’t one snake but three, and they were all part of the dance with the Nyau.



Chief Kalonga Gawa Undi entered in a massive procession to his “throne” (Lazyboy Recliner) at his “Royal Palace” (fairly modest house). He was dressed all white in the middle of a massive procession, followed by about 5 large ivory elephant tusks. He remained in his throne, mostly inactive until the end of the ceremony, at which point he got up and left, with his procession, marking the end of Kulamba, what a day!!

I walked out with a good friend. I had previously told him before that I didn’t believe in Juju, witchcraft, witchdoctors or any of that other stuff. He turned to me and said “See Benson, after seeing those Nyau, can’t you believe in magic now?”

Bricks and Basic School

One thing I dread about coming back home is trying to explain what I’ve seen and done. It’s not that it’s so special or that it takes a special person to do it, because anyone can move to another country and become comfortable in daily life. The difficult thing is that it’s something you can only learn experientially. So I’ve had this amazing experience, learned so much and probably changed without knowing it, and then I will come home and be speechless trying to explain what I’ve seen and done, probably because it needs to be seen and done to understand, not explained. Africa is such a different place. I’ve been to every inhabited continent on the planet, not extensively, but Africa is such a different place from any other. The way things work, what people say, WHAT THEY THINK, how they react, it’s so SO foreign.

You have to leave the bubble for so long just to learn simple things. There is a combination of reasons:

1. Things are different and complex here
2. Whatever word means more than subtle, that can be used to explain Zambians

Zambians are so indirect. I sent a friend to interview for a job with another one of my friends. After the interview there were 4 of us in the car and I asked “So Michael, what did you think of my friend you just interviewed?” There was a pause and then the driver said “You Canadians are so direct! You ask such short questions that really make people think and you go right to the point! Ha ha ha” Now that type of question is normal in Canada, but here it’s very uncommon and leads to a difficult environment to learn in!

Example:

March: I saw a small building that was being constructed, it had brick walls about 1.5m high at this point. Some of the parents had contributed money but (most) that didn’t have money had come and helped in construction first hand by making bricks.

April: I was walking with a friend who didn’t speak great English named Mr. Phiri. We were near his house and I saw an area cleared of trees that had about 8 different 2mx3m holes dug into the ground filled with water.
Ben: What are those holes from?
Phiri: They’re for the basic school?
B: What do you mean they’re for the basic school?
P: They’re for the basic school?
B: Why did they make holes in the ground?
P: To help with the school
At that point I gave up.

July: I visited a friend in the village Mathius Mwale and he was building a new house so we went to view the construction. There was a guy knee deep in mud in a hole in the ground, he took a brick form, dipped it in the mud and then carried it out and over to a row of drying bricks where he dumped it.

August: I drove past the same place where the mysterious holes were and then suddenly realized they were holes dug to make bricks by parents for the basic school!!!! I was so happy I figured it out and it only took 5 months experience!

The Fairy Tale Princess

I read a really great book called “The Fate of Africa”, which told the history of Africa since independence. Really interesting, a very easy read I recommend it! Well I thought about all the hatred and anger towards these “African Big Men” from my own culture, dictators who killed opponents, opposed democracy, waged wars of greed and pride, exploited the country’s natural resources for their own riches, extracted taxes from peasants so they could buy ridiculous luxuries which they didn’t deserve, were immensely corrupt giving positions of power both in government and business to family and tribe members, using state money as their own personal bank accounts. We hate these people, almost everyone on earth does, and rightly so, they are terrible greedy people.



No Canadian girl dreams of marrying one of these men when they grow up, fantasizes about living in their mansions, or has dolls of their daughters. Instead Canadian girls think about princesses from medieval times. I’m asking, what’s the difference aside from time and geography? I hate the double standard that exists, that Africans are so corrupt and evil but the same people that were corrupt and evil from our culture are worshipped in books and movies. Queen Victoria held the “most colossal and expensive meal in world history” during a 7 day celebration in India on her ownership over a land the British had stolen and occupied by violence. During this 7 day party, 100,000 locals starved to death. King Henry killed not one but TWO of his own wives by cutting their heads off! The list goes on, and is not just British.

Look at my list of the horrible things African dictators do, is there one there that European Royalty isn’t guilty of, but for hundreds and hundreds of years instead of just 50?

Is it possible to deserve something?

When a doctor works very hard for decades and helps lots of people, even saving lives, does he deserve enough money to buy several houses, luxury vehicles and boats? What about when an African farmer puts in as many hours work as the doctor over several decades and is equally intelligent but was never able to afford university, lives in poverty his entire life, 4 of his 7 children die of easily preventable causes. What does he deserve? He worked as hard as the doctor for as many hours and is equally talented mentally and physically. Does he deserve a Porsche, lake house and boat? More? Or maybe nothing.



I feel really bad because I believe I’m a person filled with love, and I want to live a life of love, but every time I sit and write what I’m thinking, I’m writing things like this. Things that are negative. It’s not that I don’t love the doctor, or think that his hard work should be rewarded. I know a lot of doctors who are much more disciplined, intelligent and harder working than me and they absolutely deserve something, more than I deserve without a doubt. I guess I just feel like we live in a distorted world, where we are oblivious to the greater community we live in and because of that lack of balance, we expect things that shouldn’t be expected by anyone, at least now.



It’s not that I don’t love the doctor, it’s that I also love the farmer, and how can I sit and write about how great everything is when someone I love suffering so much?

Good Intentions Are Not Enough

The DOs and DON’Ts of Disaster Donations

Don’t take up a collection of goods to send over

Don’t go over individually to volunteer

Do consider donating an equal amount of money to disaster preparedness programs

Don’t support any adoptions or evacuations of orphans

Don’t assume there is a body overseeing and regulating the aid

Do consider holding off some of your donations until later in the rebuilding process

These are just headings from a great blog called "Good Intentions Are Not Enough"

Please have a look to see the reasoning behind these statements and other interesting posts

http://goodintentionsarenotenough.com

Social Capital vs. Economic Capital

I was walking with a buyer (buyer is a farmer who acts as a part time agent for the company, buying cotton on the company's behalf) for the cotton company I'm working with, a very entrepreneurial and intelligent man. We walked past one of his farmer’s cotton fields that was being harvested. It was being picked late and the quality was compromised as a result. I asked him what quality grade he would give it “Grade A. I can’t give him any less because he’s my brother in law”.



We continued walking and saw his personal cotton field also being picked. There were two women picking the cotton and on the ground lay 3 empty, brand new picking bags. Beside the picking bags was a large pile of picked cotton sitting on the dirt. This was really compromising the cotton quality. He went and shouted at the women for not using the picking sacks (they wanted to take them home to use and window shades) and I asked if he would deduct their pay “No, I can’t they are my sisters”



This is an example of trading economic capital for social capital, another way Zambians “buy insurance” and stability in their unstable and dangerous lives. By trading money for favour with friends and family, they are providing some security in their lives. If they die, go bankrupt, lose their job, then there is an external force, a social network that can help cushion the blow to them and their immediate family.

There's nothing wrong with poverty

I've been asking myself the question "Is poverty wrong, evil, unacceptable. Is it just plain bad?"
The obvious answer and the opinion I've held until now is that yes, poverty is an evil thing and I should do everything in my power to get rid of it.

My previous belief was that a "humane death" was good and that long painful deaths, where the animal is afraid and in pain for several minutes, are wrong, evil and unacceptable. What I discovered is that slow painful death, full of fear, is normal. It's not the exception to the rule it is the rule. Now just because something is common doesn't mean it is right, but this is more than common, it is the way of life. It is like saying carnivores are evil. I just can't accept that one of the fundamental workings of the world is evil. It was a foundation shifting understanding. It's not that I now think that slow painful death is good, in fact I avoid it with animals as much as possible, but I stopped thinking it was some kind of despicable evil.

The same is true of poverty. It is as natural as death itself. Can a deer live in poverty? No, it just lives. It's so natural that I don't think people even knew they were living in poverty. Standards change over time and are relative and if something is okay at one point in time, I can't understand how situations change and now it's evil, simply in and of itself. Is it possible that the way we live now will one day be considered horrible and unacceptable? I define a person living in poverty as someone who can not decide what kind of career they want to have, must spend the majority of their time addressing basic needs like getting food, shelter and water, having no option but to drink water that might kill them, no chance of knowing why you're sick or what to do about it, 1/3 of your children dying at a young age and a real chance that you could starve to death. This is true for all animals and I think has been true for humans for most of our existence.

The next question I asked is "If that's not evil, then what is?" My answer: "Rape, torture, greed, violence, allowing someone to starve to death." The difference is that all things that I consider evil are interactions between people. My argument is that evil can not exist outside of people, only within and between. There's nothing evil about someone starving to death. That doesn't mean it isn't a terrible experience for that person or extremely sad. There is something evil about allowing someone to starve to death.

Life and death are equal parts, just like joy and sorrow, pain and happiness.

What does this mean then? How does this understanding change the way I live my life? I don't know yet. It changes my motivations right now though. I no longer think of poverty being an evil that I'm seeking to extinguish.

Why would I want to stop poverty if it's not evil? Would I want to change places with someone living in poverty? No. There is something missing. I believe people should love each other. That means helping each other do the things we want to. If was living in poverty, I would want to change my situation and if someone else was able to help, then I would want them to. So then by "Doing for others what I would want them to do for me" I am helping people that are living in poverty.



What is the opposite of evil? Goodness is far to soft a word, so I will say Holiness. What is holy? Forgiveness, mercy, grace, love, peace, understanding, generosity. What should I do? Do good, be holy, love and serve others.

There is a time for everything and everything under the sun has a place. Hunger, pain, laughter, celebration, rest, work. What I'm finally understanding is that they are all equal and important parts of life. They are life! I have fallen in love with the most beautiful person in the world to me. If she died today it would be tragic, but I think that I would have lived more than if I avoided the pain by not ever meeting her. One day she will die and so will I, but it's all part of something, something bigger.

Ecclesiastes:

 There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:
 a time to be born and a time to die,
       a time to plant and a time to uproot,
  a time to kill and a time to heal,
       a time to tear down and a time to build,
  a time to weep and a time to laugh,
       a time to mourn and a time to dance,
  a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
       a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
  a time to search and a time to give up,
       a time to keep and a time to throw away,
  a time to tear and a time to mend,
       a time to be silent and a time to speak,
  a time to love and a time to hate,
       a time for war and a time for peace.
 What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of people; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live. That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will revere him.
 Whatever is has already been,
       and what will be has been before;
       and God will call the past to account.
 And I saw something else under the sun:
       In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
       in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
 I thought in my heart,
       "God will bring to judgment
       both the righteous and the wicked,
       for there will be a time for every activity,
       a time for every deed."
 I also thought, "As for people, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath ; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of people rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?"
 So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?

Norah 3

I guess the whole point of putting all this on facebook and my blog was to start a discussion about what should be done, by everyone, in general.

1. If people think I should do something, they should. There are literally millions of kids like Norah.

2.... If people then decide to do something what should they do? The first thing most people think of is getting a sponsor child, but I'm saying that's a bad idea and can actually do more harm than good.

3. You can't just throw money at things. Give your time first and foremost. Learn about development, read a book, talk to someone. It is possible to do damage with aid projects, so you have to think about the big picture and make sure you're doing the right thing.

A final note on Norah. I can guarantee that if I gave money to her family that it wouldn't be spent on school. If you gave money to a Canadian family that had trouble buying food and told them to save it until their child was in college, do you think they would? If I just gave money to the school it would probably be stolen by the staff. The truth is that there isn't much I can do to directly help Norah. I want to help her and that's why I'm living in Africa. I think what I'm doing now is the best thing that I can do. Helping working adults earn and keep an income so THEY can take care of their kids.

Norah is special so what I'm about to say is not to take that away. Her situation is not unique. I met a grandmother that is caring for 8 orphans. My neighbour has 2 orphans living with her. Generally, my neighbour's contract is ending soon so he rode his bicycle 110km round trip yesterday for a job interview. Not on pavement, but on dirt road. Not on a mountain bike but on a 1 speed heavy and slow bike. He left at 3am with no flashlight. He wanted to borrow money from me to take a taxi but we were sleeping and he didn't want to wake us up. Life is hard but people, smart people, work hard.

Farmer Behaviour

This is a spreadsheet I made on the main categories that influence how rural Zambians make decisions. It's pretty self explanatory, but feel free to ask questions.

Dollars, Kwacha and Eggs

I was talking with some friends about how much things cost. I would ask them how much something costs in Zambia and then they’d ask how much something costs in Canada. The bottom line is that in absolute value, most things cost more in Zambia and wages are lower.



I took the example of a Canadian accountant vs. a Zambian accountant buying eggs and gasoline



A Canadian doing the exact same job as a Zambian can buy a lot more of the same stuff than the Zambian. That sucks! Pretty unfair I think. People get paid less and stuff is more expensive!

Why do farmers want money NOW! And then spend it NOW!

The question is why are farmers basically willing to pay a fee to get money faster? Why are poor people willing to settle for less money if it comes sooner? Why would they make an irrational, and even stupid decision like that? The root cause is trust. Trust in each other, trust in the economy, trust in their own future. I think what they are buying is stability, predictability. You could want to get your money, put it in a bank and withdraw it later and buy some stuff bit by bit. If all things go as planned, you will have more than you would any other way. The problem is that plan A never works. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, or, put another way, $100 now is worth $150 in six months. You could be dead in 6 months, or someone else could die and you have to give their family money, or someone steals from you, or the price of copper drops, or any number of things happen, and then your future $150 becomes $50. So it’s better to just take what you can get while you can get it, yes it’s less, but it’s more than nothing. It’s like buying insurance for instability, but you get the settlement right away. You take your maize and sell it to the guy on the side of the road for 40 pin/bag instead of 65 pin/bag at FRA because FRA takes 6 months to pay, and after 6 months, a new guy is running the place and the old guy ran off with your money, and now you have no way of getting anything, meanwhile your idiot neighbor who sold to the guy on the side of the road, also doesn’t have money for inputs or mealie meal, but he has a swank radio that’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

The starving buffet. If you stop someone from eating for 2 days, but you tell them that on the third day you will take them to the best buffet dinner. Do you think they will put a reasonable amount of food, well portioned onto their plate? Would you? No! Instead you would fill up the plate with all the sugary and fatty foods you could find, because you earned it when you starved, and you want it and you can have it! That’s why I think people splurge when they first get paid, wasting valuable money for their futures.

Farmers are the same!

Farmers in Zambia are the same as farmers in Canada in many ways. Doing exactly what you should have done last year, instead of doing what you should do this year is an excellent example. Last year the cotton crop was big, as a result, the price was low/kg (~1,300 kwacha/kg). As a result, less people grew cotton this year, so the crop was smaller so the price is higher (~2,600kwacha/kg). Next year…lots of people will grow cotton, and I’m sure the price will be less again.

In my home province, the spring was late and cold last year. As a result, the farmers who planted early lost a lot of their crop to coldness and had to re-seed. This year nearly everyone waited to plant and then had a hard time getting the crop seeded in time. It’s like playing yesterdays lotto numbers, it doesn’t work.

What we should do

I attended a presentation at the University of Toronto by William Easterly. It was interesting because I had kind of forgotten about it until recently when I came to some of the same conclusions that he presented, but I didn’t understand. It was a few months ago so forgive me if I make some mistakes.

The main point is that we in the West can’t and shouldn’t come up with “the solution” to poverty. Here’s why:

If we did it would require us to be 3 things:

Omniscient, Paternalistic and Authoritarian.

Omniscient because we would have to literally know everything to come up with “the solution”. As it stands right now a lot of people in fact understand very little about the people and atmosphere they are trying to help and work in.

Paternalistic because if we did know “the solution” we couldn’t get Africans to come up with it themselves, we’d just have to hand it down, unchanged from on high and they’d have to just do what was prescribed.

Authoritarian because even if we had “the solution” and explained it perfectly, we would have to make sure that it was actually implemented as designed. The only way for that to happen is for us to completely oversee and force everyone to do exactly what we tell them.

Obviously from these three things, we can’t do the one we want to and shouldn’t do the ones we can. As a result, it kind of renders “the search for the solution” pointless.

Towards the end of his lecture, I and a number of other people got the same question. He already knew it and answered before we asked. “What the heck are we supposed to do then?”

Here’s where I can’t reliably remember what he said, but I’ll combine what I think with what I think he said. Make sense? We should avoid one thing and do one thing:
Don’t be destructive or obstructive! Don’t make unfair trade agreements, don’t dump unwanted food and clothes destroying local production, don’t plunder and destroy the planets resources, don’t poach all the doctors and nurses.

Be constructive! Share ideas, trade, be (responsible) tourists, work with and support.

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example of how I landed on this belief:
You know the saying don’t give a man a fish, teach a man to fish. Well there are 3 things wrong with that.

1. It assumes that you actually know how to fish
2. It assumes that you know how to teach someone to fish (very different!)
3. If he relied on you to teach him to fish, who will teach him to cook a fish? Make a fishing rod? Avoid overfishing? Hunt? Harvest?

It’s the reliance that is the problem. You can’t be a student and child your whole life. It doesn’t mean you stop learning when you stop being a student either.

So in the fishing example what is our role?

1. Don’t overfish. Don’t buy the fish at a low price and sell cooked meat at a premium. Don’t flood the market with cheap fish you caught and put all the fishermen out of business.

2. Share where the best fishing spots are and any tricks you have. Trade some fish he catches in exchange for some you catch. Invite him to come and try fishing like you do and go and try fishing like he does without explaining all the ways he’s “doing it wrong”.

I have White Power/Being white is being a celebrity

Imagine this scenario. You are driving home from work along the highway and see Brad Pitt walking along the side of the road. As you pass he looks at you wanting a ride. Would you give him a lift? Of course you would! Why? Why not! He’s not going to rob you, he’s rich so why would he want your money. Will he beat you up? No, he’s not a criminal, if he was you would know about it. Plus he’ll be really fun to talk to, he comes from a world of the rich and famous. If he won’t take you to that world at least he can tell you about it. If you had something you thought he’d like you’d give it to him without asking for money. And when the ride was over, you’d try to get his phone number in hopes that you could be friends.

I am Brad Pitt. I have this magical power, this “White Power” where I can do things that nobody else can do. I can borrow money, go into shops, use offices and many other things completely freely, because I am trusted, because I’m white. I can walk along the road and cars will pull over and give me a ride for free, even taxis! Almost everyone wants to be my friend, people stop and say hi to me when they would have ignored someone else. I get treated with so much respect and am always offered the best of whatever is available. Even other white people treat me differently than they would a black. They trust me more, believe what I tell them, invite me to their parties and homes. Why? Because I’m white. I’m rich and come from a world that most people would cut off their arm to get into.

Norah cont.

It's pretty likely that if nothing else changes she'll be married off shortly after hitting puberty. The next school year starts in Jan, but I won't be able to be here and take care of her until she's finished school, so I can't by myself make sure she goes to school.

I thought about maybe enrolling her in some kind of program, like World Vision or something like that. But if world vision is the best option, what am I doing with Engineers without Borders?

It... See More’s a really tough issue because the resounding sentiment is that child sponsorship programs are bad development. From what I've heard the two big reasons Child Sponsorship isn’t good are these:

a) It's extremely paternalistic and they portray a very negative view of Africa: That it is full of starving kids with distended bellies, flies all over them, just sitting on the ground waiting for someone from the Developed World to rescue them. This is not productive to what needs to happen in the interaction between the West and Africa. My friend wrote about this on his now famous blog

b) A development worker driving around taking picture of children, handing out soccer balls, delivering and sending correspondence letters, etc. has absolutely nothing to do with the development of either Africa or that child. Yet a good portion of their time is spent doing this. Worse still, the performance indicators for the staff in this system are written around these activities: How many soccer balls did you distribute? Do you have recent photos of all of the children you’re responsible for etc.

So if I have major problems with Child Sponsorship on a large scale, why do I want to do it on a small scale myself?

Child Sponsorship and NGO's in general:

The other major factor is that these organizations are often simply not that well run. As far as I can tell, BRAC (Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee) is one of the best run NGO’s in the world, just so I’m not being totally negative :)

Here is the crux of it all. There are two problems at the core of this:... See More

1. We, in the Western world don’t care. We honestly don’t. When there is a national election, how big of a factor is policy on international development? It isn’t. Because of that, our politicians don’t care about it, and worse yet they know nothing about it. Worse still, we , average Canadians know nothing and are thus completely unable to hold anyone accountable. Fred Crowell said something that rang too true to me. “How do you spell love? T-I-M-E. You spend your time on what you love. Do you say you love your family? How much time do you spend with them? Do you say you don’t love TV? How much time do you spend watching TV?” Do we love Africans? How much time have we spent learning about how to be effective in our contribution to them?

2. Which leads me to the next point. We suck at international development. If we didn’t we would have some kind of results for the money and decades we’ve spent trying. The key motivations and feedback systems are backwards, and this extends far beyond Child Sponsorship programs. Here’s a healthy feedback system:
I buy a TV from SuperStore. I take it home and it works for a short time and then breaks. I return it to SuperStore, yell at the customer care person and get my money back. SuperStore get’s 60% of their TV’s from that company returned so they stop buying TV’s from that company. The company loses lots of business because of low quality products and improves the quality from this point on.

This is actually three healthy feedback systems. Consumer, retailer and producer and they all work.

Here’s an unhealthy feedback system:
Canadians (individuals and politicians) give money to an international charity. Canadians don’t know what good development work is, so we ask things like “How many cents out of every dollar go to the Africans? Is this sustainable or will this project still be doing the same thing in 10 years?” The charity is run by people who have never lived in a village and thus understand very little about the problems they’re trying to solve. They also don’t trust their field staff so they give them a checklist of things to accomplish to make sure they’re using the money well. “How many training sessions did you run? How many men attended? How many women? How long did it take you to give out the soccer balls you received? Did you hand out all the flyers on HIV/AIDS?” The field staff give out flyers written in english to illiterate people, run training sessions that don’t actually train anyone, give out fertilizer and seeds as incentives, give out soccer balls and check off their list that everything has been completed on time and give it back to the charity. The charity compiles all of this into a fancy flyer with pie charts about how little money they spend on anything other than training sessions and soccer balls and give it to Canadians (individuals and politicians) and get more donations. Had they spent any money on monitoring the effectiveness of their training programs instead of the attendance, they would know that they need to change and how. The problem is that there is no motivation build into the system for them to do this.

The reason they don’t monitor the effectiveness is because it doesn’t matter in this feedback loop. We aren’t asking for it, we’re asking for cents/dollar spent in Africa. It’s also a lot more complicated to measure if you actually taught someone something than to measure how many people attended.

When I got to Zambia (a few months after Christmas) I read an article in the paper about the cattle that World Vision gave out as Christmas gifts. Most of them died because the people they were given to were too poor to afford vaccinations and medications. Of course World Vision doesn’t report this to Canadians, and aren’t motivated to measure this, in fact, it’s in their best interest not to know this, because then they don’t have to tell us and lose donations in the future.

I would much rather see 10cents/dollar spent well on development than 90cents/dollar spent ineffectively.

It's frustrating because we only want to help children. There's nothing wrong with wanting to help children, they are completely innocent, but at what point (or age) do we stop caring about people like Norah and want to help the younger ones?

Like I said before, there is nothing ... See Morewrong with wanting to help children, the problem is with focusing help at children instead of adults. Children don't do anything, they aren't the economic force of the country, they don't care for other people, they are just kids, as they should be! Parents, care for children, have jobs and are the group that return the most out of an investment (or donation).

If you want to help kids, help their parents, they're the ones most motivated to care for them and in the best position to do so.

All that being said, if there was one direct thing worth giving money to it's schools. It sucks to meet someone, a child, teenager, parent in their 20's or 30's that want to go to school/university but can't because of fees! (Quality) Education makes a massive difference in everyday decisions!

Norah

There is a family that lives across the road from us. A widow grandmother who has remarried, her husband and her two granddaughters 15 and 8 years old, both orphaned. They are poor. Very poor. Depending on the time of year, they might go the whole day without eating, and more likely, they will just eat once per day. I’ll talk about the youngest girl Nora (8). She doesn’t have shoes, her clothes are tattered and dirty (one pair of course), she doesn’t bathe regularly and is dirty. She has never been to school and looks like she never will. Her step grandfather probably doesn’t want the extra burden of caring for her and sometimes he beats her. Our neighbours told us she “fainted” once, i.e. was knocked unconscious. It’s just across the road from us and it’s one of the saddest things I know.



The reality of the situation is that this is Zambia. Our neighbours help her when they can, give her extra food, etc., but the everyday situation is that she seems like a pretty happy and normal little girl. She comes by almost every day, visits, laughing and playing, speaks Chewa to us, which we still mostly don’t understand and hangs out until we’re tired out and go inside. She seems happy and normal.

Our neighbour/good friend said she wishes that she could pay for her to go to school, but that she’s also poor. It costs 15,000 kwacha per term ($3.09)?

What do you think I should do?

Community vs. Capitalism

Coming to Zambia I was a sound socialist. This was my thinking. The rich should help the poor, because they can and because those that have more, have more responsibility. That poor people that were lazy were not poor because they were lazy, but were simply lazy and poor, just like lazy people that are rich aren’t rich because they’re lazy, but are just both. Now I’m not going to say my world has been turned on its head, but I will give an example.
I spoke to a couple good farmers (villagers farming by hand though) who volunteered their time to teach others to be better farmers. When I asked them why, they said that if they taught other people to grow more food, they would stop asking them for food. This makes sense, but the weight of this didn’t actually land on me until recently. These people don’t simply give away food, they give away the chance for themselves to buy cattle to plough more acres and grow more food, they give away their ability to afford fertilizer, they give away their children’s ability to attend school. Because of these beggars, who are legitimate, others at stuck in a cycle of poverty and can’t pull themselves up, and then help others. As far as I can tell, if everyone is poor, it’s really hard to get a foothold up.
This awesome culture of helping each other and always being there for each other that impressed my socks off when I first got here, could it actually be part of why people stay poor?? Should people just fend for themselves and then at least someone will be able to escape this poverty trap? Is capitalism the answer and was I wrong about this whole “give to the needy, if someone asks for something give to them without expecting repayment”?
I’ll give another example. There are people who earn ZMK1,000,000/year ($215), and then there is the hotel I’m stayed at in Lusaka that costs $280/night. There are weekend conferences in Lusaka for Zambians that cost ZMK 3,000,000 (ZMK4600=$1). People drive SUV’s in a country with $1.73/L gas. One tank of gas costs half a years wage for some people!!! I don’t think just taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people is a solution, but holy crap, something here doesn’t sit right with me.

The endangered and illusive “Income generation”

I was thinking about income generating opportunities, but I’m not sure if it really exists. Does income generation exist or is there just income re-distribution? An example is “Cotton Made in Africa”. Does that just steal profits from cotton farmers in India or China? Side note, Cotton farmers here suck in comparison to cotton farmers in China and India, well maybe the farmers don’t suck, but the yields suck, and they are capable of getting much higher yields, even double.

If you try to start an income generating activity in a village where people don’t have any spare cash, where is the opportunity to make money? If 1 poor person grows tomatoes and sells them to another poor person, how does that generate income? You have to look outside the village. If you try to start income generation in a country that doesn’t have much spare cash, do you have to look to exporting to other countries and if so, is it not just income redistribution then? I guess what I’m asking is if you closed all the borders to a poor community or country, could they generate income on their own? I have no idea. I understand things by seeing examples, so I tried to think about how developed countries have developed, and it seems like it has been more of an income taking venture than generating one, but I’m no expert, so I’d love to see an example of how a developed country developed without taking from someone else’s capital. I look at countries in the Americas, where the original inhabitants were killed by disease and Europeans and a huge amount of fertile land and new crop and animal species were inherited. Then to top it off, slaves were taken from Africa and forced to generate income for owners. I look at Britain, which controlled the oceans and thus trade, and made a fortune basically as a middle man.

These are my understandings, but I could be wrong about any or all of them and would like to know.

I just don’t understand what a completely developed world would look like? Would we in Canada still be able to buy t-shirts for $8 and bananas shipped from Ecuador for $0.6/kg? Is the reason we have developed because we have stolen from and ridden so many other groups of people to the top? I guess another question is, “what would Canada look like without developing countries?” I don’t have a clue. If Zambia is to develop, is it possible to do that without bringing down another country, developed or not, like Canada or India.

In Zambia, people speak English. What I mean is they use the same words we use, however they don’t always have the same meaning. Ex. I’m reading a report on a crop which reads:

Dec.	Good
Jan	Poor
Feb	Better
March	At least

I asked “What does ‘At least’ actually mean?” To which someone replied

“It means it’s better than okay, but not very okay”.

I laughed in my head, because of course, there is no such thing as “very okay” in Canadian English, it’s like saying “very sort of!” I explained all this and my friend said “OH!!! That makes sense, because we were watching BBC news and they said ‘At least 200,000 people died in the Haiti earthquake’. (which translates to ‘it wasn’t that bad, thankfully only 200,000 people died’) We were saying that 200,000 people is a lot and the news lady should acknowledge that and say that 200,000 is a lot and not at least!”

A quote from my favourite comedian, Demetri Martin:

“Sort of is such a fluff word. It has no meaning, it doesn’t add anything to a sentence, it doesn’t change the meaning at all… Unless you say it at the end of very definite things, like :

“It’s a boy!”

Or, “You're going to live”

Background on me and my placement

I arrived in Toronto for pre-departure training at the end of January and touched down in Lusaka international airport in Zambia on March 3. I am on my first placement, living in Katete, Eastern Province with my wife. She is an awesome nurse working at an awesome local hospital. I am working with a mobile finance company and a cotton company, both private, for profit companies, not NGO's.

The mobile finance company is basically an online bank account, but with MUCH cheaper fees than a regular bank and you can access it through your mobile phone. They also do money transfers like Western Union, but again, at a much cheaper rate. They have agents, who are often stores that are agents as well, not solely agents, in most cities in Zambia that you can go to do to deposit, withdraw and send money.

The cotton company does out grower programs (they give seeds and fertilizer on loan at the start of the year and then buy back the cotton at the end of the year and deduct the loan from their payments when they buy. Buying cotton is very competitive, the main competition here being Cargill (I think it's the largest private company in the world, look it up).

Last week we just started buying cotton. The payment system in complicated and costly. Long story short, within a few days of buying the cotton they drive a vehicle with lots of cash with a paper list of farmers that should get money and then give the farmers all their money in cash, which the farmers then spend and stash in their house. The hope is that (and this is a pilot program) some farmers will be paid onto their new mobile accounts the day their cotton is sold, saving the cotton company time, money and confusion all the while saving the farmer time and giving them a bank account.

My role is collecting info so that we can set this up so that it can succeed, as well as "capture learning" (figure out what mistakes were made so that next year it's better), and do some gap filling, capacity building, learn the local language Chewa (CHAY-wa), the small task of understanding rural Zambian culture, make friends, support my wife, capture learning for EWB, blah blah blah.

Funny story, Steph and I went for dinner with 2 bwanas (bosses) from the cotton company and the next day a guy from work said "Who was your friend last night? He came to dinner with you". I was confused, "do you mean one of the bosses?"

"No the other one, I don't know his name, but he came with you"
me "No idea who you're talking about"
After about 2 really awkward minutes of this, I realized the "he" was Steph, my wife, or Steve as she's better known here.

Steve and I along with 5 other white women, including a 6ft. tall blond Norwegian (quite a sight to see us all together) hiked the big hill overlooking our tiny town. From the top we saw what at first appeared to be fairies, just like tinkerbell, then after some more sightings we thought they might just be beautiful locusts, they looked like 5 inch grasshoppers with big bright wings. The wings were a mix of blue, yellow, orange, purple and red, with nice little circles. REALLY beautiful. We ended up deciding they must be fairies.

Cotton subsidies

I was going to say "Things are frustrating here." but decided that it would be more accurate if I just said "Life is frustrating". I could probably start every post like this. This time, the reason I’m frustrated is for two reasons.

1. Farmers here want more money, but they want it the (semi) easy way. They way they want money is with higher prices for their crops. So they just ask why the cotton company doesn’t give a higher price for cotton, or why they don’t give bonus’. They turn a deaf ear when you start talking about global cotton prices or the value of the kwacha and just reply "I don't care. I just need more money to live". This is pretty normal. I’ve heard countless farmers in Canada complain about the price of feed, beef, grain. But you can’t just ask the buyer to give you more money, that’s too easy, you have to be creative. What the cotton company offers is a YIELD program, each letter stands for something, but it’s basically a program that teaches it’s farmers better practices so they can have higher yields. Here, it is more realistic to double yields than it is to double the buying price. Yields here average 700kgs/hectare, but good farming can yield 1400kg/ha. I’ve heard of farmers getting anywhere from 200-1700kg/ha, so yields vary widely and it's not just because of weather.

2. The second thing I’m frustrated about is farming subsidies…Correct me if I’m wrong, but American cotton farmers get an average of $80,000/person per year in subsidies!!!! That is the yearly income of 200 peasant farmers here! Try explaining that to farmers here. "The reason the cotton company doesn’t give a high price for cotton to you isn’t because they don’t want to, but there are farmers getting so much money from the government in other parts of the world that they can afford to sell their crops for such low prices, and you have to compete with them because cotton is a globally traded commodity".

So, farmers that are reading this, or anyone else. What do you think about farm subsidies? Should we cut them? Why shouldn’t we?

The drive home

I went to a field day in Msoro and was expecting it to be just like any other field day. Leave here around 10am, couple hours in the field, have lunch and be back around 3 or 4 pm. I should have known it would be different when 15 people got into a 3 passenger mini truck which was already partly loaded with cotton supplies…The drive was 2hours and 45 minutes one way. The “road” which started as a bumpy dirt road, degraded into what in Canada would be considered an “unmaintained hiking trail”. It was wickedly eroded in places, the elephant grass nearly closed the road and there was a constant danger of being hit by low hanging branches or falling out of the back of our sardine packed truck box. Regardless, we arrived with only stiff joints. Realizing that once we arrived, we were only half way because we had to return, I was prepared for more of the same. What I was not prepared for was rain!


The journey home started with an hour walk because our driver was still distributing picking sacks for the farmers. Once he got us we all packed into the truck we set off. After a while the thunder started and then the rain, tropical rain. We pulled over at the local office and waited for about 45 minutes for the rain to stop, which it didn’t, so we put all our phones and money and bags in the cab and started off again. At least this time we put some old bags of cotton in the back to sit on so we could be comfortable. I thought if I just get wet, it won’t be that bad, I was right, if I just get wet. The problem you see is with elephant grass, it’s about 8 ft. tall and when it gets wet it leans…onto the road. So as I sat in the back of the truck, driving 30-40km/hr, raining, soaking wet elephant grass was slapping me in the face, dropping whatever insects it had on me. At that point I thought, if this is all it is, then I’ll be just okay. I put my arm in front of my face to block the grass and just lay there laughing. I told everyone it would be a great memory of Africa for me that I won’t forget. The other men in the truck said “We’re sitting here suffering and you’re laughing making memories!” and for the rest of the ride home that was the case. After about 2 hours the rain stopped and the sky cleared and the stars were so bright, that it ended up being a nice ride. Oh did I mention we saw some park rangers bringing a dead hippo to the chief so that he could distribute it? Well we did. See the picture below.


It was pretty neat. There is so much myth and wives tales. They said that before you eat hippo you must put the blood on your hand and then let it sit for 5 minutes. After you remove the blood if your hand remains red, you are not worthy to eat the hippo. After some digging I found out the red that remains is a rash, and apparently some people are allergic, so it’s actually an allergy test! We were about 30 km from South Luangwa National Park. One of the top game parks on the continent! Look it up. There was an old park ranger in the truck telling stories about pretty much everything, what animals are used for what witchcraft, what prices you can get for them, how to catch them, and all sorts of other interesting stuff. The way people talk is quite funny, they will mix Chewa (the local language) and English, so you could hear “And of course you take the meat and (continues in chewa)”.

So at the end of the day, the ride home was awesome, I arrived soaking wet, freezing, happy, and was alright with the insects. But…During the night…I woke up scratching and itching. In the morning, well, have a look at the picture.


The following night the itching was so intense that Steph was up with me for hours trying to stop me from scratching my skin off. I was asking her to just take her needle and stab me with it if I couldn’t scratch. Anyways, it’s about a week later and I’m mostly healed up, but it was a tough week. This is a self diagnosis, so remember that, but steph has a book on tropical medicine that she keeps next to the bed. She tells me it’s to keep the mosquito net away from the edge of the bed, but I think it’s actually there to give me nightmares. Reading about parasitic worms and how they travel through the blood and lungs and up your throat and back down to get swallowed! BLAH! So, I diagnosed myself with Chiggers. The book had stuff of lice and mites and chiggers, and I think it was them, plus it’s a fun word to say. Chiggers are the larvae of mites that go to the end of grass and wait for passing mammals. Then they bite and fall off or are washed off. Oh and I have worms for sure now, because I was swimming in Cape McClear or Monkey Bay, which is the schisto (I think that’s what they’re called) worm capital of Lake Malawi. They’re the worms transmitted by snails, and there were lots of snails. Also there was good stuff about the lake, bueatiful water, beaches and cichlids (I think that’s what they’re called, beautiful bright tropical fish in Lake Malawi).

I never know how to end this, and it kind of degraded from single story to listing what parasites I think I have, but either way, I hope it’s interesting.
Oh, I forgot. Something funny about Zambians. They can’t say Steph’s name, and they freely interchange he and she. So I have heard “Your wife, his name is Steve?” to which I reply, “Yes, her name is Steph” which doesn’t clear the issue up one bit!
Zambians also freely interchange R and L so I heard that they have “Lobots” in Chipata, so I asked again and thought I heard “Rowboats”, so I asked again and thought I heard “Robots”. Which of these do you think is the correct answer? It’s Robots. So then I was looking for these ‘robots’ which were near “clossloads” (=crossroads). It turns out that they call traffic lights robots!

Here are a few more pictures: our bedroom, kitchen and home...so take a look!

Another update

Hello again everyone!

Thank you so much for the replies, it's nice to get even a one sentence reply! This is about our first week in Zambia, it took me longer to write this, so you're getting this a little late. I hope you all had a great Easter!

Steph and I spend a week staying with families in a village. It was… AWESOME. Actually, it was just intense. I don’t want to sound cliché saying that staying in a rural African village was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done in my life and every person there is the best person I’ve ever met. That being said, it really was a wonderful week. Lusaka has lots of great things, 99.99% of people are great and just want to meet you and be your friend, but it’s also noisy, dirty, smelly and some people are trying to steal from you (I got pick pocketed for the first time, only about $15 though). So to go from that to a small village was nice. You probably could drop money on the ground there and people would collect it and walk 10km to give it to you, then cook you food and try to serve it to you while you sat in the best chair. I’m hardly exaggerating. We went to church on Sunday and then entire 1.5hr service was translated to English solely for the two of us. We were brought to the front and sat in chairs off to the side and asked to stand and say some words to the congregation. At home they would give us the best chair in the nicest spot to sit, bring water, give HUGE quantities of food and do pretty much everything for you unless you really insisted on helping out.

Steph and I stayed separately with two families in a village. People there are from the Tonga tribe. It is near Pemba, 3 hours southeast of Lusaka. It’s a village in a loose sense, it’s not a close collaboration of houses, but rather an area, that has houses and about 200 people. There are families spread out evenly over maybe a 14sq. km area (I’m guessing) and as far as I could understand, the sparse population just continues throughout Zambia. The family I stayed with was a 73 year old man, named Silas Muzuma, he is the village head man. He has two wives and many dependants (about 30 people are his household). He has a Sr. wife and a Jr. wife, and they rank accordingly in family affairs. He is the capstone to the lives of so many people. The mother of his Sr. wife lives there, some of his children, their children, his nephews, and other extended family. An example is that his wife’s nephew died so he brought the wife and child of that man to live with him. There were 2 little boys about 2 years old. One would giggle and want me to chase him, so I did, but the other little boy was with him and ran away crying in Tonga “The white man, he wants to beat me!” It took me all week to convince them that I didn’t want to hurt them...

There were about 7 houses in a 150m x 150m area that comprise his household. He has had 3 wives, 1 died. Of those 3 wives he has had 30 children, 20 have survived so far. Their houses are built with brick and have a tin roof and dirt floor (the nicest houses in the village). When he was a boy he said they just had stick houses with mud between the cracks in the sticks and grass thatched roofs and people wore animal skin clothes. He said back then the roofs had to be strong because sometimes lions would jump on the roof and try to get in, but if you put strong sticks, while the lion was separating the sticks, you could stab it through the cracks! There is no electricity there, and the drinking water comes from a borehole about 500m away.

It is beautiful there. At night the stars are so amazingly bright, there is even a spot that is a cloud of stars, it just looks like dust. One of my favourite things to do was to go outside at night and watch the stars. The temperature was ideal, perfectly comfortable and there were zero mosquitoes. Wherever there aren’t houses it is either “bush”( wild area with trees and bushes) or crops.

Most crops were on plots about 1 acre in size or less. They grew peanuts, corn, pumpkin, tomatoes, varieties of beans, oranges, mangoes, guavas, okra, lemons, squash, sweet potatoes, cassava. Until recently most people only grew corn, but NGO’s have been promoting crop diversification as a means of adding stability to farms. The main problems to growing more now are that farmers need capital and knowledge. The two families that Steph and I stayed with were model farmers who voluntarily teach other farmers proper techniques. Aside from production is the much more important challenge of access to markets. They are being taught to treat farming as a business, not a way of life (i.e. you don’t just grow food to eat and give away to hungry relatives, but measure the inputs and outpouts and sell your crop as a product), but if you can’t sell your product, it’s not much of a business. I don’t know how they will overcome this.

The main purpose for this week long visit was to develop a friendship with rural smallholder farmers (farmers with small farms 2-8 hectares) and understand their lives and some of the challenges they face. It was an easy purpose. People were so kind to us, and always wanted to chat, give food and shake hands, or hold hands (today I went for a 5 minute walk holding hands with another man, it’s common here, even interlocking fingers!).

Here are some wonderful and funny things people do here. Men hold hands. People freely interchange he and she “Steph asked me, well he told me, to bring you here”. People asked if steph and I were from the same tribe in Canada. I was asked if I took a plane of bus here from Canada. Women will breastfeed at any time, even while working in the fields without slowing down(the babies are tied to their backs or sides with cloth). People dress so well, suits and all, bathe often and really take care of themselves. People laugh and are genuinely kind. Even during a meeting people are laughing as they explain things. People care about family and will always help each other, always.

Quick disclaimer: I am making generalizations based on the things I have seen so far and realize that, so I ask that you accept them as generalized observations at this point and nothing more. People are people, some are lazy, some work hard, some are smart and kind, some are not, some are funny, some are hilarious, just like anywhere else.

I was trying to understand poverty and what it meant for these people. They are well fed (I ate so much more than I thought possible), there is clean drinking water 500m away, they all seemed quite happy, the children played, ran and laughed nearly all day, there is a secondary school 500m away and there was a clinic that had free medication. I asked Mr. Muzuma what he wanted. Electricity? Yes. tv? Yes. Car? Yes. Computer? Yes. I explained that in Canada, when people get those things, they aren’t any happier, they just want the next thing better, bigger tv, newer nicer car, bigger house, etc. Mr. Muzuma answered me very honestly. He said “Yes, it is true. The bible says you can never satisfy the heart. Me, when I married my first wife, I was happy, but after some time I saw another woman and thought that I would be happier if I married her, and was then no longer happier with my current wife. Then I married the other woman and soon wanted another, but said ‘no, you will never be satisfied.’ So it is true, the heart cannot be satisfied, but there is a basic level of living that is required for human beings so that you are not living like animals.”

I agree.

Although many things are good, many are bad, and his family is better off than others. Many do go hungry, there is even a season called “the hunger season” and people may eat only one meal a day or even one every few days. I guess I will take this space to write about some of the bad things now. Life is a lot of work, especially for the women. I really mean that. No one could work harder than they do. There is a long way to go in gender equality. That’s the politically correct way to put it, but suffice to say that life isn’t fair. I’ll leave it there for now. Everything is done by hand, all the farming, fetching water, laundry, everything is people powered. The high school is understaffed, as is the clinic, which doesn’t have any doctors, just one nurse. Even if you are really smart and do well in school, many many people can’t afford school fees (about $800/year for university and less for secondary). School is free until gr.7 so many people just make it that far, or finish high school but can’t afford university. The farther you get away from the road, the worse everything gets. People die. Lots of people die. On Friday the sister of the man Steph stayed with died during childbirth. The morning we left I awoke to screaming and crying, I now understand the term wailing, because our neighbor family 200m away lost their 2 year old boy during the night, probably to an easily preventable illness. After our families said their goodbyes they went to attend his funeral, and we took a luxury bus back to Lusaka.

So I agree, that there is a minimum standard of living that is required, which includes physical things like food, shelter, medical care, but also opportunities, like to go to school, university, and at least have a shot at the career you want to have. There are some interesting things about the rural Zambians I’ve met. (I’m going to make some big generalizations but it’s what I’m thinking now so I’m going to share it). They are innocent of so many things that we in the developed world are guilty of. They are so humble and willing to learn. They are not lazy, materialistic, or proud. Their government has not invaded and oppressed another country or group of people. They do not have trade regulations that keep countries poor. They have not destroyed the global environment. They are generous. They have not turned a blind eye to the poor or lavished themselves with ridiculous luxuries. Why? Are they just better people than we are at the core? I don’t think so. People are people. I think they are like this largely because of their situation. I just hope that as their situation changes, they remain the same in all these great ways.

Ben

p.s. My Zambia name, given by trail and error, is Benson Tembo. That's the most common response I get when I say Ben Campbell