Thoughts on Malawi

'She is positive'

‘She is positive’. Nelia told me this as we walked towards one of the volunteers. This was the first time I knowingly met someone with AIDS. She is a teacher at a U6 center. Before Mary’s Meals started providing for the school, she was very ill and weak. It was devastating to learn that, and to be told that many of the children in front of me also had AIDS. However, since Mary’s Meals’ work with the school, she has become much healthier and she is leading a fairly normal life. This is because all the volunteers are usually able to eat after the children have eaten. It made me aware of the scope that Mary’s Meals has, unwittingly sometimes. She is able to help these children because she is fed enough to do so. It made me think of the kind of impact we will see in 10-15 years when all these children being fed will be adults. It holds a lot of hope, I think.

I’ve also gotten a fast track education in Malawian politics, Malawian social and business interactions, African politics/social and business interactions, poverty and poverty alleviation, and a bunch more from a variety of people in the office (mainly because I pepper them with questions).

Malawian social and business interactions:

There is huge unemployment here. It’s not as easily measured in statistics, but you can see it on the street – everywhere, I mean everywhere, there are dozens if not hundreds of people hanging out, casually selling things (phone cards mostly). I talked with a guy who works at the hostel that I’m staying at and he said that he would literally take any job that was available – he even said (which was a little awkward) that if I had any job or any thing that needed doing back home, to please please take him with. He’s 25, married with two kids. And since he’s got a job, he’s doing very well compared to most others.

That unemployment stems directly from lack of education. Here’s how and why: there are only 10,000 university places in Malawi, for a population of 15 million, most of whom are under 30. This means that tiny a proportion of people are university educated. This means that they don’t, for the most part, start up their own businesses – made even more difficult by the fact that there are very few products that Malawians can buy in the first place.

Secondly, international companies that come to Malawi and set up industry find it very hard to find qualified, trustworthy workers to be in management positions. Corruption is over this country like chickenpox on a ten year old. It’s not just in government either, as one might assume. The majority of businesses and, devastatingly, charitable organizations have major problems stemming corruption. One example - an Irish NGO, ‘Goal’, had a manager steal 84,000 euros. That is money that had been donated from Ireland and ended up straight in a person’s pocket, from an organization that has a budget of less than one million euros. You can understand the thought process though – finally, after years and years of poverty I and most of you reading this right now cannot imagine, people are in the position to do well for themselves and their family. The temptation is bigger, I think, after coming from so little.

It’s not just corruption that is the problem - finding qualified locals to work in complicated management positions, for instance the logistics manager, is near impossible. Hence it is much more reliable, safe and cheaper in the long run to bring someone in from another country, who has been educated at a higher level and has much more experience, than to hire a Malawian. This, obviously, is not as beneficial for the people nor the economy in the long run.

In addition, there is a cultural difference also. In Malawi, and as I gather, in many other countries in Africa, the need for urgency does not exist the same way as it does in more developed countries. An example was described to me – if Mary’s Meals, hypothetically, needs a month’s supply of flour delivered to a school on the 1^st of May, the supplier will genuinely wonder ‘why not the 7^th of May?’ To compound things further, the supplier rarely voices such thoughts, instead just goes through with ‘okay, maybe by the 7^th of May’. But for any organization, urgency, promptness and reliability are very important. In this example, ‘why not the 7^th?’ – because that means the children won’t eat for a week. This is a cultural difference that is widespread, though of course not universal.

Malawian Politics

Lastly, I have written a long account of the politics in Malawi. However, due to recent events involving the expulsion of the British High Commissioner from Malawi by the President for critical comments leaked from a diplomatic cable, I think it wisest to not post such opinions on a blog. However, I would be thrilled to send anyone who asks an email that includes information from expats, from local Malawians, historical and present political trends, and my own thoughts. Just send me your email address at damien.b.engelhardt@gmail.com and I'll email you back. 

First days on the job.

I had my first three days of work at Mary's Meals. I wouldn't call it 'work' so much as 'school while working', because I didn't do very much but heck did I learn a lot.

My role here is somewhat limited (which I had previously assumed) because of a number of factors: I'm only here for a month; most of the jobs are held by Malawians, not expats; this is my first real experience with the administrative side of an NGO.  However, I will be useful as providing a fresh look at how Mary's Meals works, how the schools operate, how problems encountered have been or will be resolved, etc.  That's not to say that I'm here looking for the flaws in the system to correct - I'm just providing a fresh perspective.  My main role will be visiting schools with Field Managers (of whom there are two who cover the whole of Malawi) both near Blantyre, and in hard-to-get-to places, such as the islands on Lake Malawi which is only accessible by flight (very expensive) or the once-a-week ferry.  That trip will actually be the culmination or goal of my experience with Mary's Meals, as I will be going with only one other person and we will learn about the successes, problems, experiences and complications associated with Mary's Meals working in eight schools on these two islands.  I'm also an up and coming, semi professional photographer (as of this job) and I'm to take photos and videos of the schools and children, both for publicity and for a closer look at some of these schools that are hard to visit.

While I'm disappointed that I won't be able to contribute to Mary's Meals in a greater capacity, I will know the organization's operations in Malawi inside out by the end of the month.  This experience, I hope, will be invaluable in future work in development and philanthropy.

First Day

I learned a TON on the first day.  Many of the things were pertaining directly to Mary's Meals - how they chose what food to provide (nutritional value of soy-based porridge over the typical maize-based porridge served in the country; mainly the huge difference in protein and vitamin values), how schools and volunteers are chosen, what problems arise (water shortage, children from other schools coming, flour not being delivered on time). I also learned the ins and outs of how they cook, who delivers, etc. It was very interesting to see and experience, but I suspect would be not that interesting read. So I won't write it, but if you want more info, leave a comment asking and I'll email you.

Second Day

On the second day, I realized that I had learned a metric ton (tonne?) yesterday, and today I learned an imperial ton. Because an imperial ton is heavier.

Did that joke land, like, at all? DAMMIT. Moving on.

I visited the smallest school that Mary’s Meals works with in the Blantyre area, and I visited the biggest school. The smallest school is a 30 minute drive via dirt road (bumpy, oh so bumpy). The school has 300 students to 3 teachers (not a typo) and up until two weeks ago, the teachers had to walk 30 minutes to the nearest, unreliable water source. Luckily, with the help of Mary’s Meals, they installed a well next to the school. This school doesn’t have a classroom. The children learn outside, either under the shade of a thatched awning, if they’re lucky, or under the ever moving shade of a tree. The only real building is the one that Mary’s Meals constructed to house the cooking supplies! But half the time, the children can’t use it because there are open flame fires cooking the food. On the way to the school, most of the houses are made of mud brick and about half of them only have holes in the wall as ventilation (as opposed to windows).

The second school is the biggest in Malawi, and the headmaster thinks it’s possibly the biggest in the world (I’d have to double check that…). They have 11,050 students. That’s definitely not a typo. Eleven thousand students between the ages of 6 and 14, and they only have 100 teachers. That’s it. And it’s not evenly distributed, meaning that the youngest age group actually has a ratio of 200 students per teacher! And the number of students is constantly increasing because of Mary’s Meals. In 2006, when Mary’s Meals started working with this school, there were ‘only’ 7000 students. This seemed to me a logistical nightmare – where do you put 11,000 children, where do they play, how do you organize them eating… it is bananas. The school has recently put up blackboards all over the school to create improvised classrooms. They do a good job considering the circumstances. They stagger feeding, so the earliest volunteers have to arrive at 4am to start cooking the food. The children walk from up to 8km away to get a meal, and if the water doesn’t run and thus the food doesn’t get made, a large portion of the children leave. The education and health of these 11,000 children is dependent on Mary’s Meals. Pretty crazy.

Third Day

Today I visited the Under-6 projects that Mary’s Meals started at the same time as their primary school feeding program. However, the U6 is very different from the feeding program, even if the premise is the same.

‘Feed children in schools’. How do those children get to school? Their family, for the most part. What if they are orphans? In rural areas, the community is much more helpful to each other than in urban areas. Therefore, who takes care of a child, feeds a child and educates a child if he or she is without parents and maybe without siblings? These are some of the devastating challenges that face many children in Malawi.

The first thing that stuck me upon entering the first pre-school we visited was how happy and healthy the children looked. They looked nothing like the adverts you see on TV for Oxfam or Save the Children – they looked like they were having the time of their lives! This immediately signaled to me the huge impact that Mary’s Meals is having. The meals they receive at school are often the only food they’ll receive during the day. Without Mary’s Meals, they would be scrounging for food, stealing, and very possibly not alive today. These were some of the thoughts I had whilst looking at them wolf down their porridge.

Nelia, who is in charge of the U6 program and was kind enough to show me some of the different schools, explained to me that there are many differences between this program and the primary school feeding program. Children under six years old are in the most vital formative periods of their brains, their psyche and their bodies, meaning that if there is any time where nutrition is most vital, it is then. Therefore, Mary’s Meals provides more than porridge (which is what they provide for the primary schools), they also provide money for the workers and volunteers to buy additional food, such as eggs, meat, beans, vegetables and fruit. Thus, one meal is porridge, and a second daily-changing meal is provided later in the day. This gives them the nutrients they need to grow and develop healthily.

We visited a school that was very remote. Think of dirt roads for twenty minutes (not thirty, thank heavens). The school building is actually the house of one of the teachers – she gives up two of the small rooms for the children to learn and for the cooking to happen. This is the kind of kindness and self-sacrifice that I’ve seen with all the people in and associated with Mary’s Meals. It’s one wonderful thing to see people with money, education and time give generously to help others; it’s another to see people with nothing doing the same.

Thanks for reading!

First days 'in country'... Malawi

I think that, no matter how the landscape had looked when I landed in Malawi, I would have been surprised.  But perhaps I was even more surprised to see how lush it is.  Grass, trees, crops (tabacco and corn mostly) aren't things you need to find - they're everywhere.  The evidence that this is a dry area (at least, now during dry season) exists only on the dirt roads where the pale yellow sand gets blown up by passing buses.

There isn't a huge amonut to say about Lilongwe, the capital,l except that it's possible that Peace Corps Volunteers outnumber locals. It's a busy city with very little going on.

Malawi is often described as 'The warm little heart of Africa' and that is evident the most in the people. They are, by far, the friendliest people I've ever met.  Everybody wants to chat, laugh, learn something about you.  I think I've exchanged phone numbers with 4 different Malawians, even though I'd talked for a whole 30 seconds with them!  Everybody wants to help with your bus, your hostel, your food - and nobody has looked for a kickback.  They don't want you to use their bus, and they don't talk to the driver/owner, implying to me that their not receiving a commission for bringing me.

Especially regarding public transport... thank God they're nice, because the system sure ain't efficient.  My first experience with the buses was trying to catch a minibus (which seat 15,. but fit 390) to another side of town. The guy told me they were just about to leave, so I hop into the almost empty bus thinking 'Thank heavens this isn't as crowded as some of the ones I've seen'... we waited, right in that spot, for 25 minutes till it filled up. Three other buses headed in the same direction passed us.  Ahhh, if you don't have patience on those buses, you don't have anything at all.

Via Couchsurf, I met someone who kindly offered to let me stay with them in their teeny tiny village in which they were working (they are Peace Corps).  7 hours of transport later (close to two of those hours sitting stationary on buses!) I arrive in Bwanje.  There were quite a few people living in Bwanje, but you wouldn't know it from the main road, and you wouldn't know it at night - no electricity.  And no running water.  And no cars.  And one dirt road.  I knew this was going to be fun.

A couple of the most interesting things I learned/encountered over the two days I stayed with Mary:

- The showers... are not showers. There's a little area, surrounded by bricks for privacy, where you bring a bucket of water and use a cup to wash the water onto your body.  The water is that which you collect from the nearby well.  In hot and dry season, many wells dry up, though at the moment it was fine.  The water is, surprise surprise, cold!  But when it's a hot day ('hot' and 'cold' season should be renamed 'hot' and 'my goodness it's hot' season) a cold cup of water feels great. Mary's developed a way of getting warm water - leave the plastic tub of water out in the sun all day!  It's almost too hot when it's time to shower!

- The toilet... are a hole in a ground.  At night there are maybe ten thousand spiders and mini scorpions.

- You live from surise to sunset. Mary does have a small solar generator, so she can charge things, and hang up a light or two (which she's planning on doing), but otherwise, if you stay up, it's candle light.

- There are more stars in the Malawi night sky than there are in space.

- Two oxes pull the cart full of stuff.  This is the real Toyota Tundra.

- People here are basically subsistence living, though not necessarily growing all their crops for themselves.  Meaning that the activities of the day aren't a (to us) typical clock-in clock-out of a  job - you work on the things you need to live. You work the crop to sell that day or week so you have money to buy food. You build things for your house.  It's fascinating, and I only brushed the surface.

- There is phone signal. Five bars. I can't get five fucking bars on the Red Line in Chicago!

- Nobody cares about whether the Cubs win or lose. In fact, most people barely (if at all) realize that they exist. It's a mini-paradise.

- Once again, the people are extremely friendly. I walked around for about an hour one day and had one very long conversation along with two shorter ones.  All of them fascinating, friendly, full of smiles, jokes and fist bumps.

- The houses are made of mud brick and the roofs are either made of straw or corrugated iron.  Iron is more expensive, and the richer have it, because it doesn't need to be fixt/repaced every two years, and (in theory) it doesn't leak water.  What they don't tell you in the fine print is that it bakes you compared to the straw roof.

After two lovely days with Mary, I rocked on down to Blantyre where I'll be staying for the next month.  Experiencing the small, rural village Bwanje was more fascinating than I could ever describe on a blog.  Here are a couple of pictures that don't do it justice.

Parade for Easter in Lilongwe

On the way down south

Mary's house in Bwanje

View from Mary's porch

Shower!

Little village

Woman carrying baby on her back and stuff on her head

This is how you bake cake!

The next update will be about my job!

Thanks for reading!

Going to... Africa.

Sorry for the delay in posts! You can expect them twice a week again!
First off, we left Ecuador. The trip was amazing. Visiting the Galapagos Islands was the definite highlight (there are probably 45 highlights within that one week). I'd recommend for anyone to go... but maybe try to spend less time than we did in Quito if you're not planning on working and learning Spanish.
The past week/10 days I've been frantically getting things together for the next part of the adventure. 'Getting things together' entails seeing the dentist, orthodentist, optician, back doctor, getting 4 different vaccinations, stocking up on 4 months supply of malarone, washing/repairing clothes, playing two rounds of golf (what?) - basically getting an MOT on my body. Why? Because I'm headed to Africa.
I've got the opportunity (and am taking advantage of it) to work/volunteer for two different organizations in southern Africa. The first is a charity called Mary's Meals - they help communities provide meals for children in schools, thus giving the children inreased incentive to go to school - and give the parents incentive to send them (as opposed to having them work). I will be working for Mary's Meals in the Southern Malawian city called Blantyre. I start Tuesday. After working with them for a month, I am hopping over to Maputo, Mozambique to work with Save the Children for two months. The hope is that over these 3/4 months that I will gain experience and insight into the development/philanthropy field of work so that I can work for a similar organization permanently.
I arrived in Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi, today after connecting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I haven't had a chance to discover the city at all, but I'm excited to visit around tomorrow. The drive from the airport, however, was gorgeous. This part of the country at least is quite lush, full of vegetation - there are these cool trees that have huge yellow flowers. Everyone I've met has been so nice and the hostel I'm staying in is pretty chill.
This weekend will entail visiting Lilongwe a bit, then trekking over to a tiny town called Bwanje to visit someone I met through Couch Surf. I hope to be in Blantyre by Monday to start work Tuesday.
Things seem to be happening pretty quickly. While that is exciting, it is also pretty scary. I am, sadly, doing this part of the trip alone. Kristen is going to be moving to Chicago and start working (good luck!!!!!!!).
Anyway, I'll update on the beginnings of this adventure on Monday. Until then, thanks for reading!

The Galapagos

There's too much about the Galapagos I could say... all I'll say is that it was one of the best weeks of my life. To share with you, here are photos a videos... and maybe a couple explanations about land formation, mating seasons and reasons for spitting...

Pictures:

Giant (very afraid) turtle

Huge caldera

Shark we were swimming (inadvertedly) near

Post Barrel

Pretty?

Peguins!

Turtle growth

Albatross

Couple of points of info:

- The Shark - there were actually two of them. We were swimming around before someone on the boat told us that they saw sharks in the water. So we got out (not afraid or anything) and saw two sharks. Eeek!

- The Post Barrel - this is from whaling and pirate times when they would put mail in it to be delivered when a person passion would be on their way to that country. Nowadays, you look to see if there are any letter two people in your country, you take them, and then deliver them once in your country (by hand or mail). And you get to put your mail in it. It's cool.

- The Albatross - the Galapagos Albatross is endemic to the Galapagos. They only breed on this particular island. They are usually away from November until April. We were there right a the beginning of April and saw basically the first Albatross of the year! So cool. They're huge, with wings of over 2.5 meters.

Videos:

Lots of sea lions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETomCicNLOI

Cute sea lion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6mpJxn4lSU

Spitting iguana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzN3CEOEPfA

Big ol' turtle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHdF6Y_fgWA

That's it for now because Youtube is not working right. Will post more soon.

Thanks for reading!

Cuenca

Ahh, the city of Cuenca. We'd read that there is a friendly competition between Quito and Cuenca residents for the 'nicest' city in Ecuador.
Obviously, nobody from Quito has visted Cuenca.

It's not a competition. Cuenca's lovely. It feels safe, it has lovely bars and cafes and has an almost-European feel (especially down by the lovely river). I liked it, especially compared to how gross Quito was/is. For instance, it is so not polluted (compared to Quito) that my nose snot (as opposed to my other snot) was not black in Cuenca! Woohoo!

There are few pleasant museums, good shopping (Panama hats! From Ecuador!) and a nice cathedral. Nearby, there is a great national park for hiking. We didn't hike though.

The highlight of the area was Ingapirca. It is a a less-good, cheap-man's Machu Pichu... but still pretty cool. I'd go into the details of what we learnt, but honestly, I'd find it boring second hand, so I'm sure you would also.

So that was Cuenca! Fun, good, clean, cool stuff... thank you Cuenca!

Thanks for reading!

Sorry...

Check back in a week!

Because...

Kristen and I found the sweetest, cheapest deal to the Galapagos! Ahh!!

Thanks for reading!