Are we theeere yet?

For better or for worse, I have spent much of the last 10 days on public transport. Buses, minibuses, pickup trucks, shared taxis. Despite the discomfort and general sweatiness of such travel, I am enjoying it thoroughly, enjoying the chance to see a good portion of southern Africa - from Lusaka to Johannesburg, through Malawi and Mozambique - with the locals who travel these routes routinely.

Through the sweat, cramped muscles and inexhaustible waiting, I have met fascinating people and shared good conversations.

Traveling from Lilongwe to the coast of Lake Malawi, I sat next to a Senegalese businessman who has bought and sold most commodities you can name in as many different African countries. Though this man spoke barely a word of English, he routinely lambasted the conductor in rapid French and Portuguese for piling too many people on the bus. I enjoyed our hours of French conversation, which seemed to confuse the Malawians around us, and the unique perspectives he offered on Malawi.

Coming back from Mt. Mulanje to Blantyre, Malawi's business capital, Nathan and I rode in the back of a pickup truck, a common mode of transport known as matolas in Malawi. We bonded with a group of young Malawian men over a heated game of dice, conversations about religion (typical) and the teamwork required to try to cover ourselves and our belongings from sudden downpours of rain. When the truck left the highway to detour through back alleyways in a nondescript small town, we were told that this was to evade a police checkpoint that regulates matola transport, and we all laughed heartily.

Most recently, in a minibus from Zomba, the British colonial capital perched atop rolling hills and reminiscent of many hill stations I have visited throughout India, to Blantyre, I sat next to a young student finishing his Masters in international relations - similar to the program I plan to begin next fall. We spoke continuously about African politics and his intentions to continue his studies at McGill University in Montreal, making the hour and a half journey fly by in no time at all.

In my dozen or so journeys thus far, conversation has not always filled the hours. Often, I find myself sitting grumpily, cursing myself or other convenient scapegoats - the reckless driver or rude conductor, the scratchy, blown-out audio speakers blaring the same tune over and over again, or the elbowy and smelly man sitting next to me. Most bus rides involve varying periods of waiting until the bus fills up with people; these situations are particularly excruciating and are avoided at all costs. I got on one minibus that was nearly full and apparently ready to roll, proud of myself for avoiding the long fill-up period, only to find that the driver had hired his friends to act as passengers to project the appearance of a full bus and thus attract genuine passengers to get on board. As the minibus circulated town and picked up new passengers, these fake passengers would casually disembark and collect their small payments from the conductor.

The worst of such waiting periods, however, was relieved by an amazing coincidence. As I waited for over three hours for a mid-size bus to fill up in Lilongwe, I read a passage from Ryszard Kapuscinski's The Shadow of the Sun which encapsulated my frustration so perfectly that I couldn't help but relax and silently chuckle. Describing the process of waiting for a bus to fill up in 1958 Accra, Ghana, Kapuscinski wrote:

We climb onto the bus and sit down. At this point there is a risk of
culture clash, of collision and conflict. It will undoubtedly occur if the
passenger is a foreigner who doesn't know Africa. Someone like that will start looking around, squirming, inquiring, "When will the bus leave?"

"What do you mean, when?" the astonished driver will reply. "It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up."

Kapuscinski proceeded to describe his observed differences between African and European concepts of time, which, from my observations, ring true 50 years later and thousands of kilometres away. I cannot repress my Western anxieties completely, and I occasionally still feel grumpy and frustrated during travel, but my varied trips through southern Africa are slowly ingraining in me a new kind of contented resignation about time: "It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up." How this skill will translate to a time-oriented Western job market, I have yet to find out.

On that note, I'm off to catch a bus to the Mozambique border. I'll write from Mozambique, with five or so more bus rides to recount. Until then.

Christmas in Malawi

I'm at a hostel in Blantyre, Malawi, waiting... waiting... waiting for photos from my recent travels to upload. It looks like they never will, so you'll have to wait until I return to Lusaka on January 11th.

This is unfortunate, because I've been snapping away lately. I just returned from a hike up Mt. Mulanje in southern Malawi which blew away my expectations. The mountain is towering and powerful with rock cliffs and majestic peaks, surrounded by lush greenery and dense forest, and more waterfalls than I've ever seen in such a short time. On Christmas day, we hiked and climbed to the summit of Sapitwa, Mt. Mulanje's highest peak at 3,001 meters.

I spent four days on the mountain, finishing yesterday, Boxing Day. For Christmas, seven of us - two whom I was hiking with, and four more we met on the mountain - whipped together a delicious feast in the fireplace of one of the mountain huts. Not a conventional Christmas meal, but full of Christmas cheer and good company nonetheless.

Tomorrow, I embark on a three-day bus journey to the Mozambican coast, after about 10 days here in Malawi. I will write and post pictures when I get the chance. My favourite photo, the one I've been trying to upload for the last half hour, is of our group on top of Sapitwa peak on Christmas morning, wearing Santa Claus hats that another hiker brought along for the occasion. Soon!

--

Next day update: two photos just loaded!

Meeting on Arms Trade Treaty

Last Tuesday, December 16, Dr. Bob and I hosted a workshop on disarmament, "Towards a Common Understanding of the Arms Trade Treaty in Zambia." The meeting was spearheaded by Joseph Dube, African representative of the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). Along with Mr. Dube, the Deputy British High Commissioner, Paula Walsh, and the Director of teh Zambia Anti-Personnel Mine Action Centre, Sheila Mweemba, gave speeches. The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, Fashion Phiri, was in attendance.

Joseph Dube and others are pushing for legally binding international law to control the proliferation and use of small arms. Unlike landmines and cluster bombs, small arms (which include simple firearms) will never be outright banned. There will always be a just and humanitarian need for small arms - for military use, personal security, and so on. The Arms Trade Treaty that advocates are pushing for will establish common standards and institutions to control small arms, making sure that they are produced, bought, sold and used legally. There is controversy over the scope of such a treaty, and the treaty is in its infancy, but the movement is there.

One cause for optimism, in my view, is the recent success of the cluster bomb campaign. While the two campaigns are different, to be sure, the world's success in banning cluster bombs, and landmines before them, breathed life into the disarmament campaign at large. In Zambia, we see Dr. Bob and Ms. Mweemba turning their energy to small arms without missing a beat. Indeed, Ms. Mweemba spoke specifically about lessons learned from the cluster bomb campaign, some of which were duly noted by Mr. Dube from IANSA - for example, the need for regions like Africa and Latin America, which contain many less powerful countries, to mobilize themselves and speak with one vice. In this way, African countries were quite influential in shaping the direction and scope of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

I am actually no longer in Lusaka, having left for my holiday travels a few days ago. I'm writing from a hostel in Blantyre, Malawi. More on that soon. For now, here are pictures from the meeting I uploaded before I left.

A survivor's return

I wrote this photo essay a few days ago. I'm still seeing if MAC or ICBL will publish it online, but for now...



At around 5:00pm on May 13, 1980, 16-year-old Yona Phiri stepped on a landmine while walking home from school. Exactly 28 years and 7 months later, Yona brought me to visit the location where this fateful event took place. The following are his words.

“After knocking off from school, I decided to use the rail track here. There was a road coming from that side joining the rail track. I wanted to use these rails to control my steps, because it’s a little faster than using the road. I was about to join the rail tracks, before I could get onto them, somewhere here.

At the time, the freedom fighters of Zimbabwe came here waiting for the train to Livingstone. It’s believed that landmines were left as they were going. Before I could reach this side, I stepped on something there. Upon lifting my leg, there was a deafening explosion. I was thrown into the air, and upon reaching the ground, there was smoke all over this place.

And then what I did was to run. I had to run with one leg while holding the leg which was injured to that corner where there’s a parked vehicle. Immediately my friends who saw me were all frightened. And since the explosion was too big, it was heard by the paramilitary camp nearby. They rushed to the scene to find out what had happened, and eventually found that I was lying there in a pool of blood.

Then one of my schoolmates rushed back to call the teachers, who came to find the policemen and paramilitary officers surrounding me there and arranged a vehicle immediately. I was picked up and taken to the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka. I call this a black spot because this is where the course of my life was changed. My dreams, my aspirations and all that I hoped to achieve were changed.

I was first taken from the black spot to Jack Compound where my place is, where my parents were called to come and see me. They found me lying in the Land Cruiser unconscious, and my mother wanted to start weeping, but she was stopped, “no, just get in the car, your son is dying.”

Unfortunately, the hospital personnel were on strike that day, so there was not much attention given to my case. They could cut the nerves and tie knots to try to stop the blood, but still this did not work. Finally, they said no, the leg is completely crushed, there is no other treatment we can do apart from amputating the limb, cutting it off. When I woke up, I was told, “you have lost your leg.” I couldn’t believe it. I tried to touch my left leg, I found that it was there, but the right one wasn’t there. Then I collapsed, I fell into a coma for three weeks, because I couldn’t believe it.

After some time I was revived by the doctors and helped by the psycho-social counselors to cope with the trauma, because it was something unbelievable. At the tender age of 16 years, having now a life of one leg. I don’t even know how to explain it, because it was totally beyond my acceptance. Because it was too early for me. After what I used to do with my friends, I could play football, I could run here and there, maybe we would go into one of these bushes to hunt birds with catapults. It took me time to accept it, to accept ownership, to accept that I was no longer able to play football, to do what my friends were able to do.

This is the story which happened to me, Yona Phiri, Zambian landmine survivor. This was on 23 May 1980 and it happened around 17:00 hours.”

Yona Phiri is now a certified welder with his own business in Lusaka. He has a wife and two daughters. Recently, he founded the Zambia Foundation for Landmine Survivors to advocate for the concerns of landmine survivors and persons with disabilities in Zambia.

Making change in Zambia

Disclaimer: this is my longest blog post ever! Fill up your coffee and get comfortable. It contains reflections on my work in Zambia.

Today, I confronted the age-old social-political question head-on: is it easier to effect social change through grassroots activism or political advocacy? After a heated discussion bordering on argument with my supervisor, Dr. Bob, I gained new respect for the latter position and the advocacy work Dr. Bob does.

For the last month, Dr. Bob has been attending conferences in Europe on landmines and cluster bombs. He had left me with a vague assignment to profile people with disabilities in Lusaka. I had access to a small grant to carry out the project.

When I began my interviews, I encountered problems. Without a clear idea of how the project would be used and to what ends, I was unable to justify the project to the participants. They would ask, how will this project benefit my life? How do I know you’re not simply using my story to host another ineffective workshop or publish research for your own benefit?

From early on, the nature of the project changed. In consultation with disabled activists, I decided to transform the project into a grassroots awareness-raising campaign. I would still interview disabled people but the goal would be to design and produce small black-and-white posters, each one expressing a single voice, and to photocopy these posters in the tens of thousands to be distributed strategically around the country. With the objective to raise awareness about disability, I felt better about interviewing people and recording their stories.

Dr. Bob returned this week to a nearly completed awareness-raising campaign: I had finished 15 out of 20 posters, each one including a photograph, personal testimony and an applicable clause from the brand-new Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We immediately began planning a launch for the campaign.

But today, our respective visions seemed at odds. Dr. Bob was underplaying my plan to photocopy the posters en masse and distribute them widely. Instead, he planned to use our limited funds to host a meeting for ministers and stakeholders to lobby for Zambia’s ratification of the Disability Rights Convention. Most of the money would go to the attendees as travel stipends.

It upset me that this money would be spent on well-to-do individuals when it could be put to photocopying more posters and broadening the scope of the campaign. At the height of our argument, I told him I didn’t want my project to end up as just another closed-door meeting. I told him the grassroots element was the reason people participated in the first place, and I’d be betraying them if I didn’t follow through.

Sparing you of the details (we spoke for over three hours), Dr. Bob made his position crystal clear. Grassroots activism, awareness raising, local initiatives – these are fine and good, but real change happens from above. Building allies in government and influencing policy brings about action.

He acknowledges the dirty tricks and questionable ethics involved in politics. Throughout our conversation, he repeatedly reminded me that the only reason Zambians attend workshops, meetings or launches (they’re all the same in Zambia, he says) is to make money. He waved down numerous strangers in the hospital cafeteria where we sat who all confirmed this claim. For government officials, attending meetings is actually a major source of income, making any workshop/meeting/launch that doesn’t include personal stipends doomed to failure. (Dr. Bob attributes this situation to the wave of HIV/AIDS research over the last 10 years; before HIV/AIDS, believe it or not, people used to attend meetings for free... for free!)

Dr. Bob is an advocate. He makes things happen by knowing the right people and pushing in the right places. As if to prove his point, he interrupted me during our conversation to say hello to a lady walking by, the wife of the Minister of Health. All good advocates are part-politicians, he said.

My work here has largely been to provide Dr. Bob with concrete advocacy tools. I have not always seen tangible results from my work, but its utility is now clearer to me.

In September, I wrote a draft national program for small arms control, based on research and information Dr. Bob made available to me. My document has been tabled at Zambia’s National Focal Point on Small Arms and Light Weapons, and Dr. Bob is using it to pressure police and government officials to implement new policies and programs.

In October, I wrote a draft national program for civil society action on disability, tailoring the program to the Disability Rights Convention, which Zambia has signed but not yet ratified. Dr. Bob presented this document to Norwegian donors and is using it to mobilize support for a nationwide Norwegian-funded disability program.

Most recently, I interviewed people with disabilities and documented their voices in the form of small posters. Dr. Bob and I still plan to photocopy and widely distribute these posters to raise public awareness about disability, but this is not his foremost concern, and I now understand why.

Dr. Bob sees potential in the project to garner political support. Hosting a meeting/workshop/launch might seem like a waste of money, and there won’t appear to be immediate results, but it will influence the Minister of Foreign Affairs to ratify the Convention, thus making Zambia legally bound to its provisions. Dr. Bob will make his best effort to use my project to make political changes. It’s what he does best.

Of course, there is a role for grassroots activism. I like to think that activists and government form a symbiotic relationship, each keeping the other and the system in check. Dr. Bob’s role, an indispensable one, is to communicate between the two. He speaks both languages – that of the activist and that of the politician. He makes activist concerns sound important to policymakers, translating activist aspirations into real policy. In developing countries like Zambia, where the courts are inefficient and the government only mildly accountable, the importance of direct, high-level advocacy is amplified.

Dr. Bob said he didn’t want to tell me the raw details described above because they would depress me. I’m glad he did – even if they indeed depressed me. Because although it’s depressing to know how politics and development work, it’s better to know than not to know. I came out of this conversation – and, to a large extent, out of the first three months of my internship – with a renewed respect for the advocacy work that Dr. Bob does. For me, Dr. Bob demonstrates the potential for social change through strategic relationship building and personal politics. This may not be the best or the only way to effect change, but it is one way.


--

Update: I wrote this post a few days ago. Since then, Dr. Bob has informally secured the British Council of Lusaka as the venue for a launch and exhibit of the disability project in January. The launch will include members of parliament and ministers. Bob also arranged unlimited free photocopying through his contacts, so we’ll only have to buy ink and paper. It looks like both aims – the grassroots awareness campaign and the lobbying – are compatible after all, at least in this case.

Farewell, Stephanie

Award-winning Globe and Mail correspondent Stephanie Nolen has just left her post as head of the paper's Africa Bureau. This farewell piece she wrote on her years of reporting throughout the continent is a thoughtful and honest reflection on the troubles Africa faces and the progress it has made. I appreciate Nolen's emphasis on covering the tragedies and the triumphs in Africa in equal measure. She is a reporter that us Canadians – and Montrealers, and King's College grads, depending – should be proud of. If you have the interest, the archives of her Africa blog are full of exciting and educational anecdotes from her travels.

MY VOICE posters

Here are a few posters for my awareness-raising campaign, "MY VOICE as a person with a disability." The rest of them (16 so far) can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lcentury/sets/72157611032822061/

I am still very much open to criticism and suggestions. These posters will be distributed widely across Zambia to raise awareness about disability. They will also be used to pressure the Zambian government to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We're hoping to present the posters in a gallery setting and organize a launch in January.

Disability politics

In two days, over two interviews, I gained brief exposure to the deep and complicated politics of the disability sector in Zambia. Who said a cause as urgent and worthy as the rights of persons with disabilities wasn't political?

On Sunday, a successful lawyer, well-established on the boards of various political agencies and non-governmental organizations, physically disabled since age four, agreed to participate in my awareness-raising project. We spoke on my veranda for the good part of three hours.

Among other things, he mentioned the weekly column on disability affairs he publishes in Zambia's most widely read newspaper, The Post, called "The Disability Desk." I was surprised and impressed by the reach of such a column and the level of publicity already enjoyed by disability advocates in Zambia. He told me about his latest column, which argues for the importation of seeing-eye dogs to help the blind in Zambia. Again, it surprised me that such issues were being discussed in the newspaper that half the people in the street seem to be reading at any given time.

The next day, I met up with a second prominent disabled person, a lifelong civil servant who lost his sight from cataracts in his early childhood. He has also served on various boards and even directed the precursor to Zambia's current government agency concerned with disability. He also agreed to participate in my project.

When I mentioned the man I interviewed the day before, his first reaction was to bring up the column about the seeing-eye dogs. Seeing-eye dogs are the last thing Zambia's blind need, he said. They're expensive to train. Blind people are poorer on average than other Zambians – where would the dogs stay? What would they eat? In a culture that doesn't value dogs as domestic pets, they would surely be abused – by people and by other dogs.

Similarly, while the former emphasized the importance of litigating rights, of suing those who breach the rights of persons with disabilities, the latter questioned this approach. While litigation might work in Canada or the U.S., he said, Zambia is a country of advocacy, of discussion. For example, $50,000 put towards strategic advocacy and lobbying goes much further in Zambia than $50,000 put towards litigation. With the money used for advocacy, one could even sit down with relevant ministers and influence policy directly.

These simple disagreements between two individuals represent the world of obstacles that the disability sector in Zambia faces. Added to a shortage of funds and political will, there is fragmentation among disabled people's organizations (DPOs) and controversy over who should represent the voices of disabled people. In my numerous interviews, I learned that both the government agency and the civil society umbrella concerned with disabled people are seen as largely ineffective, yet it is they who receive most donor funds.

Back in October, I worked with Dr. Bob to draft a national civil society programme on disability. I modeled it on various studies already conducted on Zambia, as well as international norms and case studies. Yesterday, I learned that Dr. Bob pitched this programme to major Norwegian donors while in Oslo for the signing of the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and received a highly favourable response. The gist of their approach and mine is to seek out smaller organizations and build up their capacity, rather than lazily channeling funds through the larger umbrellas. It looks like the Norwegians are serious in the long term, and plan to invest heavily to build up a stronger foundation of disabled people's organizations.

This is exciting! In the meantime, I have been working on a more modest project and avoiding politics at all cost. I'll post my posters in a few days.

"The development set"

This poem was published in 1976. It could have been written in 2006. (I found it at wronging rights; they found it at Owen abroad.)

The Development Set
by Ross Coggins

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet
I’m off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!

The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations
We damn multi-national corporations;
injustice seems easy to protest
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution –
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like “epigenetic”
“Micro”, “macro”, and “logarithmetic”

It pleasures us to be esoteric –
It’s so intellectually atmospheric!
And although establishments may be unmoved,
Our vocabularies are much improved.

When the talk gets deep and you’re feeling numb,
You can keep your shame to a minimum:
To show that you, too, are intelligent
Smugly ask, “Is it really development?”

Or say, “That’s fine in practice, but don’t you see:
It doesn’t work out in theory!”
A few may find this incomprehensible,
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.

Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.

Enough of these verses - on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.

“Adult Education and Development” September 1976

But now we have participatory, inclusive and community-based development, you say. Problem solved!

In fact, these labels can be as harmful as the ones of yore. (I discussed this in a shortened version of my undergraduate thesis.)

Why am I in development, you ask? For the batiks, of course! And the warm fuzzy feeling too.

Alright, to be serious (the poem is as serious as it is funny), it's essential that development workers come to terms, or at least grapple, with these issues. The assumption that doing something is better than doing nothing is bogus. Development – like colonialism and evangalism before it – quite often does more harm than good.

In the midst of my first on-the-ground development experience (working with UNHCR last year was more bureaucratic), I am encountering some of these ethical issues for the first time. There's no easy answer.

Jew-ish Louis

By all accounts, Zambians are very religious people. From mid-week lunchtime fellowships to "I Love Jesus" caps sold in abundance at the markets to the 24-hour GOD television network, Christianity is a way of life for most people here.

It's one of the first questions foreigners are typically asked in conversation with Zambian men and women: which church do you go to?

The simplest answer, which I provide when I'm in a hurry or not in the mood for deep discussion, is to follow my mother's religious tradition, and tell people I'm Anglican. Without exception, this response evokes instant understanding, and the conversation continues elsewhere.

Occasionally, with more time on my hands and greater interest in the given conversation, I follow my father's side, and tell people I'm Jewish. This is normally met with mild surprise followed by a mixture of curiosity and understanding ("I'm a monotheist too!"). I've had a couple extensive conversations about key differences between Christian and Jewish belief.

With close friends and lots of time to spare, I choose option three: I'm stuck in the middle. Like many Canadians, I am hyphenated and confused. To the total surprise of most people I say this to, I am not particularly religious. I am interested in religion (which is the truth), but I wasn't raised with it; I don't have a single go-to or fall-back religion; and as much as I might like the comfort and personal conviction of religious faith, I am quite happy living in curiosity, at least for now. In a Jesus-loving a country like Zambia, none of this really makes any sense.

The other day, while interviewing two deaf women and a deaf man for my disability project, communicating in writing because the interpreter was busy, I was asked the time-honoured question.

"My mother is Anglican. But my father is Jewish," I daringly wrote in reply.

All three burst out in laughter.

"They love each other," I wrote. "Strange?"

"Yes but you are perfect Jewish."

I never did figure out what that meant. In any event, religion has provided some of my most fruitful and engaging conversations in Zambia. The times that I've broached my truthful response – nuanced and peculiar religious limbo, as opposed to straight-up Anglicanism or Judaism – the ensuing discussion, though long, has never become hostile. In Zambia, there's almost no situation that can't be alleviated, no tension that can't be resolved, with a friendly, heartfelt smile.

Thug life

Some eerie graffiti on the road to the mortuary at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

(I don't mean anything deep or symbolic by this photo. That small hut is not where deceased Africans are piled up, as my Zambian housemate sardonically suggested, and that road indeed leads to the mortuary at a vast and efficient urban hospital. It's simply a comic juxtaposition my camera couldn't help but capturing.)