Journal Entry 8: Home for a Rest

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Well, I have finally returned back home to Choma and been here for almost a month. It feels like I sort of had to redo the process of settling back into the life here and reintegrating with the culture because the roots I grew in my first month weren’t strong enough to keep me grounded during my time away. However the process has been moving forward and things are starting to settle down.

I am really loving the challenge and reward of my work. I come home many days saying to myself that I have the best job in the world. I get to learn an incredible amount everyday and meet with a huge variety of people and learn about their lives. I then get to work with these people in a very sincere and straightforward manner because my job is to really learn about their challenges and help them overcome them. I genuinely get to share whatever useful information I have with them (which does have unconscious biases but I try super hard to be aware of them) and then really try and allow the farmer to make their own choice on what is best for them.

I get to work on all sorts of various levels of development. Some days it is working at the very small scale level when I get to fly around on my motorbike through the beautiful Zambian landscape and spend time working with and understanding farmers. Other days I am in an office working with my Zambian workmates designing programs aimed at finding the most effective ways in helping the most number of farmers using our very limited resources. Some days I even have to work with and understand huge macro level things like international trade policies, government poverty reduction strategy papers and large scale private company operations.

Personally I also get to use different skill sets I have. I get to apply bits of my engineering knowledge when working with the pumps and irrigation systems. I get to use my entrepreneurship and enterprise development knowledge when looking at marketing opportunities and the Zambian economic system. I get to use my team building and creativity skills when working with my other workmates in designing programs for helping our office operate and running training sessions for farmer groups.

The best part is that I get to work with an amazing partner and leader. Joshua, who grew up very close to Choma, is becoming a brother to me. He is amazing at teaching me what I need to know while at the same time letting me learn things for myself. He allows me to make mistakes when they need to be made and at the same time accepts that he makes mistakes as well. We communicate extremely openly with each other and we both really value each others input because we both realize that we are both contributing and both learning together. Outside of work we hang out, share personal stories, debate about Zambian football, and have fun playing with his young son, Joshua Jr. (who now calls me “Uncle”).

Putting all of these things together makes for a very fulfilling working environment where I am finding a lot of meaning in what I am doing here.

But not everything is all fluffy and perfect as there are huge problems and frustrations as well. One of the biggest ones is that hardly anything goes as planned and there are huge external shocks that make it extremely difficult to plan or prepare for anything.

Here’s an example of a typical situation. Joshua and I start to work with a farmers group teaching them about improved farming techniques using a treadle pump and they tell us that they are really benefiting from the training and they would like us to return the following week to do a follow up training. Joshua and I, seeing that we are working with a really motivated group that is benefiting of course agree and we plan to meet the group the following week on Wednesday. Now, since these farmers are very rural (over 100km away from Choma), there is no real way of getting in contact with these farmers when we’re back in Choma (although I’m sure a lot of you would be very surprised to know that a lot of rural farmers actually do carry cell phones which astonished me when I got here). Therefore, all of these farmers are going to trust that Joshua and I will be back on the following Wednesday because some of them have to trek 10 km from their homes and sacrifice a full day of farming for the training.

The following week comes and we are preparing for the training. But then all of a sudden the day before the key to your motorbike gets stolen. There’s no other form of transport out there and the only replacement key socket for a motorbike is a 3.5 bus ride to the capital Lusaka. We have to find a way out there so therefore we decide to hotwire the bike to make it work (this isn’t a public blog is it?). But hotwiring the bike means that we don’t have lights when we’re driving which means we have to get back into town before the sun sets which means we have to end the training early (there isn’t exactly any street lights to show you the way, but I’m not sure if being able to see the huge potholes is actually better or worse). We are then ready to leave but we have to grab the training materials from another NGO who has borrowed them from us but they don’t show up for work on time, so we wait for them for half an hour and then finally someone informs us that they’ve left for 3 days to go attend a funeral for a family member (which seriously happens once or twice a day here). We then rush to the computer business store to try and print out another set of the materials but we find that the power in the town is cut again and obviously we can’t print them out. We decide that we can do the training without the materials so we finally jump on the bike and try to start out, but we show up at the gas station and find out that the entire town is also completely out of fuel and everyone is stuck.

My friends, I can’t explain how frustrating and painful it is to sit in my office all day knowing that 25 farmers are sacrificing important farming days, hiking long distances and sitting in the hot sun all day waiting for people they might have shown some trust in but now who are not going to show up. I know that I can drive around from farmer to farmer the next time I can get out there and apologize and a lot of them will probably accept it because it isn’t the first time it has happened to them. But still I know that they have lost a piece of trust in me and that burns deep.

Often spoken of many times within development circles, there is criticism about past development workers who make too many promises to the communities that they are working with and then not following through with them. These promises raise the expectations of the local communities and then when they are not followed through with the expectations drop lower then when things started. It sucks knowing that you are doing the same thing. I think we assume that a lot of these promises are made by past development workers just to excite the communities and draw them into their programs, which is probably sometimes the case, but now I know it’s not always. I’m starting to empathize with the other development workers who have worked their asses off to try to make things happen, only to have the only person who knows how to get to the remote village come down with Malaria the day of the event or to blow your tire on the way out there, and then the TWO other spares you brought with you as well.

It’s really tough because I have lots of ideas of ways I think we can be of help and these involve creating a vision for what things could be like, then we start to set goals and find ways to reach those goals. Moving towards this vision then requires me to trust and become interdependent on other people and also to have people trust and become interdependent on me. These are usually key principles that I feel are necessary for good problem solving, good teamwork and good development. But when I start trying to get these things done there always seems to be these small tiny little logistical problems that get in the way and although each one is small, added together they create huge problems. I know that back home I really take for granted how well things and people operate so that you can plan and achieve tasks. Simple things like having access to phone someone in the case things change, or knowing that there is going to be fuel at the gas station, knowing that there is going to be power available, or even just assuming that the person who is helping you doesn’t have to suddenly leave to go to a funeral. But those things that I take so easily for granted back home, I can’t do so here. Therefore, instead of being able to focus on spending my time entirely on working with people, I end up spending a lot of it just trying to deal with all the basic logistical stuff to even allow me to accomplish some tasks. Even worse it that is that I never tell anyone I promise that I’m going to do anything or that they should trust me because I don’t even know if I can follow through with it and that not only reduces my ability to do a lot of the work I need to do, but it personally eats away at your insides not being able to feel you can be trusted.

I am also struggling with the level of how much I should let myself be absorbed by and become dependent on the culture and others here vs. how much personal independence I should keep. When you are in a place for a short amount of time, I find it is fairly easy to sacrifice your selfish desires and urges in order to try and live similar lives of the people you are working with to try and help. I really find that making these sacrifices early on helps a tremendous amount in terms of earning respect from the people around you and gaining a deeper insight into what certain people experience in terms of poverty. Learning and speaking to people beyond the most basic phrases in their native language, I find has the most impact. Although I do feel that it isn’t completely deserved because It really isn’t that hard, it’s just that the bar has been set really low by many of the past foreigners who haven’t even learnt a thing. Seeing the smiles on peoples faces and the gratitude in their eyes really makes you feel welcome. However, now that I’ve been here for a longer stretch of time, I am feeling a little like I’ve forgotten the feeling of being truly me. I’m feeling maybe that due to being afraid of affecting peoples culture, I’m maybe trying too hard to integrate and to be empathetic with everyone’s situation. I think I’ve started to forget that I’m allowed to have my own opinions, my own quirky idiosyncrasies and my own selfish desires. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it earlier, but it is impossible to really try and manage peoples perceptions of you. Not only is it impossible, but it is really not completely sincere, natural or even healthy. They even teach elementary school children that you shouldn’t worry about what other people think of you and just be yourself. Now, it’s not like I’ve been this totally other person. I hope that people here have seen my sincerity with the interactions with them, I just think that my development approach so far has been a little bit micromanaged and based too much on theory instead of maybe what I feel is natural in my gut. I guess that it just takes some time to work through these types of things. I’m sure that throughout my time here, there’s going to be constant struggles within this issue, buts its all about finding the right balance and I’m at least feeling that I’m coming closer to finding it.

Alright, I’m off to go get my butt kicked in football.

Bazuba Kabotu (Have a good day)

=^)

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Photos

Cutest Baby in the World!
Meet Anna, so adorable that you almost just want to take her home with you =^)

Gonna be a Farmer like his Pa!
I raced this kid 5 times to see who could gather wood with the wheel barrow the fastest. The final score was 4-1.....poor kid tripped on a rock the fifth race

The Makeeshee
A traditionally symbollic figure who shows up during the many festivals here and is chased around all day by whords of children.....hey, where'd I get a beard from?

But this pot was full 10 minutes ago?
Notice in background: See, the chickens here even know how tasty they are, these ones are practically running into the pot

But I was just starting to look like a real bushman
After insistant lobbying by practically the entire town of Choma, I was forced to part with my first real beard