Question of the day… by Charlene

We’ve mentioned our challenges with electricity shortages and we hear that the problem will likely not be resolved for a year or so which means regular shut-offs at any time of day or night for any number of hours. Meanwhile, our colleagues in Kitwe have been without water for over a week now and they had 3 of our other colleagues visit them this weekend. Imagine 7 people, one toilet, no water… enough said. Over the course of the weekend Cheryl posed the question:

“Would you rather be without power or water?”

What do you think? In case you folks in the developed world have not experienced either here are a few scenarios for you to think of:

No water:

• No baths or showers
• No flushing
• No water for doing the dishes
• No drinking water
• No washing the vehicles
• No tap water for washing faces and brushing teeth

No power:

• No television
• No oven or stove
• The freezer thaws and the fridge warms
• No hot water for showering
• No tea or coffee to drink
• No lights and the sun is down by 7 p.m.
• No computer or internet – ahhh! Our lifeline to the outside world!

Place your vote by clicking on the word ‘Comments’ and let us know what your choice would be if faced without one or the other for a whole week.

International Negotiations - by John

Last week was very interesting, in that I was helping negotiate a contract between one of our partners and an international NGO. For the sake of confidentiality, let's just say that the NGO was based in Elbonia (the fictitious country that Dilbert used as a reference).

The Elbonians we met to negotiate with were very nice people, and had a lot of good intentions. We got together at a local coffee shop to look over the contract, which they were requiring our partner to sign so that he could get some grant money from them. The original contract was written in Elbonian of course and translated into English, and while the English of the Elbonians was really very good, technical legal language has its challenges at the best of times and definitely posed a challenge to our friends. So, we were reading a contract that had been translated from Elbonian to English, for a Zambian to sign after it had been interpreted by a Canadian. There was considerable room for discussion around some of the wording as you can imagine.

Some difficulties arose because the contract contained clauses that were "non negotiable", inserted by the NGO's state funder (The National Aid Agency of Elbonia). The state funder is very worried about fraud and corruption, which is understandable. Unfortunately the requirements of the contract are such that the kind of audit required is almost more expensive than the value of the contract itself. To top it all off, there is a "we don't trust you a bit" clause, which demands the right to come and examine any record of our partner, at any time, by anyone associated with the state funder, including the state auditor, and oh by the way, if there is any legal question at all, it will have to be resolved in Elbonia and you will have to give all the money back. We have visions of black clad Elbonian auditors in Ninja masks crashing through the door and making off all the (dusty) paper records.

Ah, what to do. Our partner needs the money and will put it to very good use, but at what risk? Do you capitulate and sign, knowing that the chances of any of the potential bad things happening is very small? Or do you decide to walk away, because there seems so little trust or understanding, but at the same time putting some of your projects at risk?

We talked over the contract over three more meetings, and still haven't resolved all the issues. I feel like while everyone's hearts are in the right place, but contracts like this are a form of "aid imperialism" rather that partnership definition. The implicit "my way or the highway" language just doesn't set the right mood, and this from a "enlightened western democracy". It's been very interesting for me to see this first hand and to compare it to MCC's methods, which are quite different and more partnership oriented (and better in my opinion). International Aid is an interesting and complex business!

The Dark Ages

It seems we have entered our own dark ages in Lusaka these days. After having a steady power supply from last Easter until mid-January we have re-entered the world of regular power outages. The girls have gotten used to doing homework and having their evening showers by candlelight. We are slowly learning our own coping mechanisms like having dinner ready early – just in case. We’ve also learned to mark our light switches to show which lights are turned on and which are off (the switches are all different) so that we don’t have to get up in the middle of the night when the power comes back on and go around and turn off all the lights - a bitter lesson. Usually the power is only off for a couple of hours at a time as different areas of Lusaka get switched off at varying intervals to save power. This experience has made us feel for our Zimbabwean neighbours to the south who we hear are without power most of the time.