Per Diem is a Big Hairy* Deal

All About the Banda's

Per diem is meant to defray the daily cost of breakfast, lunch, dinner and “incidentals” (defined mostly as tips by the US Federal Travel Regulations) incurred when traveling for work. It is typically a flat rate, prorated by percent for each meal. The US government international amount seems to be set by assuming the traveler would eat all meals at the most expensive hotel restaurant in town.

Because it’s usually so ridiculously high, it ends up being closer to a salary supplement. When I was traveling abroad from the US, I considered it a small consolation prize for sitting 18 hours cramped in aisle 48H next to the bathrooms. It was a nice bonus, but it wasn’t why I worked.

Thing is, when people live closer to the margin, the collection of per diem gets elevated into an art form. It moves beyond supplement to an incentive, and for some, a second salary. For a few more, it becomes a right. Thus, its provision in your project becomes more urgent, more pressing…

…and more of a barrier to actual work.

For example: Because drivers travel frequently, they need this benefit the most often. We spend a lot of time carefully managing their schedules to avoid complaints that one may be getting more than others. As such, between all the last minute changes, time off schedules  and jockeying amongst seniority, setting the monthly schedule can sometimes feel like giving birth to a pound of razor wire. 

When I first arrived, a group of sub-partners actually threatened to walk away from an all-inclusive training in Nigeria, because they’d only take home a nominal incidental fee. Forget learning, they wanted the money.

Local governments also seem to be in on the take. To get community buy in, development organizations work hard to meet with and work through existing channels (such as local district executive committees).  Unfortunately, some committees refuse to convene unless they receive per diem! I recently discovered that one such committee charged three different organizations for the same meeting. Coordination and communication being what it is (fairly informal) this was only discovered after the fact.)

Imagine if you were just an average constituent; how would you afford democracy this way?

If I let it, the Per Diem Issue feels like being hijacked by the people we want to help, off the backs of people we want to help. Aside from wasting resources, it expends a ton of organizational and emotional energy. Policies upon policies are created. Schedules are scrutinized. Meetings turn tense. At the end of it all, precious, valuable work undone. Even now, as I write, I feel the bile rise. If donors really wanted to see where their time and money were going, my bet is on this.

The solution here isn’t easy. How do you move someone from considering per diem as a right to a nice supplement? From beating the system to doing your job? The answer lies in the rat’s nest of macroeconomics, global inequality, choices and personality.

There’s nothing wrong for having the costs of your job be covered. However, how does this translate when everything has a cost? 

I contextually understand, but it’s a culture shock every time I run into it. This is consistently where my Midwestern no-nonsense work ethic rams like a sledgehammer into my carefully constructed attempts at cultural sensitivity. Why are you even here?! I want to scream. Do you care so little about helping others that you’d kidnap the entire program over a measly $8?  We more than likely end up paying, because we have indicators to hit, targets to achieve. But I hate every conversation about it.

I try to have compassion. I try to remember being squished in 48H, dreaming of what I would do with that extra money. But mostly, every day I’m reminded: Per Diem is a Big Hairy* Deal.

*Not the original adjective.

Five Things that Have Surprised Me About Life In “The Field”

Bean field, feeling misunderstood

1) Every work place has “a field” – whether a country office, district office, or literally, a field of beans. Headquarters is, likewise, relative. They all equally feel misunderstood by the others. 

2) The importance of having a back-up for the back-up. To get a simple phone call through to headquarters, I keep two internet connections, one dongle, a cell phone and a landline on hand. For a local call, most folks use two phone numbers on two different networks, text, or even WhatsApp to get through. Constant problem-solving, creative thinking, bobbing-and-weaving is a must.

3) Streamlining does not always equal most efficient/effective (see #2). Why don't we just....? All that diversifying makes it tempting to cut through the red tape with simple solutions. Sure, it might make sense in one context to buy goats from all one vendor. One set of paperwork, one contract. But spreading the risk amongst three or four vendors ensures that if one overstates their capability there’s enough of a back up to keep the distribution on track. I call it the Not All in One Basket approach. It's exhausting, but not as exhausting as explaining why there are no goats.

Proudly displaying mango #11

4) I wouldn’t have interpreted it that way, but…it works. In an attempt to keep track of our office inventory, our gardener numbered each one of the ripening mangoes in the yard with a magic marker. I once also worked with an office manager who knew the project was underspending, so she stock piled over 100 bottles of toilet bowl cleaner, toilet paper and other cleaning supplies in an effort to increase the burn rate. I am constantly reminded that procedures need context, people need guidance, and it's ok to not take ourselves too seriously.

5) Waiting is the New Doing. When our car ran out of gas (because we didn't follow #2 and get gas when we were still at half tank and trying to streamline our stops) and the only station within 100 km hadn’t had electricity to pump in 14 hours, there was literally nothing we could do. So, we sat in the station with a coke and a samosa. Several solutions eventually revealed themselves (ending with the electricity magically turning on.) When in doubt, wait it out.

The Development Myth

Here come the goats! Here come the goats!

When I first moved here, the realities of what I thought my job would be and what it actually turned out to be was a bit jarring. I imagined I’d be delivering of goats to women-farmers while they sang, danced and ululated around me in the sunshine of a bucolic farmyard. Instead, I’ve developed a hunchback and squint-eye compiling bid matrices and no-conflict-of-interest forms in triplicate that justify why Fatso Investments (name of real firm) has the best goats for the best price.

Complaining one night over beers, a good friend of mine (who works in the UN system) laughed and then advised. “Remember, your job is not to do your job. It’s to cut through all the bureaucracy to enable someone else to do their job.” I laughed, ruefully.

This perspective just doesn’t mesh with the humanitarian stereotype. You know, the one of a Westerner who has assimilated perfectly to their adopted homeland. S/he lives in a mud hut, happily without electricity, eating street food, and cheerfully taking public transportation. They speak the language, get all the formalities correct, never point their feet where they shouldn’t. As such, they are able to do really effective cool stuff. They hand out blankets to AIDs orphans, mobilize community health programs, and rehabilitate boreholes with a toothpick and a smile.

I will never be one of these people.

I used to feel so guilty about this. Sure, I’ve eaten street food and murdered “thank you” in eight languages, but I can never quite move from “clumsy outsider” to “effective local”. I like roadside samosas as much as the next person, but that doesn’t make me Indian. I can admire, adopt even, certain things out of respect and even, enjoyment. I can slow down when I talk. Share my food. Sit in the driver’s office and get the gossip. But I’ll never be Malawian. The best I can hope for is cultural competence, not fluency.

I’ve gone round the emotional mill on this (sad, angry, frustrated, guilty). The development stereotype tells me that I should be good at all these things - but I’m just not. I have spent the last ten years carrying residual guilt about this until, last week, something caught my eye on a recent post on AidSpeak. J., was expounding on the skills needed to be a good development professional:

The value that foreigners (us) bring to the table is less and less about our knowledge and understanding of the details of local culture (local staff usually know organically in a few seconds those things that take us months or years of study to get right), or our ability to endure harsh conditions (the fact that we might be able to live like refugees for a few days almost never impresses real refugees), and more and more about our ability to engage with the global humanitarian system.

Suddenly, I feel so much better. I've stopped beating myself up over this. 

The truth is, I don’t think these people actually exist the way we think they do. And even if they did, there’s an awful lot of tedium that you don’t hear about in the run up to becoming that effective. Never once do you hear about cleaning data sets or editing quarterly reports. No one ever spends hours waiting for the lights to turn back on, or the government official to show up or fixing crashed computers.   But those things need to be done.

This misconception has to change. We have to start being honest about what development work looks like. And sometimes, it's boring.

Our lead farmers and local staff know Chichewa and how to castrate a goat much better than I do. But I do know how to jump the hoops of procurement and the industry terms (allowable and allocable anybody?) to get those darn goats in the first place. I can practically quote 22 CFR 226 in my sleep. The thing is, I never valued these things as “skills” because that’s not what I thought a “good” development practitioner did. The mundane is always overlooked, undervalued.

That’s not to say understanding local context is unimportant for expats, or examining the intricacies of the global humanitarian system are impossible for locals. I’m just saying: Let’s each play to our comparative advantage. My comparative advantage will never be goat vaccinations and chatting away in Lao/Chichewa/Hausa. It is in understanding and following a donor system, their regulations, and smoothing the way for smart, creative local staff who understand their culture and their context to do their job.

My friend was right, it's not my job to do my job. It's to pave the way for someone else. That realization adds so much value, so much relief, it almost makes the paperwork...palatable.

Grit and Resiliency

This week I came across the WhyDev.org podcast, Mission Creep. While still new (and not as slickly produced as say, NPR) Mission Creep is refreshing to listen to, as it brings mid-level aid professionals together to discuss “fresh and frank” development issues. I appreciated the non-Amero-centric views and diverse newspaper and website references (who loves the Guardian? I do).

In their January 2015 podcast, they discussed a recent article about grit. Specifically, how (and if?) grit is a good way to measure a successful development professional.

As they were discussing grit, it reminded me of a talk I listened to last year by Angela Lee Duckworth (link to a short video version here). Sure enough, they bring her up later on in the episode.

According to Ms. Duckworth, grit is “passion and perseverance for very long term goals, […] having stamina, […] sticking with your future day in day out […] and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”  

Everyone knows people in their lives who have grit, whether or not you call it that. They are the ones who stick with something long after it seemed prudent to stop. The ones who work harder than anyone else, hustle faster, show up earlier, stay longer, practice more.

My high school best friend has grit: she farms with her dad, owns her own business and fosters eleven puppies in the middle of winter when they were literally thrown away by someone else. When we played volleyball in high school, she hustled after every stray ball, even into the bleachers, even as her elbows and knees bled. I’ve never known someone to work as hard as she does.

The article suggests that the concept of grit is better than resiliency to evaluate if a person will be a successful manager of development projects. Resiliency, woefully over-used yet still an industry favorite, basically means ‘the ability to bounce back after setbacks’ or ‘rolling with the punches’. Did half your staff just quit? Did you indicators just double? Did your donor reduce funding? Did the lights just go off?

The hosts were quick to define grit and resiliency at odds with one another. On the one hand, grit equalled ‘pushing through’ and ‘not adapting’. On the other, resiliency was a how one changed, or rolled with it. The problem is, these things are not mutually exclusive. You have to have grit to stay in the dark while you figure out an alternative way to get the lights back on.  You have to have grit to attend yet another meeting that has been co-opted by the grandstanding government official to eventually meet the right person who can push your project forward. You have to have grit to tell someone they are not getting any more grant funding unless they can show you where the previous funds went even if you have that money burning a hole in your budget and HQ keeps yammering on about NICRA.

Granted, it’s only a thirty minute podcast, but I felt like their framing of these two concepts was off. Grit doesn’t mean be a jerk, it just means “Do the hard things.” That doesn’t mean you’re not changed by them. It doesn’t mean you don’t roll with the punches. It doesn’t mean you don’t cry internally (and sometimes externally, alone, in your office, at 8:05 am). It simply means that you show up, time and time again, and again, even when stuff gets hard. Grit is what keeps you there, while Resiliency asks "What's Next?"

Does grit equal inflexibility? Inadaptability? I don’t think so. I think grit and resiliency are closer cousins than academics would have us believe. It’s easier to gravitate towards the term grit because it’s colloquial; we can all identify. If Ms. Duckworth had been talking about resiliency, I would’ve never remembered her podcast or identified my best friend in her description.

Do I have use grit all the time? No way. In fact, I think that’s a pretty good way to burn out. Same with being resilient – even the most flexible things can break. I recently came across a great quote by Nelson Mandela: “Quitting is leading, too”. As someone who doesn’t thinks she’s had much grit lately, I love this. Both quitting and hanging tight have their moments; it’s only the timing of when and how that we have to perfect. 

Grit and resiliency are both tools we need to survive or successful at, well, anything. Jobs. Earthquakes. Marriages. Children. Just the way we sometimes need to be supple and forgiving, thankful and proud, fun-loving and hard-nosed. I love the idea of grit, I love the idea of resiliency. Do we really need to pick?

What do you think? 

Letters Left Unsent: A Review

I’m a bit late on this – although I was given a beta copy to review, his book was launched on Amazon in November. Check it out here!

This collection of essays loosely drawn into a book by author and blogger J., depicts snapshots in the life and travels of a humanitarian aid worker.  Unsurprisingly, it’s not all parties on the Serengeti.  Like most jobs, it has ups and downs: long hours in dusty hotels, stuffy conference rooms, morally difficult decisions, poor coordination. Letters Left Unsent is the distillation of thoughts that come from twenty years of these experiences, for better and worse.

I’ve been following (rather, lurking) J’s blog Tales from the Hood and AidSpeak for a few years now. I check in when I need inspiration, provocation and a little moral outrage. Being mired in the day to day realities of life “in the field” (e.g. trying to get fuel into six cars and eighteen motorcycles on weekly basis while keeping rats from chewing up seed corn in storage and spilled generator diesel from starting the kitchen on fire), it feels so good to read about someone else’s thoughts, opinions and struggles with the Aid Industry writ large. Reading his words are like hitting a release valve. Throughout his book, I found myself nodding and laughing, relieved that someone finally understands, finally can advise. (I found his comments on having an exit strategy particularly useful...)

For those considering a career as an aid worker, this book gives a straight picture of what to expect. It even includes the Aid Work Suitability Self-Test, which is as snarky as it is real to life. Outsiders may bristle at some assertions throughout the book (development is for professionals, not volunteers) that may sound elitist and exclusionary on the surface, but I assure you it is not. I do wish there was more of a narrative arc, but I'm more a fiction person than I am an essayist, so it may be personal preference.

As it stands, Letters Left Unsent is a collection of essays, blog posts that represent a tome to development work, one that gives voice to a little acknowledged non-Hollywoodized perspective of humanitarian aid.

It is well worth the read.  

This is a blog post.

Actual elephant crap (half dried)

This is a blog post about writer’s block, because I have it. Sometimes there is nothing pithy to say. But sometimes, you just have to keep going. You know that saying “If you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all?” That’s elephant crap.  Keep going.

I made a commitment to myself that I would update this blog every Sunday in 2015. This is what that commitment looks like. I’m only mildly sorry that it sucks to read. FYI commitment is sometimes not pretty (also, like elephant crap).

It’s not like I haven’t been busy. This week was crazy with work, more electrical issues with the house, Robert Mugabe’s 91^st birthday, my fiancé climbing Kilimanjaro and coming home safely. Friday night I think I had two nervous breakdowns 1) because I was exhausted and 2) because who changes the locks on the office door and then goes home for the weekend, leaving you inside, and doesn’t tell you? OMFG.

I am practicing patience. I am dreaming for the future. I am preparing for some terrific and terrifying life changes. I am getting married, interviewing for jobs, and getting ready to move (again) and I of course decided it all NEEDED TO BE DONE THIS WEEK. Life is dull, tedious, joyful and hilarious all at once. I am breathing in my nose and out my mouth and trying not to swallow another fly like I did in the backyard this morning while picking fresh lemons.

Three dung beetles, fighting over crap.

Some day (soon, I hope) my writing will be better. It will not be a pile of crap. If I keep at it, like the dung beetle, I might roll it in to a little ball over half my size and push it along until I can get it home and live off it for a long, long time. Until then, I will keep going. I will keep going until that pile of crap is something useful and beautiful and that causes a Land Rover of white people with enormous cameras to stop and peer at a pile of poop, literally, rolling away from them.

Because that's a story, too. 

Until then, this is a blog post.

This is Rainy Season?

Last week, I visited a farmer in southwest Zambia - Kazungula district to be exact. This area along the Chobe river between Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Namibia is known to be drought prone. I was told it has something to do with the dry winds from the Kalahari desert, but I'm not a meteorologist, so I don't know. However, in terms of drought, it looks like this year will be no different. 

The maize on our farmer's field was between three and five feet tall, some of it already tasseled, forced into early maturity by the dry weather conditions. Many leaves were already starting to curl and brown. It was hard to see that it would grow much taller. In a good year, he said, he could get upwards of 80 bags (50 kgs each) of maize from his two hectares.  

A little while on, he showed us his ground nut (peanut) field (right). It had been planted after the first rains, which had  come late (January). I might not have gotten this down right in my notes, but I believe he said it had been three weeks since the last precipitation. I asked him what he would do if the rains didn't come. 

"There's nothing we can do," he said. "We can't control the weather." 

I walk the line

This week, strange new waves of feelings have hit me. I’ve been hosting visitors for work and they are hilarious. One is a former beauty queen and one is a former major league baseball player.  It’s hard not to smile as they react to commonplace things (look at the baby on that woman’s back!), or ask completely inane questions in very loud voices (what is the name of that brown bird? You know, the one with the tail?)

While they are both extraordinarily sweet people, they could not be more opposite from the development set. He has biceps as big as my thighs. She has more highlights than a sports reel. It’s hard not to be a bit jealous and frustrated with people who are so shiny and new, oblivious to their affluence. I want to tell them to tone it down. Take off the Rolex. Put the I-Phone away (or at least, crack the screen so it matches everyone else’s). But, it’s not their problem that they are out of context. I must look the same way to my Malawian colleagues. So I keep my mouth shut.

(Also, I can’t wait to get highlights).

Although I’ve been living in Malawi for nearly two years, I often wonder when this place will feel like “home”. Being with these ridiculously rich and carefully coiffed individuals makes me realize that, while not exactly a local, I have come to live here in my own way. No power? No problem. No petrol? No worries. We’ll make a plan.

As much as I complain about the hardships, these crazy experiences and power outages and frustrations have become a permanent part of my life’s landscape. I can snarl and rail and weep and gnash, but this place has railroaded me into acceptance (and even love) with the patience of having nothing better to do. Like a mother with a trying child, I am annoyed, but I love. Oh, how I love.

This is my home.

To share this space with someone new – especially someone so clearly out of their natural habitat and with whom I have little in common - makes me feel vulnerable. What if they don’t like jazz at Chameleon’s? What if they get sick? – I want them to understand their new context and join this crazy club. But that’s not going to happen in 10 days. So, I show them the “best” of what we’ve got, knowing that it’s not the “best” by any international standard, wanting them to know I know it’s not the “best” but that it’s still a good life. Most days I go home, feeling like a poor church mouse. 

I don’t want to be that development person who makes others feel unworthy and uncomfortable because they haven’t lived in South Sudan for 10 years. This isn’t about “field experience” or “street cred”. It’s about being in the middle of two worlds and asked to be the cultural ambassador for both. I want people to know how hard the Malawians are trying; how eager they were to welcome visitors; how concerned they were when they home early because they are sick. I want Malawians to know that Americans are trying; we don’t all wear Rolexes; how much we really do want to help. No one should live without access to clean water and electricity (and education! And health care! And…and…and..)

These are the waves of emotions I’ve been rolling with all week. 

The Itch

The mosquito net had to come down. Against the wall, an air con leaked semi-cool air, feeble and ineffective against the humidity. The tiny room sagged and sighed. Only the ceiling fan was able to stir the atmosphere. It hung awkwardly on a loose eye hook above the bed, obstructed by the mosquito net from making relaxed deliberate strokes.  Given the option for malaria or a breeze, we decide to take our chances.

It had been a long day. No power. No water. A six-hour escape drive to the shore, arriving only at dark. Lying there side by side, we tried not to touch each other.  

The stale air undulated, washing against us like waves from a too warm shore. I drifted to sleep, watching the ceiling fan wobble a few feet from our faces.  We kept it on low not to tempt fate, but I wondered idly what it will feel like when it fell on our faces. And what would malaria feel like? Would I be sleepy? Mal-aria, meaning “bad air”. It was a possibility.

These anxieties tickled me, but like whispers through a door, weren’t quite sharp enough to arouse concern. The air was too thick for them, so I drifted away.

I woke a few hours later, needing a toilet. It was a surprise not to get caught like a fish in the ever-present mosquito net.  I reveled in that freedom, but not the missing toilet seat. I swam back to bed, falling in mid breast-stroke.

Suddenly, my ankle stung. A jelly fish! No, a mosquito! It’s the only thing that has the energy.  I kicked my feet and try to wash back into slumber, but it was too late. The itch had begun. Still clinging to sleep like the shoreline, I used my big toe as scratching tool. If I didn’t move my upper body, I could still float away.

But then - again! A different ankle. I waved my foot to warn them off again, but it should’ve been a white flag. Another gets my shin, then my forearm.  I felt a line of bites along my calf.  Each pinch pierces the veil of slumber, needling me into consciousness. There could be one, or a hundred.

Like a shark to the surface, I snap. I thrash upright into the darkness, abandoning sleep altogether. They are impossible to intimidate, but at least I can scare them.

My partner snores beside me.

The overhead fan whirs: “wud-wud-wud-wud”.

As the silence settles back in around me, I feel the itch creep around the delicate bones of my foot. It’s the spot they like best, the most vulnerable, where the lacework of my veins is closest to the surface. 

Having nothing else to do, I scratch with vengeance, as if to get back at the little beasts who put them there. It feels so good, giving in to that temptation to itch, finding that line between relief, satisfaction and pain. But I stay a little too long and end up drawing blood.

Watered Down

View from the waiting area at the airport.
Normally, you can see a tree row at
the far end of the tarmac.

Although the rains were late again this year (see my host and dusty earlier post about Tropical Christmas), they made up for it by arriving with a vengeance. In fact, they arrived right as we were preparing to board our plane to Capetown. The whole airport shut down for approximately two hours while we waited for the skies to empty. We returned to a green and glorious Malawi.

Unfortunately, there can be too much of a good thing. Following an enormous typhoon off the coast of Mozambique the week of January 13^th, fifteen of Malawi’s twenty-eight districts were catastrophically flooded. Thus far, the government’s department of disaster management affairs has announced a state of emergency, mostly in the southern region. Estimates are over 60 dead, 150 missing and 200,000 without homes. This does not include damage to just-planted fields and loss of livestock, which are nearly too many to count.

My company doesn’t work in those areas, but I have plenty of friends who do. One friend is managing camp in Nsanje for over 5,000 people. Another friend has been frantically busy garnering resources and is hosting a delegation of donors next week. Malawi is on a “no aid” budget, but suddenly it’s pouring in. Malawi seems to be flooded every year, taken by surprise by the onset of such fast and heavy rains. Although there are always efforts to prepare, the environmental impact of poverty - deforestation, poor housing, land degradation are endemic. They don't lend themselves to being solved by one season of "no-aid" solutions.

Photo courtesy of Malawi Red Cross, near Nsanje Southern Malawi. 

www.FaceofMalawi.com

For us here in Lilongwe, the major impact has been electricity. It’s always been a bit variable in rainy season, but it’s much worse now. Reports are that a few of the hydroelectric power stations have had their water intakes damaged by trash, logs and detritus. To clean them out, the entire station has to be taken offline, leaving even more load-shedding than normal. 

For us now, it’s not a matter of if the electricity will go off, it’s when. When it does, we manage. The longest our power has been out is twelve hours. Not so bad really, but there’s not a lot of warning, so we try to keep our electronics charged and plugged in as much as possible. We have a lot of candles. It helps that the whole community is affected, because we rely on each other. I have only had to take one dish over a friend’s house (with generator) to finish a meal. As we go into week two, it’s getting a little less “adventurous” and more “annoying as hell” but all things considered - if it comes down to this or having my home washed away in a flood, you can bet which one I’d take. Having lived through the 1997 flood of the Red River Valley, I know it could be much, much worse.

**If you'd like to donate to victims of this flooding go to: http://www.unicef.org.uk/landing-pages/donate-malawi-floods/**

Mary Sostene and Joyful Motherhood

This is a piece I wrote for African Women’s Health Initiative (AMHI) in 2014. AMHI, or Joyful Motherhood, is a Malawian organization that provides care for preemies, orphans and babies with HIV/AIDS. They fill a gap in outreach care that the local hospitals can’t possibly provide. Rainy season (Jan - April) is hungry season, and they are currently looking for more donations to keep pace with demand for their services. Please consider including them in your plans for giving in 2015 (and share with friends if you like!)

Mary, with four of her five children.

Mercy Sostene was not expecting triplets. With four other kids, including a special needs child and alreayd a set of twins, she already had her hands full. When she began bleeding at 28 weeks, she headed to Bwaila hospital in Lilongwe, hoping it was nothing serious. It was there that the doctors discovered her babies, and performed an immediate cesarean section. The children were small – each of them less than 1.5 kgs (3 lbs) – but healthy.

Given their low birth weight, Mercy was referred to Joyful Motherhood, a local Malawian NGO, in January 2014 for kangaroo care and follow up visits. Kangaroo care is a way of keeping children warm when there are no incubation units (and even, no electricity). Joyful Motherhood’s first priority was the keep the premature babies warm and gaining weight. Mercy’s assigned nurse, Nitta, told her and her husband to keep the babies inside, showed how to wrap them naked against their chests (like a kangaroo) and instructed not to bathe them for the first few weeks. It worked, and after six weeks, each baby was moving in the right direction. 

Mary's Husband brings Bertha
outside to chat.

It may not seem like it, but Mercy is lucky. First, she lived close enough to a major hospital to receive proper care for the babies to be delivered safely. Second, her cesearean section scar healed without infection. Third, she clearly has a supportive husband. Visiting their home, he joined us on the porch cradling their 8 year old developmentally disabled child, Bertha, who doesn’t walk or talk.

“I see it all the time,” whispered Nitta. “A woman has multiples and the husband leaves her, but this one has stayed – twice! He is a good man.” Tall, with broad shoulders and a rugged face, Mercy’s husband exuded warmth and caring. He works as a night guard and as manual labor to pay the bills, bringing home roughly $25 a month.

Given the paucity of funds, the family eats only once a day. The meal is made of a thin maize porridge and usipa, a dried fish. During the visit, the nurses noticed that Mercy’s breasts had dried up. With nearly half their income going towards rent, it was clear she wasn’t eating enough calories, nor drinking enough liquids to keep her breasts full. Because most households drink tea for breakfast, volunteers provided a small donation of sugar and milk, knowing it would give Mercy a double dose of liquids and nutrients at least for the time being.

Despite the challenges, the Sostene’s looked to the future with the modest goals of every parent: “We want our children to have enough food, to get a good education,” Mercy’s husband explained. Their oldest child, coddling one of the triplets, shyly admits that he’d like to become a doctor. These are big dreams for a large household, one sustained by love and the support of Joyful Motherhood.

New Years Resolution: A New Job

The sky is the limit when searching for a new gig!

I can always tell when the end of the semester or the new year begins based on the number of informational interview requests I receive. I'm also an inveterate extrovert, so when I meet someone on a picnic bench who is working in Lesotho with child health but wants to "break in" to development, I can't help myself. I gave her my card.

It strikes me that some of the things she and I chatted about might be helpful to others. This isn't development related, just a few suggestions I've accumulated after seven years of semesters. Here are a few simple things to keep in mind: 

1) Hone your ask . Something along the lines of “I’m an MPH with a background in maternal and child health seeking a long term position with an international NGO. What kinds of positions are available for someone with my skill set? (refer to attached CV). What organizations should I be looking at? Who should I talk to?” 

Don't start with: "I don't know what I want to do but tell me what to do" It may sound like a compliment, but really this person is asking me to figure out their lives for them. No. Help me help you by giving up some form of direction, even if it is an inkling of an idea. 

2) Start telling people –close work colleagues, professional friends, university professors – that you’re looking for a job. If you don’t know exactly what kind of job, tell them what you’re interested in and ask them what you’re good at, what should you say to professionals in the field you want to get into, etc.  This will help you Hone Your Ask. Once you know what you want to do (domestic or international? program management/coordination or actual nursing? FYI – unless you’re fluent in the language and culture, most expats fall into the former very quickly…) then...

3) Target specific people and companies. Start informational interviewing. Even if you don’t know someone at World Vision, chances are someone in your circle knows someone that does (Yes yes Linked in does this but an email intro from a friend who knows a friend is always so much better…). Intro emails should be short, who you are, how you know them, what you want (to talk with them about them), for how long you want to talk with them, and attach your CV. 

4) Once on the phone/skype, get them to talk about THEM, not you. The best piece of advice (career, dating or otherwise) I ever got was to ask questions about the person in front of me. It works every time. Ask them what it’s like to work there. Ask about how they arrived there, what skills they find useful, what every day work they do. How could someone with your skill set be successful in this company or position? Most importantly - who else in their network do they think you should talk to?

5) Don't outright ask if there are any jobs available (info interview = already code for “please hire me” also you can find this on their website). Trust me, they already know this. Instead, ask if you can add them to your list of professional contacts (LinkedIn or otherwise).

The best thing to do is to leave a good impression and your CV behind with the person you talked with. If something comes up in their org, they will remember you. Keep applying for positions on your own. If you see something in that org pop up on a recruitment website, let that person know you are applying. Many of my colleagues (including myself!) did info interviews but still were hired through the regular recruitment process.  These seeds sometimes take a long time to germinate, but something will turn up.

As I begin my last six months on this contract and start my own job search, I'm ruminating on these subjects myself.  I know it's not an exhaustive list. I've an idea of where I want to go and do after this, but exactly how I'm going to get there is a bit muddy yet. So, I'm going to take my own advice and tell others. I'd love to hear your ideas on what makes a good job search.

Because after all, the single best thing to do is to start.

I (Won't Be) Home for Christmas

When my partner moved here, we decided that it was too expensive to fly both of us back from Africa to spend the holidays with our families. Additionally, with combined family spread all over the US, it likely wouldn’t be the relaxing, snow-filled, memory-maker we imagined. As a signal to the new era of Us, we decided to stay here and explore South Africa as a couple. It will be the trip of a lifetime! We crowed. By September, the tickets were booked.

Now that it is upon us, though, I’m struggling. It just doesn’t feel the same. It’s 95 degrees. I’m dusty. And tired. Although the air gets more humid every day, the rains refuse to fall. My brown garden withers under the protracted heat. The idea of a crisp snowfall and a hearty fireplace feels alien and unattainably awesome. I am slathering on sunscreen and trying very hard not to sweat. We both hope that Capetown is cooler.

But then I remember my favorite quote by Thornton Wilder: “The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself "Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.”

Upon further reflection, I"m taking my discomfort as a sign that I’m doing something right. In the year of Tropical Christmas, I’m out having lots of adventure - even if feeling a tiny bit homesick. I'm grateful for the change and the discomfort. (That’s not to say there’s no Christmas cheer here at all. Unlike Bob Geldof’s idiotic song, yes they do know it’s Christmas here. With the largest evangelical Christian population in the world, it’s kind of a big deal.)

So, where ever you are this Christmas, remember that adventures happen in all forms. Being uncomfortable is good for you...and Santa will find you, wherever you are.

Here’s to an adventurous 2015!

Corrupted

For the past few weeks judiciary civil servants across Malawi have been on strike. Their strike is in response to an approved 300% salary increase for parliamentarians, who rely on civil servants to fulfill their mandate to the electorate, but to whom the increase was conveniently not extended. This strike has crippled the court system, raised the prison population to critical levels, and left hundreds of families in limbo. Because the default of the police seems to be throwing people in jail first and asking questions later, it’s kind of a tough time to run amok of the law.

As far as I can tell the criminal justice system in Malawi works like this: When faced with an alleged crime, the police use jail as a holding pen while they investigate. Because it’s so easy to melt back into the populace (no street signs, variable contact information, fluid borders, etc), I can kind of understand wanting to hold suspects - if it wasn’t such a gross breach of due process. Bail, if allowed, is variable. If it is found that there is evidence, then there is a hearing in front of a magistrate, who decides if there is enough evidence to go to actual trial. In an efficient system, this might work itself out in a few hours; in Malawi, depending on how motivated and resource constrained the police are, it can take much longer.

Over dinner a few weeks ago, our host told us of his friend who had just been robbed. The suspects were apprehended, but claimed that the accuser was one of their gang trying to frame them.  Just to be on the safe side, the police threw the accuser in too, leaving to the courts to decide whether or not there was any validity to the charges. The police refused to set bail. Our host was going to go down the next day to see what he could do.

Now, I understand that it is hard and perhaps unfair to judge an entire judicial system based on just this anecdote. I also think it’s terribly cliché to write about corruption in developing country. We Westerners often treated it as a fait accompli, simultaneously revealing our jaded experiences and our condescension. As the #blacklivesmatter protests rock the States, we’d do well to scrutinize our own systems before casting aspersions on others.

However, I do know I’ve been stopped by the cops more than once and asked for a bribe (Madam, I am so thirsty…). I do know that the prisons here are overcrowded, and that vigilante mobs exist to fill the role of an inefficient and ineffective police unit (a robber was beat to death by one just outside our office). It’s frustrating and scary and hopeless all at the same time. And when I asked my friend how he was going to get the robbery victim out of jail, he just looked at me like I was an idiot. 

“More bail,” he deadpanned. 

The Problem with International Development…is Us

A friend of mine sent me this article a few weeks ago, and I’ve since seen it blow up all over my Facebook feed. Doing a blog post on such a rich and thorough article is daunting, but Michael Hobbes gets it so right on so many points, I can’t help but get on my little soapbox to echo them. 

1. The myth of Overhead. The cost of keeping the lights on (overhead) versus handing out the blankets (activity funds) has already been written about prolifically in the domestic non-profit sector (See here. Or all of here). It’s just as bad in the international scene. I’ve seen donors reject multi-million dollar proposals, on the grounds that they only want to see a 15% overhead. How does one run the activities without the means to pay a living wage to staff, or keep the lights on?  Mr. Hobbes says what I've always wanted to say to a donor: just because you say we shouldn't pay for it doesn't mean the need for it doesn't exist. We need toilet paper. We need printers. We need (like, reeeally need) HR Managers.

Instead, those roles and tasks become diffused throughout the organization until the staff are wearing so many hats they lose their heads. In my own working life, I’m a logistician, supply chain manager, low-level bookkeeper, financial manager, janitor, HR manager, GIS expert, chief operating officer, communication specialist, procurement manager, contracts manager  and, apparently, the only one who can refill a fuel card in less than 10 working days. 

2. The myth of scaling up. Man I hate that word, "scaling up" As in somehow, magically, what works in Malawi will work in rural Azerbaijan. Hobbes calls this the Paradigm of the Big Idea. Why are we so intent on finding a one-size fits all approach to saving the world? Is it easier than actually thinking broadly, creatively? I think we've duped ourselves into believing this.

Letting go of this myth that what works in one place will work in another makes space for innovation and creativity. It embraces this wild crazy patchwork-diverse world we live in.  It's scary and messy. Shouldn’t the “solution” to a complicated problem such as endemic global poverty be as equally confounding and similarly heartbreakingly intricate? Then let it be so. Acknowledging that it is half the battle.

3. Our expectations of international development are off. I’ve read many of the same books as Mr. Hobbes and thought many of the same downtrodden thoughts of international development. Why isn’t this working? Why are Malawians still so poor? What am I even doing here, messing around with these stupid fuel cards? 

Hobbes argues that development is happening - just not in the way we expect. Since 2008, Lilongwe has seen three and a half new, enormous shopping complexes erected. (Never mind that most people are still too poor to shop there, and they are mostly empty). Change will look like what it looks like. 

I realized that it was time to let go of the expectation that world hunger will fall away because we start giving fortified peanut butter instead of living wages; that we have a magic bullet to scale up; that someone will notice that there is fuel in all the cars. Letting go of this expectation has been tremendously thought-provoking, and a bit freeing (thus, why it took so long to write this post).

Hobbes ends this article with some of excellent advice:  

 “If we really want to fix development, we need to stop chasing after ideas the way we go on fad diets. Successful programs should be allowed to expand by degrees, not digits […] NGOs need to be free to invest in the kinds of systems and processes we’re always telling developing countries to put in place. And rich countries need to spend less time debating how to divide up the tiny sliver of our GDP we spend on development and more time figuring out how to leverage our vast economic and political power to let it happen on its own.”

Amen, Mr. Hobbes. A-freakin’-men.

Monkey Business

Photo Courtesy of  Ice,
Dreamstime Stock Photo

My friend Kari called me Wednesday. She was in a village with her mobile clinic and a few community members brought her a baby vervet monkey. The mother had been killed. The baby, not more than a few weeks old, was helpless and hungry. Would she rescue it? Also, could she give them 2500 MWK (about $5) to help them keep it alive?  

Kari is a missionary and prone to helping. But she smelled a trap. In places where there a few ways to make money, exotic animal trafficking is a real and present danger. People will sell almost anything they think there is a market for. She called me, thinking I might know someone who worked in wildlife management who could advise her. I passed her the number for the Lilongwe Wildlife Center, Malawi’s only wildlife sanctuary.

The Wildlife Center told her that this kind of stuff happens all the time. Because they wanted money from her, it is likely that someone in the village purposefully killed the mother. Sure, she could bring back that one baby to their center, but by buying it she’d be playing into the very black market they were trying to stop. They told her,as hard as it was, to leave it in the village. When she tried to do so, the folks with the animal protested, saying they owed her 500 MWK (about $1) for ‘turning them in’. It was then she knew she was doing the right thing, even if not for that specific baby.

I told my regional director later about this, all the while cursing the stupid meanness of those villagers. He grew up in Zambia and owns a game farm in the northern part of that country. It’s one thing to read about animal trafficking from far away. It’s quite another to know that someone who wanted your money killed an innocent animal just to play on your sympathies. The duplicity and cruelness of it had my blood boiling. 

He cautioned me not to think too harshly of the people who did this – not because they weren’t stupid and mean - but because they were playing a zero-sum game. Killing wildlife for a quick buck is a short term fix for the long term problem of endemic poverty. Not excusing their behavior, he counseled me to think of it in context. If it went on this way, eventually no monkeys would be left. It was a far bigger tragedy than one baby monkey. And besides, he said, vervets make terrible pets.

I try to think about this in a way that doesn't make me sad, angry or depressed, but I don't get very far. I know this doesn't represent all of Malawi or Malawians, but it reveals another layer of cruelty that I don't often think about. As hard as it is for humans, life here for animals is equally abysmal. I see the bigger picture, but I still kind of wish Kari had a pet monkey right now.

An Emergency

Sarah raps timidly on my office door. “Madam,” she whispers and waits for me to look up. “We have an emergency.”

I peer over my laptop screen. Slender and long-limbed, Sarah reminds me of a giraffe. Well over six feet tall, with a wide straight smile and elegant neck, she is easily the most beautiful administrative assistant in all of Lilongwe. Her movements are graceful, even as she traipses around the office, making too much noise in too high heels. I watch her slip into my office and slide the door closed. 

"It’s the Salima office, Madam.” She says, by way of explanation. I wait for her to continue, as I have learned to do. She takes a deep breath and steps closer to my desk. 

“It’s like,” she chews bit of her hair, then launches. “Beatrice is out until tomorrow and they only have one bank signatory and they might have guests today. Nancy called me, Alice is out today and the gas station has no fuel. She doesn’t know when either will return. So when she called she was afraid that it might be on, but it’s not on, so I told her that I would help her out.”

This is a typical day in my office: lots of context, but very little by way of actual explanation. I have no idea what she is talking about. The field office in Salima might be out of fuel, which happens frequently, preventing our project cars and motorbikes from getting out on the road. Salima office is a major hub to our project operations. Nancy, our office admin there, is often calling for help. The level of emergency this time around was difficult to gauge however, so I kept Sarah talking while I figured out what she meant.

“What can we do to help?

           

“Well, she wants us to do the buying here. They are almost out and-“

“Out of what?”

“Sugar.” She says it quietly, but no less urgent, pronouncing it "shu-ga"

I bite my cheeks, trying not to smile. Tea breaks are a big deal in this former British colony. Fuel can be tricky, but sugar? This is an emergency I can handle. “How much do they have left?”

“3 kgs, Madam.”

“Oh dear, only six and a half pounds to get through one day,” I sigh, fake exasperated, trying hard not to laugh. There are only about 10 in the Salima office at any given moment. They'd each have to eat themselves sick to be out of sugar by tomorrow. But still, out of respect for Sarah, I try not to laugh too hard. Another example of cultural perspectives and a decision that doesn't need to be kicked up to the director. I struggle, and try to find a way to make this a teachable moment. “Do you think they’ll make it?”

“I don’t know.” Said Sarah, not catching my sarcasm. “Nancy thinks the staff might be upset.”

“Something tells me they’re going to be fine,” I assured her. "But I'll leave the decision up to you if you'd like to drop everything to order more sugar for Salima." 

When I stopped by her desk a few hours later, she had decided that work was more important. Unsurprisingly, everyone in Salima lived.

One Man's Trash...

Trash elephant - downtown Livingstone, Zambia

A friend of mine came for a visit during the entire month of June. As she settled into the house, the inevitable question arose around garbage: “Do you have recycling?”

“Yes,” I hesitated, “But not in the way you may think.”

In the west, we are now hardwired to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. But, the separation of tin cans and plastic and newspaper and soft cardboard that ends up in blue bins doesn’t exist here. What does exist is another, more interesting form, more along the "re-use" spectrum.

Malawians don't typically own a lot of stuff, so what they do have, they treasure. This includes trash. I’ve seen bottle tops wired together to make toys, baskets, plant holders, fridge magnets, trivets. I’ve seen pop cans slit open and hammered flat to make toy cars, notebook covers and house siding. Plastic bags can be woven together to make purses. Plastic bottles, in particular, are most treasured. As a side business, many Malawians make “thobwa” a sweet millet-based beer, or mlambe (baobob) juice, to sell, so these bottles are in high demand.

This type of recycling inevitably creates a weird dynamic for an American expat.  For one, you know without a doubt that your garbage is being gone through on a regular basis. How would your habits change if you knew without a doubt that someone (or perhaps even the whole neighborhood?) was going to see what you threw away? I bet you’d shred a lot more documents. You wrap those maxi pads extra thick. You waste less food.

Lifecycle of a sparkling water bottle: full, empty, and thobwa!

I’ve taken to leaving out bottles I know that my housekeeper will want to use in making thobwa. My gardener wanted to try a terrarium out of wine bottles, so I leave those to slowly become yard art. He also put together the chicken coop from cardboard boxes and plastic garbage bags. It looks kind of like hobo-town around here, but I think it's cool.

I also find myself not throwing things away because I either don’t want someone to find it, or I can’t bear to see that embarrassing thing show up somewhere else (old, hole-y underwear).

What remains is still too much (plastic bags, arg!) but overall, this reuse is kind of cool. It makes you aware of the value of things that we take for granted. The mish-mash of garbage toys and plastic lined thatch houses admittedly contributes to Malawi’s shabby feel, but it’s also a testament of ingenuity, its MacGyver-attitude. 

Just a Job

Last week, I caught an episode House Hunters International, a US-based show where they help expatriates find housing in a new city and country. An American woman was moving to Gaborone, Botswana, to train flight attendants. In a few sound bites, the show made it her sound like she was a martyr for moving Africa and helping lowly African women achieve their flight attendant dreams.

I get it. It’s reality TV. They’re going to be a little heavy-handed in finding an ‘angle’. But really? Training flight attendants in Africa is a self-less act? One wouldn’t move to the United States to work in human resources and be hailed a savior. That’s just …weird. Sometimes a job is just a job.

Yes, even in Africa.

If there’s one thing I wish more Americans (and American television) could come to know and express, it is this: Africa is many places, just like home. It has jobs and cars and malls and fashion shows and people with dreams and hopes and careers and (sometimes) internet connections. Painting it as only a place of depravity and famine that needs “help” does both geographies a disservice.

It’s the same thing with development. 

A while ago, I was complaining to my partner about a tough day at my job, when he interjected: “Yeah, but at the end of the day, don’t you feel like you’re Doing Good?” he asked. “It’s not like you’re pushing paper for a big insurance company or sub-prime mortgage lender.”

Sure, I say, but it’s all about the spin.  Big picture – yes, I help farmers get irrigation sites that work, slaughterhouses that aren’t gross, goats to rear and sell. But if that’s true, then selling insurance is about providing safety in an unsure world, and being a mortgage lender puts more people in homes. Although I appreciated his take, just because I work in development make paperwork any more fun.

I’m proud of my career, and what my company is trying to accomplish. I’m lucky to be in Africa where I can, at times, physically see the fruits of my paperwork labor helping someone else. But let’s not overstate the impact. At the end of the day – it is still a job. I'm no saint.

And that lady who moved to Gaberone, who eventually settled into a three-bedroom apartment for $700 ($700!) isn’t either.

*photo courtesy of shutterstock.com*