Just a quickie to thank you all for your welcome, your help and your hard work over the past 8 weeks. It’s made my first experience working in Zambia really interesting and rewarding. I’ll take a lot away, not least an infinitely improved understanding of ice hockey, the incredible (in the truest sense of the word) male to female ratio of native Zambians and the bus network of Eastern Province.
I’m sure that the e-voucher product and more MTZ has a lot of success ahead.
Best
Tom
(Just a footnote to explain some of this.
1 - I've been working with a lot of Canadians who originally came to Africa through Engineers without Borders, so occassionally I've played some hockey. A number of them have been glued to the Stanley Cup over the past few weeks and were dissappointed to see Vancouver lose- no riots on Josef Mwilwa Road though, as yet.
2 - Zambia has some urban legends, one of which is that women outnumber men 6 to 1. The CIA factbook would seem to put the figure at 1 to 1, so who's right? I think it all depends on your view on polygamy...Another legend is that the famous independence statue here, depicting a man breaking out of chains, rather than being a metaphor, captures a real feat of strength that actually happened. Apparently the man is still alive and is owed 5% of Zambian National Income which was promised to him by the first President.
Katete's a pretty small place and I've only been there twice this trip, so to give you a bit more of an insight the blog featured here on the St Francis hospital website is worth reading.
If you can't be bothered to click the link, I've copied a great contribution by Dr Donnelly on Zambian names below:
"What’s in a name?
Posted by Cormac Donnelly at 7.36pm
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Surnames are pretty boring here in Eastern Zambia. Much like most people on Achill Island having either Gallagher or Kilbane as their surname, here well over half of the patients have either Banda (which in English means plain) or Phiri (meaning hill or mountain) for their surname. The remainder comprise a scattering of Zulu’s, Tembo’s, Sakala’s or Mbewe’s. In fact when I see a patient with an unfamiliar surname I usually enquire and find that they are originally from a different part of the country.
Perhaps as a means of making it easier for people to identify themselves and keep numbers of John Banda’s or Mary Phiri’s Limited people here are extremely imaginative when it comes to forenames. Some of these names parents seem to pick in the hope that their children will grow up well, to be Good people, Innocent of any faults, live a Happy life, be Smart and do well in school, to be Humble and Decent.
Some I feel are pretty bad choices. I know being overweight here is a sign of affluence but I struggle to understand how anyone could call their daughter Fatness, or Vast for that matter. I think parents should love all their children just the Same no matter what Size they are. To many parents the arrival of a child is seen as a Gift, a Beauty something Precious. And while it’s good to spread the Love, Lovemore sounds like a chick from a James Bond movie.
Maybe parents pick names in the hope that they are Lucky. Calling your child Fertiliser may lead to a good harvest. Perhaps rather than a child they would have preferred the arrival of a new pair of Shoes or a Table. It’s difficult to put together the Chain of events that leads some choices though such as Tennis or Lightmaka or Butterfly or Dynamo to Note just some.
Sometimes the names bear Witness to the child’s arrival into this world. A boy delivered after a difficult labour is not let forget the fact for the rest of his life and often gets named Mabvuto (trouble). Some mothers are thankful for a Nice and Easy labour though.
I hope it is Obvious to the reader that all words in italics are actual names of patients I have come across here working as a Doctor. Goodbye."
It’s 10 days until my last day of work with MTZ before I start to do some travelling and thoughts have been largely occupied by what I can leave behind.
Whilst presenting to farmers two weeks ago I realised that while it’s a great experience, presenting to the farmers of Eastern province once or twice probably won’t have much of a lasting effect when it comes to taking the project forward in the future. This is one of the bigger criticisms of outside intervention for development in Zambia and in Africa – that well meaning people come, do the job and then leave a big vacuum when they go home. Cue one of my least favourite phrases, “Capacity Building” (second only to “Sensitization”, which is apparently what I’ve been doing to farmers in the East.)
Quite a lot’s happened in 8 weeks.
We have 10 retailers signed up to offering farmers some sort of discount for vouchers, including the Zambian Educational Publishing House, who see this as an opportunity to improve educational attainment in rural areas where spending on school materials has traditionally been much lower than in Lusaka. We might have had more - one small agro-retailer’s wife felt that we were Satanists. There’s no way back from there really.
We have 10,000 marketing flyers ready to farmers to advertise this and a number of retailers, cotton buyers and farmers are familiar with the idea.
With some luck and even more enthusiasm, people might even accept some vouchers. One farmer told us he would like to sell us an ox for some.
Now I’m actively trying to do as little as possible independently. It feels a bit odd, but I don’t want phone calls from irate shopkeepers when I’m watching leopards in South Luangwa. And more importantly, the staff who come from Eastern province and the staff I’ve been working with here have a better grasp of what’s needed anyway.
So it’s not me designing next week’s training programme and it probably won’t be me who gets on the bus to Chipata next to rustle up some more interest and help with a radio advert. If it works out I won’t be able to take credit for any of that.
'Fresh' back from a second field trip to the Eastern Province having presented the voucher proposition to (nonplussed?) farmers with the help of an interpreter. 9 hours on the bus has allowed some time for reflection...
Over an Nshima dinner on Wednesday the conversation got around to discovering the 'real' Africa. It was suggested to me that I needed to live in a typical rural house with no electricity, no water and a pit latrine to really do so, (I should add that urban Zambian Chris wasn't too impressed by this lifestyle.) I've been living in Zambia for 5 weeks, but in Lusaka primarily, with two weeks or so spent in rural areas. As I've previously mentioned, my home there is very secure , and it's pretty comfortable inside. Likewise, even staying at a terrible motel in Katete affords me electricity, (although the sockets buzz concerningly) and a bath (water intermittent.)
After entertaining thoughts of a masochistic last 3 weeks of work here spent operating out of a remote village I realised that I probably won't experience first hand some African realities if I'm going to get the work experience I'm here for. Someone else reminded me that doing things because you think you ought to do them ususally doesn't work out. Nevertheless there are some realities that I have come into contact with directly or indirectly.
The first is how much people are paid. I'm hiring people at the moment to drive the voucher project in the East and have discovered that a wage of $10 (£6 or ZMK50,000) a day is a decent salary here. This took some time for me to digest and I had to lobby for some sort of bonus system before I could settle my conscience. To put this in context, a casual labourer can earn as little as ZMK150,000 a month. I'll let you do the maths. For a bit more context - sometimes Ferraris are spotted in Lusaka.
Reality number 2 is simply that this place is huge and getting to places in person would be difficult even if you drove a Ferrari. Added to this the spectrum of languages, confidence levels, formal skill levels and simply the settings for events can vary hugely. Yesterday I informally interviewed 4 people on the doorstep of my motel room - I had dragged chairs from the room outside. One of the people I spoke to had an Accountancy qualification, whilst another had left school with the bare minimum. With limited access to the internet, supporting this team, 8/9 hours away, will be an incredible challenge.
Final reality is that whether you're experiencing a very simple life in rural Zambia or trying to conduct business of some sort, if you're an outsider like me you know it's probably only for a set period. It's real, but only for a bit. That's unavoidable, and I'm not sure what I'll make of that until I get back.
PS - A correction from my first post. Many of the 2 million people of Lusaka are living in the compounds, which are shanty districts.
We left Lusaka at about half past ten in the morning and arrived at Chimfunshi at quarter to seven, after the Rapture. The last 20 km were the most exciting, negotiating a dirt track in the dark that led to the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, 8ft grass on either side and owls (or insert your own animal here) watching in the trees. Breaking down out here isn’t an option.
The little clearing and campsite was very welcome, in particular the burning barbeque or bri as everyone seems to call them here. After pitching the tent, opening the beers and meeting some Primatologists and Philosophers (Chimp philosophy: “I wanna be like you-hoo-hoo”??) the journey didn’t seem so bad. I discovered that the night sky is as bright and as clear as everyone says it is out in the bush.
Chimfunshi is the world’s largest chimpanzee orphanage in the very North of Zambia. Most of the 120 chimps are refugees from all over the world - Cindy, for example had come from Italian family who had giving up looking after her as a pet. Some have had pretty rough treatment. There’s also a hippo called Billy – more on her later.
When we arrived early in the morning we were greeted by Mrs, whose family have been looking after chimps for more than 30 years. We were given blue jump suits and we put crisps, biscuits and powdered milk in our pockets before climbing through a small hole in the wall into the enclosure.
Sims, Didi, Dominic, Cindy, Carla and 5 month old Kitten rushed out to greet us, rummaging in our pockets for their breakfast. Dominic, who turned out to be as troublesome as most 4 year olds, immediately jumped onto my head, almost making me fall over.
Cliched I guess, but it was like taking some people for a walk. The chimps misbehaved in a very human way with 4 year old Dominic deliberately winding up Didi and Sims by swinging on the trees and kicking them. Highlights: (1) Meeting a 5 month old baby chimp and his mother and seeing them behave just as humans would and (2) trying to teach Cindy how a zip worked on an anthill in the jungle.
When we got back to the orphanage, Billy the Hippo was lying comfortably under a tree. Frankly it’s impossible to imagine that an animal that wide and that rotund, with such short legs is biggest threat the animal kingdom has for a human being in Africa. Nevertheless, with that being the fact, it was disconcerting to be within 15 feet of her.
Billy was found under her dead mother’s body after she had been shot by poachers and was then raised at the orphanage, who discovered six months later that she was a girl. Since then she has acted as a guard hippo, being very protective of her adoptive parents when drunkards have appeared and has occasionally left to visit local wild hippos, but has always come back. She has a biography – “Billy the Hippo” – of which I am now a proud owner.
