May 24th - Impressions and similarities

So here I am! Zambia! I have been here a week now, in the capital Lusaka, and am figuring my way around the city and the culture. So what is Africa like? Even though I’ve been to other developing countries, I still was not sure what to expect from Africa. To my surprise, it is just like India, or Pakistan, or even Malaysia or the Middle East. The cities are developed – in a non-Western way – and the rural areas are still lively and bustling with markets and trades. People live; it is not all desolate as World Vision or Unicef ads would have you believe (although some live like that, just as some live on the streets in Canada too). Here in Lusaka, people dress in North American-type clothing, they go to work or school from Monday to Friday, they go to church on Sunday. There are shops and restaurants, overcrowded roads with cars, trucks, and buses, and kids playing along the streets. It is not so different from home.

The details, of course, are different. The roads can be quite bad, especially inside some of the neighbourhoods, where it can be like the worst rutted road you have ever experienced, times five, with humps and drops one after the other, sometimes a foot or two down – so much that you wonder how any car can get through. But they do. The air quality is poor, with vehicles shooting out black exhaust that catches your breath as you walk by. The ground is not grass – except along fancy hotels, government buildings or wealthy private businesses. Instead it is a sort of dirt, but of a fine powder almost like sand but without the grittiness, and it is red. And it is everywhere, since sidewalks do not exist in most places. It blows around in the wind, it coats your shoes as you walk – it is a part of the life here. I’m sure it will be all-encompassing in the rural areas. Side roads and paths have potholes filled in with broken bits of cement or brick, in a wonderfully haphazard way. It all adds to the chaos of life here and elsewhere that I love, the unpredictability and ingenuity that comes when people have to make do with what is available.

The biggest difference here in Zambia is that there are people everywhere! The main roads are always overfilled with loaded cars and overloaded minibuses and people walking everywhere, and carrying everything. The market – very similar to marketplaces in other non-European countries – is a rush. Some outdoors and some indoors, the stalls may or may not have wooden frames (cement walls for indoor markets), may or may not have sheets or grass walls separating them, and consist of closet-sized boxes all lined up in a row, open at the front with a hawker calling out to passers-by, sometimes with their wares spread out or heaped up on cardboard sheets on the ground in front. You can buy everything at the market: new clothes, second-hand clothes from N. Am., old shoes, DVDs, dodgy electronics like radios and power bars, belts, fruit and peanuts (here called groundnuts), and whatever else you desire. Men without stalls go around carrying their wares, handfuls of lollipops or kids’ trinkets, plastic shopping bags, sunglasses, watches, or cologne. It is just like Pakistan! The women are amazing, carrying huge baskets of bananas, sweet potatoes, homemade meats, or the like on their heads as they walk, as well as small children up to about three years old in a sling on their backs. Intermixed with all of this are the finely dressed people, a few drunks, and heaps of ordinary shoppers; there are usually no muzungus (white people or foreigners) at the market. Instead, the muzungus are all out shopping at the sanitary air-conditioned department grocery stores – yuck. I love the chaos of the market, but it can get stressful with the bartering, the staring, and constantly wondering how much you are being overcharged.

One thing that has been different for me here is that there is no way for me to go unnoticed or to blend in. Everyone sees the muzungu coming from a mile away, the same as you would notice a 7ft person in a crowd. Of course, this has made it very difficult to take photos discreetly. Elsewhere, either by dress or tanned skin, I have managed to slip in under the wire a little more, but not here. And with the low numbers of muzungus around, I am feeling so conspicuous that I truly know what it feels like to be an obvious minority.

And yet, most of the time I feel welcomed. Many people greet me on the street, and those that do not, still respond well to my greeting. People are very friendly and warm here, and even though I will be the only muzungu in my village – wow – I think I will be even more welcomed, just as it is in the rural areas back home in Canada.

A long first post from Zambia, but there is so much to describe. After Tuesday I will not have any electricity or internet for a month – but still cell phone service! for as long as my phone battery lasts – but new blog posts will still come up since I will post-date them here from Lusaka. I will receive all comments and emails at the end of June, and hope to hear from you then!

May 17th – London, England

So I am –t—h—i—s— close to being in Africa! After an intensive week of pre-departure training with National Office staff in Toronto, our group of 10 headed off to London on the evening of Thursday the 15th. While eight of the group continued on from London to Lusaka (Zambia) through Nairobi, two of us (Olivia and I) decided to have an extended stay in London! Actually, what happened was that Olivia got quite sick on the plane over the Atlantic, and remained sick throughout our 8-hour layover at Heathrow, such that she was nauseous and vomiting for something like 12 hours and she was not granted clearance to fly by the airline. The Heathrow medics decided that she should be admitted to hospital to be rehydrated and given a dosage of anti-nausea, so I remained with her after sorting our flights for the following day and advising the rest of our group.

Olivia is fully recuperated now, and on the plus side, we got to ride in a UK ambulance, experience the UK National Health Service (5-hour wait in the emergency ward), stay overnight in a hotel and deal with our jetlag with a 12-hour sleep and a hot shower. As well, I took a long walk around the neighbourhood surrounding the hospital while Olivia slept. I found a nice natural area to enjoy with everything so lush and green and the flowers on the trees all smelling so good. The act of actually leaving the airport and interacting with more of British culture helped my brain to sort out that I *was* away from home, since I was in a weird state from being in Pearson airport in Toronto, then onto a closed-in airplane without a window, and then directly into Heathrow airport in London without any real recognizable differences. The accents had changed but since I hadn’t *seen* myself travel (i.e. actually seen us lift off from the ground or land somewhere new) it had not felt like we were in a different place, or country for that matter. Somehow, I don’t think that it will be possible to not notice differences in the Nairobi airport…
Next blog – in Zambia!!

May 17th - pre-departure training, Toronto

My first blog! I will give a quick intro for anyone who is not familiar with what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. Since I’ve been studying International Development at University of Calgary for the last year (similar to humanitarian work, but more focused on building and empowering the less fortunate), I hooked up with an organization called Engineers without Borders (EWB) who work overseas in four African countries doing just that. I applied and was selected to be part of their team going to Zambia this summer, so I will be there from May through to the end of August 2008. For the ten of us going to Zambia, we are separated and partnered with local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) who work on local development projects in either the Water and Sanitation sector or the Agriculture sector.

I have been partnered with OPPAZ (Organic Producers and Processors Association of Zambia) which acts as an umbrella organization for small-scale organic farmers, meaning that they pool farmers and farmer collectives (such as co-ops) and provide resources and connections for them. My position with OPPAZ is to conduct a baseline survey for them this summer, which will have me traveling to two villages in two provinces (Petauke in Eastern province and Kasama in Northern province) where I will be working with members of OPPAZ and looking at how they utilize OPPAZ, advising them on what they have access to, checking in on what they need from OPPAZ, and measuring the effectiveness in the area. It falls into the monitoring and evaluation work that EWBers also perform for our partner organizations, in order to assist them in becoming even more effective in their development work and business. I will be alternating my time in the field with time at the head office in the capital, Lusaka, to write reports on the data I have collected, so my schedule has me spending one month in Petauke, then a week or two in Lusaka, then a month in Kasama, and the last week or two in Lusaka again.

The cool thing about the EWB placement is that the emphasis is on cultural immersion in order to make us the most effective. This means no 5-star hotels or white land cruisers! We stay with local families in their modest homes – which can mean mud-walled homes in some cases – and we share their meals, all of their accommodations (cup showers and latrines included), and become a part of their family during our stay there. With my placement having me move so often, I won’t be able to bond strongly with one family all summer like some of my other colleagues, but I will be able to compare different families and lifestyles in all of my different accommodations.

So that’s me this summer. I expect to put up lots of cool pictures with my blogs, but internet access may be limited so potentially only once a month. I will have a cell phone once in Zambia, and the phone number will be posted here on the blog, so please feel free to call me! It is VERY expensive for me to call Canada, but calls from Canada to Zambia can be as low as 13 cents a minute, so it is easy for people to call me! I can take calls in the evening (Zambian time): I will be 8 hours ahead of Alberta and Saskatchewan time, and 7 hours ahead of Manitoba time. Rather than use phone companies, the cheapest phone cards to call Zambia can be found on the internet (just Google it), but remember that you need a specific card to call Zambian CELL phones (different than land-lines). The card that Kent has is only 13 cents a minute to Zambia cell phones (Nobelcom.com), so not too bad. Contrary to what you would expect, I will probably have good cell service no matter where I am in the country. I would love to hear from people throughout the summer, so don’t be afraid to call!