Flower bullet points

By the way - I have NO IDEA why what were numbered bullets in Word are now flower shaped bullets on the blog. Madness.

Street in Dambwa North [my neighborhood in Livingstone]

Project Update – My Intended Add Value

So we have finished compiling the interview results from the Manyemuyemu Dam community and are moving ahead with preparations for the community mobilization meeting. This work, however, can be conducted by locals and, as you know from the last post, EWB volunteers are trying to do more than gap-fill. So where is my add-value?

I’m going to take a minute here to make sure everyone reading this has a decent understanding of the Junior Fellow program. It is an 18 month position starting when you are selected. There is a lot of “foundation learning” we do before going to that pre-departure training session. The overseas volunteering is not the beginning of our development education, it’s the culmination. But I don’t think that’s very accurate because of course it doesn’t end there and you learn a lot by being on the ground. The idea is we come overseas with minds jammed full of development theory and field techniques so that we are effective contributors to our partner organizations. The Junior Fellow program as three goals:

1. Having impact overseas, with our partner organization, host community, and Dorothy!
2. Personal learning to become effective “Development Champions”
3. Impact in Canada

If you were wondering what we Junior Fellows will be up to for the 8 months remaining after our 4 months overseas ends its sharing the experience with our chapter and community in Canada so that Canadians are aware of the development issues. As you can guess from my Motivations post, this is one is something I am really looking forward to!

So, impact with my partner organizations. What’s my add value? It may seem like I am stating that question a lot… that’s because it’s a question that haunts us volunteers. No one tells you what your add value is, its impossible to know ahead of time. It takes a good month or so of working with an organization before you can figure out where you, a young Canadian student, can add value to this organization which has been around for years. For some placements that impact is more obvious, for others I am sure they are still figuring it out. But its of prime importance so in the mean time we are wracking our minds trying desperately to figure it out as the time remaining in our placement slips by. EWB tries to push us to become the most superb agents of change possible to do this job, pushing us to identify and overcome every weakness and build on our strengths [that pre-departure training is very intense let me tell you]. One fellow-JF commented that EWB is the only place he has felt challenged and I understand why. EWB is the only place where we have been challenged to challenge ourselves. I can’t speak for the rest of the volunteers, but I certainly ever felt our work was a matter of doing a good job. You never really think of it in terms of whether you have done a good job… only could the job be done better? Could I be having more impact? Is there anything I am not doing that Dorothy would want me to do? Quickly you realize the hardest boss to work for is yourself!

Anyway, back to the add value! With my placement I was told at the beginning my task was to verify this manual, “Mobilizing Communities to Maintain Earth Dams”, which Nick Jimenez produced during his placement the year prior. That was all the direction that given. As you know from the other updates first a verification that it worked at Mulabalaba was undertaken. It was found to have worked the first time, so now Kantu and I are using the manual in another area, Manyemuyemu, to see if it is useful for extension officers other than Nick and Ernest and applicable to another location. So far there is very little that can be improved in the methodology. There a few areas which need adjusting, but certainly not the same contribution as creating this comprehensive, 50+ page, participatory manual. I was really aghast at the enormity of the accomplishment Nick made. We learn about participatory methodology, but to write a participatory manual… quite the achievement. But my improvements to the manual can not come close to the contribution of its creation. Where is my biggest add value? But our impact is supposed to be long-term, so the fear begins to creep in that at the end of august there will be an improved manual and it will just sit on the shelf. Will it be used? A-ha! This manual needs to be more than a manual containing a good field methodology… it has to be a useful tool! If the methodology works the next task is to make sure it is presented in an extremely efficient and use-friendly manner so that it will actually be used. So while we continue the mobilizations of Manyemuyemu I will conduct some research amongst the field officers as to what participatory manuals they have used in the past, what made them effective/ineffective, and how they would like to see this manual structured so that it has the greatest utility for the intended users. Furthermore, in the process of including a stakeholder analysis to the methodology to identify what programs other NGOs might be running in the area that could compromise our activities [this is something that happened during the Mulabalaba mobilization – an NGO was offering a food for work program to the community, paying them to do maintenance that MACO was asking them to do for free] it became clear that NGOs and MACO [the government] do not have the best coordination with each other. In fact there doesn’t seem to be an established method of communication with them despite the fact that MACO should know of all NGO activities. At one time MACO held stakeholder meetings where all the organizations working in a certain area, or maybe within a certain sector, would come together and meet so their programs could be harmonized. But organizations didn’t like this harmonizing it seems and stopped coming. As a volunteer from an NGO working with MACO who will be leaving at the end of August – I am in a very good position to do some mediating. I am planning some research – perhaps it will only be preliminary research – into identifying what communication is supposed to be taking place, what is taking place, and what the concerns and issues are – from both side’s viewpoints. Hopefully from that some groundwork can be made in terms of establishing a format for communication. It may be as simple as an organization preferring letters rather than emails or the other way around. Right now there is nothing. There are some really convenient advantages to these two [manual utility and NGO communication] activities… they don’t require any resources from MACO! My co-workers are really incredible. They have lot of knowledge and many of them have a passion and care about their work instead of it just being another job. The biggest thing hold MACO back – as far as I can tell - is how terribly under funded they are. They just don’t have the money to conduct the work they are mandated to do. This research can be very beneficial to MACO without drawing resources such as overnight allowances and fuel costs that it takes to get me into the village [we have enough of those costs with mobilizing Manyemuyemu which is far enough away its cheaper to spend nights between days in the villages at a nearby town of Zimba]. Also, these activities do not require the help of the extension officers beyond being interviewees. The officers I work with have many other tasks they are working on beside the community mobilization that my placement focuses on, and this research can take place when they are required elsewhere or circumstances out of our control [ie the fuel truck doesn’t show up so the petrol station has no gas, the electricity is out in the city, the vehicle we hope to use is needed to take people to a funeral, etc.] prevents us from carrying out the mobilization activities that day. These ideas have been met with positive reactions from my co-workers and the DACCO [the head of MACO for this district] so it appears as if this is what I will be working on for the remainder of my placement.

So, in conclusion:

1. Continue mobilizing the Manyemuyemu dam community and using that exercise to further refine the methodology contained in the manual.
2. Conduct research amongst the field officers to find out ways to make the manual as user friendly as possible.
3. Do some research [as much as time permits] to better establish modes of communication between MACO and key NGOs.

There you have it. That is a lot to do in the time remaining so I better get busy!

Rural Livelihoods

Before the Junior Fellows are sent to their host country, we go through an intense, week long, pre-departure training. One of the many things discussed is rural livelihoods. Here are some of the factors we look at:

1. Households are the unit of analysis, and gender plays a role. [Households operate as an organic entity with everyone contributing something as if it was a joint enterprise which sustains each individual in return for their contributions. This also involves a division of labour amongst the household. That is why, in development, we talk about households instead of individuals]
2. Households make use of livelihood diversification strategies.
3. People have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them.
4. Religion and culture are extremely important to livelihoods.
5. Agriculture is of prime important to livelihoods [in rural communities this is often the largest source of livelihood]
6. Households are affected by macro-trends.

Each one of these factors can be discussed quite extensively but hopefully they are understood for my purpose here which is to flip them around. I haven’t fully worked out this idea, but its been interesting as far as I have taken it so I am sharing it with you…

The 6 Factors of Development Organizations!

1. Organizations are the unit of analysis, gender plays a role. [This is way more obvious than households. Organizations are, by definition, a joint enterprise between a number of individuals to achieve something and thus we discuss development agents in terms of organizations]
2. Organization make use of funding diversification strategies [non-profit organizations need to get money from somewhere, and those sources are not always reliable so its important to draw upon numerous sources as well sources which do not hinder your work by various requirements]
3. Organizations have assets and capabilities and it is important to utilize them and build upon them. [A lot of these organizations have existed for many years and have a great deal of experience and knowledge for their respective fields. It’s important not utilize those skills and not simply to try go around them because you think you can do it better despite your inexperience]
4. Organizations have foundational values and an internal culture which affects how it operates, how effective it is, and how efficient it is. [anyone who has had more than one job knows how different work places get be, how expectations and interactions change depending on the corporate culture, and how that culture can affect the work that is intended to be achieved]
5. Donors are of prime importance to non-profit organizations. [Though obvious, this is really key. It is quite common for an organization which wants to work in one area of development, such as HIV/AIDS, having to compromise its goals because they can’t find donors because people want to sponsor sanitation projects. Also donors usually require tangible deliverables - such as number of latrines installed – which may force the organization to work ineffectively as it is trying to meet the demanding requirements of their donors – non-profit is a highly competitive sector, there is only so much money to be had – instead of making sure that their work is having impact. How many people are still getting sick because they are not properly educated about hygiene aren’t something the donors necessarily are worrying about.]
6. Organizations are affected by micro-trends. [as stated in factor 5: the sponsors go through “fads” where everyone wants to tackle HIV/AIDS or water/sanitation or food security and if your organization is working in that area you have to change or give up. Other macro-trends also affect organizations. Perhaps this point could also be switched to micro-trends affect organizations and you could look at how differences from one group of beneficiaries to the next can compromise the replicability of a successful project.]

Something I have really learned from my volunteer experience – which I knew ahead of time but there is no learning like from experience – is that development is extremely hard. There are so many factors working against an organization. Just like the root causes of poverty exercise we do in EWB, where we list all the causes of poverty we can identify in a case study and try to link them in terms of causality – I bet you could do the same thing with development organizations. The root causes of organizational ineffectiveness.

This, seemingly obvious, reality is being pointed out to you so I can better explain what I see as the role EWB is [increasingly] taking on in the development sector. This is what I have seen and not the official word from the National Office. But as volunteers we work, mostly individual, within partner organizations and try to help them. We try to avoid positions that would lead us to be gap-fillers [doing the job that any other local worker could be doing] but search for places where we can have the most add-value and help the organization build its capacity. These leads to very diverse volunteer placements because there is no one thing we do. We try to identify areas where we can add value and then try to make it happen. So ultimately what we end up doing is not working on the root causes of poverty but the root causes of organizational ineffectiveness to help the people who do have the experience do their job better. It seems that is where EWB has found its greatest add value to the sector as a whole is.

Faith

This post is an outgrowth of a conversation I am having with Michelle Murphy, last years EWB UBC President and now EWB journalist running around visiting all our volunteers so that EWB can get more information from the field. Many the ideas I throw out here are hers that came up during our ongoing discussion.

What is the role of Faith in development?

I feel much development tries to completely avoid the subject. We are not trying to develop people spiritually, they have material needs and rights which are not being met and that is the crisis we are trying to remedy. What place has faith in that? Ultimately though we are trying to achieve behavior change. Whether its changing farming techniques or implementing some new technology… behavior change is the goal. Humans are not material beings though. We need more than food and water and warmth. There is an intangible portion to us. You can label it and divide in many ways [intellect, emotion, spirit, soul, heart, mind, etc.] but its there. People have their beliefs, and often the less-economically-developed world is where you find very devout faith.

[as a side note: if you read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance you’ll likely see that everything we “know” is a belief, even what we think of as reason is just a creation of the human mind and so we cling to our beliefs – such as the laws of physics – in much the same way as any devout religious person clings to their beliefs]

Yet most development organizations don’t address this. Or, even worse, they address it by providing material aid in exchange for conversion to their faith which is, in my opinion, immoral spiritual coercion. I wonder how those groups see it though. After all, in their view they are saving people’s souls and bringing them unto God.

We prefer to view people as economic maximizers. Everyone does what is in their best interest [this refers back to that bit of economic theory I mentioned a couple posts ago]. Everyone weigh their opportunity costs and goes with what comes up being most beneficial. Then, some, balk at people going to Church when they could be earning more money. Watch people give money to their faith when they don’t have enough for themselves. Watch their productivity be interrupted by prayer. And be shocked and frustrated by this. But these actions, which may frustrate a development worker, should not surprise us. The frustrated development worker has just failed to wrap their head around the idea that spiritual activities such as prayer and charity add value to ones life. That individual weighed the opportunity costs and decided to be a little hungrier than to not practice charity.

So how are development workers supposed to come in and treat a spiritual community as if they don’t have beliefs and meet any kind of success? What are the other options though? Do we have only FBOs [Faith Based Organizations?]. Should the area an FBO can work in be limited to the extent of the people who already believe in it so that a Muslim development organization can not come to Zambia – a Christian nation – and do development work? Do we add yet another skill requirement to the development workers who are already in need of such incredible and diverse skills that you might think to do their job you have to be super-human? Not only do they have to somehow satisfy contradictory requirements from the head-office [who may be just passing on the requirements of the donors] - such as gender equality and respecting traditional values and social structures – as well as being multi-disciplinary so that they can tackle issues from all the different angles from which an issue needs to be tackled… but now they have to understand the spiritual practices of each group of beneficiaries and tailor their work so that it meets the communities spiritual needs?

Contemporary development rhetoric demands that development be conducted in a bottom-up [as opposed to top-down] way. Is our secular development pushed upon spiritual beneficiaries bottom-up? Seems top-down to me.

Or is making your development work spiritual manipulation? As an example, with my project, I had the idea that if you are having trouble getting a Christian village community to do maintenance on an earth dam which provides water… well there is certainly more than a couple verses of scripture that pertain to the sacredness of water. What if we involved the community’s pastor/religious leader in our project and have sermons that are timed effectively with our dam community meetings which focus on the sacredness of water and the importance of appreciated that sacredness. But, as I said, is that manipulation? Yet if we are trying to cause behavior change… is that not manipulation?

Does not every development worker take his beliefs into the field with him/her? Does that mean that organizations need to employees of certain beliefs?

There seems to be infinite questions that spin of this fundamental concept:

People have spiritual and material needs, and you are trying to change their behavior to satisfy their material needs… how do you incorporate the spiritual? Does this problem contribute to the lack of progress development, which has been going on for decades, has made?

What is the role of faith in development?

Culture Conundrum

I have a passionate love for many foreign cultures. I love the myths and sagas of Scandinavia. I love the food from many places around the world, particularly India. I enjoy music from all over. I am passionate, some might say obsessive, about beverages: all types of tea, espresso beverages, cappuccinos, real Chai, Turkish coffee, Artisan wine and beer [though I’m done with that now]. I really enjoy smoking hookah, especially at in hookah bar with middle eastern décor or in my home decorated like I am Indian. I think food is much more enjoyable when eaten with chopsticks. Poetry, paintings…. ART!

I must make a refrain here, because these things that I love are not, in fact, culture. They are part of culture, but they are only the very visible surface aspects. I’ve started to think of them as manifestations of culture. This opens up a huge can of worms in terms of what is culture? It is so innate in us that we can’t escape our own culture and if we can’t escape our own culture can we really understand what it is to be a part of another culture? I am living in Zambia for the summer. Do I know what it is to be Zambian? To think like a Zambian does? I am just trying to begin to understand how Zambian culture views things. Can we really experience other cultures when we travel? What is Canadian culture? As a Canadian does that not make all those things I mentioned above Canadian culture?
See what I mean? Can of worms! But that isn’t what I am trying to tackle in this post.

One thing I have personally struggled with in Zambia is that the culture here does not seem to have these things. I have tried and tried and tried to find Zambian art but to no avail. There isn’t art in Zambian homes. There isn’t art anywhere. The poetry I’ve heard is just about child-trafficking and HIV/AIDs. The music is mostly heavy beats that remind me of American Rap music. The food is largely based on nshima – which is like thick mashed potatoes made from maize [corn] flour which you grab small chunks of and make into sort of the shape of then end of a spoon and then use that to scoop up some “relish” which is any of the side dishes. There are virtually no books here. That isn’t true actually – there are tons of books. They are just all bibles. There isn’t even the traditional style of dress you find in West Africa.

I came to Zambia looking forward to discovering what Zambian art was, or even African art because I did not know much of it. I wanted to come and appreciate Zambian culture the same way I have been appreciating other cultures, through their manifestations. But I haven’t found any of it here. This may seem like a small matter… but I found it huge. It starts with puzzlement, and then like a painful whole in a tooth you keep poking at it. I started to search for this missing Zambian art. The biggest lead I had was the University. Of course that’s where the creative energies of Zambia would be focused… nope. No visual art whatsoever. It was driving me crazy. Right up the walls. How can 10 million people in Zambia, and likely other poor countries in Southern Africa, not produce any artwork?

But then I decided I couldn’t really blame them for this. I mean Zambians have gone from tribes in villages to colonial exploitation to independence [still largely in the villages], with independence largely bringing the pursuit of western lifestyle. As far as I know, there have never been any might civilizations in Southern Africa and it is those civilizations that produce a lot of the cultural manifestations I love. In fact, in anthropological terms, art work is an indicator of civilizations and societal wealth. When artifacts go from clay pots to intricately carved or painted pots [in other words, more effort is put into things than their practical purpose requires] it means that society is wealthy enough to support artists to do that work. If everyone is poor no one is going to pay for something artistic. And that is where the nickel drops.

A revelation occurs, that in hindsight seems so obvious. In EWB we call them “a-ha!” moments. A-HA! Of course the arts have never flourished here… they have never had a chance…. Zambia is too poor! Things start to fit together now. The curio markets which I felt indignant about, the markets where they sell “African” carvings of zebras and giraffes and carved masks that have nothing to do with Zambia but its what tourists want to buy. Those markets are full of art, the art for the only market there is… tourists. With most of the country living on less than a dollar a day, who are you going to sell your art to? It is not that Zambians don’t have any creative energies in them, they have never had the opportunity to unleash them!

A whole vast new perspective stretches out before me, but it goes much much further than this. I guess you could say the nickel keeps dropping…

There is 10 million people in Zambia and not much art is happening. That’s 10 million people that could be making enormous contributions to the world of art. What poetry and visual art, what music and literature could be coming out of these people. They are of a whole different culture [now I mean real culture, not just the surface stuff]. How much more would there contribution be simply because little has come out of Zambia before. But it doesn’t stop there. Science, engineering, medicine, politics. All these things are moving forwards without the innovations of this group of people because they are too busy trying to overcome poverty! Maybe one of the minds that are extinguished by the AIDS pandemic - or taken down by a meager illness because famine and malnutrition has left their body defenseless – maybe in one of those minds was the cure for cancer. The cure for HIV/AIDS! Suddenly the vast expanse of individuals whose lives are little more than desperate struggles to survive and offer their children better lives than they had – a struggle against factors we have the power to help overcome – are not only a tragedy because these people have the same right as you and I to live a happy life full of opportunity, but because those minds are millions of points of light from which contributions in every field of human endeavor could have sprung! Holy sweet mother of pearl. What are we losing because so much of the world is poor? What illnesses or diseases have affected your family that might have been cured? What art – whether food, visual art, music, etc. – is not enriching your life. What whole new systems of organizing society that we never thought of are being lost forever like so many lives. Out this enormous frustration with Zambia has blossomed a whole new sense of urgency about development. Is it not ironic that while being concerned for the lives of others in Africa seemed like the big picture, the BIG picture – of humanity as a whole – comes from realizing what its costing us to keep much of the world poor!

Perhaps they should be into account in our opportunity cost decisions.

The Gender Issue

So it has been requested that I say some things about the gender issue here in Zambia. One of things EWB would like to see is gender equality which is not necessarily prevalent in the less-economically-developed world. So I don’t have a lot I can say on the issue because I haven’t seen much of it. Within the MACO – which is the government – there are high powered women and there are low powered women like the secretary. The DACCO is male, and I suspect most of the really important positions are exclusively held by men. There is definitely the idea that women are equal in what goes on. The development sector is a major industry in sub-Saharan Africa, with many of the best jobs in these countries found with NGOs, and with gender equality thoroughly embedded in development rhetoric – which maybe a problem if it is not looked at as in issue in itself no one will take responsibility for seeing that it happens.

What I am trying to say is there is gender inequality, but the whole scene seems to be moving towards equality. Its in the minds of the development workers, and it can be seen in the villages. One of the questions we were asking during our interviews was “How many women are on the dam committee?”, and “Do you think there should be more? How many?”. Women definitely have their own ideas and want them to be heard, but there is still an ingrained hierarchy. In fact, much to my surprise 50% of the women we talked to didn’t think there should be more than the two [out of 16] women on the committee. That doesn’t mean 50% said there should be, only 38% said there should be more, the rest “didn’t know”.

Talking with Besta a Lweendo, both are going to school and want to get good jobs. Lweendo has actually gone up to the Copper Belt to work in the mines because she doesn’t like the hotel industry here in Livingstone. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I don’t really know what it is like to work in the mines here or anywhere. All I have is mental pictures of movies and pictures of the Industrial Revolution with the horribly coal mines. Besta was amazed to hear that I have been washing my clothes. She had to look at my hands because she didn’t think I could handle the job. I find the reversal of ideas of physical strength interesting. As I guy I am not strong enough to wash my own clothes, or cook nshima [nshima does tire me out, these people must have forearms of steel after cooking it everyday]. I tell them that I love to cook at home in Canada and they share their favourite chores with me. Besta loves to sweep and clean, but hates cooking. They tell me they know there aren’t these same gender roles in Canada [even though, as much as we try to avoid it, there still is underlying roles] but that’s the way it is in Zambia. They have almost a cultural pride in those roles. I guess its division of labor. I think you could get into a big discussion about the difference between equality and equity and which is more appropriate.

There are female extension officers too. At the end of the day it doesn’t seem like it’s a huge problem, but if you really looked you would see in the villages that the women do most of the work. Its not equal, or even equitable. But things are getting better. You can’t stop the emancipation of women. And if those women choose to have those roles, well it’s a lot different than that role being a prison one can not escape from.

I think it also important to note that Zambians have their eyes fixed on the U.S. Even when they dislike the U.S. government they try everything they can to achieve the North American lifestyle. All the Hollywood movies are available here. Those videos are propaganda for strong independent women, in a way. The girls watch them and see women not held back by anything but their ambition. And guys watch and see guys not holding women back and everyone just pursuing the lifestyle they want. So maybe we can’t completely condemn the pursuit of the American lifestyle.

This is an extension of the post after I wrote it originally:

I saw a Zambian beauty magazine the other day. It had the similar style of advertising its articles like you see an magazines in Canada. One of them read: “Why men won’t commit: what women are doing wrong!” I couldn’t believe it. There is a problem with the behavior of men but it’s the women doing something wrong. If books and magazines weren’t so damned expensive I might have even bought the beauty magazine just to find out if that is actually what they meant.