More Visitors in Lusaka

Our latest company arrived safe and sound last Tuesday together with all of their bags. It's been great spending time with Richard (John's brother) and Heidi from Ottawa. The last time we saw them we didn't even know that we'd be moving to Africa and they have since had another baby so we had lots to catch up on. Their children: Rebecca, Benjamin and Mia are vacationing in Winnipeg with both sets of their grandparents. Richard and Heidi really hit the ground running when they arrived here, no time for napping or jet lag; we've been on the go everyday. You can check out their blog here to read about our events on a daily basis. They flew to South Luangwa this afternoon to go on safari so we have a bit of time to post some updates. I'll just cover a few of the things that they haven't already written about.

We enjoyed our visit to Mumbwa where our colleague Amy is working. We visited two community schools and one of them has recently started a feeding program to provide lunches for the children there. The staple food everywhere in Southern Africa is a maize product and in Zambia it is called nshima. Heidi wanted to give nshima making a try and it is much harder than it looks but she gave it a good effort.

Heidi: a.k.a. "African Mama"

We enjoyed touring the sites with Amy and learning the difference between the main roads and the side roads. Apparently the difference is that the main road has two tracks for the two sets of tires on the car where as a side road is really like a path where grasses and branches brush along the sides of the car.

When we said good bye to Amy at the end of the day it was very sobering to see her co-worker out in front of their office and he was making a coffin out of small scraps of wood that he was piecing together. A woman who was HIV positive and who spoke out about her condition by doing AIDS awareness clinics had passed away that day and the coffin needed to be completed in the next hour so that it could be used immediately.

Heidi and Amy with Teddy working in the background.

In a stark contrast to this day, we also spent a day at one of Lusaka's finest attractions, Adventure City, a waterslide park with beautiful grounds and many small pools around the property. We spent the day under the shade of the banana trees and some other friends joined us also. The six kids had a great time on the water slides and the adults had some fun too.

Here comes Richard...

Splash!
Enjoying the 30 degree weather

After seeing the local craft market on Sunday afternoon Heidi decided to treat us all to a big batch of cinnamon buns, we're hoping the girls will remember what they've been taught and will soon be able to make these yummy treats on their own.

Here is Danica learning how to knead dough

Erin with the nearly-finished product

We will be out of town on Easter weekend weekend so we did our egg colouring ahead of time. We got creative and used candle wax to make patterns on the eggs.

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.

The Road Less Traveled

The rain has been relentless and it has taken its toll on our mud roads. This week’s task was to deliver school supplies to the community schools and also to spend a day with our colleagues Mark and Tyler giving them a learning tour of MCC’s work in Lusaka. The water on the roads made our tasks much more challenging.

This is a mini-bus that we passed on the road to one of the community schools.

Comparatively, the road in front of our house doesn't look so bad!

Here are some of the students at Needs Care school with their new notebooks.

Much to their surprise, Mark and Tyler ended up doing some teaching at Needs Care school.

Does Tyler look familiar? Tyler was a featured teacher in the current Common Place magazine, I'm sure autographs can be arranged.

All Play and No Work? by Charlene

Just in case you think our time with Dave and Ruth was one continuous romp on the beach, I wanted to highlight some of the time that we spent with our local MCC partners.

Chisomo Drop-In Centre

The children from our home church in Winnipeg have been raising funds for Chisomo since last September. Dave and Ruth brought the money with them and with it we were able to meet some of the basic needs of the street children who stay at the centre. We bought 50 pairs of shoes so that each of the children there now has a pair. Many of the children arrived at Chisomo barefoot after living on the streets. We also purchased 80 kilos of beans to add some protein to their diet and we added a few things to their basic kitchen supplies such as oil, sugar and detergent. The children at Chisomo were very appreciative and they did a thank you song for us and then we moved outside for some drumming and dancing (during which most of the kids kicked off their shoes so that they could dance better!).

Jordan distributing shoes to the Chisomo children.

Nice Shoes!

Dancing is best done in bare feet

Needs Care

Needs Care is the name of a community school in a local compound here and the school is definitely in need of care. The school was started by a woman named Esther who saw that many children were not attending school since their parents could not afford to pay a $5 school fee or purchase a uniform. She now has 225 students who attend her school, they meet inside a church building that is not yet completed (it was started years & years ago) and it does not have a completed roof which creates some complications during rainy season. Her annual budget is just about $0! Esther and 5 teachers are all volunteers working without any kind of compensation and the children pay nothing to attend the school and uniforms are not required. All of the supplies at the school have been donated by “well-wishers”. MCC donates school kits annually and the school does not have any text books and home made black boards are the only teaching tool. Dave and Ruth had brought some donations from friends and family back home and were able to purchase 200 notebooks, 100 pencils, 50 erasers, notebooks for the teachers and they were able to give each teacher a financial gift to thank them for their efforts in their community. We had a good time on our visits to this school. The school kids enjoyed having Jordan and Caleb join in on their games and they loved having their pictures taken. As a thank you for our donation they had a school assembly with drumming and plenty of bum-shaking dancing.

The little drummer boys

Charlene posing as Sally Struthers

These children just started kindergarten this week.

These kids also prefer dancing barefoot on the school floor.

Esther (crouching) and her team of teachers

Yummy Inswa! - by John

Mmm, a big plate of termites

So, a few weeks ago we posted a blog about eating caterpillars. They weren't horrible, but weren't all that great either. Nonetheless, our friends Dave and Ruth posted a comment, something like "Bring it On", so we did. We arranged for our maid to fry up a big batch of Inswa, which we know as termites (see this Wikipedia entry). They are pretty popular around this time of year in southern Africa, they come out, fly around and mate, and then loose their wings, so people pick them up and cook them up.

We did a sort of taste test, and had about a 50/50 reaction. I found them crunchy, oily and pretty good, they make a nice snack. Others had a different reaction.

Danica likes Inswa!Caleb likes Inswa a lot!

Erin is still tasting....

Erin expresses her disappointment

Jordan would prefer other forms of protein

Regardless of the negative reactions, I predict that it's only a matter of time until Inswa hit the frozen food aisle at Superstore, or that we will find the McInswa burger at McDonalds.