Last Day

Dear All

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.

Someone else's blog about Katete

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.

http://www.saintfrancishospital.net/html/stories.html

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."

What you can leave behind

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.

Caption competition