Blog Post 6 – First thoughts on Pemba (May 24)

So I've only been here 3 days, so I am probably not completely qualified to comment, but I will anyway. There is a ton to explain, so I will list some Zambian facts here, that you will need to understand in order for the story to make sense. However I this post will still be pretty disorganized and jump around everywhere, and long.

-There is no garbage collection in Pemba (or most of Zambia from what I've seen). This means you throw your garbage wherever you like, in the road, in the ditch, sometimes in big holes in the ground.
-Everyone sweeps their yards. Yards are small (20 or 30 sq ft.) dusty patches of sand.
-Washing and evacuation tasks are undertaken in different venues depending on the location.
-Zambia is cold in the winter. I was surprised, but often at night and the morning, or when it is cloudy, I am wearing a sweater or jacket, and apparently it gets colder, before heating up in August. I am actually considering getting another sweater, but we will see.

For now I am staying with a 27 year old Zambian, Mukelabai, who is a friend of my counterpart. Mukelabai just moved into a new place the day I arrived, so the two of us are sharing a 5 room house. The first thing that had to get done, according to Mukelabai, was to fix up and clean the place. While I expected this meant we would spend some time cleaning the yard and rooms, it actually meant he had paid a local woman to clean the inside, and pick up all the garbage and sweep the yard. Today we also did some more sweeping and cleaning ourselves, and its starting to look pretty good, though there are spiders and cockroaches everywhere (including all over the food!)

I probably won't stay here too long, maybe a week or two. I am hoping to meet some of the local farmers over the next week, while working with IDE. Some nearby villages are only 5km or so from the office, so I can easily walk or ride a bike from one of them to work in the morning and night. It would be good exercise too. I am hoping that if I get on this right away, I can even start a small garden of my own, and get a feel for how to grow vegetables, and how local farmers deal with irrigation, weeds and fertilizers. Something like tomatoes or onions could probably be harvested before I leave in August.

Mukelabai and I have running water, at the tap outside. In Pemba, the water comes from 5 boreholes and is pumped out using electric pumps. Then it is chlorinated, and stored in the water tower. This is fed underground to a series of taps, it appears there is one in each yard. Generally you will fill a bucket (or many buckets) with the water and use this for your water needs. It is interesting to see how much less water you use for things like washing your hands, showering and dishes when you have to carry your own water, even from a nearby tap. Staying in a village could be pretty interesting.

Today we did the laundry, which was fun. The preferred laundry detergent here is BOOM which apparently makes your clothes lighter after some use, so I'm glad I don't have any super nice clothes here. The technique is as follows: you fill a bucket with water, and squeeze out some BOOM paste into your hand. You rub this into the water, to make suds. Then you put some clothes in, and grab a fistful of the clothing in your left, and rub with another part of the clothing your right. For stains, just apply extra BOOM. Then you rinse in a second bucket, and make sure to get all the BOOM out. Hang dry on a clothsline. It probably took me an hour and a half to wash 5 shirts, a pair of khakis, and socks and boxers... so there is room for improvement. But they are drying pretty fast.

Here is a picture of my first morning at the office. Yes, that is men standing around fixing a motorbike. After a while of learning the ins and outs of fixing stuff with very limited tools, which people here are excellent at, I went inside the office and talked with Liana about what she has been up to. Liana is an intern from one of the local collages, and has been at IDE since February. She has been going to 3 local villages, interviewing farmers about their crops to find the most profitable vegetables. Recently (in the last week of so) she has setup some demonstration plots at each village, to showcase correct planting techniques. She will be gone before the crops are done, so part of my job is to go around with her over the next month or so, learn how to do her work, and then take over when she leaves.

For bathroom uses near the office, there is a concrete room and a door, which I opted to close, and then found myself locked in! I had to climb out the window, much to the amusement of my counterpart who explained to me that the door automatically locks, and the door handle is missing, and then opened it using a spoon. Bathroom facilities are a hole in the concrete floor, which is the entrance into a pit about 20 ft deep (my best guess by shining a flashlight down). Aim is important, since the hole is only about 5 inches wide, by 10 inches long. Showering requires a bucket of water and soap, and then you sweep any excess water into the hole with a nearby broom. Some places do have flush toilets, but no running water, so you have to flush with a bucket of water.

Our house has some interesting electrical oddities too. Only 3 light bulbs can be on at once, without tripping the lighting circuit. However the electric stove, Mukelabai's stereo and TV equipment, and 2 laptops can be plugged in without any issues. “The stove has no power switch” explains Mukelabai as he separates the hot wire from the stove from the hot wire from the wall, and a small stream of blue sparks appear. The wires are bent into hook shapes to facilitate this primitive power switch. Hmm, pretty sketch.

I should mention that the stars here are unbelievable! It is insanely dark in Pemba, because there are almost no streetlights, and everything goes quiet past 6 or 7 at night. You can look up and see way more stars than I can see, even in Langley.

I know this was a fairly long post, as there are a lot of neat things about Pemba. Instead of trying to detail each one now, especially with my limited knowledge and experience, I think over the next month or so I will try to document a few things in more depth. A quick sneak preview of upcoming blog posts could include: food in Zambia, nearby towns, the market, clothing, village life, and of course a day in the life at IDE...

...Mike

Blog Post 5 Divide and conquer (May 20)

IDE Head Office - this is a scaffold that is used to test the treadle pumps at all different heights and flows and stuff.



First a quick shout out to all the blog commenters – you have far exceeded my expectations, so keep it up and make me look like I have tons more friends than any other JF this summer. I promise in the future there will be sweet pics and insightful stories to comment about, but for now the comments are really awesome!

Tonight should be my last night with other mazungus for a little while. Probably means no more beer for a month or so too. I had a good chat with my coach, and finished training at IDE. Then we all went for Indian Food, said goodbyes to all the OVS. Tonight was also my first encounter with diarrhea in Africa, so, yeah, that. I heard all the West Africa JFs had it within a day of hitting the tarmac, so I guess I'm doing OK.

Training at IDE was pretty awesome. The first day we discussed what market facilitation is. Essentially its the idea that with a very 'light touch' a market facilitator can connect buyers and sellers, and then step back and let stuff happen. About lunch time I discovered I stayed in the sun way too long the day before, and had heatstroke. This meant I spent my first afternoon at work trying my best not to vomit during the session, or fall asleep in front of the country director. At least I didn't vomit.

Today we had some cool discussions about how market facilitation is actually achieved. This means we discussed possible markets for farmers, and how effective each one could be. We had a neat framework for assessing buyers in terms of risk, needs, demand, and other factors that could affect the relationship. All in all I learned a ton, and I'm super stoked to put it in practise.

Tomorrow its off to Pemba, the land of debatable internet access. It will be interesting to see how close my expectations compare to reality. I have a mental picture of some dusty huts at the side of a dirt highway, surrounding a well and maybe a school. In reality, I think the only part I have right is the highway's existence, and I'm pretty sure its paved. Hmm, could be a good opportunity for some pictures – I apologize I haven't felt very confident yet in the photo department, so I will definitely have to step that one up a notch.

Anyway, my only real reason for writing this is in case I don't have internet for a while, so I shall stop rambling and get some sleep...

...Mike

(p.s. The next morning diarreah still there, and its really not a lot of fun. Should make for an interesting travelling day)

Post 4 – Lilongwe (May 15)

We landed last night and are staying at the Golden Peacock which is a pretty fine establishment. Everyone gets their own bed, mosquito net and there's 6 showers (definitely a cut above the EWB house). No internet access, but we are in Lilongwe so the fact that you are reading this means that I succeeded in finding myself an internet cafe (so I'm writing this yesterday night if I haven't confused you enough yet).

Scavenger hunt! We partnered up and headed into the town to find a bunch of stuff. Mike and I (yeah, I know) spent about an hour just finding our way into the town, and then getting our hands on some cash. After talking with a few people, we determined our options were the bank ATM, or the black market trader near the bridge... and given the local wouldn't go anywhere near the black market guy then we decided it wasn't a good choice. (Turns out there was a Bureau de Change) that had pretty decent rates, but we didn't find out about this until we talked with other JFs. Now we had local money so our bargaining leverage was greatly increased.

Other things on our list were cell phones, potions from the witch doctor, malaria cure, and a ton of wierd stuff from the market that was not in english. Luckily we found a couple really nice local men who were just hanging around and were super stoked to show us where to buy stuff in the market. We got a couple chitenges (multipurpose cloth things), white beans, cassava, avacoado, bread, some Fanta, banannas sandles and a sweet serving spoon.

Oh and also on the list was this beer called chibuku, which comes in a 1L carton, and is made from maize and sorghum, and not only tastes gross, but also has tons of floating grains of stuff. Really rough when you get to the bottom of the carton, because the top of the carton where you put your mouth is soggy, and all the floaties are more concentrated as you get to the bottom. To top it off, the slogan is “Shake, Shake” and everyone who saw us white guys (azunga) carrying it got a pretty good laugh (though we got more people talking to us and shaking our hands than before we were carrying the beer). And the guy who sold it to us very sincerely stated how he appreciated that we were drinking the beer and trying his culture.

Still don't have my cell phone yet, but I've heard of a couple good places to buy it, and I'm in no rush because I'll need a Zambian SIM card anyway. Sounds like the thing to do is buy a phone with a flashlight, especially for when you're in a smaller village. And we didn't manage to get to the witch doctor, though another group found him and bought some magical headache cure. I also want to go back and buy some toilet paper (if I run out of other topics, I may discuss the different toilet techniques in a later post) and water purification tablets (think I managed to leave mine at the EWB house). And of course to put this post online.

To cap off the day, I had nshima tonight for the first time! We went to a couple of the local OVS host families for dinner. We had nshima (maize flour rolled into balls) with a ton of relishes (chicken, beans, rape, pumpkin seed and mustard leaves) as well as rice, oranges and banannas. The technique for nshima is pretty cool: you take a chunk of the nshima in your right hand and roll into a ball. Then you make a depression in the ball, so it looks a bit like a scoop. Using your scoop and thumb, you scoop relish into the depression and then put it in your mouth. I thought it was pretty good, but let's reevaluate how I like it after 3 and a half more months of nshima for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Looks like tomorrow we have some more serious sessions going on, and a sector meeting (which means I'll be chatting strategies with Thulasy and all the IDE team. Hopefully party it up a bit that night, and then next morning board the bus for Lusaka. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I think we are at the IDE head office, and chilling in Lusaka, and then its off to the real work. I'll try to have a post or two online before I leave Lusaka, then I'll be 80km from Monze which looks like the nearest town that has internet and an ATM. Good news is that buses pass by fairly frequently, since I am on the main road in the Southern Province, but I won't expect that blog posts will be all that frequent. Instead look forward to checking my Twitter for news, as I can start updating that once I get myself a cell phone...

...Mike

Post 3 - May 14

Meant to write this a couple nights ago, but then we started drinking beer, and I had to postpone my writing. The last couple days have been pretty insane, we had a pretty sweet set of sector presentations; I made up a sweet game about market facilitation which totally flopped. And on the last day we spent the afternoon on a mini-project where we interviewed 'farmers' and formed a proposal about how a certain project worked. It was a good introduction to field work, and I learned a lot about how I ask questions.
Right now I'm sitting in Amsterdam airport, which is actually a pretty nice airport. Its pretty surreal, being this close. Of course I still have a week or so of travelling before I reach Pemba – when we get to Lilongwe we spend a couple days for in-country training. Then we head for the Zambia border, so we aren't in Malawi for the elections. After a long bus ride, and a couple days visiting the head office for IDE, I finally head off to Pemba to meet my counterpart and figure out exactly what I'll be doing.
Its looking like there are five JFs working for IDE this summer – Vicky, myself, Deg, Sierra and Tony. We are all working on projects related to output markets. The current hypothesis is that the main bottleneck in IDE Zambia's RPI (Rural Prosperity Initiative) is the market facilitation capacity of the field staff. Our job is to partner with existing field staff in the IDE field offices, and find ways to develop output markets in partnership with them. In the process of doing so, we hope to increase the field staff capacity, since they will still be working on the project long after we have left.
One neat part of this project is that we are using an interesting framework: the Value Chains Framework. Instead of the Livelihoods Approach which looks at people and the work they do and the way they live, the Value Chains Framework is more focused on how a product works its way through a market, and what stages add value to the product. For example, a t-shirt starts with a farmer buying cotton seeds and fertilizers and maybe a pump. Then the cotton is harvested and transported to the manufacturer. Finally the manufacturer makes the t-shirt and sells it to the store, who sells it to a customer. The value chains framework looks at all of these stages and searches for weaknesses.
Next a person called a market facilitator is used to repair or form poor or missing linkages. For example a smallholder farmer (farmer with a small plot, in the region a couple ha.) may not be able to sell on at market because he is too far away and has no means to transport his goods. If a market facilitator noticed that lots of nearby farmers had this problem, they may recommend to a manufacturer or supplier to send a truck down to these farmers every week or so to buy the goods. Ideally a contract would be formed to alleviate any issues arising from the farmers not knowing the correct market prices. After some time, the market facilitator can step away from the project, and with a little M&E (monitoring and evaluation) the linkage should continue by itself.
Anyway, time for me to catch a flight, enjoy a couple free Heinekens and get some sleep. I'll hopefully post this one in Lilongwe, once I locate an internet cafe...
...Mike

Post 2

We did a neat activity in predep today. We looked at all the people we want to communicate with this summer, and what they are likely thinking right now. Then we figured out how to change this to what we want them to be thinking. Ergo, blog post number 2...

...A week or so ago, I saw the whole pre-dep (as in predeparture training) thing as a massive black box. The scary pre-dep mystique. Time to change this, so I will paint a little picture for the interested reader, and the uninterested reader can skip to paragraph (*).

U of T is an awesome campus. Sitting at a window in the engineering building I am looking out over Collage St. Cyclists and cars and pedestrians pass by 2 floors below me, and I'm surrounded by old brick buildings. Straight ahead is the CN tower. I love looking at other people's campuses, I guess its my version of stalking, and a campus in the downtown area is really sweet. Still haven't found the library, but all the doors are locked, so I won't have a chance to explore today.

The last couple days have been pretty insane. I'm at about 10 hours of sleep for the last 3 nights, and I would say that each day is as mentally demanding as exam season. Its a bit like national conference, but with fewer people per workshop, and homework, not drinking to end off the day. Definately no chance for midday naps, and sleeping in would be grounds for 'unfortunate accidents'. Each day is full from 9 AM to 7 PM (at least) of workshops, tours, role plays, case studys, and discussion.

And the EWB house! Picture 25 people crammed into a 3 floor house. And each floor 2/3 the size of the engineering lounge at SFU! Rules and lists for shower times, house rules, cooking and cleaning days, and of course every bit of floor space and couch space taken up. I think I'm just a little bit too introverted to want to spend all my free time there, which is probably why I'm hiding in the engineering building at U of T listening to my ipod. Besides, last couple evenings involved lots of sitting around on the couches with everyone on thier laptops, so I don't feel too bad about hiding for an hour infront of my laptop. Oh, and not a huge fan of rules, though I am looking forward to cooking with my cooking team on monday. Suggestions? I need it to be vegitarian, and for 25 people.

(Paragraph (*))

Toronto vs. Vancouver? Tough question. I had a really decent sushi lunch with Danny Howard yesterday; food here is pretty decent. Transit is amazing! Picture a subway like the skytrain, except the train is actually as long as the platform i.e. 10 or 15 cars long. Streetcars are genius... they are electric powered, but only have one wire. I guess that means they ground themselves through the track – hence genius. But Vancouver has the ocean, and skimboarding, and mountains. And get this, the milk here comes in plastic bags! You have to buy special milk pouring jugs, then you pour the milk from those... its like a 3 step process. Milk jugs just seem so much easier to me.

So what's coming up? Why did I write a blog post now? I suspect that I will be 80 – 100 km away from internet of any sort this summer, and while I thought a pre-dep post was kinda lame, it is definately my best chance to use my blog. Soon as I get a cell phone in Zambia, I'm thinking of linking it to a Twitter account (search Mike Henrey). That way I can use my cell phone to update everyone. And then you all can twitter to my phone (I think) from your computers... which if it works may be cheaper than you texting me. Advise me on twittering if you are familiar, because I definately am not.

Another problem I have with lack of internet is solving my insatiable need for information. So here's my plan: Say I need some specialized piece of data for my work, i.e. average maize prices for the last 5 years in Lusaka. Then I update my twitter, or send out some texts. Then you can all get to your fancy internet capable devices, find the answers I need, and text me back. So yeah, don't be suprised if you get some strange messages over the summer. Also, if you can think of a good way of sending graphs, or information that wouldn't fit in a text (I was thinking picture messaging, but haven't hashed out the deets yet, or figured a way to do it cheap, and have no idea of the capabilities of my Zambia phone until I see it), let me know.

Otherwise, just thought I'd let you all know that training is pretty sweet, albeit pretty mentally taxing. I'm aiming to post again before I leave, to fill you in on my most updated placement details, possibly some fun stories from pre-dep, and of course to make you all super jealous that I'm off to Zambia. Until then I'll keep busy with kicking some pre-dep ass...

...Mike