Catching Up

So, what's up with me going to Africa? I've got a bunch of audiences of my blog - friends from Ladysmith, UVic/Victoria, the EWB (the UVic chapter, connections across Canadian university and professional chapters, National Office, past and present Junior Fellows, the Long Term Overseas Staff..), my family, my extended family (there's like 50 of you, jesus), work friends, acquaintances, anonymous internet browsers...

On top of that, I have gone through a rigorous workbook of documents and activities for the Junior Fellowship, and a week in Toronto for pre-departure sessions. This has has changed my perspectives and attitudes on the global community, the notion of aid, and my role in all of it.

So it can be difficult to write anything publicly since it will be read by various audiences with different interests and knowledge. Hopefully I can publish enough for everyone to be a little satisfied!


So why the heck am I in Africa? Maybe it starts with why I joined Engineers Without Borders. It was a whimsical decision for more volunteer experience by joining the newly-founded UVic EcoCAR team. I dedicated my time to EWB once I realized how much the organization appealed to me; the culture of continuous self-improvement, reflection, critical thinking and feedback is refreshing, and the desired efficiency of time, money and other resources, and increase in understanding and effectiveness appeals to my engineering mindset.

EWB has semi-autonomous chapters across Canada, both in cities and universities. Each chapter can send one or multiple Junior Fellows to Africa for a 4 month placement, with the understanding that it's really 16 months. There's 4 months of preparation through foundation learning, about 3.5 months overseas (4 with pre-dep and debrief and travels), and 8+ months spreading knowledge, experiences, and stories with the home chapter. The overseas portion is relatively small for actually implementing changes overseas. I expect to have a minimal impact on my partner organization and staff, but perhaps we will both learn from each other.

In Southern Africa (SA), EWB works in the Agricultural Value Chains (AVC/agric) and Water & Sanitation (watsan) sectors. I'm part of the agric team in Zambia. The JFs in this team are all partnered with International Development Enterprises in Zambia, or IDE-Zambia. This organization seeks to fight rural poverty in smallholder farmers through profitable farming.

IDE is composed of six field offices throughout Zambia, and a head office in the capital Lusaka. There's around 35 employees in total (that number is inaccurate!), and each field office has 2 or 3 field staff. My office has Jairos and Alice, and a student intern Elijah who's doing his practicum. The current project, the Rural Prosperity Initiative (RPI), focuses on six areas (listed with some examples):
Inputs:
Credit -- linking farmers to micro-credit
Inputs -- seeds, fertilizer
Irrigation Technology -- linking farmers and suppliers of treadle pumps, drip irrigation
Production:
Capacity Building -- horticultural practices, best methods for planting and irrigation
Gender -- empowering both genders within households
Outputs:
Markets -- establishing links between farmers and markets that do not currently exist


My impression (naive - I'm new) is IDE is very good at establishing farmer groups, so that (eg.) 50 farmers can elect a few representatives that communicate with a field staff member, and they act to disseminate knowledge and practices. That's how a field office with 2 or 3 employees can manage over 2000 farming households. I'm very impressed with their progress and effectiveness to date. Additionally, they understand that NGO intervention must be facilitated, not forced. Otherwise any change will not be sustainable for the long-term.

My role here is to work with the field staff in their daily tasks and accompany them to the field (riding on the back of a motorbike woot). Once I am more accustomed to general practices, I am to help the field staff improve their effectiveness of market facilitation. So, they have many farmer groups that are producing more diverse crops and higher yields with lower production costs (through the first 5 areas of RPI listed above), but current markets are not favourable. One potential role of IDE is to link a food processor to smallholder farmers by facilitating meetings between the farmer groups and the processor, helping to negotiate a contract, and possibly following up on the progress and learning best practices. I can perform my duty by applying EWB tools such as the Personal Development Plan (PDP, and coordinating with other Junior Fellows working with IDE.

Another role is identifying and analyzing the effectiveness or challenges of IDE and the AVC sector as a whole. This is more my job with EWB, but it could also benefit IDE immediately - for example, having the various field offices meet more regularly and/or more informally. I'm not sure if that's a good idea and it's just something I've been considering in the last day or two.

So far, I am very impressed with how appropriate the treadle pump and dripkit irrigation technologes are. The former can be manufactured locally, and the latter is inexpensive to mass-produce and ship (extruded plastic hose, pipe, and fittings). The returns on investment are relatively fast and significant - indicated by high support among farmers! I've heard that uptake within Bangladesh and India of similar technology is ridiculously higher - in the millions. Understanding the reasons and consequences of the disparity may be of great value to EWB.


That's work. What about life?! A big portion of the EWB placement focuses on integration - we live on <$14/day, but I think that could be reduced further. We are encouraged to live with a family and try and become a temporary family member - cook and eat with them, attend church, clean, ..., where appropriate. I want to learn as much Zambian culture and language (chinyanja, language of the Nyanja tribe) as possible. I'm living in a large town which will bring a different experience than someone in a city or a village.

My town! It's about an hour south of Lusaka on the main highway. Kafue is just at the border of the Lusaka and Southern provinces, and beside the Kafue River. There's a hydroelectric dam nearby that powers Lusaka and maybe some of the copperbelt as well. There's also a dam far to the south that also powers Zambia.
I don't know how many people live in Kafue. Area-wise, it might be like Victoria, BC. Maybe 200,000 residents? It's very hard for me to estimate. There's a downtown core of shops, a heavy industrial area (Zambian Nitrogen Chemicals, Zesco power, and Kafue Steel Plant), many schools and churches, another area of shops and buildings, lots of light industry/commercial industries like machine shops, and plenty of markets and living regions. There's a railway that runs through the town and across the river, but rail transit/transport kinda sucks here and it isn't used much.
I think the proximity to Lusaka and all the businesses between them provides a lot of employment. I'm very new though and I don't know what's what!


In the future, I will post about life here - currency, buying things, environment, weather, people, language, food, transportation, attitudes, economy...
I can also talk about my direct work with the field staff, and my EWB role of the bigger picture. I left contact details on the left side of my blog. Please don't hesitate to phone, email, or comment!

Love.