i've put each section of this blog entry up separately. i hope they aren't so overwhelming to read and i hope you all enjoy! love love love, hannah
Library
Finally, I think, we finally have our books coming! They are loaded on a ship, they will be crossing the ocean (starting maybe tomorrow!) and are scheduled to land in Dar Es Salaam on September 10th. Ah, we have an arrival date!!!! It’s really so exciting. Getting the school organized to accept them getting shelves and tables and chairs all organized finally makes it seem so real. And the thought that all of these people who are always asking me for books will finally be able to take out BOOKS just makes my heart race. I struggle with whether or not this is just another form of aid and if I’m not just fitting myself into this system I so criticize, but, even if it is, I think people will benefit and I just need to accept that as a positive.
Along with that project I think we’re going to start a project with my women’s group to tell THEIR stories. Since none of the books we’re getting are (obviously) in Bemba, we’re going to do a project with my women’s group where they tell their life stories in just a couple sentences, and in Bemba. Then I’ll type them, print them out, take them back and we can draw in some pictures, staple them, and put them in the library! I think (and hope) this will do a couple things – 1) let the women tell their life story, 2) give the little kids in grades 1 and 2 and maybe older something in Bemba to read and learn to read with, 3) give the kids stories from here, about Zambia and about the women in their lives, and finally 4) give the women some pride as they see their stories, their lives, stapled and “published” in their library! I hope it works. It seems almost too simple; something is guaranteed to fail. But it will work. It will it will it will.
Ok, I should probably sign off of this now. This is getting very long. I’d love to hear from anyone who’s reading this. Send me comments or a letter or an e-mail. I can respond (and will!) to all. I promise. And a shoutout to my dad who sent the best package today – chocolate, nuts, beef jerkey, cheesy risotto mix, new CDs… ah what good be better. The simple life.
Monday, July 28, 2008
grad school? b-school? help?
Grad School anyone? B-school? Help?
One of my latest stresses and internal debates is whether or not I should try to get some of the grad school tests taken here and apply this fall/spring so that I can start school next fall (2009). Part of me thinks that taking the tests and getting the applications out of the way makes a lot of sense – I have time here to study and write essays – and that transitioning straight into school would be a pretty easy way to transition back into America. But, then part of me thinks I really want more experience – I want to work for an organization that IS successful – where I can learn from people who ARE good at evaluating success and problem-solving and where I have a team who can help me do that. AND, since I can’t take the GMAT in Zambia it means flying to Dar Es Salaam or Jo-burg, paying $250 (two hundred and fifty DOLLARS!! That’s more than I make in a month!) for the test, plus money for the plane ticket, lodging, food, cabs to and from and I imagine that taking a stupid test will cost me more than $600. That’s ridiculous (ETS, how I hate you!). It just makes me think “no wonder no one in Zambia goes to business school in America! It’s practically impossible!”
And then the question is b-school or, well, something else. I still find myself wanting to think about how to develop businesses here, in the developing world. That a successful business does a couple things: 1) generates income for a family, 2) helps develop the larger economy, and 3) rewards such behaviors as creative thinking, problem-solving skills, communication skills, math and literacy which in turn helps the society as a whole. And I think that helping NGOs that are doing other work here generate sustainable income is much better long term solution to development than aid. Aid doesn’t work. Tess and Emma just read a book (The Shackled Continent by Guest) that (on page 150, yay citations!) says Zambia has gotten more aid than almost any other country in the world since independence and with that aid the average income has gone down. DOWN! Sad. Time to think of another solution! So… business school anyone? But, I don’t want to end up on a business school corporate track where I realize I can’t get back to this kind of work and I don’t really know how to evaluate schools or tracks from here. Any help anyone wants to offer would be taken, processed, and, well, maybe even listened to!
One of my latest stresses and internal debates is whether or not I should try to get some of the grad school tests taken here and apply this fall/spring so that I can start school next fall (2009). Part of me thinks that taking the tests and getting the applications out of the way makes a lot of sense – I have time here to study and write essays – and that transitioning straight into school would be a pretty easy way to transition back into America. But, then part of me thinks I really want more experience – I want to work for an organization that IS successful – where I can learn from people who ARE good at evaluating success and problem-solving and where I have a team who can help me do that. AND, since I can’t take the GMAT in Zambia it means flying to Dar Es Salaam or Jo-burg, paying $250 (two hundred and fifty DOLLARS!! That’s more than I make in a month!) for the test, plus money for the plane ticket, lodging, food, cabs to and from and I imagine that taking a stupid test will cost me more than $600. That’s ridiculous (ETS, how I hate you!). It just makes me think “no wonder no one in Zambia goes to business school in America! It’s practically impossible!”
And then the question is b-school or, well, something else. I still find myself wanting to think about how to develop businesses here, in the developing world. That a successful business does a couple things: 1) generates income for a family, 2) helps develop the larger economy, and 3) rewards such behaviors as creative thinking, problem-solving skills, communication skills, math and literacy which in turn helps the society as a whole. And I think that helping NGOs that are doing other work here generate sustainable income is much better long term solution to development than aid. Aid doesn’t work. Tess and Emma just read a book (The Shackled Continent by Guest) that (on page 150, yay citations!) says Zambia has gotten more aid than almost any other country in the world since independence and with that aid the average income has gone down. DOWN! Sad. Time to think of another solution! So… business school anyone? But, I don’t want to end up on a business school corporate track where I realize I can’t get back to this kind of work and I don’t really know how to evaluate schools or tracks from here. Any help anyone wants to offer would be taken, processed, and, well, maybe even listened to!
Dealing with Frustrations
Dealing with frustrations
Having my family here in general (both mom and em, and tess and dad a couple months ago) gave me a new sense of joy and an ability to look at some of the things that I’ve gotten frustrated at with a kind of new, more patient eye. Oh, it’s just ZAMBIA! It’s ok! For example, Mom and Em and I got stuck on a bus (the company from before that has the slogan “safety first, arrive alive”) that told us they were going to Lusaka. Then at 2 o’clock in the morning, three hours (at least) north of Lusaka they said “oh, THIS bus isn’t going to Lusaka, but the one that is will be here in 15 minutes!” Well, at least 30 minutes later, a very full bus showed up and the 15-20 of us from the first bus squished in. Between the first row of seats and the windshield I counted 15 people and just prayed that we would arrive alive. We did and we even got in on time and made our flight down to Linvingstone, but I sometimes I just don’t understand why Zambians put up with that. If they paid for ticket why don’t they demand their money back when the bus is so absurd and ridiculous?! Crowded, late, the driver’s rude…
But it was also difficult though to try to convey some of the things that I DO feel like I’ve worked hard on and just still aren’t working. Another example, I’ve worked with a woman in town a bunch who works with women’s groups and sells their goods. She’s amazing. She knows how to work with women, she knows how to facilitate, she speaks English and is just a kind and generous person. She also makes almost no money and she and her employees function on no salaries. I’ve worked with her a lot to try to get her business more organized and it just seems like no matter how times I give her instructions she can’t follow them – she just can’t seem to get them right and her business suffers because of it. How do I change that? Is it me or is it her? What am I doing wrong in how I explain the situation? Does she just not WANT it enough to make herself understand? Our latest joke was that she’d set a price for one of her products and when my mom wanted to buy one she asked ME how much they cost. “It’s your business!” I joked “how much DO they cost?!”
That sense of frustration came up today in a conversation I was having with a guy who is up here in Mpika doing some research for Unicef. He asked what the hardest thing for me is here. I’ve said in the past that it’s trying to do the work here alone. I mean it’s not that I’m alone exactly – I have Zambian co-workers and other Peace Corps Volunteers – but my chief job does kind of seem to be one of a motivator. But, today I said that the hardest thing is trying to find the people who are the movers and shakers – the people who WILL get things done. I’ve spent the last year working on trying to set up a youth group here in my village and after working with a young man for all of that last year – taking him to Lusaka, trying to teach him how to prepare and teach lessons, trying to find other people to help him – I finally just feel like he doesn’t REALLY care. He doesn’t want to make this a priority in his life and he doesn’t want to show up to meetings when it means skipping something else.
Part of me feels so unbelievably frustrated, why did I waste so much time, and even some money, on him? And part of me feels like “Well, it’s his village. When I’m done here, it’s still up to him to face these issues and I’ve tried.” Is it dangerous or just real to get to that point? I know it’s real to get to the point that you realize that there are people who just can’t make things happen, but at what point can I tell myself that it’s ok to give up? That this just isn’t the person who will take a project to a new level? That development has to be HIS problem, THEIR problem too if it’s going to get any better?
Back to transport for second, the ridiculous transport situations that many Zambians will put up with AND pay for always surprises me and often makes me angry. On the bus when I was so frustrated the conductor turned to me and asked “Muli shani?” (How are are you?). Angrily I glared at him and said “not good, thank you!” He turned to the woman next to me and asked “muli shani?” to which SHE responded that she was fine. I looked at her in shock. Why don’t you TELL him OFF?! And then realized I failed Zambia test number 1 – things are always fine, they aren’t as bad as they COULD be, and we were on the bus and moving. What more did I want for heaven’s sake?!
Along the same lines it took me and Prince 8 hours to get from Kasama, where the Peace Corps House is, to Mpika on Saturday. We sat on the side of the road trying to catch a ride for 4 hours and then paid to get squished in the back of covered pickup with 6 other people and a huge metal BAR and to break down and take 4 hours to go 210 kilometers. I was cranky and annoyed, wanted my money back, wanted to be comfortable. But when we got into Mpika and were trying to decide whether to walk the hour to my house and jump in a cab for 5 minutes a friend passed. He had petrol and said he drop us at my house for free. I sighed and told him our exhausting story and he said “well, you’re here. That’s all the matters.” It’s true. We were there, alive, ready to cook dinner and go to bed, if exhausted and sore and, at that point, that was all that mattered. And that he was kind enough to give us a ride.
This kind of attitude, as always, seems to have a good side and a bad. The lack of frustration and anger that the Zambians I interact with seem to have, the patience, is beautiful. I hope I can bring that back with me. It’s sort of a zen acceptance of the world and its faults. Yet, (is it the American in me?) sometimes I think you HAVE to get angry at things. Doesn’t the world change because someone decides “this is unacceptable and I am going to change it!”? Where does that come from? How do you create that? Should we? Is creating that here changing this society? Or did colonialism kind of create a sense of acceptance because there WAS no alternative?
Having my family here in general (both mom and em, and tess and dad a couple months ago) gave me a new sense of joy and an ability to look at some of the things that I’ve gotten frustrated at with a kind of new, more patient eye. Oh, it’s just ZAMBIA! It’s ok! For example, Mom and Em and I got stuck on a bus (the company from before that has the slogan “safety first, arrive alive”) that told us they were going to Lusaka. Then at 2 o’clock in the morning, three hours (at least) north of Lusaka they said “oh, THIS bus isn’t going to Lusaka, but the one that is will be here in 15 minutes!” Well, at least 30 minutes later, a very full bus showed up and the 15-20 of us from the first bus squished in. Between the first row of seats and the windshield I counted 15 people and just prayed that we would arrive alive. We did and we even got in on time and made our flight down to Linvingstone, but I sometimes I just don’t understand why Zambians put up with that. If they paid for ticket why don’t they demand their money back when the bus is so absurd and ridiculous?! Crowded, late, the driver’s rude…
But it was also difficult though to try to convey some of the things that I DO feel like I’ve worked hard on and just still aren’t working. Another example, I’ve worked with a woman in town a bunch who works with women’s groups and sells their goods. She’s amazing. She knows how to work with women, she knows how to facilitate, she speaks English and is just a kind and generous person. She also makes almost no money and she and her employees function on no salaries. I’ve worked with her a lot to try to get her business more organized and it just seems like no matter how times I give her instructions she can’t follow them – she just can’t seem to get them right and her business suffers because of it. How do I change that? Is it me or is it her? What am I doing wrong in how I explain the situation? Does she just not WANT it enough to make herself understand? Our latest joke was that she’d set a price for one of her products and when my mom wanted to buy one she asked ME how much they cost. “It’s your business!” I joked “how much DO they cost?!”
That sense of frustration came up today in a conversation I was having with a guy who is up here in Mpika doing some research for Unicef. He asked what the hardest thing for me is here. I’ve said in the past that it’s trying to do the work here alone. I mean it’s not that I’m alone exactly – I have Zambian co-workers and other Peace Corps Volunteers – but my chief job does kind of seem to be one of a motivator. But, today I said that the hardest thing is trying to find the people who are the movers and shakers – the people who WILL get things done. I’ve spent the last year working on trying to set up a youth group here in my village and after working with a young man for all of that last year – taking him to Lusaka, trying to teach him how to prepare and teach lessons, trying to find other people to help him – I finally just feel like he doesn’t REALLY care. He doesn’t want to make this a priority in his life and he doesn’t want to show up to meetings when it means skipping something else.
Part of me feels so unbelievably frustrated, why did I waste so much time, and even some money, on him? And part of me feels like “Well, it’s his village. When I’m done here, it’s still up to him to face these issues and I’ve tried.” Is it dangerous or just real to get to that point? I know it’s real to get to the point that you realize that there are people who just can’t make things happen, but at what point can I tell myself that it’s ok to give up? That this just isn’t the person who will take a project to a new level? That development has to be HIS problem, THEIR problem too if it’s going to get any better?
Back to transport for second, the ridiculous transport situations that many Zambians will put up with AND pay for always surprises me and often makes me angry. On the bus when I was so frustrated the conductor turned to me and asked “Muli shani?” (How are are you?). Angrily I glared at him and said “not good, thank you!” He turned to the woman next to me and asked “muli shani?” to which SHE responded that she was fine. I looked at her in shock. Why don’t you TELL him OFF?! And then realized I failed Zambia test number 1 – things are always fine, they aren’t as bad as they COULD be, and we were on the bus and moving. What more did I want for heaven’s sake?!
Along the same lines it took me and Prince 8 hours to get from Kasama, where the Peace Corps House is, to Mpika on Saturday. We sat on the side of the road trying to catch a ride for 4 hours and then paid to get squished in the back of covered pickup with 6 other people and a huge metal BAR and to break down and take 4 hours to go 210 kilometers. I was cranky and annoyed, wanted my money back, wanted to be comfortable. But when we got into Mpika and were trying to decide whether to walk the hour to my house and jump in a cab for 5 minutes a friend passed. He had petrol and said he drop us at my house for free. I sighed and told him our exhausting story and he said “well, you’re here. That’s all the matters.” It’s true. We were there, alive, ready to cook dinner and go to bed, if exhausted and sore and, at that point, that was all that mattered. And that he was kind enough to give us a ride.
This kind of attitude, as always, seems to have a good side and a bad. The lack of frustration and anger that the Zambians I interact with seem to have, the patience, is beautiful. I hope I can bring that back with me. It’s sort of a zen acceptance of the world and its faults. Yet, (is it the American in me?) sometimes I think you HAVE to get angry at things. Doesn’t the world change because someone decides “this is unacceptable and I am going to change it!”? Where does that come from? How do you create that? Should we? Is creating that here changing this society? Or did colonialism kind of create a sense of acceptance because there WAS no alternative?
Family visits
Family visits
My mom and my sister just left after a lovely visit here. Emma stayed in my village for an extra ten days, which I know is such a gift. I’m sure it was an interesting experience for her (maybe she’ll write a guest entry! ), but for me it means that when I get home people I love are going to have such a better understanding of what my life is like here – what my house looks like, how I bathe (or sometimes don’t! ha), how or what I cook, what the Ministry of Education looks like, how all the kids yell after me constantly, even just what Zambia LOOKS like – both the complete beauty and the dirt and trash – they’ll have a more real idea of what it is to live here.
Emma, I think, handled being in my village better than anyone else in my family. I think we were both surprised by that, but in retrospect I think she just took the whole experience with a sense of humor. People are laughing? I’ll laugh too. The kids are crying? I’ll pick them up. I don’t understand what they’re saying? Oh well, I’ll talk to them in English and then at least we’ll ALL be confused! It was a joy to watch.
My mom and my sister just left after a lovely visit here. Emma stayed in my village for an extra ten days, which I know is such a gift. I’m sure it was an interesting experience for her (maybe she’ll write a guest entry! ), but for me it means that when I get home people I love are going to have such a better understanding of what my life is like here – what my house looks like, how I bathe (or sometimes don’t! ha), how or what I cook, what the Ministry of Education looks like, how all the kids yell after me constantly, even just what Zambia LOOKS like – both the complete beauty and the dirt and trash – they’ll have a more real idea of what it is to live here.
Emma, I think, handled being in my village better than anyone else in my family. I think we were both surprised by that, but in retrospect I think she just took the whole experience with a sense of humor. People are laughing? I’ll laugh too. The kids are crying? I’ll pick them up. I don’t understand what they’re saying? Oh well, I’ll talk to them in English and then at least we’ll ALL be confused! It was a joy to watch.
i year in
1 year in
One of the hardest things about being here after a while is that even as I am suddenly used to living here and the patterns and routines of life feel more normal to me other people still see me as such an anomaly. People still ask for money or call me “muzungu” (white person) or act surprised that I live in a thatch hut. My response is kind of “come on!” Don’t you know who I am? Or where I live? Or that you shouldn’t call me muzungu, that I have a name? I get frustrated that people can’t get used to ME.
But probably most often it is still people who don’t see me often or don’t know who I am or much about me and that even as MY life here has settled, and there are people who have settled in, they aren’t a part of that and they don’t see that. It can be quite frustrating, especially on days when other things aren’t going well, but for the most part, it’s just laughable and connected to my awareness that I AM an anomaly. I AM a bit strange. It IS weird for a muzungu to be hanging around here. Heck, when I see other muzungus I kind of do a double take and think “what are THEY doing in MY town?!” and then I laugh at myself.
One of the hardest things about being here after a while is that even as I am suddenly used to living here and the patterns and routines of life feel more normal to me other people still see me as such an anomaly. People still ask for money or call me “muzungu” (white person) or act surprised that I live in a thatch hut. My response is kind of “come on!” Don’t you know who I am? Or where I live? Or that you shouldn’t call me muzungu, that I have a name? I get frustrated that people can’t get used to ME.
But probably most often it is still people who don’t see me often or don’t know who I am or much about me and that even as MY life here has settled, and there are people who have settled in, they aren’t a part of that and they don’t see that. It can be quite frustrating, especially on days when other things aren’t going well, but for the most part, it’s just laughable and connected to my awareness that I AM an anomaly. I AM a bit strange. It IS weird for a muzungu to be hanging around here. Heck, when I see other muzungus I kind of do a double take and think “what are THEY doing in MY town?!” and then I laugh at myself.
Saturday, July 05, 2008
books!
we got all of our money for the books!!! it's so exciting. we're working on getting them shipped out as soon as possible and i can't wait to update you all!
i also just got back from a vacation with my mom and sister, which was wonderful - south luangwa game park where we saw lots of animals, my village and a dance party with my women's group, livingstone and the falls and a beautiful beautiful lodge on the river.
my sister is still here and we head back up to mpika today to hang out there for a week which should be fun. and my mom headed out yesterday, which was sad. it's crazy to get this intense time with family and then realize how far away they are going again - but it's now been twice as long (about) as it will be until i see them again! so i've already gone this long without seeing them, the rest will seem so fast probably. too fast maybe since i still have so much i want to do.
we're hopefully getting this library up and going now now, still working with a women's group on trying to start a big sewing project (might have just gotten a sewing machine for them! fingers crossed), might be working on a youth or girl's career week that will maybe be around world AIDS day and focusing on HIV a bunch, my youth group may actually start moving with some footballs i just got and a peer educator training we're doing next week... so, life's busy and i hope i have some more concrete work stuff to report next time i write.
i also just got back from a vacation with my mom and sister, which was wonderful - south luangwa game park where we saw lots of animals, my village and a dance party with my women's group, livingstone and the falls and a beautiful beautiful lodge on the river.
my sister is still here and we head back up to mpika today to hang out there for a week which should be fun. and my mom headed out yesterday, which was sad. it's crazy to get this intense time with family and then realize how far away they are going again - but it's now been twice as long (about) as it will be until i see them again! so i've already gone this long without seeing them, the rest will seem so fast probably. too fast maybe since i still have so much i want to do.
we're hopefully getting this library up and going now now, still working with a women's group on trying to start a big sewing project (might have just gotten a sewing machine for them! fingers crossed), might be working on a youth or girl's career week that will maybe be around world AIDS day and focusing on HIV a bunch, my youth group may actually start moving with some footballs i just got and a peer educator training we're doing next week... so, life's busy and i hope i have some more concrete work stuff to report next time i write.
Friday, June 20, 2008
catching up
first, i'm in capetown! with my mom and sister. it's beautiful and lovely and friendly and clean and i ate sushi for dinner the first night! it was great.
second, here's a lovely entry by a friend of a friend of mine who's another PC volunteer, in mozambique - http://souaqui.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html. i think it gets into some of what is so difficult to do when it comes to AIDS and HIV here - in zambia, in mozambique, in south africa... i'd recommend reading it because of the insights it offers, but also just because it's beautifully written account of an AIDS death and the struggles of that.
third, things have been going well - i think i've been struggling, as always, with what sustainability means in my role here. how do i set up systems that might, possibly, if people want last? how do i disengage myself from the active process of making something happen and step back a bit to let my counterparts do it while at the same time making them feel i'm helping, paying attention, assisting in appropriate ways? how do i encourage people who have never been told to take risks in school to try to take risks in facilitation or youth skills work?
i've been feeling frustrated with how much many of my projects seem to revolve around me - that kids come when i'm there, that people forget to have or go to meetings if i'm out, that the practical organizational stuff falls on me, that the frank conversations about sex happen with me. none of which is bad by itself but when i think about whether or not even a youth group will keep meeting when i leave i get left with questions and not any answers... it's exhausting.
so, i think a vacation will do me good and then when i get back to my last 9 months here i can get back on track!
second, here's a lovely entry by a friend of a friend of mine who's another PC volunteer, in mozambique - http://souaqui.blogspot.com/2008_03_01_archive.html. i think it gets into some of what is so difficult to do when it comes to AIDS and HIV here - in zambia, in mozambique, in south africa... i'd recommend reading it because of the insights it offers, but also just because it's beautifully written account of an AIDS death and the struggles of that.
third, things have been going well - i think i've been struggling, as always, with what sustainability means in my role here. how do i set up systems that might, possibly, if people want last? how do i disengage myself from the active process of making something happen and step back a bit to let my counterparts do it while at the same time making them feel i'm helping, paying attention, assisting in appropriate ways? how do i encourage people who have never been told to take risks in school to try to take risks in facilitation or youth skills work?
i've been feeling frustrated with how much many of my projects seem to revolve around me - that kids come when i'm there, that people forget to have or go to meetings if i'm out, that the practical organizational stuff falls on me, that the frank conversations about sex happen with me. none of which is bad by itself but when i think about whether or not even a youth group will keep meeting when i leave i get left with questions and not any answers... it's exhausting.
so, i think a vacation will do me good and then when i get back to my last 9 months here i can get back on track!
Thursday, June 05, 2008
guest entry
A guest entry from a lovely guest - my dad! enjoy
If you haven’t gone to visit Hannah in Zambia yet, you should go. It is amazing.
I went at the end of April. Tess, who was wandering around Europe, met me at Heathrow and we flew down to Lusaka together. We got there as the sun was rising. It took a while to get through immigration, and we were surprised that the visa fee had gone up to $135 each. Hannah met us at the airport with a cabbie waiting who whisked us in to Les and Lynn’s house. Les and Lynn used to direct a Peace Corps program and now work for NGOs. They’ve made their lovely home a haven for Peace Corps volunteers and, it seems, any other weary traveler of goodwill who is looking for a hot shower and a beer.
We went shopping at the Dutch Reformed market where Hannah knows just about everybody.
The next morning, we caught the dawn bus to Livingstone. We stayed at a great hostel called Fawlty Towers - where we got our own room for three, with a bathroom down the hall, a pool in the courtyard, a decent restaurant, and bunch of friendly cats to play with. It is two miles or so from Victoria Falls.
The Falls are better than you can imagine – they are like no other geologic formation I’ve ever seen. The river flows across a flat plain above them, then just drops over a mile-wide ridge that looks like it is the edge of the earth, into a narrow ravine below. Because there is so much water (it was the end of the rainy season), because the ravine is so deep, and because it is so narrow, the water crashes into the rocks below and makes so much mist that you can barely see the falls. (The name for the falls in the local language – Mosi Ao Tunya – translates as “The Smoke That Thunders”) All you see is mist. And you hear an incredible roar. On the paths that go along the ridges opposite the falls, the mist is so thick that it is like a torrential downpour. The rent raincoats, umbrellas, and even rubber clogs. If you don’t rent them (we didn’t) you will get very, very wet.
The next day, we met our safari guide, a guy named Bob Batchelor. I’d found his company – Imfuduko African Safaris – on the web, and worked with him by phone and email to design a trip. We spent a few days canoeing on the Lower Zambezi (and saw many hippos, crocodiles, impala, and great birds. We saw one large, lonely elephant, munching reeds by the river bank. Then we drove to another game park – Kafue – in Western Zambia. There, on a night game drive, we saw more elephants, zebras, a leopard, a civet, a few porcupine, kudu, puku, impala, and a fat lazy puff adder, slithering across the road. We let him slither. Bob dropped us off in Lusaka after a week in the bush –and we were happy to see Les and Lynn’s again.
From there, we went up to Mpika to visit Hannah’s village. We were welcomed like royalty. Everyone from the proprietors of the internet café to the vegetable sellers in the market know and love “Ba Anna” (as Hannah is known there.) We basked in the reflected glory. The village ladies put on a wild and wonderful dance show, skit, and formal welcome ceremony for us. For the children in the village, our visit was major entertainment. They watched our every move, imitated our funny speech, wanted to touch our strange pale, hairy skin, and found us amusing in every way. We liked them, too.
We met all the other Peace Corps volunteers. We ate nshima and chibwabwa, made over Hannah’s charcoal brazier fire. We drank beer and played pool at a great bar run by a German guy who has settled in Mpika. We hiked to the dam. We went to visit the waterfalls in Kasama. We visited a local orphanage and the local school. Everywhere we went, the people we met were warm and welcoming.
Zambia is one of southern Africa’s success stories – especially compared to its neighbor Zimbabwe. That doesn’t mean all is well. Poverty is rampant. AIDS orphans are everywhere. The education system is massively underfunded. All the contradictions and frustrations of developing countries are everywhere apparent. But so are the virtues. It is a challenging place to visit – hard to get to, hard to get around, and full of things that challenge preconceptions about Africa, about development, about culture. Hannah is a great tour guide, and will only be there for another 11 months. So you should plan your trip now. You won’t find a better tour guide. Have fun.
If you haven’t gone to visit Hannah in Zambia yet, you should go. It is amazing.
I went at the end of April. Tess, who was wandering around Europe, met me at Heathrow and we flew down to Lusaka together. We got there as the sun was rising. It took a while to get through immigration, and we were surprised that the visa fee had gone up to $135 each. Hannah met us at the airport with a cabbie waiting who whisked us in to Les and Lynn’s house. Les and Lynn used to direct a Peace Corps program and now work for NGOs. They’ve made their lovely home a haven for Peace Corps volunteers and, it seems, any other weary traveler of goodwill who is looking for a hot shower and a beer.
We went shopping at the Dutch Reformed market where Hannah knows just about everybody.
The next morning, we caught the dawn bus to Livingstone. We stayed at a great hostel called Fawlty Towers - where we got our own room for three, with a bathroom down the hall, a pool in the courtyard, a decent restaurant, and bunch of friendly cats to play with. It is two miles or so from Victoria Falls.
The Falls are better than you can imagine – they are like no other geologic formation I’ve ever seen. The river flows across a flat plain above them, then just drops over a mile-wide ridge that looks like it is the edge of the earth, into a narrow ravine below. Because there is so much water (it was the end of the rainy season), because the ravine is so deep, and because it is so narrow, the water crashes into the rocks below and makes so much mist that you can barely see the falls. (The name for the falls in the local language – Mosi Ao Tunya – translates as “The Smoke That Thunders”) All you see is mist. And you hear an incredible roar. On the paths that go along the ridges opposite the falls, the mist is so thick that it is like a torrential downpour. The rent raincoats, umbrellas, and even rubber clogs. If you don’t rent them (we didn’t) you will get very, very wet.
The next day, we met our safari guide, a guy named Bob Batchelor. I’d found his company – Imfuduko African Safaris – on the web, and worked with him by phone and email to design a trip. We spent a few days canoeing on the Lower Zambezi (and saw many hippos, crocodiles, impala, and great birds. We saw one large, lonely elephant, munching reeds by the river bank. Then we drove to another game park – Kafue – in Western Zambia. There, on a night game drive, we saw more elephants, zebras, a leopard, a civet, a few porcupine, kudu, puku, impala, and a fat lazy puff adder, slithering across the road. We let him slither. Bob dropped us off in Lusaka after a week in the bush –and we were happy to see Les and Lynn’s again.
From there, we went up to Mpika to visit Hannah’s village. We were welcomed like royalty. Everyone from the proprietors of the internet café to the vegetable sellers in the market know and love “Ba Anna” (as Hannah is known there.) We basked in the reflected glory. The village ladies put on a wild and wonderful dance show, skit, and formal welcome ceremony for us. For the children in the village, our visit was major entertainment. They watched our every move, imitated our funny speech, wanted to touch our strange pale, hairy skin, and found us amusing in every way. We liked them, too.
We met all the other Peace Corps volunteers. We ate nshima and chibwabwa, made over Hannah’s charcoal brazier fire. We drank beer and played pool at a great bar run by a German guy who has settled in Mpika. We hiked to the dam. We went to visit the waterfalls in Kasama. We visited a local orphanage and the local school. Everywhere we went, the people we met were warm and welcoming.
Zambia is one of southern Africa’s success stories – especially compared to its neighbor Zimbabwe. That doesn’t mean all is well. Poverty is rampant. AIDS orphans are everywhere. The education system is massively underfunded. All the contradictions and frustrations of developing countries are everywhere apparent. But so are the virtues. It is a challenging place to visit – hard to get to, hard to get around, and full of things that challenge preconceptions about Africa, about development, about culture. Hannah is a great tour guide, and will only be there for another 11 months. So you should plan your trip now. You won’t find a better tour guide. Have fun.
Monday, April 21, 2008
water carriers in training
the best image of my day: my two little three year old neighbors each carrying a plastic 500 mL water bottle on their heads. so cute.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
donate to my library!
i've pasted and copied the description for the Peace Corps Website below. We've already raised $1000! But anything, and really i mean ANYTHING (if everyone who has ever been sent the address to this blog gave $5 we'd prob have over $1000!) helps...
So, to donate:
go to peacecorps.gov. on the left there is menu and at the bottom is a button "DONATE NOW." That will take you to a page with a couple options, click on "Volunteer projects" and then go to Zambia. It's labelled "community libraries" project and the name is "C. Staatz." Colleen is a friend of mine and her library in another district is getting some of the books along with some other PC libraries. Please please help with whatever you can!
Also, if you have books you'd like to send that's possible, but maybe more complicated. e-mail me with specific questions about that. Thanks!!!
Community Libraries
Imagine learning to read with 1 book: your 2nd grade textbook that 3 siblings have already torn to pieces. Imagine learning to appreciate reading when you’ve never been read to or watched an adult read a book. Imagine learning to read in a language that is not your first language. Imagine living in a place where books can cost your parents’ monthly income. These are only some of the issues that Zambian school children face in learning to read and speak English.
This project will fund the transport of 20,000 books to develop four libraries in Zambia. All three districts are far from the capital and lack reading and reference materials is a problem. These students are often eager to study topics that interst them or refer to outside materials when preparing for exams, but are unable to do so. In addition to reference materials, these libraries would also include basic children’s books, which wil help Zambian students to improve their English, a vital skill for performing well on their national examinations and their ability to continue in higher education. All four libraries are being built in schools or community centers where local kids as well as adults can easily access the books.
The communities have greatly contributed to this project by providing the physical spaces to house the libraries. This eliminates the need for costly construction materials and ensures that the libraries will become functional quickly after the arrival of the books.
So, to donate:
go to peacecorps.gov. on the left there is menu and at the bottom is a button "DONATE NOW." That will take you to a page with a couple options, click on "Volunteer projects" and then go to Zambia. It's labelled "community libraries" project and the name is "C. Staatz." Colleen is a friend of mine and her library in another district is getting some of the books along with some other PC libraries. Please please help with whatever you can!
Also, if you have books you'd like to send that's possible, but maybe more complicated. e-mail me with specific questions about that. Thanks!!!
Community Libraries
Imagine learning to read with 1 book: your 2nd grade textbook that 3 siblings have already torn to pieces. Imagine learning to appreciate reading when you’ve never been read to or watched an adult read a book. Imagine learning to read in a language that is not your first language. Imagine living in a place where books can cost your parents’ monthly income. These are only some of the issues that Zambian school children face in learning to read and speak English.
This project will fund the transport of 20,000 books to develop four libraries in Zambia. All three districts are far from the capital and lack reading and reference materials is a problem. These students are often eager to study topics that interst them or refer to outside materials when preparing for exams, but are unable to do so. In addition to reference materials, these libraries would also include basic children’s books, which wil help Zambian students to improve their English, a vital skill for performing well on their national examinations and their ability to continue in higher education. All four libraries are being built in schools or community centers where local kids as well as adults can easily access the books.
The communities have greatly contributed to this project by providing the physical spaces to house the libraries. This eliminates the need for costly construction materials and ensures that the libraries will become functional quickly after the arrival of the books.
Monday, April 07, 2008
"orientalism"
it's interesting how many people responded to my last entry about my awe at my "African" moments. i'm not sure if it's that i asked for comments cause i want to know who's reading this or if it's because that's such a common, expected feeling. i know it is. an awe at the beauty and the frustration of living here is hard to not make romantic.
i'm reading a book called "The Road to Hell" right now (i forget who it's by, but i'll try to get it on here next time!) which is, to be very broad, about the failure of development organizations and possibly even the evil of them... that they can participate in the continuing underdevelopment of nations. but it focuses on somalia in the '80s and the work done around the famine and food aid. the image of a starving african child is, in its horror, romanticized by the "Development" world. "you can help! you can feel good about yourself! you can smile at how you helped!"
it's sick and yet part of the system. of course women here in their beautiful, colorful suits will seem romantic and an "other" to me because it's been part of our media for so long. africa, since the days of the explorers, has been full of mystery, intrigue and excitement. and that goes from here to the states too. a zambian in america would probably keep thinking "this is america! this is the land of opportunity!" yet, trying to make it a reality, with it's complexity is something i try to do everyday and something i also try to do here, on this blog. keep commenting!
to change direction just a bit, i got an e-mail from a friend today talking about "relative" poverty. i'll quote:
"Otherwise, I have been spending a lot more time thinking about the situation in the US. Obviously, we don't have extreme poverty like that which exists in Mali, Zambia, India, and Honduras. So at times I think it is foolish to spend time wondering how to help those who are relatively well off globally yet poor relative to our country. And yet, it is sensible and even powerful to be an advocate for change and justice within one's own community and culture. Perhaps I can do more in that capacity...especially as I do not envisage myself living overseas for the remainder of my life. Perhaps not. Either way, the conditions here are not great. The country is going through a terrible crisis of confidence, with 81% of people thinking the country is seriously off-track. Prices for food and fuel are soaring, the number of people on food stamps is growing, unemployment is up and the economy is struggling with a seriously f-ed up loan system and declining real estate prices. As usual, the poor and lower middle classes suffer the most. That, plus the presidential race and the serious questions of race and sex it elicits, makes it a fascinating time to be here."
i thought he (and i'll reference him if he tells me it's ok!) wrote so eloquently about the complexity of poverty today. the poor here suffer. lack of clean (or running) water, illness, infant mortality, HIV, poor education, lack of jobs and capital and loans and so much more make life difficult. yet people are friendly and kind and supportive in ways that i know i will miss when i am back in america. the random person who saw that i greeted another peace corps volunteer and then asked me to greet someone for him and who i ended up talking to as i walked the two blocks to the internet...
yet, the poor everywhere suffer. especially when you SEE wealth and inequality around you. few people here have a good education so, though you may want that for your children, it's not rubbed in your face as much if you don't have it... is that harder? or is that easier? where do we need to work? how do we make change? obviously the answer is both. we need people who can work and make change here and we need people who can work in the states making change (both with the poor and how we view the poor!)...
but, i also recently got a letter that another friend wrote a year ago. not sure how on earth it travelled to take so long but she wrote about being a peace corps volunteer and trying to both teach people but not change values, to work within the cultural system and values. but if you're trying to teach to change behavior how does that not, inherently, struggle with changing values? women are healthier if they don't have ten children, but children and having family are valued here. they are also valued as a kind of social security - unpredicatability and lack of care in old age mean children help you survive... but as we encourage women to have fewer children (both for their own health and for the fewer expenses of caring for fewer children) do we change values? change a culture? to come back to the beginning, make it real and less romantic and less full of suffering?
i'm reading a book called "The Road to Hell" right now (i forget who it's by, but i'll try to get it on here next time!) which is, to be very broad, about the failure of development organizations and possibly even the evil of them... that they can participate in the continuing underdevelopment of nations. but it focuses on somalia in the '80s and the work done around the famine and food aid. the image of a starving african child is, in its horror, romanticized by the "Development" world. "you can help! you can feel good about yourself! you can smile at how you helped!"
it's sick and yet part of the system. of course women here in their beautiful, colorful suits will seem romantic and an "other" to me because it's been part of our media for so long. africa, since the days of the explorers, has been full of mystery, intrigue and excitement. and that goes from here to the states too. a zambian in america would probably keep thinking "this is america! this is the land of opportunity!" yet, trying to make it a reality, with it's complexity is something i try to do everyday and something i also try to do here, on this blog. keep commenting!
to change direction just a bit, i got an e-mail from a friend today talking about "relative" poverty. i'll quote:
"Otherwise, I have been spending a lot more time thinking about the situation in the US. Obviously, we don't have extreme poverty like that which exists in Mali, Zambia, India, and Honduras. So at times I think it is foolish to spend time wondering how to help those who are relatively well off globally yet poor relative to our country. And yet, it is sensible and even powerful to be an advocate for change and justice within one's own community and culture. Perhaps I can do more in that capacity...especially as I do not envisage myself living overseas for the remainder of my life. Perhaps not. Either way, the conditions here are not great. The country is going through a terrible crisis of confidence, with 81% of people thinking the country is seriously off-track. Prices for food and fuel are soaring, the number of people on food stamps is growing, unemployment is up and the economy is struggling with a seriously f-ed up loan system and declining real estate prices. As usual, the poor and lower middle classes suffer the most. That, plus the presidential race and the serious questions of race and sex it elicits, makes it a fascinating time to be here."
i thought he (and i'll reference him if he tells me it's ok!) wrote so eloquently about the complexity of poverty today. the poor here suffer. lack of clean (or running) water, illness, infant mortality, HIV, poor education, lack of jobs and capital and loans and so much more make life difficult. yet people are friendly and kind and supportive in ways that i know i will miss when i am back in america. the random person who saw that i greeted another peace corps volunteer and then asked me to greet someone for him and who i ended up talking to as i walked the two blocks to the internet...
yet, the poor everywhere suffer. especially when you SEE wealth and inequality around you. few people here have a good education so, though you may want that for your children, it's not rubbed in your face as much if you don't have it... is that harder? or is that easier? where do we need to work? how do we make change? obviously the answer is both. we need people who can work and make change here and we need people who can work in the states making change (both with the poor and how we view the poor!)...
but, i also recently got a letter that another friend wrote a year ago. not sure how on earth it travelled to take so long but she wrote about being a peace corps volunteer and trying to both teach people but not change values, to work within the cultural system and values. but if you're trying to teach to change behavior how does that not, inherently, struggle with changing values? women are healthier if they don't have ten children, but children and having family are valued here. they are also valued as a kind of social security - unpredicatability and lack of care in old age mean children help you survive... but as we encourage women to have fewer children (both for their own health and for the fewer expenses of caring for fewer children) do we change values? change a culture? to come back to the beginning, make it real and less romantic and less full of suffering?
Friday, March 07, 2008
safety first, arrive alive
that's the slogan of one of the major bus companies around zambia - germin's. i'm not sure if that inspires confidence or fear. most of the time i ride the buses around zambia i, somewhat surprisingly, feel safe. we pass many a flipped over semi where the drivers were either drunk or asleep on their long drives from Dar Es Salaam to various places mostly in South Africa. needless to say, i do not take that bus line.
i've just arrived in lusaka on the night bus (thank you juldan bus company for arriving safely!)and around 5:45 as we were pulling into the edges of Lusaka the sky started to light up with one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen. usually i like sunsets more, probably partly because i don't have to wake up early, but also because they are usually much more colorful, with much more pink and orange in their clouds. this sunrise though made me sit there thinking about Africa - i'm in africa! watching the sun rise!
part of that thought made me think about these repeated thoughts i have about being in africa - "i'm on a bush path in africa! on my bike! by myself!" or "i'm watching an african sunrise!" or smiling at the beautiful "african" patterns on the women's chitenges (skirts/shirts/colorful material). is it just some kind of neo-colonialist romanticism? i don't think so exactly. as much as the thoughts hark back to a kind of "africa house" feeling of the 19th century adventures in Africa, i think (i hope?) that mine is different... is it a different motivation? is it a different kind of appreciation? a knowledge that i'm leaving and am not trying to ignore the people on some level?
i think these feelings probably conincide with definite frustration that PC isn't really the way to do development. increasingly i find myself wanting to work on projects that are looking at systems level change - and my latest is how to finance ideas here. development increasingly doesn't work, i think, because it's outsiders coming in and thinking through the problems and approving (or not) finances. when will zambians be able to start their own projects and try to make them work and let kids learn from them to think similarly? when will the idea of venture capitalists come here? where someone can say "i believe in your idea, try it!"
hmmm, what else? have had some interesting conversations in the last two days about evolution vs. creationism. it's scary to me that kids here are hardly even given the information about evolution. how can they ever consider it if they aren't even taught the history that IS there? fossils, discoveries of ancient peoples etc?
also, had a beautiful moment when earlier this week i heard some women singing and dancing outside my house. they were actually next door and had come bearing song to welcome the baby my neighbor just had. so beautiful.
ok, have to go and do lusaka office stuff.
i've just arrived in lusaka on the night bus (thank you juldan bus company for arriving safely!)and around 5:45 as we were pulling into the edges of Lusaka the sky started to light up with one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen. usually i like sunsets more, probably partly because i don't have to wake up early, but also because they are usually much more colorful, with much more pink and orange in their clouds. this sunrise though made me sit there thinking about Africa - i'm in africa! watching the sun rise!
part of that thought made me think about these repeated thoughts i have about being in africa - "i'm on a bush path in africa! on my bike! by myself!" or "i'm watching an african sunrise!" or smiling at the beautiful "african" patterns on the women's chitenges (skirts/shirts/colorful material). is it just some kind of neo-colonialist romanticism? i don't think so exactly. as much as the thoughts hark back to a kind of "africa house" feeling of the 19th century adventures in Africa, i think (i hope?) that mine is different... is it a different motivation? is it a different kind of appreciation? a knowledge that i'm leaving and am not trying to ignore the people on some level?
i think these feelings probably conincide with definite frustration that PC isn't really the way to do development. increasingly i find myself wanting to work on projects that are looking at systems level change - and my latest is how to finance ideas here. development increasingly doesn't work, i think, because it's outsiders coming in and thinking through the problems and approving (or not) finances. when will zambians be able to start their own projects and try to make them work and let kids learn from them to think similarly? when will the idea of venture capitalists come here? where someone can say "i believe in your idea, try it!"
hmmm, what else? have had some interesting conversations in the last two days about evolution vs. creationism. it's scary to me that kids here are hardly even given the information about evolution. how can they ever consider it if they aren't even taught the history that IS there? fossils, discoveries of ancient peoples etc?
also, had a beautiful moment when earlier this week i heard some women singing and dancing outside my house. they were actually next door and had come bearing song to welcome the baby my neighbor just had. so beautiful.
ok, have to go and do lusaka office stuff.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
sunshine is wonderful
i realized after a recent letter from my aunt that people have a lot of questions about what i'm doing here. but it's hard for me to know what those are and what to answer in these blogs. send me comments and i'll answer your questions!
sunshine, after a month of rain almost every day, is wonderful. in the last two weeks we've had a couple full days of sun and the breeze and the sun and my bike as i ride down trails make me just think "i'm in africa!"
i have two beautiful new babies in my life. my cat had kittens! they're incredible. they were born a week ago and i was at a workshop so i didn't actually get to watch and pet her while she was in labor. i wish! but, they are just starting to open their eyes and look like real kittens. i'm so in love. one looks like rexy (white with black and tan spots) and the other is black with white feet and a white mark on her face. they're incredible. i think one will be named ululimi, which actually means tongue or language, because she always has her little tongue sticking out while she's asleep. and then the other might be loleni, which means "look" but i just think it's pretty. i think they're both girls, but i could be totally wrong! haha.
yesterday i was approached by a neighbor whose husband seems to have run off to work and kind of disappeared. he isn't sending money, he isn't calling, he won't pick up her calls (from my phone)... and she's stuck with three children under 6. she came to my house yesterday. "ba, anna, give me ama'advice.'" what could i say? i don't know what to say. he's a jerk. i gave her food and felt teary. i would love to give her some work to do, but i don't have much.
right after that a kid who said he would hoe my yard came by and told me he's a double orphan, lives by himself, and could i help him pay for grade 9? and give him some food? and maybe a t-shirt? i can't help all of these people, obviously, with food and money because it would be endless. how can these kids find jobs? or be expected to pay for school if they're orphans? or do well eventually if they don't finish school? it can all just be so overwhelming.
i miss you all. i'll stop there. but i'll put info up soon on how to donate to two projects i'm working on: a library and a youth centre.
sunshine, after a month of rain almost every day, is wonderful. in the last two weeks we've had a couple full days of sun and the breeze and the sun and my bike as i ride down trails make me just think "i'm in africa!"
i have two beautiful new babies in my life. my cat had kittens! they're incredible. they were born a week ago and i was at a workshop so i didn't actually get to watch and pet her while she was in labor. i wish! but, they are just starting to open their eyes and look like real kittens. i'm so in love. one looks like rexy (white with black and tan spots) and the other is black with white feet and a white mark on her face. they're incredible. i think one will be named ululimi, which actually means tongue or language, because she always has her little tongue sticking out while she's asleep. and then the other might be loleni, which means "look" but i just think it's pretty. i think they're both girls, but i could be totally wrong! haha.
yesterday i was approached by a neighbor whose husband seems to have run off to work and kind of disappeared. he isn't sending money, he isn't calling, he won't pick up her calls (from my phone)... and she's stuck with three children under 6. she came to my house yesterday. "ba, anna, give me ama'advice.'" what could i say? i don't know what to say. he's a jerk. i gave her food and felt teary. i would love to give her some work to do, but i don't have much.
right after that a kid who said he would hoe my yard came by and told me he's a double orphan, lives by himself, and could i help him pay for grade 9? and give him some food? and maybe a t-shirt? i can't help all of these people, obviously, with food and money because it would be endless. how can these kids find jobs? or be expected to pay for school if they're orphans? or do well eventually if they don't finish school? it can all just be so overwhelming.
i miss you all. i'll stop there. but i'll put info up soon on how to donate to two projects i'm working on: a library and a youth centre.
Monday, January 21, 2008
a loooong update
(Warning: this is a looooong one. I thought about breaking it up into sections, but most of the “sections” are more connected than I thought… so, 2 pages on Israel, 2 on Peace Corps, 2 in response to a NYTimes article about Peace Corps and 2 are the article. Enjoy! Send me comments!)
I went to Israel for a bit less than two weeks, right before Christmas to right after New Year’s. The impetus for the trip was a good friend from college’s wedding. But what made it reality was that two friends from here said “well, we’ve never been. Soooo, if YOU go, we’ll go!!”
So, I went; with two friends from here! Which was interesting because one, they’d never been; two, I haven’t actually traveled there WITH friends in a while (I usually seem to be stuck at Israeli borders by myself!); and, three because they’re Christian. They put me into the role of tourist that I haven’t been in for a while. I realized while I was there that the first time I was there was 10 years ago this Christmas. (It’s hard to believe that I’m old enough to be able to say “10 years ago…” and remember it!). But really, that’s the last time I was a full-fledged tourist there. I remember then the awe of the Old City, the first time I saw the “mud” at the bottom of Turkish Coffee, the shock that Christmas felt like just another day, and watching carefully from the plane taking off until I literally could not see the land anymore… I guess even then I knew I’d be back.
They also made me a guide to a Jerusalem that I don’t know as well: Christian Jerusalem. We saw more churches than I could keep track of. But, I think my two favorites were the Church where Mary was born on Mt. Zion and the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane. I loved the church at Mt Zion because it was so peaceful, out of the way a little and the paintings and mosaics were beautiful and varied. I felt like I could have sat there for a long time, thinking, praying, loving Jerusalem... The Church at Gethsemane is supposed to be where Jesus prayed before he was arrested, has a garden full of 2,000 year old olive trees and the most beautiful windows made out of very thin, purple alabaster. That garden and a walk up the Mt. of Olives have made me fall in love with olive trees. They’re so beautiful with their winding old trunks that look almost like aged skin, making you ask in your head just what all they’ve seen in their lifetimes…
It was amazing to be back. The wedding was incredible. And instead of feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the fact that a close friend of mine was getting married I was mostly overwhelmed with how wonderful it was. She looked beautiful, they looked happy, it was at Ramat Rachel, an old kibbutz south of Jerusalem, which was gorgeous, the dancing and the music were so much fun, and it was so nice to see so many friends from Brown, some of whom I didn’t even know where there! I was teary for the whole service as his friends and family brought him in to present the engagement and as we all danced with them away from the Chupah when they were finally “man and wife.”
While I was there I also got to see a bunch (but nearly enough!) friends from Seeds of Peace, several of whom were friends from my first summer at camp which I realized (again) was almost ten years ago! Not quite because this summer will be 9 years. But it’s hard to believe that first of all that was so long ago; second, it has impacted my life is so many ways; and third, that I’m still in touch with and close to people I see rarely, communicate with almost solely by e-mail, and who have been in so many different places than me over the last 10 years (the army, school, the west bank, India, camp again…). Seeds of Peace, though, gives us this bond, that I also realized while I was there, was probably the first thing we all approached as adults… suddenly we were given the responsibility and the trust to try something and to be opinionated and we responded with a mature, adult passion.
I think that’s also one of the reasons it was so wonderful to be back. I miss the passion with which I approached so much of my work in the Middle East. Maybe I miss some of the naiveté and the simplicity with which I allowed myself to delve in so deeply. I know that I ended up here in Africa because of a desire to get away from that, if not forever at least for a little while. I wanted an opportunity to compare, to try to understand something else, and maybe by understanding someplace else creating an ability to come back to the Middle East with some distance, some more understanding, and maybe a renewed energy. By my last summer at Seeds, I was burnt out and a little saddened… So much work and so little progress!
I don’t know if going back to the Middle East is what I will want or will do eventually, but being there definitely made me realize how much I miss it. I miss speaking Hebrew; I miss speaking Arabic; I miss the beauty of the call to prayer as many different mosques call it out at the same time and their beautiful tones play games with each other in your ear; I miss trying to understand and explain “the conflict” or “the situation”; I miss the connection I feel personally to the land; I miss the desert and the beauty of the trees in an oasis or a kibbutz in the middle of all that brown; I miss hummus, falafel, fatoush, and food with different spices; I miss having a Jewish community… so, needless to say, it was hard to get back on that Ethiopian Air plane.
Yet, even after the exhaustion of many hours of overnight travel we landed back in Zambia and the first thing I realized was that I do know how to live here… I can greet, I can joke, I can negotiate a cab, I increasingly know my way around Lusaka, I can hitch up north, when we stopped for gas in Mpika for 10 minutes I saw friends. I can’t believe that I’ve lived here for a year almost now. That’s longer that I’ve actually LIVED anywhere since high school.
Getting back to site I was exhausted. Exhausted from traveling, from the emotion of Israel and seeing friends, and from the news that my dog died while I was away… I felt a bit like I had abandoned her to the craziness of my village. There were rumors that she was poisoned, more likely she was stupid and ate something bad… but either way it was hard to get back and feel guilty, that I could have done something.
All of the exhaustion, the fact that I’m coming up on a year, and an interesting article that many of you may have seen (copied at the bottom of this. It’s from the NYTimes, by Robert Strauss on January 9th, 2008) has made this week mostly about trying, again, to get to a point where I understand and can talk or write about what I’m doing here…
I spent time thinking about my schedule and whether I feel productive. I’m working on a lot, I have a lot of ideas, and yet at the same time, often feel like I’m working very little. I get a lot of sleep and my pace of life is slow. I get to the internet café and updates on the computers that, in America, should have been done before the store opened, are being started as I walk in. Things like that make me late to meetings, not get to the Ministry on time, miss a counterpart at the district, or just slow down my time getting home or buying food for dinner… Yet, they also allow for relationships. I talked with the people at the internet while I waited to for the updates to download. I have my friends at the market who I buy dried fish for my cats from or tomatoes and cabbage for my dinner. Everyone I pass seems to know my name and most people greet me, even in town. I walk or ride my bike everywhere so travel that in the states would be fast fast, takes an hour. Sometimes I think I could get so much more done if I could just speed up processes, but people also move slower. A guy who gave us a ride to the Peace Corps house the other day had traveled to America and said “oh, it’s too fast! I couldn’t wait to be back!” So, am I here to teach about efficiency or to learn to slow down?
Many Peace Corps volunteers see our work as a process where we, unlike NGOs, bring skills to teach and information to pass on. I often feel that as an education volunteer who does NOT have formal training as a teacher, but IS working with teachers who have formal training as teachers, my strengths are not the trainings I do. Who am I to teach teachers how to teach? A health volunteer working with community health groups has much more space for expertise I think. They do know more science and can teach it. Yes, I have been part of educational system that may be light years ahead of this one in its organization and its student pass rate; yes, I have a ideas for things that could be done better… but I also have to realize that things here are done certain ways for certain reasons. Should they continue that way? Sometimes, often not. Students here may not pass because teachers aren’t stellar but maybe also because they aren’t fed enough, their parents are dying, they don’t have clothes and shoes, they don’t have books to practice with or adults who encourage them to think and question. Probably, all of the above. This school system needs resources.
So, I see my strength as much more about my ability to help people here with a vision access resources… there really is so much money going into development now, so if I can help people think through a project, find funding for it and make it a reality I can help them do several things. First, I help them think of what they need. They prioritize what they want and need (I, of course, am somewhat selective because my interests and expertise mean I’m more interested in a youth center than, say, a study on fertilizers… though that would be good too!). Then we think about what will work, what won’t work, and how to run the idea or project they are thinking of. Finally, we think about ways to access funding and then actually implement the idea. I can’t give it to them, so who can? A bank? A loan from a microfinance institution? Peace Corps? A ministry or the district? The World Bank? The American Embassy?
Right now my two big projects are one to build a youth center and two to get 20,000 books shipped to Zambia. For both of them the community or the school has expressed interest and we’ve sat down to think about what they might need. For the youth center, we came to realize that with the five government and five private schools in the area there are over 6,000 children (not counting the ones not in school) who have NOTHING to do after school, no extracurricular activities, no place to continue some kind of constructive learning. They have chores and work to do at home, but they are often wandering around, at my house, playing in the street, getting into trouble, or, if they’re older, going to bars or starting to experiment sexually. We have several youths and adults who are interested in making a youth center happen, but they have no funding. So we’re applying for funds. We’ll apply to a couple different places for different parts: the building, the furnishings, the trainings… and when it’s done, I hope, there will be a place where the kids can be and can learn when they are not in school (which is most of the day).
For the library, the school had a structure. They, and the ministry, wanted to make it a library, but because there were no books the school had been using the space as two classrooms for the last couple years. This structure is at the school where the District Resource Center is, meaning that teachers, administrators, and students pass through all the time. If they can re-furbish the building and get books, it will be the first library in the district. And, it has unprecedented access to people from all over the province. So, along with four other PCVs, we’re trying to apply for money to ship 20,000 books (that will be shared between four libraries). If you’re interested in donating books, they can be sent to MD and you can e-mail me for the address. Or, you can give money to help us ship them.
Along with those two projects, I am trying to do some work with teachers to do regular meetings, set up regular discussion groups so that they can problem shoot together, maybe make a zonal resource center where they can talk to each other, access resources, maybe use a computer or (gasp! if it works!) the internet… and also maybe do a project in environmental education with several schools in the area, because I recently learned that Zambia has the highest rate of deforestation in the world! Not sure where that comes from or how that’s true, but it’s true that in my village there are almost no trees! So, we plan to talk about the life cycle of trees, non-wood parts, and then plant some trees at the school. I didn’t get money from Peace Corps, but maybe the Ministry of Forestry or the Environmental Support Program would be able to support us.
Do all of those projects mean I am working all the time? No. In fact there are many days when I say I will stop by and talk with different people and not a single person is there. The DEBS at the ministry isn’t in, the environment officer is in another province, the District Commissioner just ran to a meeting, the internet is down, and there was no food in the market… I get home at 14:00, feeling ready to take a nap even though I didn’t really do anything and think “I’m useless. I do nothing here. This is just a game that the US government plays with us! Or that we thought would be fun to play with ourselves!” Maybe I am, but other days I do feel like I do something. Maybe I just have a good conversation with kids or I watch an interaction that I won’t ever forget or all of the ministry officers are there and think my ideas are good and want to help or I learn things about what I want to do next and what I DON’T want to do next … is that worth it? I don’t know. Is two years a long time? It’s not that long. Sometimes it feels a lot longer than others. Though, right now I can’t believe it’s been a year! Is it an expensive way for me to learn a lot? Maybe. But will I probably do my next job better now that I’ve learned more about development, project implementation, individual motivation, time, and what works or doesn’t work? I think so. Even if it’s not in development!
Which is the perfect link to some comments on this NYTimes article... Strauss raises some good points. There are many volunteers who come in without much training and without much motivation and are thrown into situations where they can’t do much and maybe a Zambian could do better. Those volunteers would be better suited to offer help and to be mentally stable themselves if they had come in with more training or more support or more professional background. Though, the work is undefined and often slow and even volunteers with an extensive professional background struggle, and sometimes more because of expectations of how things “should” work.
Strauss seems to simplify several things. He writes that older volunteers have, “extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers” and that “too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.” Both of these statements make a broad generalization about younger Peace Corps Volunteers that is, I think, unfair. All of the other volunteers that I’ve come in with have life experience that is valuable. Many of us have traveled or worked in different places and come with our struggles, challenges, successes, and our own maturity. Peace Corps, at least in Zambia, would benefit from encouraging us to know those things about each other, to lean on people with specific experiences… I also get much support from the other volunteers who are my age because we are going through the same processes and the same life decisions. “What next?,” for us, is about making a career direction decision. Older volunteers can, of course, shed light on those decisions as well but often forget what it is to making that decision.
Strauss also writes, “This wasn't the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it's much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.” This is a valuable argument on one level. Yes, there are many unemployed Zambians looking for jobs and yes many of them would benefit from the experience of the work we’re doing.
But it fails on many others. One, many of them wouldn’t volunteer to do. They, understandably want to work their way up their own system and don’t want to spend two years in a village, living in a mud hut, without electricity or cell phone service and working on a very basic community level of development. Second, their government doesn’t have the money to pay them to do it (should ours?). Third, there is always value in having an outsider come in help (that’s the point of consulting companies! Of which, Strauss now runs one). There are parts of the systems here that are so totally lacking that having someone, even someone who has just experienced a functional system, can add on to.
I think Strauss is correct in saying that Peace Corps would strengthen its own position and level of respect if they were more selective about whom they accepted. If they suggested that there was more competition they would not only get better applicants and choose better applicants, but they would add to development by suggesting that development work could also benefit from competition. Peace Corps in each country could also support the development work and could make it more effective if they encouraged more people, throughout the application process as well as throughout training and service, to actually talk about what development is and think about why they are giving two years to a developing country! What IS development anyway? (oh Brown Development Studies, how I love you!)
Peace Corps, I think, in many ways also contributes to some of the issues he brought up. From the beginning of the recruitment process Peace Corps emphasizes flexibility. They ask, “Is place, time [that you leave], or job most important to you?” And then throughout the process they like to question your commitment to do Peace Corps. I was challenged by a recruitment officer when I told her that leaving two weeks after college graduation was not the ideal time. She said “Hannah, are you sure you want to do Peace Corps? Are you ready to commit?” Yes, but not in June was my response!
I had at least one friend (who was another Middle East person) who, after being offered a position in Eastern Europe, kind of scoffed at Peace Corps. How could they, recognizing his skills and area of expertise, not try to take advantage of that?! They must not be very sincere about the work they expected him to do. I have other friends who, for fear of not being offered another position in Peace Corps, accepted the first invitation they got even though it wasn’t where they wanted to go or what they wanted to do or when they wanted to leave! How, and why, does Peace Corps think that by sending volunteers to places they don’t want to go to or to do work that is not connected to their background that their work will be most effective?
Again, encouraging people to think about and explain why they want to go somewhere, what their personal goals are (none of us are completely selfless in this work… we are all getting something out of being here and came TO get something out of being here… even if that was just an experience of helping others), and why they have those goals would help Peace Corps Washington put us in places where we can be most effective and help volunteers understand more thoroughly what they are trying to do here.
All of that said, I think most Zambians ARE thankful that I’m here. I may feel uncomfortable teaching teachers, but they seem to be a lot less uncomfortable. They love when I teach lessons, they love when I come to the schools, they love when I have ideas for the community of for how to get books or other places they could look for funding. They laugh that I always have children at my house or when I talk about my leaking roof or when I say things wrong in Bemba. They’re surprised that I’m young or that I’m not married, but they think I have ideas that are interesting and useful. They see me as kind and they are surprised that I would be willing to live in the village without electricity or water. They, unlike many Americans (farmers or not) appreciate that someone is willing to come and help for sometime. Maybe that’s because I am a distraction or I feed their kids bananas, but if there’s ever discomfort with me it’s more of a resigned acknowledgement that I have more and that I will go back to America. I don’t think there is any resentment. At all. Maybe that’s something we Americans have to learn from?
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS
Published: January 9, 2008
Antananarivo, Madagascar
THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps' country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.
However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.
This wasn't the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it's much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.
The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.
The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.
In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad's backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma's cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I'm pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.
For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.
Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.
This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.
The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.
Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.
ps, i'm reading a really interesting book now called "Innocents Abroad" by Jonathan Zimmerman. it's about teachers abroad in the 20th century, with a large emphasis on Peace Corps Volunteers, and the changing perceptions of their roles and purposes abroad. i'd recommend it!
I went to Israel for a bit less than two weeks, right before Christmas to right after New Year’s. The impetus for the trip was a good friend from college’s wedding. But what made it reality was that two friends from here said “well, we’ve never been. Soooo, if YOU go, we’ll go!!”
So, I went; with two friends from here! Which was interesting because one, they’d never been; two, I haven’t actually traveled there WITH friends in a while (I usually seem to be stuck at Israeli borders by myself!); and, three because they’re Christian. They put me into the role of tourist that I haven’t been in for a while. I realized while I was there that the first time I was there was 10 years ago this Christmas. (It’s hard to believe that I’m old enough to be able to say “10 years ago…” and remember it!). But really, that’s the last time I was a full-fledged tourist there. I remember then the awe of the Old City, the first time I saw the “mud” at the bottom of Turkish Coffee, the shock that Christmas felt like just another day, and watching carefully from the plane taking off until I literally could not see the land anymore… I guess even then I knew I’d be back.
They also made me a guide to a Jerusalem that I don’t know as well: Christian Jerusalem. We saw more churches than I could keep track of. But, I think my two favorites were the Church where Mary was born on Mt. Zion and the Church of All Nations at Gethsemane. I loved the church at Mt Zion because it was so peaceful, out of the way a little and the paintings and mosaics were beautiful and varied. I felt like I could have sat there for a long time, thinking, praying, loving Jerusalem... The Church at Gethsemane is supposed to be where Jesus prayed before he was arrested, has a garden full of 2,000 year old olive trees and the most beautiful windows made out of very thin, purple alabaster. That garden and a walk up the Mt. of Olives have made me fall in love with olive trees. They’re so beautiful with their winding old trunks that look almost like aged skin, making you ask in your head just what all they’ve seen in their lifetimes…
It was amazing to be back. The wedding was incredible. And instead of feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the fact that a close friend of mine was getting married I was mostly overwhelmed with how wonderful it was. She looked beautiful, they looked happy, it was at Ramat Rachel, an old kibbutz south of Jerusalem, which was gorgeous, the dancing and the music were so much fun, and it was so nice to see so many friends from Brown, some of whom I didn’t even know where there! I was teary for the whole service as his friends and family brought him in to present the engagement and as we all danced with them away from the Chupah when they were finally “man and wife.”
While I was there I also got to see a bunch (but nearly enough!) friends from Seeds of Peace, several of whom were friends from my first summer at camp which I realized (again) was almost ten years ago! Not quite because this summer will be 9 years. But it’s hard to believe that first of all that was so long ago; second, it has impacted my life is so many ways; and third, that I’m still in touch with and close to people I see rarely, communicate with almost solely by e-mail, and who have been in so many different places than me over the last 10 years (the army, school, the west bank, India, camp again…). Seeds of Peace, though, gives us this bond, that I also realized while I was there, was probably the first thing we all approached as adults… suddenly we were given the responsibility and the trust to try something and to be opinionated and we responded with a mature, adult passion.
I think that’s also one of the reasons it was so wonderful to be back. I miss the passion with which I approached so much of my work in the Middle East. Maybe I miss some of the naiveté and the simplicity with which I allowed myself to delve in so deeply. I know that I ended up here in Africa because of a desire to get away from that, if not forever at least for a little while. I wanted an opportunity to compare, to try to understand something else, and maybe by understanding someplace else creating an ability to come back to the Middle East with some distance, some more understanding, and maybe a renewed energy. By my last summer at Seeds, I was burnt out and a little saddened… So much work and so little progress!
I don’t know if going back to the Middle East is what I will want or will do eventually, but being there definitely made me realize how much I miss it. I miss speaking Hebrew; I miss speaking Arabic; I miss the beauty of the call to prayer as many different mosques call it out at the same time and their beautiful tones play games with each other in your ear; I miss trying to understand and explain “the conflict” or “the situation”; I miss the connection I feel personally to the land; I miss the desert and the beauty of the trees in an oasis or a kibbutz in the middle of all that brown; I miss hummus, falafel, fatoush, and food with different spices; I miss having a Jewish community… so, needless to say, it was hard to get back on that Ethiopian Air plane.
Yet, even after the exhaustion of many hours of overnight travel we landed back in Zambia and the first thing I realized was that I do know how to live here… I can greet, I can joke, I can negotiate a cab, I increasingly know my way around Lusaka, I can hitch up north, when we stopped for gas in Mpika for 10 minutes I saw friends. I can’t believe that I’ve lived here for a year almost now. That’s longer that I’ve actually LIVED anywhere since high school.
Getting back to site I was exhausted. Exhausted from traveling, from the emotion of Israel and seeing friends, and from the news that my dog died while I was away… I felt a bit like I had abandoned her to the craziness of my village. There were rumors that she was poisoned, more likely she was stupid and ate something bad… but either way it was hard to get back and feel guilty, that I could have done something.
All of the exhaustion, the fact that I’m coming up on a year, and an interesting article that many of you may have seen (copied at the bottom of this. It’s from the NYTimes, by Robert Strauss on January 9th, 2008) has made this week mostly about trying, again, to get to a point where I understand and can talk or write about what I’m doing here…
I spent time thinking about my schedule and whether I feel productive. I’m working on a lot, I have a lot of ideas, and yet at the same time, often feel like I’m working very little. I get a lot of sleep and my pace of life is slow. I get to the internet café and updates on the computers that, in America, should have been done before the store opened, are being started as I walk in. Things like that make me late to meetings, not get to the Ministry on time, miss a counterpart at the district, or just slow down my time getting home or buying food for dinner… Yet, they also allow for relationships. I talked with the people at the internet while I waited to for the updates to download. I have my friends at the market who I buy dried fish for my cats from or tomatoes and cabbage for my dinner. Everyone I pass seems to know my name and most people greet me, even in town. I walk or ride my bike everywhere so travel that in the states would be fast fast, takes an hour. Sometimes I think I could get so much more done if I could just speed up processes, but people also move slower. A guy who gave us a ride to the Peace Corps house the other day had traveled to America and said “oh, it’s too fast! I couldn’t wait to be back!” So, am I here to teach about efficiency or to learn to slow down?
Many Peace Corps volunteers see our work as a process where we, unlike NGOs, bring skills to teach and information to pass on. I often feel that as an education volunteer who does NOT have formal training as a teacher, but IS working with teachers who have formal training as teachers, my strengths are not the trainings I do. Who am I to teach teachers how to teach? A health volunteer working with community health groups has much more space for expertise I think. They do know more science and can teach it. Yes, I have been part of educational system that may be light years ahead of this one in its organization and its student pass rate; yes, I have a ideas for things that could be done better… but I also have to realize that things here are done certain ways for certain reasons. Should they continue that way? Sometimes, often not. Students here may not pass because teachers aren’t stellar but maybe also because they aren’t fed enough, their parents are dying, they don’t have clothes and shoes, they don’t have books to practice with or adults who encourage them to think and question. Probably, all of the above. This school system needs resources.
So, I see my strength as much more about my ability to help people here with a vision access resources… there really is so much money going into development now, so if I can help people think through a project, find funding for it and make it a reality I can help them do several things. First, I help them think of what they need. They prioritize what they want and need (I, of course, am somewhat selective because my interests and expertise mean I’m more interested in a youth center than, say, a study on fertilizers… though that would be good too!). Then we think about what will work, what won’t work, and how to run the idea or project they are thinking of. Finally, we think about ways to access funding and then actually implement the idea. I can’t give it to them, so who can? A bank? A loan from a microfinance institution? Peace Corps? A ministry or the district? The World Bank? The American Embassy?
Right now my two big projects are one to build a youth center and two to get 20,000 books shipped to Zambia. For both of them the community or the school has expressed interest and we’ve sat down to think about what they might need. For the youth center, we came to realize that with the five government and five private schools in the area there are over 6,000 children (not counting the ones not in school) who have NOTHING to do after school, no extracurricular activities, no place to continue some kind of constructive learning. They have chores and work to do at home, but they are often wandering around, at my house, playing in the street, getting into trouble, or, if they’re older, going to bars or starting to experiment sexually. We have several youths and adults who are interested in making a youth center happen, but they have no funding. So we’re applying for funds. We’ll apply to a couple different places for different parts: the building, the furnishings, the trainings… and when it’s done, I hope, there will be a place where the kids can be and can learn when they are not in school (which is most of the day).
For the library, the school had a structure. They, and the ministry, wanted to make it a library, but because there were no books the school had been using the space as two classrooms for the last couple years. This structure is at the school where the District Resource Center is, meaning that teachers, administrators, and students pass through all the time. If they can re-furbish the building and get books, it will be the first library in the district. And, it has unprecedented access to people from all over the province. So, along with four other PCVs, we’re trying to apply for money to ship 20,000 books (that will be shared between four libraries). If you’re interested in donating books, they can be sent to MD and you can e-mail me for the address. Or, you can give money to help us ship them.
Along with those two projects, I am trying to do some work with teachers to do regular meetings, set up regular discussion groups so that they can problem shoot together, maybe make a zonal resource center where they can talk to each other, access resources, maybe use a computer or (gasp! if it works!) the internet… and also maybe do a project in environmental education with several schools in the area, because I recently learned that Zambia has the highest rate of deforestation in the world! Not sure where that comes from or how that’s true, but it’s true that in my village there are almost no trees! So, we plan to talk about the life cycle of trees, non-wood parts, and then plant some trees at the school. I didn’t get money from Peace Corps, but maybe the Ministry of Forestry or the Environmental Support Program would be able to support us.
Do all of those projects mean I am working all the time? No. In fact there are many days when I say I will stop by and talk with different people and not a single person is there. The DEBS at the ministry isn’t in, the environment officer is in another province, the District Commissioner just ran to a meeting, the internet is down, and there was no food in the market… I get home at 14:00, feeling ready to take a nap even though I didn’t really do anything and think “I’m useless. I do nothing here. This is just a game that the US government plays with us! Or that we thought would be fun to play with ourselves!” Maybe I am, but other days I do feel like I do something. Maybe I just have a good conversation with kids or I watch an interaction that I won’t ever forget or all of the ministry officers are there and think my ideas are good and want to help or I learn things about what I want to do next and what I DON’T want to do next … is that worth it? I don’t know. Is two years a long time? It’s not that long. Sometimes it feels a lot longer than others. Though, right now I can’t believe it’s been a year! Is it an expensive way for me to learn a lot? Maybe. But will I probably do my next job better now that I’ve learned more about development, project implementation, individual motivation, time, and what works or doesn’t work? I think so. Even if it’s not in development!
Which is the perfect link to some comments on this NYTimes article... Strauss raises some good points. There are many volunteers who come in without much training and without much motivation and are thrown into situations where they can’t do much and maybe a Zambian could do better. Those volunteers would be better suited to offer help and to be mentally stable themselves if they had come in with more training or more support or more professional background. Though, the work is undefined and often slow and even volunteers with an extensive professional background struggle, and sometimes more because of expectations of how things “should” work.
Strauss seems to simplify several things. He writes that older volunteers have, “extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers” and that “too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.” Both of these statements make a broad generalization about younger Peace Corps Volunteers that is, I think, unfair. All of the other volunteers that I’ve come in with have life experience that is valuable. Many of us have traveled or worked in different places and come with our struggles, challenges, successes, and our own maturity. Peace Corps, at least in Zambia, would benefit from encouraging us to know those things about each other, to lean on people with specific experiences… I also get much support from the other volunteers who are my age because we are going through the same processes and the same life decisions. “What next?,” for us, is about making a career direction decision. Older volunteers can, of course, shed light on those decisions as well but often forget what it is to making that decision.
Strauss also writes, “This wasn't the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it's much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.” This is a valuable argument on one level. Yes, there are many unemployed Zambians looking for jobs and yes many of them would benefit from the experience of the work we’re doing.
But it fails on many others. One, many of them wouldn’t volunteer to do. They, understandably want to work their way up their own system and don’t want to spend two years in a village, living in a mud hut, without electricity or cell phone service and working on a very basic community level of development. Second, their government doesn’t have the money to pay them to do it (should ours?). Third, there is always value in having an outsider come in help (that’s the point of consulting companies! Of which, Strauss now runs one). There are parts of the systems here that are so totally lacking that having someone, even someone who has just experienced a functional system, can add on to.
I think Strauss is correct in saying that Peace Corps would strengthen its own position and level of respect if they were more selective about whom they accepted. If they suggested that there was more competition they would not only get better applicants and choose better applicants, but they would add to development by suggesting that development work could also benefit from competition. Peace Corps in each country could also support the development work and could make it more effective if they encouraged more people, throughout the application process as well as throughout training and service, to actually talk about what development is and think about why they are giving two years to a developing country! What IS development anyway? (oh Brown Development Studies, how I love you!)
Peace Corps, I think, in many ways also contributes to some of the issues he brought up. From the beginning of the recruitment process Peace Corps emphasizes flexibility. They ask, “Is place, time [that you leave], or job most important to you?” And then throughout the process they like to question your commitment to do Peace Corps. I was challenged by a recruitment officer when I told her that leaving two weeks after college graduation was not the ideal time. She said “Hannah, are you sure you want to do Peace Corps? Are you ready to commit?” Yes, but not in June was my response!
I had at least one friend (who was another Middle East person) who, after being offered a position in Eastern Europe, kind of scoffed at Peace Corps. How could they, recognizing his skills and area of expertise, not try to take advantage of that?! They must not be very sincere about the work they expected him to do. I have other friends who, for fear of not being offered another position in Peace Corps, accepted the first invitation they got even though it wasn’t where they wanted to go or what they wanted to do or when they wanted to leave! How, and why, does Peace Corps think that by sending volunteers to places they don’t want to go to or to do work that is not connected to their background that their work will be most effective?
Again, encouraging people to think about and explain why they want to go somewhere, what their personal goals are (none of us are completely selfless in this work… we are all getting something out of being here and came TO get something out of being here… even if that was just an experience of helping others), and why they have those goals would help Peace Corps Washington put us in places where we can be most effective and help volunteers understand more thoroughly what they are trying to do here.
All of that said, I think most Zambians ARE thankful that I’m here. I may feel uncomfortable teaching teachers, but they seem to be a lot less uncomfortable. They love when I teach lessons, they love when I come to the schools, they love when I have ideas for the community of for how to get books or other places they could look for funding. They laugh that I always have children at my house or when I talk about my leaking roof or when I say things wrong in Bemba. They’re surprised that I’m young or that I’m not married, but they think I have ideas that are interesting and useful. They see me as kind and they are surprised that I would be willing to live in the village without electricity or water. They, unlike many Americans (farmers or not) appreciate that someone is willing to come and help for sometime. Maybe that’s because I am a distraction or I feed their kids bananas, but if there’s ever discomfort with me it’s more of a resigned acknowledgement that I have more and that I will go back to America. I don’t think there is any resentment. At all. Maybe that’s something we Americans have to learn from?
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS
Published: January 9, 2008
Antananarivo, Madagascar
THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps' country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.
However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.
This wasn't the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it's much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.
The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.
The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.
In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad's backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma's cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I'm pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.
For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.
Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn't matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.
This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.
The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.
Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.
ps, i'm reading a really interesting book now called "Innocents Abroad" by Jonathan Zimmerman. it's about teachers abroad in the 20th century, with a large emphasis on Peace Corps Volunteers, and the changing perceptions of their roles and purposes abroad. i'd recommend it!
Monday, January 14, 2008
happy new year
i swear i'm working on a new update. but there's so much to say that i'm struggling to get started and not make it a novel. maybe it will come in installments.
until then i got a new year's card from my cousins today which wished us all "love and laughter in 2008," which i really liked. so i wish you all love, laughter, and a place of peace in your lives in the coming year.
until then i got a new year's card from my cousins today which wished us all "love and laughter in 2008," which i really liked. so i wish you all love, laughter, and a place of peace in your lives in the coming year.
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