A friend and I in Canada were bantering back and fourth about the conditions for teachers these days versus the hours they work and the time they get off. He asserted that teachers receive no more vacation days than anyone else. I quickly reminded him of the whole summer with July and August. He sat there bewildered for a second and then replied with a smirk, “Oh yeah, I guess we count those in months.” While I’ve always been a proponent of teachers and education in general, it was always something that was more of an automatic response: is education good? [View Full Entry]

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I thought it might be valuable for everyone to gain an appreciation for Zambian domestics but it seemed an overwhelming task since the term “family life” is about as close to nuclear as Canada is tropical. Canada itself, with the divorce rate at approximately 50%, has experienced major paradigm shifts in the past fifty years in the traditional definition. Add a fatal pandemic infecting between 20-30% of the population, intermarriage between 72 tribes in Zambia alone that haven’t always lived in harmony, and a dash of traditional social norms mostly absent in North America and you have the recipe for a [View Full Entry]

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Yes yes y’all, Good newz, I’m in the capital city of Lusaka this afternoon and they actually have intenet access here without a phone wire going into the bback of the comp which means some pics are up, booyaa http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/KoolguyTy/ The past two weeks have been reminiscent of university as I’ve taken a couple of road trips. I hit a friends farm that is 15 km outside of town. We rode bikes like it was grade five and my bike fell apart faster than a… well… a Chinese bicycle. It was a one speeder with a broken seat, pedal, and crooked [View Full Entry]

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I think everyone would admit that corruption is ubiquitous to some degree in every society; no one’s perfect. In Canada all of us have greased a bouncer, bent the rules to help out a friend, and been a victim or benificary of the problem. However the corruption that exists here in Zambia appears to be of a different breed and magnitude than that at home. Many Zambian’s I have spoken with feel that thee biggest problem in getting a job is corruption. I don’t think too many Canadian’s experience this as the biggest barrier in securing employment and most would [View Full Entry]

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The intention of this blog is to share my experience with development here in Zambia. I realise being only one person and here for only four months implies a limited perspective and time constraint but I think through my integration in the community and position with a prominent NGO (non-government organization) It is possible for you to fgain a valuable apprecation for the framework of development in Zambia, typical barriers and challenges encountered, and the livelihoods of those it is intended to benefit. Hopefully this will either spark some curiosity, awken a previously dormant in development, or stimulate an existing knowledge [View Full Entry]

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