Retreat

I'm back from a rushed week of travels and learning and challenges and fun... our SA JF retreat! It was at the Wheelhouse Marina, Senga Bay, Malawi. I think that place runs programs for street kids or something. But it was sweet to be able to swim every morning, drink full-strength unsweetened coffee, cook a crazy variety of food, and share stories of the last month. Sending letters with the JFs was done by a couple other chapters, but I think UVic's are the best. Not that the JFs have shared them.. just a gut feeling. EWB UVic rocks.

So where am I at? At the retreat, we discussed the future of EWB and the returned JF role. We are planning an event for late September - UVic, SFU, and UBC JFs doing a presentation tour of the three universities! Since Victoria has a bit of a moat around it, we might host Andrew, Annelies, and Mike for a night! Annelies is in Burkina, Andrew is in northern Malawi, and Mike is in Pemba (about 2-3 hours from me). I'm thinking it will be good to contrast our placements - our work, what we do in spare time, our counterparts, host family, stories..

What else? We discussed our summer plans. I plan on posting some general questions on my blog, which could be answered or researched by anyone. They might be good starting points for my chapter to explore, or anyone to answer. I also might be creating some training modules for my field staff in areas related to leadership, communication, coaching... sounds like good EWB resources! Hopefully this will tie into chapter work.

There were also monkeys! First time I've seen monkeys in the wild. They're so entertaining to watch...

My personal impact plan is to take some initiative with our field office and market research/linkages. Maybe they're waiting on me? Maybe I can show them it's something they have plenty of time to do..
I also want to research some of the other actors in Kafue. The treadle pump manufacturer Chokwadi, the fertilizer company Nitrogen Chemicals Zambia, the market welders that make rope and washer pumps, the distributors of chemicals to farmers... there's a lot of learning about them.
I'm not 100% on where I should focus my main impact. Previously, the JF program had monthly reporting and a final collated report that nobody (asymptote) read. EWB is experimenting with dropping that requirement, and instead allowing JFs to create some tool or resource for use within EWB - maybe chapter learning, maybe something else. I'm pretty excited to create some case studies for future use. There's a cool farmers group that has some sort of government-sponsored water storage tank, allocated land, and electric pump for irrigation. There's a group with nearly 300 farmers, and a group of 30 farmers. The other players in the supply chain and value chains are also pretty interesting.

Mmm personal story of too much alcohol..
On our final night, we had a booze crooze on the lake, anchored and swam at a little island. Lots of crazy fun. A few beers later, I think we had another few crazy game of jenga (foot jenga, mouth jenga, blind partner jenga..) and some other shenanigans (I had about 6 carlsbergs in me). Then the Chibuku chug-off... team Zommmmmbia, Malawinners, and Oh Oh Oooh (OVS!). The Zambians had a pretty low turnout of four guys wearing wifebeaters (other teams had 6), but we maybe... tied? Hard to say. Enthusiasm died once people tasted the delicious, vinegary, way over fermented, chunky, milk-looking maize and sorghum beer. I loved it enough to drink another 1 and a half cartons. Then we hung out around a beach fire - me with about 3L of chibuku - and I guess made our way back to bed. I somehow missed our treefort-ish dorms, and I woke up around 4am on my back in the parking lot and still very drunk. I stumbled back to my bed in front of the watchman, and woke up again around 7am (still drunk). The day's hangover was not bad at all. Maybe because chibuku's 3-4% alcohol? I'd still do it again though.

Questions regarding NGO actors in Zambia, working with Agriculture Value Chains:
What is PROFIT doing here? Hans Hesse, a long-term OVS, is working with them and both IDE and PROFIT have clients (farmers) in a certain village. I'm hoping it's not a conflict of interest for IDE to be promoting farmer groups and collaboration with other groups for marketing, when PROFIT is running some other program...
What is the SMC project in Zambia? I heard it was run by USAID. When did it run? Where? What were the results?
What is CLUSA?
What is technoserve?
What is CETZAM? Christian Empowerment Trust.. Zambia. IDE Zambia is partnering with them and I'm very curious about their previous and current work. Are they international? Who funds them? What is their development theory?