The real people of Zambia

It’s amazing what one can learn from and about a person by just walking with them –masks of stereotypes fall and all you are left with are human beings and the lines on the faces that represent their lives stories. After having lived in the village for the past few weeks suddenly ‘rural’ people don’t seem as rural anymore.

Lovemore Sipukula, the captain doesn’t look a day over 30 in my opinion but he’s just turned 47, the only sign of which are the few lines around his eyes. A leader, a motivator, a believer, a visionary; still single because he claims to not want to deal with the troubles of a married life; skilled in not just farming but also in bricklaying, sand mining, animal rearing and the list goes on. He’s decided that he wants to give back to the community and so decided to work with my partner organization. He understands the need for the community to take ownership of its development. He pushes the project on and boosts the morale of the rest of the VCFs, who he considers family, when they don’t see the point or the light at the end of the tunnel; he sees the assets of the community even if they don’t necessarily, and recognizes the endless possibilities. He once told me, as we were on one of our many walks to visit a fellow friend in another village, “you know Chimbo (my community given name), the real job lies in motivating the people. If you want to mobilize the resources of a community you need to first mobilize the people”. I was impressed. He has plans to start goat rearing as there has been a drastic decline in livestock rearing since the epidemic that took place 10 yrs ago. When livestock were dying by the hundreds, leaving whole families to take up farming as a form of livelihood. He doesn’t have the initial capital to start it yet but he’s determined. He’s saving up.

Gladys Kabongola Chama, a widow with six children, was kind enough to gift me a chicken. She says I haven’t tasted a real chicken until I’ve eaten a chicken from the village, none of that GMO stuff she says. She said she lost her husband two years ago. They told her it was a severe case of malaria. She now farms maize on her own with her six children. She says she wasn’t able to yield enough maize to sell because she didn’t have enough fertilizer which is very expensive. She spends whatever spare time she can afford volunteering with my organization. She wants to start an adult literacy class.

Ebby, like a true Tonga man, likes his women as much as his drink, and also very smart. Smooth with his words and a quick learner. He is one I would call a “Public Relations” man. Still single for obvious reasons but insists that he’ll settle down one day and has asked me to find him a Muzungu (foreigner) wife like myself. He wears second hand Italian shoes (which seem to be the fashionable thing for men to wear in Zambia) as he rides his bicycle that he received from World Vision. He farms cotton and maize for a living.

Nicolas, a small built man with a million dollar smile, a church elder, a father, a farmer. His family has been farming maize ever since his father (a well known member and cattle rearer of the community) lost 400 of his cattle to the epidemic. He used to work for Dunavant, a cotton distributing company, but he wasn’t receiving his monthly wages from his supervisor. He tried to complain to the manager in the head office in Lusaka. But the supervisor was paly with the manager at the head office, and so his complaints fell on deaf ears thereby forcing him to quit his job. He’s back to farming maize again. He always insists on giving me a ride on his bicycle on my way to the Information Centre even though the poor man seems like he’s about to croak at the end of the journey. He says I’m a heavy woman but he’s a used man and can carry my weight all the way to Lusaka if he had to.

Juliet Kofu, a widow of three children and also my host mom. Makes MacGyver references and improvises like one too (she’s able to ride a bicycle that has no breaks and has its pedals missing). Farms enough maize to keep the family going. Wants to start growing cotton but doesn’t have the manpower to do it. She insists I add glycerin to my body lotion (which it seems like all Zambians do) to help get rid of my dry skin and refuses to let me wear my pants until I let her wash it for me because it’s too dirty (I think differently ;)). She watches patiently as I struggle to cook nshima and takes over when I finally give up. Leslie, Sharon and Veronica act a lot like the way my siblings and I do. Leslie is a spunky 15 yr old, who can be loud, nutty and bullies her sisters because she knows she can. Sharon is 12 yrs old, quieter than her other two sisters, has a head on her shoulders and a hard worker who will do the household chores without being asked. Veronica is a 9 year old who is relatively tall for her age, has a cute smile and a twinkle in her eye that spells mischief.

Fights for the last bit of relish during supper by the fire are usually between Leslie and Veronica. This is because Leslie believes she’s been in the world longer which makes her entitled to it, Sharon (much like my sister Amy) sits quietly because she’s been in the world long enough to know that arguing with the first born is a lost battle and truly, a piece of fish is really not worth all that effort and energy, while Veronica (much like my brother Josh) has clearly not been in the world long enough to realize that pearly wisdom. I watch amused, realizing how much I’ve come to adore these girls and miss my own siblings.

As I sit by the fire at the end of the day watching Juliet and the girls cook nshima for supper, sharing with each other the stories of the day and singing as we all watch the sun set I recognize that these people are my Dorothy. If there was any doubt before as to if I should have come here, they aren’t there now to say the least. They’re real people with virtues and flaws just like any of us. They have the same needs, wants and desires. They take pride in their country, themselves, their children, their farms and nshima making skills. Beautiful, intelligent, hardworking, calloused, hospitable, trusting, God fearing, and peaceful- these are the real people of Zambia.

Africa 2000 Network- Zambia and me

I realize that I haven’t actually told people what I’m doing or what I’m working on. So here’s some information on my organization and areas I might be working on.

My organization Africa 2000 Network is involved in localizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through mapping and profiling of community villages and then coming up with a Community Action Plan which they can then, in turn, turn into project proposals. It sounds fancy which it isn’t but it’s definitely very interesting.

The Millennium Development Goals are goals hoped to be met by 2015. They include goals like ending hunger and child poverty and ending HIV/AIDS etc. However translating those goals to the village level is almost always unsuccessful and is very difficult because it’s imposed by the government or donors on the people through different projects which the people themselves either don’t really need (like just providing food relief which undermines the local farmers produce) or the people just don’t think they need it. It is not a process that they usually initiate themselves, monitor, and control or own. So people are starting to realize that these top down approaches to development just don’t work and for the most part, the most vulnerable and small scale farmers get left behind.

So the question is how do we decentralize development and make goals like the MDGs realistic and attainable at the community level. That’s what Africa 2000 Network is trying to do. A2N in Zambia is using an approach called the Participatory Development Management to bring meaning to decentralization at the local community level. The approach is meant to empower the village to draw up their own development plans which can then be used as building blocks for projects at a higher level.

All that is essentially achieved through the mapping and profiling which is then used to construct their community action plan. So members from the village/community map out their own village which helps them not only recognize key areas of problem but also helps them recognize the assets of their village. They then go out and do the profiling which essentially means that they go to different households of a mapped out village and ask them questions related to the MDGs - what kind of diseases family often suffer from, amount of crops they produce and how much they're able to sell and how long it lasts them, distance to the nearest school etc. Once all that information is collected and compiled it can then be analyzed by the villagers themselves to see the areas of improvement (like for example transportation of crops is too expensive because of the distance of the nearest market) and actions they should/can take to improve their own situation (e.g. form a collective cooperative so that they can come together to sell their goods and all pitch in for transportation). This procedure helps the community recognize their areas of need themselves and helps them take ownership of their own wellbeing instead of being dependent on handouts from NGOs and/or subsidies from the government. Other areas where they need external support they can get by making business proposals which they can give to NGO's or the government.

I've come to realize that there are so many NGO's that have more money than they know what to do with and they want to help but don’t know where to put those resources into. So they end up spending large sums of money on projects which are either not appropriate for the people living there (like for example spending half million dollars on sending a little outdated but fancy medical equipment to a hospital in Africa without taking into consideration if the community actually needed it, if there were people trained to use them and people who could fix them. So the equipments ended up becoming half a million dollar worth of paper weights. Or even building a well in an area that already has four neighbouring wells) or the people reject it (e.g. building a community center without taking into consideration that the community values and/or is structured such that children play together anyway within compounds and people consider old folk to be a part of their responsibility and so the community center was abandoned).
So these project proposals will help the government implement appropriate strategies and policies at the district level and NGO's fund appropriate projects without reinventing the wheel by doing an exact project that another NGO might have worked on already.

So I know this is sounding long winded but I've just had an overload of all this info and come to realize so much over the past 2 months. Anyway so they're trying to implement this project for the first time in Zambia. It has been successful in other parts of Africa like Ghana but is a pilot project in Zambia. Here we are trying this out in two particular districts Mazabuka and Chibombo districts.

So the question is, where do I fit in? I will be facilitating and helping out in the progress in the Chibombo district. So I'm still defining my role but I will most likely be ensuring that the mapping is completed and profiling is done appropriately and help in compiling of the information. Since this is a pilot project a lot of work has to be done and a lot of it has yet to be defined so it’s pretty neat because I feel like I should be able to contribute and help define the project up to a certain extent. I should be able to help facilitate the process in developing the Community Acton Plan by guiding the Village Facilitators in their thought process. The profiling questions need refining and I can help develop the trust of the villagers with A2N. I could also possibly be the contact person for the NGOs in the district like World Vision, Plan etc. So we'll see. I still have to figure things out myself. They're areas I have recognized as potential areas of capacity building. I’ll let you know how it goes as and when I have a chance.