March Blog Entry

It seems like the intervals between my blog entries are getting longer and longer. Probably the slowness of a slow town is starting to catch up to me. Suffice it to say, I do have plenty to write about, as usual. So let’s just get right into it.

WHERE AM I AND WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

Looking back at my past blog entry, I realize that I’ve gone through some recognizable phases of adaptation already in the few months that I’ve been living in the small isolated town of Mwinilunga.

The first 3-4 weeks were basically shock. Imagine, my first time living in anything smaller than a city, let alone a tiny isolated rural town in Africa. During that period I kept asking myself, what am I doing here? Why am I here? I could be back home living a comfortable life with my friends and family; a life that I know and that is mine. I felt like I was floating; a foreign character who doesn’t belong to the strange setting that makes up the temporary background of his life. Being the only foreigner in town and being stared at regularly doesn’t help either.

After that initial shock period, I really started to warm up to the place, and I started to recognize certain changes in me that I embraced. The idea of living one’s values is special, and it’s hard to do in the west, unless you value money and material possession above all else. If you value community, generosity, laughter, and simplicity, then small-town Zambia is the place to be. I was never alone, and everybody wanted to be my friend. Granted, no one could really relate to me or my situation, but still, I had become a part of a community. I had made friends, I could joke around with people and share stories. At work, I got along well with the guys, and after work, I could hang out with Joshua and Simeon, my roommates, and spend some time with the young boys living at home. Mostly, I embraced the simplicity of my life and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like a selfish prick. I thought about others regularly. I wanted to stay in Mwinilunga for a long time, and continue to live the values that I wanted to live.

As peachy as the last paragraph sounds, it wasn’t to last. At this point, to be frank, the values that I live have become a part of my day to day. I still appreciate them, but they don’t have that shiny special veneer they did a month ago. And glaring cracks in the community have permeated into my own life. How do you help people that won’t help themselves? And if I’m not helping anybody, then why am I here?

My roommate Joshua is probably the perfect embodiment of what I’m talking about. He’s an amazing individual, and I believe that he truly loves me as a brother. He would do anything for me, and I can’t say that for many people in this world, let alone a poor Zambian guy who I’ve known for 2 months. But Joshua is ruining his life before he’s even given it a chance. I sadly came to the realization a few weeks ago that Joshua is an alcoholic. He’s an alcoholic with no money to buy alcohol, but with plenty of friends to buy it for him, including me at one point. Joshua has a few dependants he says, and his parents are also piss-poor, so they could really use his help. He has a rare opportunity that many people here don’t get. Joshua was fortunate enough to be taken in by a mission when he was younger where he was looked after and put through high school. Then a Dutch couple who were once visiting the mission sponsored his college certificate as an automotive technician. Now Joshua is working at the same place I’m working, Forest Fruits. Everyone likes him, including me. And Forest Fruits is the type of company where if you show initiative and work hard, there are opportunities to better yourself through loans and school sponsorship. But Joshua doesn’t take advantage of any of this. I told him I would help him budget the little money he makes so that he could try and save something and try to start some small business ventures to get ahead. He makes about $100/month. I don’t even know how you budget that in a place that’s frankly, expensive. Anyways, when Joshua got paid a few days ago, the first thing he did was go straight to the bar. The next day he went straight to the bar. I used to give Joshua money sometimes, but when I realized about his habit, I stopped.

So what now? I have a month left in Mwinilunga. All I can do is try and sit down with Joshua and try and make him realize he’s pissing away his life when he has so much more than most people will ever have, and hope for the best. I will do what I can, but at the end of the day, I feel that until he realizes this for himself, nothing will change. And it’s not just Joshua. The kids in my house too. They are the dependants of Simeon, my other roommate. There’s 3 boys in the house, not that young, the youngest is 16 or 17. Simeon is supposed to look after them, and he does when he’s around, by buying food. But he’s often not around, he might go for a week or two stretch away from Mwinilunga for work. When that was happening I ended up buying food for all of us, since Joshua never has money. I was more or less okay with this for a while, until last week when I realized the boys had stolen some things from my room and gone through my stuff. It was nothing big, but enough to annoy the hell out of me. I was pissed off. I had done a few things for them to make life at home more comfortable and this is how they repay me? Well, anger was my initial reaction, but really, it’s not anger that I feel as much as sadness and disappointment, not just in the people I live with, but in the whole town. I see so many young people piss away their lives with alcohol and sex and stupid behavior. Not too long ago, I saw a person passed out by the roadside, in front of a bus. Because there’s no streetlights, you couldn’t have even noticed him unless you stumbled into him. Let me remind you he was in front of a bus. The next week I saw the same thing, but a different person. People do ask me for things in town sometimes, since I’m foreign and they think I have money. But what they ask for isn’t knowledge, or school sponsorship, or food for their family. It’s always alcohol. What a waste.

So that’s where I’m at now. Sounds bad doesn’t it? I’m frustrated with this place. I’m lonely. No one understands me. If I tried to explain certain things to anyone in this town, they’d look at me perplexed. It’s not their fault, it’s just the way it is. But despite all of the flaws of this place, the lesson has come through loud and clear. Poverty is not really what you see on TV, of skeleton-framed African children with flies buzzing around them. Poverty is what I see in this town. It’s alcoholism, ignorance, unprotected sex, and an inability to see past today. As Chiko said to me once, “poverty is not about what’s in your wallet, it’s about what’s in your mind”.

There’s a guy that lives in the small servant quarters behind my house. He lives there with his wife, and his name is Crispin. He’s also Chris’ house-maid. Crispin recently impregnated a woman (other than his wife). He just told his wife about it 2 days ago. The same day she found out she drank sulfuric acid. Luckily it wasn’t terribly potent, and she’ll survive. Apparently this kind of thing happens here all the time. Crispin says that once she’s out of the hospital he’s going to divorce her. Not sure if it’s true or not, but still a pretty dark thing to say.

So things aren’t great right now, but I know this feeling is also part of the journey, and it may be the most important part. And I know that it will pass. And I do take solace in looking at some of the guys in the factory like Chiko, Evans, and Chris, who have worked hard, and have gotten ahead. I know it’s possible, but you really do have to be smart, work your ass off, and have some luck. If this were Canada, you’d just have to work your ass off.

I’ve got about 5.5 weeks left in Mwinilunga and then I’m off to Lusaka, where my life will change dramatically. I’m happy to be soaking up not just the good, but also the bad.

WHAT IS DEVELOPMENT?

This is a question I’ve been grappling with for some time now. I often ask myself what it means to be developed. Does it mean to have a TV, and frozen food, and a big house, and a flush toilet? Does it mean to have healthcare, education, running water, and security? Or does it mean having a community that will take care of you and a deep sense of spirituality? Does it mean being able to depend on others, but also having others depend on you, for your whole life?

I have a theory. If you have a scale of development, where “developed” was in the middle, and Zambia (and other such countries) were on one side, the “under-developed” side, then where would Canada be, and other western countries for that matter? Would it be right in the middle of the scale, on “developed”? Or would it be on the other end of the scale, opposite of where Zambia is? And if it’s sitting on the other end of the scale, then what would it be called? Certainly not “developed” right? Maybe “over-developed”…? Think about that. What does that mean to you?

What makes a country “developed” anyways? In my opinion, it’s when everyone has the basics. Healthcare, education, clean water, security, equal rights, etc. are the basics. These are things that many developing countries are striving for, at least for their poor. But these are all fairly tangible, material things. What about the less tangible, but in my opinion, equally important? Community, spirituality, generosity, humility? Should a developed country not also possess these moral social values? Or are the materialistic values sufficient? If you see where I’m going with this, you’ll see that what I’m saying is that Canada is not developed at all. Zambia is not developed either, but for different reasons. We should all strive for that middle-place where there is balance, but Canada has missed the mark. I won’t say anything more about this, I’d rather you think about it for yourself.

But what does this mean in Africa? Why am I here? Am I here so that one day people can have fridges, and TVs, and McDonalds? Hell no. One thing that’s become clear to me is that all I want here is for people to get the basics. Once they have that, the rest will take care of itself, and I will hope hardily that having the basics will not on its own bring out the materialism that morally devalues our own western cultures. If having the basics means one day idolizing television and money, then I’d rather leave Zambia now, figuring that Zambians without basics to be far better off than the Canadians who have it all. When I’m with people here, when I’m in the village, I feel a richness that is not known to most “developed” nations, and for these people to lose that would be a horrific loss. Maybe it’s better to just leave Zambians as Zambians and go back home?

EDUCATION

The education system here is horrific. I’ve come to the conclusion that education is pivotally important in the development of a people, and spending time with youth here scares me for the future of this country. Apparently a while back, education in Zambia was top-notch, but then in the late 80’s or so, things changed for the worse. I’ve heard different explanations for this. One person blamed donors who had too much money to spend and decided to introduce too many new programs to the Zambian curriculum in a short period of time. I’ve also heard that it was the structural adjustment programs of the IMF. I’m not sure exactly, but one thing I know is that the education system here is a big fat joke. When I talk to older generations, I see that they are articulate, knowledgeable, and thoughtful. When I speak to the younger generation though, well, put it this way, I can barely speak with them because their English is so bad. No, Zambia isn’t England, but it was an English colony, and as such I’d expect people to be able to speak English, especially since it’s an incredibly useful language to know in this world. And especially because the older generations speak it effortlessly, and actually, even better than me. It’s sad. So what should be done?

NGOs

Sorry, I have more bad news. One thing that I’ve learned from Engineers Without Borders, and from newer development books, and from what I’ve seen on the ground, is that many NGOs don’t have a clue. This has become apparent. Believe it or not, most people working in NGO offices have never stayed in a village. So how do you help people that you know nothing about? Strike 1. Then, you realize that many NGOs don’t work for the poor; they work to satisfy the donors that give them money, by writing flowery reports that make them happy, and make it seem like all is well on the ground, even when it’s not. Strike 2. To top it all off, it seems like NGOs rule this land. You land in Lusaka, and instead of seeing corporate offices and advertisements, you see NGO offices and advertisements in their place. Let’s put a few things in order; NGO’s pay decent, and there aren’t a whole lot of jobs in Zambia. NGO’s want good people. So guess what? NGO’s get good people; good Zambian people who would otherwise be working in the private sector or in entrepreneurship to further the economy. But instead they’re stuck in an NGO trap where they lead lives of relative comfort but accomplish virtually nothing for their country, while the private sector can’t get good people because they’re all being poached by the NGOs. Strike 3.

Right, I know it’s not all that bad. Although 60 years of development work and trillions of dollars of aid have accomplished virtually nothing, and actually, probably set things further backwards than forwards, there have been some good interventions and good work done. I know that, but let me have my rant.

Coming from a results-driven, high performance consulting firm with a succeed or be fired culture, it’s hard for me to accept that in an industry where human lives are the biggest stake, that a culture of ignorance, blunder, and outright stupidity have been allowed to thrive for so long. And frankly, it doesn’t make the private sector look too bad. Sometimes I wish we could just set all of the Accenture consultants on the big project of development; give them their salaries, their bonuses, and the same results-driven culture that they have now, and make sure they know that their client is the poor, NOT the donor. I’d suspect you’d see some results.
Yes, there are plenty of concrete examples of NGO’s screwing up. PLENTY, but you don’t hear about this much in the west.

SOLAR ENERGY IN MWINILUNGA

In the isolated rural town of Mwinilunga, many things are hard to come by, including food with taste, but that’s a different story. When you do find stuff, it’s terribly overpriced. Rob (fellow EWB volunteer) came up to visit me recently, and we decided we’d sell someone a solar kit from Lusaka and set it up. We wanted to see how a solar kit would do in a poor community environment.

Rob put together a kit from Lusaka for a cost of about $230. The same kit would have cost 2-3 times as much in Mwinilunga. I found someone at Forest Fruits, Tobet, who purchased the kit. Because he doesn’t make much, we gave it to him on an installment plan scheme.

Tobet lives in a very small, simple home with no electricity. We wanted to set up the solar kit in this type of environment. We want to see how solar energy will fair in a poor village-type community. Will Tobet try and use the energy to make money? Will his neighbors be jealous? Will someone try to steal the kit? Will the kit we purchased produce enough energy? These are all questions we want to learn more about. Already, Tobet has asked me to bring him some electric shavers so that he can start a barber-shop business, so I’m happy to see that he’s thinking in terms of $$$. We just installed the thing last week, and I need to go back and visit to learn more.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this in the next entry, but it’s very interesting. One thing I’ll say is that there is a huge potential for solar energy in this area, because power is incredibly unstable. Did I mention that just 2 weeks ago power went out for 9 days? Do you know why? Because the government power company ran out of diesel fuel. Oh, the country had plenty of fuel. Someone just forgot to make an order, or send the truck . So anyways, there’s a lot of demand here for solar, if it can come cheap. We know that it can come cheap from Lusaka, but we’re testing it out with Tobet, and we’ll go from there. I’ll talk more about this next time when I have more to say, but it’s very interesting.

I’M A LAND-OWNER!!!

On a happy note, I’m a land-owner! I’ve bought a plot of land along the main road in town. The size of the plot is 40 X 140 metres. I paid $667 for it. It’s in a (currently) undeveloped area, but in an area where the town is getting ready to build a bunch of government buildings. This will mean a lot more development in the area. Also, the main road where the plot is situated, is being fixed. This road leads to Angola. As the stability of Angola increases, it is expected that trade will begin to steadily increase. This route through Angola is also the fastest route to an ocean port, which hopefully will increase traffic a great deal in a few years time. Anyways, there is a lot of potential for the land. I’m excited . I have plans for it for the future, but for now, it’s a beautiful grassy patch of land with a few giant ant-hills on it. Who would have thought the first land I bought in my life would be in small-town Zambia?

SOME THOUGHTS

Sometimes I get random thoughts in my mind. Here’s a couple:

1) Development as a Rubik’s Cube

Lately I’ve been thinking about development as a Rubik’s Cube. It’s a complex problem with many sides, like the many sides of a Rubik’s Cube. For example, you have Business and Entrepreneurship, Gender Equality, Public Services, Culture and Values, Infrastructure, Agriculture, etc. It seems like when you’re trying to run an intervention on one thing, you end-up screwing up something else, like in a Rubik’s Cube you might get all of the red squares on one side, but then you realize you’ve screwed up the side with the yellow squares. For example, you may try and increase farmer income by buying a bunch of produce from farmers at an inflated rate (to help them out), but then you may inadvertently screw things for another legitimate business that’s trying to buy the same product at legitimate, market prices. You may be trying to line up the reds, and accidentally take out the yellows. To make matters worse, there’s numerous hands trying to work the same Rubik’s Cube, and they’re not always aware of each other. You have Donors, NGOs, Social Investment Funds, Governments, Missions, etc. Rubik’s Cubes always frustrated the hell out me…

2) Something Missing in the Behavior Change Framework

I think all of the behavior change / change management frameworks that I’ve seen are incomplete. They are all missing two vital steps that should be documented and studied further. All behavior change/change management frameworks (that I’ve seen) generally start at the “trigger” stage, sometimes also called “create urgency”, or “unfreezing” or whatever else. But I think there needs to be two things added:

i) Research the culture (whether it be organizational culture, people culture, whatever)
ii) Job shadow and create relationships
iii) THEN Trigger/Unfreeze
iv) …
v) …

I think that in EWB we all do these first two things somewhat implicitly because we realize the importance, but I think there would be a great deal of value for others in adding these two steps to the change framework, and documenting why they are important, what works and what doesn’t work, etc. etc. Especially for capacity building practitioners.

This is definitely the process that I’ve followed at Forest Fruits and really, I don’t feel that it would be a good idea to try and move on to trigger without first having a good idea of what and who you’re dealing with. These first two steps also really help with the subsequent steps in the framework.

EN FIN

Well, in the end, I know this blog entry was a bit dismal, but thank god for that. If everything was just peachy all the time, what would I have learned? There are lots of problems here, and not a lot of good solutions as yet, but I guess that’s why I’m here. Wish me luck.

Ciao for now. As always, if you have comments, please email me at: sarf2k@gmail.com (I DON’T check my facebook anymore, by the way; it’s way too expensive where I am, so please email me thanks).