Peace Corey.

hey dudes!

back again, reporting from the EWB house in Toronto, Ontario and what a crazy place this is. I feel super close to all these JFs and after three days I truly feel like a 13+ piece family.

On the first day, things were a little quiet, a little reserved, and not too eager to share during sessions. But yesterday morning I noticed a huge difference and I knew it was going to be a great day. When we were all making breakfast, there were elbow nudges, jokes, conversations, laughs. The difference in community in just 24 hours was night and day.

As a result, my learning has skyrocketed. I'm not too hot a learner when I'm in big groups, but it really doesn't feel like that anymore and we're all 100% engaged.

Today was a phenomenal day for learning. We started off by doing a scenario exercise. It was a role playing activity of a community meeting involving the community and the NGO wanting to improve the community's economic situation. I was the lucky duck who pulled the chief card so I was facilitating the meeting. I knew I was in for a challenge because I'm not the tough guy or assertive type of person, but I did my best at a Ghanaian accent.I feel like I'm expanding my comfort zone every minute.

Somebody was playing the role of the EWB volunteer on the NGO side and it really opened my eyes to how we'll be perceived when we're working. The director of the NGO only liked the EWB volunteer because it could result in funding from CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and another person's role was to ignore the EWB volunteer because they thought they knew nothing. Perhaps these are realistic, perhaps not, but it will be in the back of my mind when I'm in district meetings and meeting new people. The exercise also helped me think about decision making in a community and the ambiguity or lack of information that is available when making a decision. I'm sure I'll have to make a lot of assumptions this summer when making any kind of decision.

Later in the afternoon, we had a session on economics and gender. In the econ session, we mapped out the systems in our own country and then looked at a model for sustainable livlihoods. I learned that in the context of Malawi or a rural African country, we'll have to look at things like social networks, relationships, government, the skills and knowledge of people, natural assets like land or rivers, physical assets like houses or schools and financial asssets like access to credit or money in order to start understanding the economic system. I probably will only begin to understand these systems by the end of August.

Our last session was a discussion about gender. We talked about risks and roles related to each gender when living in Malawi. We talked about how the Malawian men will flirt with us all the time, the excess of marriage proposals for both women and men, and the role that each gender plays in the household and workplace. Apparently, in a workplace, the hierarchy of power is white man, white woman, black man, black woman and the way you are treated depends on where you are. Some female volunteers talked about how they were treated like men in the field and women in the office. Very interesting. I'll keep you posted on my observations.

In the household, we will likely play the role of the guest for the first little bit. Volunteers typically have to ask to learn the customs of cleaning, laundry and cooking and men are typically not allowed to do some of these things. Hopefully I'll be able to build the trust and relationships with my host family and become more than a guest quick. That is one of my greatest hopes.

Last thing I have to say: this conversation got me thinking about who I want to live with and I decided that I'd love to live with lots of women and children. I receieved an email today from my co-worker who is going to help me find a place when I get there. She also told me I start work on the 24th of May. My first day of work is in 12 days. What a reality check!

I have more info for you about my living situation but I feel I've written a lot for now. You can check out my town on google mapshere.

I wish i could tell you more stories but I have to go work on a CLTS presentation.

One more: Parker told me my necklace was "peace corey" and that I shouldn't wear it. This was when 5 National Office staff lined us up and judged our outfits.

All my love and everything I got,
love kate

Predeparture Training Pt. I

DUDES!

Thoughts and Stories

Here is my journal for the day before and the first day of predeparture training.

Day Before:
i've arrived to pre-departure training and it is wonderful here. we all made a massive vegetarian chili dinner with biscuits and we've been here since 4pm. by now, we've all grabbed our bunk in the EWB house and had our first session on overseas logistics (insurance, entry visas, allowance and money, etc). tomorrow the fun actually starts. starting tomorrow we have ~16 hour days.

tomorrow, we're doing morning introductions, hopes and fears, lunch one on ones, what is poverty/development, intro to rural livlihoods, learning journal, dinner at the ethiopian house and an EWB's vision workshop with george. what a day! i'll be fueling up with a fresh cup of fair trade java in the morning, that's for sure.

earlier today, i was feeling extremely nervous about all of this. it is actually happening. saying goodbye to my family and tony really made this journey into something a lot more real. now i've settled into this house and the people are so awesome and so nice, those nerves have disappeared. i have an open heart and open mind and i'm ready to get started!

the gang is made up of equal parts girls and boys. there are only three people going to zambia this year as an interesting fact. nobody is going to kitwe (tony's town). the rest of us are heading to malawi. me and a guy named stan from windsor are the only ones working on CLTS. everyone is in the same boat as me in terms of preparation and i'm feeling pretty happy about that.

We have had a fun night and now it's time to get rest for the long day tomorrow!

Day 1:
Feelings upon waking up: rested and excited. I had a really great sleep on the top bunk in a room of 10 JFs and surprisingly, there was not snoring or late night conversations. I'm sure that will change one of these nights...

Some major questions and learning from the day:
If development is inevitable change, whose change is it?
If I impose my own values into decisions that I'll make this summer, it might not be in the best interest of rural Malawians. I have to be empathetic, understanding and have an open mind.
Is development happiness or economic security? Are they the same thing? What about long term vs. short term development? What kind of work are we doing?
Integrating into rural Malawi is not about losing yourself. Don't overstep your limits!
If international development is such a heavily criticized field, why is EWB any better?
I have to push myself out of my comfort zone in order to expand it and learn.


Some explanation on the sessions we had today:
Hopes and fears- We all wrote down, you guessed it, our hopes dreams and fears for our placement this summer. We only had time to review a few so we talked about learning chichewa (the tip is to hire a school teacher as a tutor!), connecting to your counterpart in an open, honest, mutually beneficial way, feeling like a family member vs. a guest in your host family, connecting the chapter in an effective way, not having the skill set that your APS/partner require/expect and being paralyzed by culture shock. It smoothed out some feelings I'm sure we were all having.

What is poverty/development- This was by far the most challenging session of the day. The objectives were to identify our personal definition of poverty and development, share it with others and open our mind to new ideas and definitions. Our chapter spends a lot of time defining poverty but I have never discussed the basic "what is development" in the company of EWBERS. My small group concluded that development is the inevitable change that is neither positive or negative. The general group talked about this for an hour. Really thought provoking and interesting session. What is your definition of development?

Intro to rural livlihoods- In this session, we learned about the six things that affect rural livlihoods: the household and the gender relations within it (productive and reproductive), agriculture, religion, culture and beliefs, assets and capabilities and the effect of macro trends. Then we did a case study of a particular household and addressed each of these things within it. If you want to learn more about this, hit me back and I can send you the case study.

Dinner at the Ethiopian house- If you haven't had Ethiopian food, you gotta try it! 'nuf said.

It was a long a lovely day. The folks around here are amazing people and I encourage you all to check out their blogs at the bottom of this page.

On another note, please send me feedback on my blog. I already know that my posts are too long but I'll work on being more concise!

see you in the future!
love love love.
love kate!

Job Description and Nyanja

Hey folks!


Work and Approach
So, as you know, I'm moving to Malawi in about two weeks and the excitement builds every day. Right now, I'm knee deep in documents trying to get as prepared as possible for pre-departure training which starts on the 10th. If you'd like to join me, there are all kinds of resources at this website.

So, as this website alludes, I'll be working on a Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) project. This means that I'll be working on the sanitation side of things, mostly to do with the health effects related to open defecation. CLTS is "an innovative methodology for mobilizing communities to completely eliminate open defecation (OD). Communities are facilitated to conduct their own appraisal and analysis of open defecation (OD) and take their own action to become ODF (open defecation free)." I'm not yet sure of my exact partner organization or job description but I will be doing some of the following things:

-Peer-coaching a district officer counterpart
-Attending lots of CLTS meetings in the village with district extension staff
-Running workshops for teams of extension staff before and after meetings – repeatedly – to facilitate max. on-the-job experiential learning
-Supporting districts in improving planning, execution, and human resource management processes
-Helping counterpart write an article for S.H.i.T.S. or a longer stand-alone article about a special/personal aspect of their CLTS learning (esp. management techniques)
-Organising a district’s CLTS “data” (quantitative and qualitative). Help the team set goals based on what’s been accomplished (and failed with) so far. Taking inventory (participatory) of what the district doesn’t know about its CLTS but wants/needs to know. Coaching to find a feasible way to collect this info.
-Helping counterpart write a profile of the overall district’s CLTS program to help them (a) build support among key people in the district – Members Parliament, Traditional Authorities, District Commissioner, District Planning Director, District Education Manager, District Community Development Officer, District Health Officer, etc. and/or (b) get additional funding for CLTS if they want to.
-Interviewing field staff about their experiences with CLTS
-Strategising ‘next-step’ interventions for their district, or for the CLTS support program as a whole – e.g. ideas as to how UNICEF could better support the district


Connecting to Malawi
I'm also about to dive into some language learning. The languages spoken in Malawi are English and Chichewa (aka nyanja). I hope to get a nyanja tutor when I get settled but for now, I hope these phrases will help me on my way.

Ndipunzera Chinyanja: I am learning nyanja
Sindilankula maningi: I cannot speak a lot

Go ahead, say it out loud! You can also learn at this amazing website. More language updates to come!

Also, if you're looking for more ways to connect to Africa, please check out the tab with African jams and film recommendations. I filled it up with mp3s and trailers to some awesome movies.

Keep eating the fruit!
love kate