Louis in Lusaka

Old Blog, New URL

2009-05-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

For the purpose of shameless self-promotion, I'm resurrecting this blog, just once. Contrary to what the above banner suggests, Louis is emphatically not in Lusaka. But he still blogs.

The site of my current blog, Governance Village, has been undergoing maintenance and the URLs have changed, twice. I learned recently that some of my previous readers thought I'd given up, but in fact the website had simply been moved.

I haven't given up. To the contrary, I am writing regularly about things like:

A lively web debate about the effectiveness of aid
The story of Nigerian missionaries in America (yes, in that order)
Recent books by Michela Wrong, Dambisa Moyo and Samantha Power
A troubling case of security sector reform
The use and misuse of development buzzwords like "participation"
My take on the challenges confronting refugee protection
Ironies and contradictions in Darfur advocacy

If you're at all inclined, check it out! The new URL is here. The RSS feed is here.

If you're really inclined, then please sign up to the Governance Village platform and join in on the debate! (This is free. You only need to fill out this short application form and sign in before posting comments.)

Also at Governance Village, journalist Christopher Mason blogs about media and development, while photographer Terry Sebastian shares his thoughts and beautiful images from South America. Unfortunately, all comments dating back to before the site renovations have been lost.

This photo, of me atop Mt. Kenya's Point Lenana, has no relation to the above comments. I thought it might help to reflexively spark interest in my blog, which has nothing to do with Mt. Kenya or hiking.

Kariba to Ottawa, and thank you!

2009-02-21T12:24:00.000-08:00

View of Lake Kariba, Africa's largest man-made lake, which displaced tens of thousands of Tonga people in southern Zambia when the Kariba Dam was built in the 1950-60s. The picture was taken from the plane from Lusaka to Johannesburg three weeks ago. After Johannesburg, I continued to Dakar, Washington DC and finally Ottawa, pictured below prior to landing.

For the last three weeks, I've been couch surfing in Montreal and Toronto, fundraising and organizing events for Canadian Landmine Action Week (February 23-March 1). After March 1, my work with Mines Action Canada, the Zambian Campaign to Landmines, and mine action in general, will have concluded, at least for now. I'll be back on the job market – until September, when I plan to take refuge from the "financial crisis" by going back to school.

For those who enjoyed reading this blog, thank you! I enjoyed writing it. I won't be continuing it, except to use it as a convenient URL for other purposes – like the exciting quilt raffle my mother and I have organized for Mines Action Canada!

Instead, I will be writing a regular blog at Governance Village (GV), a Canadian forum for ideas on governance and development. GV is an outgrowth of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Jim Balsillie Blackberry-money think tank based in Waterloo. I was hired by the GV editor, who lived in Lusaka last year with the Mines Action Canada intern before me. My blog, "Minor Truths: Politics of disarmament, refugees and aid in sub-Saharan Africa" (www.igloo.org/minortruths) discusses current events in sub-Saharan Africa from the perspective of my experiences over the last few years. I will pay special attention to disarmament, refugees and aid, the areas I've been most engaged with in my work and study.

I'll post a better summary of my new blog in the next few days, formalizing the "hand-off" from here to there.

Quilt raffle

2009-02-13T07:24:00.000-08:00

As part of Canadian Landmine Action Week, Mines Action Canada will be raffling the above quilt. Produced by prominent Canadian artist Barbara Todd, the quilt is made up of textiles from Zambia, DR Congo and Mozambique. I (Louis Century) collected the textiles during my recent work in the region.

The draw will take place on March 1st. Tickets cost $5 each. They can be purchased online through the Mines Action Canada website: www.minesactioncanada.org. The minimum online donation is $10 for two tickets.

Here is the direct link to the donation page, from where you must click the "one time donation" button. From here, click on the "Fund Designation" drop-down menu and select "Quilt Raffle." Your number of tickets will be your donation amount divided by five. For example, a $20 donation pays for four tickets. You will receive an email confirmation for your purchase. Please allow two days to receive this email.

Thanks for your support!

P.S. If you're in the Toronto area, you may view the quilt at Linuxcaffe, 326 Harbord Street, corner of Grace Street.

View Larger Map

Mozambique take ten

2009-02-07T10:32:00.000-08:00

The first minibus I took in Mozambique, leaving from the Malawi border. You can see the afternoon light against the windows. I recall that on this minibus, and not only on this one, passengers in the last couple rows climbed in and out of the sliding window – instead of going out the door, which would require half a dozen others to also get out. This minibus was my first encounter with Portuguese. I was struck by how widespread the language was, even so far north of Maputo.

The story of post-colonial Mozambique in one photograph. FRELIMO (Liberation Front of Mozambique), the party that liberated Mozambique from the Portuguese, fought a decades-long civil war with RENAMO (Mozambican National Resistance), an armed group supported first by Rhodesia and later by apartheid South Africa. Although FRELIMO remains in power today, RENAMO has come to form a legitimate opposition party – despite their origins as a proxy army of white racist regimes.

Sunrise in Maxixe, across the bay from Inhambane. I'm glad I photographed this, because at the time I was delirious from 28 hours of travel – starting at 3:00am the previous morning – on various buses and minibuses. A friendly young Mozambican named Moses (Mosse) was returning to Inhambane for the holidays, so we kept each other company – in what broken Portuguese and English each of us could muster.

A great impromptu performance, a marimba with drums and shakers, on Tofo beach. This provided a nice reprieve from the herds of South African tourists who dominated the hostels and beaches during the holidays – my entire time there. Moses is the tall man with sunglasses in the top right.

Sleepy, old Inhambane, where my friend Nathan has been living and working for five months. The town is incredibly charming, and I enjoyed two full afternoons exploring it on foot. Quiet, friendly and full of Portuguese architecture – blocks on blocks of residential streets, complete with tree-lined sidewalks, ornate front gates and quaint, little homes. Most of Inhambane's residents live in "informal housing" outside the city centre, which may partially explain the quietness of the streets.

Central Maputo, from underneath the gate to the botanical gardans – you can see the back of the statue of Samora Machel, the country's first president.

The old Portuguese railway station in Maputo, the city's strongest visual symbol of Portuguese legacy.

The junction between Mao Tse Tung and Kim Il Sung, one of many comical Marxist-Communist street signs that pervade Maputo.

Vodocom seems to have hit the jackpot with its slogan, "Tudo bom," which also serves the all-purpose "it's all good"/"I'm fine" in Portuguese. Catering to the innumerable new cellphone users throughout Mozambique, the Vodocom ads are everywhere.

Typical high-rise apartment in downtown Maputo.

Construction near the airport in Johannesburg, South Africa. I took this photo as I waited overnight due to the bankruptcy of Zambian Airways, waiting for my South African Airlines flight to depart the next day. Sights like this one – cranes in active use – were everywhere in Johannesburg, frantically preparing to host the 2010 World Cup next summer.

Successful launch!

2009-01-25T06:42:00.000-08:00

After two months of work and two weeks of frantic last-minute preparations, the launch of "MY VOICE as a person with a disability" was a success. Notable highlights include:

Turn-out of over 60, including the Deputy High Commissioner of the United Kingdom to Zambia.
11 great-looking vinyl prints of the "MY VOICE" posters, and thousands more A4-size photocopies. We provided every attendee with an envelope of all 20 posters. The printing and photocopying was funded by the Canadian High Commission, Action on Disability and Development, and the Zambia Mine Action Centre.
Three outstanding vocal performances by participants in the project: a three-woman harmonization, a solo rap, and two moving songs by celebrity singer John Chiti. In Chiti's second song, he repeated the last verse over and over until half the room broke out into perfect harmonization. Apparently, this is not unusual in Zambia.
Great speeches by various participants.
The successful installation and unveiling of a ramp at the front entrance of the British Council, making the Council accessible for the first time. I had approached Disacare, a wheelchair manufacturer, and asked them to give the British Council an invoice for such a ramp; the British Council agreed to pay for it.
Interpretation for the deaf, free of charge, by the sister of a deaf woman I met during my interviews.
Excellent snacks provided by one of the participants, who happens to be starting up her own catering business.

John Chiti singing, Isabel Banda interpreting, me and Dr. Bob against the wall with my posters.

Peter Chibesa Bwale, who is blind, rapping about disability in English.

A poetic drama performed by Zambian soap star Phenny Walubita and her fellow actor James Chishala.

One section of the audience.

Elijah Ngwale, past director of the now-defunct Zambia Agency for the Handicapped, stole the show with his comically large vocabulary: "I refuse to be fooled, duped, hoodwinked, beguiled!" and so on. As someone standing next to me pointed out, Elijah, though blind, has probably never been duped in his life.

Me and John after the show.

More photos, along with all of the finished posters, can be found here.

Launch preparations

2009-01-19T08:48:00.000-08:00

Kulima Towers bus station during rainy season, today.

As my departure from Zambia nears, I am working long hours preparing for the launch of my disability awareness campaign, "MY VOICE," to take place this Friday. I persuaded the British Council of Zambia to provide the venue free of charge; British NGO Action on Disability and Development (ADD) agreed to pay for some of the printing; and superstar singer John Chiti, the project's most high-profile participant, will sing at the launch. Having issued press releases and invited key ministers, I'm optimistic for a successful launch.

Still, it'll be a hectic week. Trying to track down all 20 participants to get their written consent to use the posters – on African time, no less – is one thing. Organizing the event to meet ministerial and accessibility standards – wheelchair ramps and interpreters for the deaf – with next to no budget, is another. Doing all of this using public transport at bus stations that could just as easily be swimming pools (above) with sudden tropical thunderstorms most afternoons (below), is the icing on the cake.

I may not sleep much until the launch is over, but so far, things seem to be falling into place.

Malawi take ten

2009-01-17T10:20:00.000-08:00

My journey started with a few days in Lilongwe, capital of Malawi since 1974, a hot and dusty city with a bustling marketplace, heaps of NGOs and government buildings, and a muddy river running through the middle. I stayed with Undule Mwakasunguru, director of the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation and a colleague of Dr. Bob's.

The bus trip to Lilongwe, like the dozens of trips that would follow it, involved periodic stops where a handful of local merchants, each selling the same product, jostle for window space and the prospect of making a sale. For an entire day on Mozambican buses, for instance, I survived quite comfortably on freshly roasted cashew nuts and pineapples – purchased from my bus seat.

I managed to squeeze in one day on the shores of Lake Malawi, a vast and beautiful lake spanning much of Malawi's eastern border. Its abundant fish supplies provide most Malawians with their protein of choice. Some of these fish also happen to be colourful and exotic, drawing large crowds of Western scuba divers and snorkellers. I enjoyed an afternoon of solo kayaking along the coast.

You can't drive five minutes in Malawi without passing a field of maize – a less sweet, tougher variation of North American corn. This type of maize can be found throughout Africa, but in Malawi it's rare to find anything else. I met an American researcher looking into agricultural policy and ways to diversify Malawian farming. To date, the entire agricultural sector revolves around maize, which is used to make nsima, the country's staple starch.

The town at the base of Mt. Mulanje, the glorious mountain range where I spent Christmas. For four days, I hiked between quaint colonial mountain huts, some more than a hundred years old, with Nathan – a MAC intern working in Inhambane, Mozambique (his blog is full of great photos) – and Maureen, an Australian volunteer.

This waterfall is one of the dozens – hundreds – we encountered during our hike. Swimming in mountain streams and drinking ice-cold mountain water were two highlights. This stream happens to be where we spent Christmas Eve – if you look closely, you can see our hut poking above the trees.

A dramatic (and shamelessly staged) picture of me looking into the sunset on Christmas Eve, deep in contemplation and natural-world awe.

This is the best I could do to capture the steepness of our Christmas morning ascent up Sapitwa, the range's highest peak at 3,000 metres. It was an arduous and entirely rewarding climb, although the descent was decidedly less enjoyable. After dense, dark grey rain clouds ambushed us seemingly from nowhere – the weather formations were spectacular – the ensuing rain made the rocks slippery and we resorted to sitting down on our backsides, edging inch by inch down the mountain.

Again, the weather formations. The clouds rolling through this valley, as dusk approached on Christmas day, created a continuous stream of National Geographic scenes. This is the silhouette of a solitary cedar, one of the few cedars to have been spared by rampant legal, then illegal, deforestation on the mountain.

Logging continues unabated, with these superhuman transporters hustling up and down the mountain with pounds of pine and other wood on their heads. Watching them negotiate the steeper inclines is something else. (Thanks to Nathan for this photo.)

Christmas on the mountain! With Nathan, Maureen, and two lovely couples who happened also to arrive at Chembe Hut, Mt. Mulanje, in the afternoon of December 25th. A Christmas I won't forget. After leaving the mountain, I spent another couple days in southern Malawi, visited the colonial capital Zomba, then took off for the Mozambique border. Tomorrow, ten (or eleven) pictures from Mozambique...

Airline implosion marks end of my trip

2009-01-13T09:38:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, after nearly four weeks on the road in four different African countries, I arrived home. Lusaka, Zambia. A city that meant very little to me as recently as six months ago now evokes wonderful feelings of friendship and familiarity. Returning here felt something like returning home, even though I'll be leaving for good in a few weeks with no concrete plans to return.

I spent the last few days of my trip with two Canadian friends in Johannesburg. Meg, Kate and I caught up over delicious and affordable cappuccinos and thin-crust pizzas in Melville, one of Joburg's trendy and relatively mixed-race post-apartheid neighbourhoods. It's a far cry from the crime and violence that's reputed to plague Joburg, and a nice place to reacquaint with old friends.

On Sunday morning, with a few hours until my planned flight back to Lusaka, I woke up intending to visit Soweto – once notorious for apartheid abuses and consequent struggles, now increasingly known for its fast-growing middle classes – until I checked my email and plans changed. Zambian Airways had "suspended operations until further notice" the day before, with all signs pointing toward bankruptcy.

The company, Zambia's largest airline, cited "high fuel costs over the last year-and-a-half and the need to restructure its operations"; its debt is said to surpass $25 million. All airplanes were grounded in Lusaka. My housemate Aaron, stuck in the same situation, overheard a Zambian Airways staff telling his spouse over the phone to prepare to move within the month because he'd lost his job. Another seemingly informed staff member claimed that Air Zambezi, a much smaller carrier than Zambian Airways, had purchased newer and larger jets as if anticipating the events now taking place.

I lost a one hundred dollar plane ticket and scrambled to find another way home. Thankfully, I found an affordable South African Airways ticket for the same day – although the flight was overbooked and I was put up in a hotel for the night. In any case, I resigned myself to the situation, accepting that there's nothing I could ever have done to anticipate it, and I should just move on.

That is, until I learned more about the reason for the airline's collapse. It so happens that Fred Mmembe, infamous as the editor of The Post newspaper, which lambasted President Rupiah Banda daily throughout election campaigns and remains the president's nemesis, is a board member of Zambian Airways. Apparently, the airline has been feuding with President Banda and his MMD party for some time now, and the MMD coldly refused to respond to a desperate plea for help in late 2008.

If Zambian Airways collapsed because of troublesome economic times, the decline in copper prices and the related struggles of the Zambian Kwacha, so be it. If, on the other hand, the airline's demise is the result of high-level, back-door political quarreling, I want my money back!

View Larger Map
This map roughly documents my route from Lusaka to Johannesburg, totalling approximately 3,000 km traversed in over 20 separate public and private buses, minibuses, shared taxis, pickup trucks and one ferry for good measure. I'll post pictures tomorrow.

King of Maputo

2009-01-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, exploring Mozambique's lively and entertaining capital city, Maputo, I and a German traveler named Philip found our way to the top of the city's highest building, to the 33rd of 33 floors. It wasn't a usual tourist site, and it involved inquiring down empty hallways and ascending any stairway so long as it went upwards, and the views were utterly worthwhile. We saw the relatively small city of majestic Portuguese architecture and decaying 1970s concrete and bustling marketplaces and an active ocean port and expansive parks in one continuous landscape. Later on, passing through the large buildings and sites that appeared ant-size from above, we enjoyed a unique added perspective on our surroundings.

Poco monde

2009-01-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

I realize that "poco monde" may well mean "a little bit of world," or nothing at all, instead of "small world," which I was going for. In my few days of self-taught, book-free, French-influenced Portuguese, however, I say what it means, and small world it is.

I say this because in Mozambique, as elsewhere, I have found the world closing in on me; the further afield I travel, the more familiar things become, the more people and things I recognize, run into.

My latest small world episode came yesterday evening when, from the window of a public bus taking me back to beachfront Tofo from Inhambane, I spotted Elias, a Greek humanitarian worker I took a course with in Toronto last June. For 3 months in Toronto, I ran into no one from the course; a few days in Tofo, Mozambique, however, and there he is!

Such is the curious, interconnected world of humanitarian work in Africa (and I presume many other disciplines too), where you're as likely to meet an old friend or acquaintance in a randomly chosen African capital or holiday destination as in your own home city.

Last week in Malawi, I went hiking with a Mines Action Canada colleage named Nathan who is working in Mozambique - we met up at our mid-point, a "convenient" two-day bus journey each. Nathan brought along Maureen, a friend of his working in Malawi who (surprise?) knows one of my current Lusaka housemates and (surprise?) had planned to meet up with her after our hike. We combined our plans and all got together for a lovely, unplanned evening in Malawi.

In a few days, I will meet another Lusaka housemate in Maputo (where I am now); soon after, I'll meet two old Halifax friends for a couple days in Johannesburg; and, time permitting, I'll dip into Pretoria to catch up with another friend from the course in Toronto.

I don't think I'll ever match my all-time unlikeliest small world episode - traveling in Dharamsala, India in 2006, a Montreal friend (who didn't know I was in India, and vice versa) noticed my name (could there be another Louis Century?) on the sign-up sheet for a cooking course that evening, and promptly signed herself up too. I won't match this coincidence, partly because coincidences themselves are feeling less unlikely, less coincidental. As they occur with increasing regularity, they lose their surprise. Instead, they offer a kind, comforting sense of place: traveling, I am not lost.

I'll be writing again soon, because after a week or more of no connectivity - even the phone lines were unreliable - I'm now staying down the street from a super-fast Internet cafe. Located on a broad old Portuguese-style boulevard (aptly titled Avenido Mao Tse Tung), this cafe has Internet, and also excellent Italian espresso, baked goods and ice cream; I'll be back soon!

Are we theeere yet?

2008-12-29T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-27T09:03:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-16T14:43:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-16T14:23:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-14T06:54:00.001-08:00

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.

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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

2008-12-14T04:49:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-08T10:07:00.001-08:00

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"

2008-12-06T13:07:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-04T09:47:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-01T07:32:00.001-08:00

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.)

A whole new Mumbai

2008-11-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

News of shootings and hostage crises in Mumbai shocked the world, and rightfully so. USA Today writes that the gunmen delivered "an unmistakable message: This U.S.-friendly democracy of 1.2 billion people has joined the front lines of the global war on terrorism" (via Slate). BBC summarizes the turn of events here.

This terrifies me. The Mumbai I know from traveling there in March and April couldn't have felt further away from the regularized terrorism of the Middle East and elsewhere. Though defined by tensions of rich and poor, new and old, Mumbai is (was) a vibrant, multicultural and foremost safe metropolis.

What's more, the violence did not occur out of the sight of tourists and expats, as is so often the case elsewhere.

Café Leopold is practically a right of passage for Western tourists visiting Mumbai and well-to-do Bombayites alike. The backpacker's bible The Lonely Planet writes, "Drawn like moths to a Kingfisher flame, most tourists end up at this Mumbai traveller's institution at one time or another." Jess, Rebecca and I ate there numerous times. It was there that I met up with an old high school friend, choosing the most obvious meeting point we knew.

The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, another site of shootings, also known as Victoria Terminus, is one of Mumbai's central landmarks and a symbol of British colonial splendour. The architecture, pictured above in March, is vast and exquisite. The Penn Station of Mumbai, CST is filled at all hours with thousands of people from all walks of life.

Though I didn't make it to Mumbai's Chabad House, you can imagine the demographic there. Innumerable Israeli tourists visit India each year, along with Jews young and old from around the world. And the Taj Mahal Hotel, a stone's through from where we stayed but well beyond our student budgets, symbolizes the super-wealthy elite of Mumbai, hosting movie stars and millionnaire businessmen nightly.

All of this took place in and around Colaba, arguably India's most conspicuous tourist hub, where Jess, Rebecca and I spent much of our time. I remember our discussions about crime in Mumbai; I was confused by the feeling of total personal safety I had there, night and day, especially having just come from crime-ridden Nairobi, Kenya.

It's why this news has hit me especially hard. I don't mean to harp on the presence of Westerners there; it shouldn't take dead Westerners to elicit the compassion of the media and its viewers about a crime. Yet I am a Westerner and – for better or for worse, probably worse – the shootings ring truer for me because of it. Perhaps my descriptions above will have a similar effect for some of you.

Who is blind?

2008-11-26T10:07:00.000-08:00

I have begun interviews for an awareness-raising project on persons with disabilities in Zambia. It will involve around 20 small black-and-white posters photocopied in the thousands and distributed around Lusaka and Zambia – at hospitals, churches, government buildings, NGOs, and so on. Each poster will express the voice of a single disabled person: "MY VOICE as a person with a disability."

More on the project later. For now, here is an excerpt from one of my interviews. Peter Chibesa Bwale (pictured above) lost his sight at 14 and now, at 28, teaches computers and Braille to other blind people. He is also an active musician and actor. The following is his word-for-word reply to my question, what would you like other Zambians to know about persons with disabilities, through this project? I used a voice recorder, and the text is unedited.

To the people out there, disability is not inability.
Disability comes next after a human being.
When I was born, I was not born a disability.
I was born a child, and then you noticed a disability after I was born.
Who is blind? If you look at me and only see blindness when I am a human being?
Don’t handle me like a liability.
Don’t interpret my rights by replacing them with charity.
Give me what is mine rightly.
Let me not fight for it, for it is mine.
Don’t underrate me or my abilities.
Give me what I need for me to succeed.
Teach me how to fish.
I do not want to be given fish, for tomorrow is for those who prepare for it.
Thank you.

Feature article

2008-11-23T06:56:00.000-08:00

Full-page spread in the Saturday, November 22, 2008 edition of the Times of Zambia:

Zambia leads way in cluster bombs ban

By LOUIS CENTURY

“When Zambia spoke, 34 African countries had spoken,” says Ms. Sheila Mweemba, director of the Zambia Mine Action Centre, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

She is referring to Zambia’s role as African representative in the global campaign to ban cluster bombs, known as the Oslo Process.

Cluster bombs, also known as cluster munitions, get their name because they contain “clusters” of dozens to hundreds of smaller “bomblets” or “submunitions” which are scattered over large areas.

Many of these bomblets fail to explode on impact, thus becoming landmines and destroying civilian lives long after the end of a conflict.

Beginning in February 2007, countries from around the world have been pushing for a legally binding treaty banning the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of cluster bombs.

On December 3, 2008, in Oslo, Norway, over 100 countries are expected to sign the groundbreaking Convention on Cluster Munitions. Zambia will sign the treaty.

What few Zambians know is that Zambian men and women played crucial roles in making this treaty possible.

Why Zambia?

Apart from an isolated incident during the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, Zambians have not been affected by cluster bombs.

But Zambians have felt the impact of landmines laid by foreign armies on their territory. And Zambians have witnessed the impact of violent conflict in their neighbouring countries.

Ms. Mweemba explains: “For us, we have seen what anti-personnel mines have done, and cluster munitions can do far worse. So why wait until it becomes a problem?”

In recent years, we have seen a rise in the use of cluster bombs around the world.

In Iraq in 2003 and Kosovo in 1999, cluster bombs dropped by the United States and Britain killed more civilians than any other weapon system.

In Lebanon in 2006, 4 million submunitions were dropped by Israel. An average of 25 percent of them failed to explode, creating roughly 1 million potential landmines in the tiny southern part of the country.

Ethiopia and Eritrea used cluster bombs against each other in 1998.

Ms. Mweemba reminds us that the countries worst hit by cluster bombs often lack the capacity to remove the bombs and help the victims.

Like Zambia, they tend to be developing countries whose economies rely on foreign aid. They are almost never producers of cluster bombs.

“The people who are selling these weapons are not using them in their own backyards. They always inevitably end up in ours. And we don’t have the capacity to clean up.”

Contaminated land prevents development – including agriculture, mining and tourism – because people are unable to walk the land in fear of explosions.

The countries where cluster bombs were used may seem distant from peaceful Zambia.

So long as cluster bombs remain in production and use, Ms. Mweemba counters, Zambians are potentially at risk.

Speaking for Africa

Facing opposition from powerful weapon-producing countries like the United States and China, African countries banded together under Zambia’s leadership in support of a total ban on cluster bombs.

In March to April of this year, Zambia hosted the first ever Africa-wide conference to ban cluster bombs, in Livingstone.

As Dr. Robert Mtonga, a Zambian medical doctor and Africa spokesperson for the international Cluster Munition Coalition, said during the conference, “Too often Africa’s voice is pushed to the margins in international decision making. But in banning cluster bombs worldwide, a common African voice will speak volumes and win the day.”

South Africa and Egypt have both produced and exported cluster munitions. At least 14 African countries stockpile cluster munitions, including Zambia’s neighbours Angola and Zimbabwe, as well as nearby South Africa and Uganda.

While most African countries supported a total ban on cluster bombs, South Africa adamantly opposed such a ban.

In negotiations, South African representatives pushed for a watered down treaty that would make exceptions for certain types of cluster bombs.

Along with other producing countries, South Africa argued that cluster bombs with reliable detonation rates and self-destruct mechanisms for duds should be excused from the ban.

The Zambian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Kabinga Pande, made Zambia and Africa’s position very clear: “Africa is going for a total ban because all cluster munitions cause unacceptable harm... No matter how wise or foolish a bomb is, it will remain a threat to civilians.”

For one, there has never been a cluster bomb without unacceptable failure rates. Secondly, even if such technology existed, cluster bombs are indiscriminate by nature.

By scattering over large areas, they are unable to distinguish between military and civilian targets, which is one of the basic requirements of the laws of war.

Starting in Livingstone, Mr. Pande, Ms. Mweemba, Dr. Mtonga and other Zambians began the process of unifying African countries around the idea of a total ban on cluster bombs. “No exceptions, no excuses.”

Negotiating the ban

When countries gathered to negotiate the treaty in Dublin, Ireland in May, 2008, Zambia continued its role as coordinator of African countries.

Under Zambia’s leadership, Africa went to Dublin speaking with one voice. With 34 African countries endorsing the treaty at that time, Africa was the largest regional block. Their voice did not – could not – go unheard.

When certain countries called for transition periods, Africa rejected them. Ms. Mweemba rhetorically asked, “What’s the point of banning a weapon and then using it for 10 or 15 more years?”

When certain countries called for rigid definitions of cluster bombs that would excuse certain types from the ban, Africa rejected such definitions.

In the end, compromises were required by all sides. In exchange for removing transition periods, Africa conceded some space on definitions.

The final treaty contains a definition of cluster bombs that excludes certain specific types – submunitions must not number more than 10 for each cluster bomb or weigh more than 4 kilogrammes each, for example.

Yet the definition is broad enough that most cluster bombs in the world, including those produced by South Africa, are covered by the ban.

For many, the most important part of the new treaty is its provisions on victim assistance.

Mr. Yona Phiri, survivor of a landmine that was laid by Zimbabwean liberation fighters in Zambia decades ago, holds this opinion:

“It is essential that this treaty include survivor assistance provisions for governments to take ownership of their survivor populations. Because unlike me, the majority of victims receive no support.

“They are isolated and sitigmatized. Their communities are missing out on their talents and their potential. We are an asset not a liability.”

Improving on the Mine Ban Treaty which banned anti-personnel landmines 10 years ago, the Convention on Cluster Munitions requires states to help victims in specific and legally binding ways.

For Zambia, where there are no cluster bomb victims, this will mean providing assistance to landmine survivors and other persons with disabilities.

The treaty states that countries “shall not discriminate… between cluster munition victims and those who have suffered injuries or disabilities from other causes.”

When Zambia signs and ratifies the treaty, the Zambian government will be legally obligated to provide support to landmine victims and disabled persons.

This includes medical care, rehabilitation and psychological support, and socio-economic inclusion.

Moving forward

One month ago, 42 Zambian civil society leaders convened at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka to plan for the domestication of the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Among the doctors, activists, journalists, police and others in attendance, there was the sense that banning cluster bombs was only just the beginning.

Zambians still have to make the treaty a reality by ensuring support for landmine victims and disabled persons, setting an example for other countries.

Most importantly, banning cluster bombs represents one small victory in the larger disarmament campaign.

“The success of the Oslo Process brings the world one step closer to our foremost goal of global peace and disarmament,” said Dr. Mtonga, who convened the meeting of Zambian stakeholders.

Next in line is tackling small arms and nuclear weapons, which Dr. Mtonga and other Zambians are already actively engaged in.

In these larger tasks, there is no doubt that Zambia will remain a global leader.

When asked how Zambia would respond to a country that wanted to attack it, Ms. Mweemba replied, “I’d sit down and talk about it.”

Zambia is a peaceful country with a peaceful history. As Ms. Mweemba said, Zambia believes in dialogue before turning to weapons.

“But even if we did turn to weapons,” she said, “cluster munitions would not be our weapon of choice.”

Thanks in part to Zambia’s efforts, using cluster bombs will no longer be an option – for any country.

Louis Century works for the Zambian Campaign to Ban Landmines in Lusaka.

Sleeping bombs: Security blankets

2008-11-21T03:20:00.000-08:00

My mother, Barbara Todd, and I have been planning Sleeping bombs: Security blankets for several weeks. The project will utilize the connections I have with Mines Action Canada interns and other disarmament campaigners around the world. Here is the project summary:

This is a proposal for funds to support the production of a collaborative artwork addressing the issue of landmines and cluster bombs in an innovative and thought-provoking way. Sleeping bombs: Security blankets will be a joint project between Barbara Todd and Louis Century. The artwork will express the complex and interconnected nature of global conflict and its impact on human lives.

The artwork will consist of fifteen small quilts, each representing a single survivor’s story. Textiles will be collected from the home areas of the survivors – textiles that are culturally specific, locally produced and personally meaningful to each survivor. With these textiles as a backdrop, other textiles that are representative of the producing country of the weapon that injured the survivor will be overlaid. This second fabric will depict the particular model of landmine or cluster bomb that caused the injury.

Below each quilt, the survivor’s narrative will be more literally portrayed, using photography, testimonials and physical artifacts. Through these various media the survivor’s story will be told: how and when he or she was injured, how the injury affects his or her life, as well as information about the weapon in the quilt and the fabrics used.

The project will offer both a general understanding of the global nature of arms production, trade and use, as well as an honest and intimate glimpse into the subjective personal experience of individual survivors. Instead of representing a simplistic victim-aggressor narrative or commodifying the textiles of a given culture, the artwork will express the complicated and at times paradoxical narrative of military violence and civilian impact, using the diversity and complexity of textiles as a parallel narrative.

The age-old significance of textiles as protectors – used for sleep, care and warmth, the very antithesis of military violence – adds potency to these representations. The particular nature of landmines and cluster bombs – that they lay latent and explode unexpectedly, as if sleeping only to be awakened by a farmer’s foot or a child’s hand – will be evoked through the textiles.

If you're interested, email me and I'll send you the full proposal. Though the budget is substantial, our short-term priority is to obtain the funds needed to acquire materials and collect stories before the MAC interns return to Ottawa in January – just $1,000 or $2,000. If you have any advice on funding, let us know!

Here are some previous works by Barbara Todd, for those unfamiliar with her. You might also check out this earlier entry.

Security Blanket: A Child's Quilt (32 Missiles, 1 Bomb), 1988-89, Collection of the Canada Council Art Bank.

Barbara Todd: Security Blankets, Installation view at the Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Ontario, 1993.

Pelt, 1996, from A Bed is a Boat, Galerie Oboro, Montreal, 1996.

Jardin de guérison (Healing garden), Sacred Heart Hospital, Montreal, 2008.

Some postmodern continent-hopping

2008-11-18T04:58:00.000-08:00

Last night, I watched the latest James Bond film, only it wasn’t what you think.

I watched a Chinese-produced copy – dubbed into Chinese from the original English, atrociously subtitled back into English, and sold in downtown Lusaka, Zambia, all before the film’s release date here.

Watching Britain’s beloved hero jabber away in Chinese, straining my mind to understand the hilariously nonsensical English subtitles, sitting in my Lusaka living room, I felt immersed in a wholly postmodern experience.

It isn’t the first of such experiences I’ve had in Zambia.

On Saturday, my housemate Aaron and I spent the afternoon exploring Lusaka’s expansive markets – Kamwala, COMESA, Soweto and City – perusing for new-old clothes and other nick-nacks.

The clothing market in Lusaka, as in the rest of Africa, consists largely of Chinese-produced garments bought by Western consumers, donated or abandoned to second-hand shops like Value Village and the Salvation Army, and ultimately – after even these shops give up trying to sell them – shipped as cargo to one of Africa’s ocean ports, from where they are transported to Lusaka and countless other urban markets across the continent.

It’s why you shouldn’t be surprised to come across Tim Horton’s caps or Oakville Bantam ‘AA’ Hockey jackets (for my Canadian friends) or other obscure Western novelties in the remotest corners of Africa.

For a creative and photo-filled account of the lifespan of various little girls’ dresses, click here. For a great piece of reporting that follows the actual journey of a single blouse – from Leicestershire, England to Chipata, Zambia – click here.

This process hasn’t escaped academic interest. An old professor of mine reviewed Salaula: the world of secondhand clothing and Zambia, which argues that Africans actively appropriate second-hand Western clothes in a process of identity construction.

I buy the argument, although I still regret the dwindling of traditional, locally produced garments.

This stall pictured below sold Zambian- and Congolese-produced chitenges, worn as wraparound skirts and baby slings by women (generally accompanying their Gap or Fruit Of The Loom shirts). The patterns and printing techniques are fascinating. I plan to bring many home to my mother, who is a textile artist, hopefully for the purpose of a large-scale collaborative artwork – more on that later!

The trials of a new Zambian NGO

2008-11-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday, after a long and drawn-out process, the Zambia Foundation for Landmine Survivors (ZAFLAS) was formally registered with the Registrar of Societies. Pictured above, founding chairman Yona Phiri smiles with his long sought-after certificate.

Attempts to register ZAFLAS date back to months before I even arrived in Zambia. Yona and his colleagues were frustrated by a total lack of government support given to landmine survivors or disabled persons more generally. Just to receive official status as a landmine survivor, Yona fought patiently and persistently for several years, visiting and revisiting government and police officials who expressed no interest in his plight – indeed, who were concerned that granting Yona status would open the floodgates for new requests and end up burdening state resources.

Remarkably, and with support from friends like my supervisor Dr. Bob, Yona was formally recognized as a landmine survivor, although to this day he remains the only one in the country with such status. Lack of will and resources have prevented the government agency concerned with landmines from conducting a national survey of victims. Despite Zambia’s ratification of the Mine Ban Treaty, there has been little action on demining and even less on survivor assistance.

Yona is not the only landmine survivor in Zambia. There are hundreds more, though no one really knows how many. Yona set up ZAFLAS to find out. Among other things, his goals are to register new landmine survivors and give them a voice in his organization.

Shortly after I arrived in Zambia, I met Yona and other founding members (and wrote about it here). I admired their cause, and saw the value in establishing a civil society organization to complement and keep in check the work of the governmental Zambia Mine Action Centre. Their obstacle at the time was the million Kwacha (around US$300) fee required to register with the Registrar of Societies. I set out to raise what they still lacked of this amount through small donations from family and friends.

Over the last two months, I have worked with ZAFLAS to get them registered, and witnessed the formidable hurdles that prevent grassroots NGOs from starting up in Zambia.

In addition to the registration fee, Yona and his colleagues were confronted by countless unexpected obstacles – police checks, city council approval, endorsement letters, and on and on, each with additional costs ($30 here, $50 there). Every new requirement meant a day or more of bus and taxi fares; many founding members are disabled, making transportation difficult and costly. With anticipation of a small grant from Mines Action Canada – which was confirmed last week! – and contributions from family and friends, I was able to support ZAFLAS financially to the end. Without my privileged flow of funds, I cannot imagine how Yona would have raised the registration fee, to say nothing of the hundreds more dollars in additional fees and transportation costs.

One could perhaps argue that this obstacle course of a registration process ensures the integrity of organizations that finally do register. By necessitating sacrifices and investments from the get-go, the number of half-hearted, inefficient organizations is reduced. I am confident that ZAFLAS will not be one of these failure cases, in part because of how hard they’ve worked already.

On the other hand, without my serendipitous arrival, ZAFLAS would not exist as it does now. Do the roundabout requirements for registration actually reward hard work, or just deep pockets and timely connections? Yona met me partly because of his previous dedication – in fighting for his rights as a disabled person and landmine survivor, Yona made contacts with the people who eventually put us in touch. Yet it’s quite plausible that we would never have met, and the Zambia Foundation for Landmine Survivors, despite the remarkable dedication of its members and worthiness of its cause, would still not be registered.

Regardless of how it happened, I’m happy ZAFLAS is now registered. In supporting the organization financially, I was careful to reflect on issues of financial dependency that were drilled into me over four years of academic study. Yona and I often spoke about trying to avoid dependency relationships, knowing that my limited funds would only take ZAFLAS so far. Yona works hard to instill the concept of personal sacrifice in fellow members. To make sure that members feel a stake in the organization, Yona is strict about collecting the measly membership fees, even though they’ll seem inconsequential after ZAFLAS receives its first grant.

Now that ZAFLAS is registered, their struggle has only just begun. It may seem like they’re in over their heads – in a cut-throat development world of computers and Internet, ZAFLAS has neither knowledge of computers nor the resources to learn. What they do have is an inspiring leader and a diverse team supporting him. Fortunately, there are prospects for collaborations between ZAFLAS and bigger organizations – both the Zambia Mine Action Centre and major Norwegian disability stakeholders are planning projects we hope ZAFLAS can play a part in.

I am confident and excited about the coming months. While I realize more than ever that development can be a nasty game of money and cold calculation, it doesn’t have to be that way. I hope for the sake of disabled people all over Zambia that Yona’s new organization is successful.

1:38 of your time

2008-11-10T06:32:00.000-08:00

Watch this video.

Sign the People's Treaty: http://www.minesactioncanada.org/peoples_treaty/index.cfm.

Help ban cluster bombs!

To learn more, check out this six-minute Human Rights Watch video or visit the Cluster Munition Coalition website. You have three weeks until the signing conference in Oslo, where governments from around the world will put the groundbreaking ban in writing. Will your government sign the ban? Until Oslo, every one of your signatures helps!

Where were you?

2008-11-05T07:32:00.000-08:00

I am so happy and excited I can barely write a full sentence. As my father just said, it still feels like a dream.

I'll keep this short, and ask a question we'll be asking for generations to come: "Where were you when Barack Obama was elected president of the United States?"

My answer: O'Hagan's Irish Pub, Lusaka, Zambia.

Actually, by 6:00am Zambia time when the official announcement was made, I was slouched half-awake on my living room sofa, weeping hopelessly in my tired state. (No pictures of that, I'm afraid.)

Anyone else? Where were you?

November 4, 2008

2008-11-03T22:37:00.000-08:00

If your excitement about the coming day, like mine, is running wildly out of control, here are three readings to channel your energy and stay cool:

An NYT article from ten days ago on Obama’s management style, to assure you of his composed leadership abilities.
The transcript of his famous race speech, "A More Perfect Union," to remind you of why you first loved this man.
The transcript of Montreal’s own Masked Avengers’ prank call with Sarah Palin, for comedic relief.

For visual effect, I couldn’t help but also post this brilliant Los Angeles graffiti art, from the French Libération newspaper [Dans la banlieue de Los Angeles, on vote déjà...Obama]:

Happy November 4th everybody!

Monitoring the Zambian election

2008-11-03T09:27:00.000-08:00

Through a random expat acquaintance – a Czech guy I met at a BBQ two months ago and ran into at the mall last week – I landed a volunteering gig to help monitor last week’s election.

This was an exciting opportunity for me – to witness the inner workings of a fledgling African democracy, and partake in election monitoring, an activity that has always intrigued me. For all the emphasis that is put on the importance of fair elections, grasping the actual process, in all its complexity and scope, isn’t straightforward.

The Foundation for Democratic Processes (FODEP) was one of the primary monitors of last Thursday’s vote, which it deemed free and fair. The organization hired 922 monitors to be placed in every voting booth in every polling station across the country, including 150 supervisors, one per constituency.

FODEP teamed up with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute (NDI) to implement a procedure called Parallel Vote Tabulation (PVT), whereby monitors across the country observe the vote counting process at the constituency level and transmit the numbers, via their supervisors, to NDI. As the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) tallied its results, NDI and FODEP simultaneously tallied theirs, and could then confirm or reject the official announcement.

After a day-long training session, I was assigned the task of working in the FODEP “command centre” in Lusaka. My job, performed in two all-night shifts from 9:30pm to 5:30am, beginning the night the polls closed, was to proactively contact FODEP supervisors across Zambia and collect their results. Along with a dozen or so other phone operators, I dialed supervisors’ numbers into the early hours of the morning, carefully documenting their observed vote tallies for each polling station, as well as qualitative observations made according to a multiple-choice form.

The experience, though arduous, was rewarding. I was blown away by the sheer scale of the project. NDI staff from the U.S. and elsewhere worked around the clock for several days analyzing results and overseeing our work. Using piles of new mobile phones, state-of-the-art computers and a thousand personnel, a civil society organization was able to follow a national election and arrive at a result independently of the government process.

I struggled with phone reception, communication barriers and other technical issues. But Zambian spelling is thoroughly phonetic, meaning I could spell most words simply by slowly repeating them out loud. My non-Zambian status didn’t go unnoticed – one supervisor called the centre and asked for the white man she’d been speaking to; several of my fellow volunteers approached me with queries, assuming I was part of NDI’s international staff.

All in all, however, the prevalence of the English language and cell phones made possible a remarkable process that would have been inconceivable a decade ago. Some say there were problems with the vote – opposition leader Michael Sata has pledged to take the ECZ to court over rigging. You can call me naïve, but having participated in FODEP’s grassroots monitoring process, I fail to see how substantial rigging could have taken place.

Tomorrow, an election thirty times bigger and infinitely more significant globally will take place. It consoles me to know that in the United States, like in Zambia, election monitors will help to keep the process in check [OSCE begins monitoring of US elections].

The Zambian poll in pictures

2008-11-03T04:48:00.000-08:00

As described in my previous entry, countless trucks filled with Michael Sata supporters barreled down Independence Avenue on election eve.

This was by no means as crammed as they got.

The flowery and well-kempt boulevard of Independence Avenue, nearby the president's house, offers an outside glimpse of the perks of being president.

Rupiah Banda posters like these were hard to miss.

Election day, declared a national holiday, was calm, with some streets nearly empty.

A polling station in Kabwata, near my Woodlands home. Though I was able to walk around inside the station, picture-taking was prohibited.

The FODEP command centre in the early hours of the morning on Friday. This is where I stayed up for two consecutive night shifts collecting results from election monitors around the country.

Banda supporters celebrate at a gas station across the street from where their leader was being sworn in as president.

Banda posters above a typically colourful downtown Lusaka shop. I wonder how long it'll take for shops and businesses to take down the old Mwanawasa portraits and replace them with Banda ones.

Election eve

2008-10-30T00:37:00.000-07:00

As I walk home along tree-lined Independence Avenue on the eve of Zambia’s presidential elections, the sound of constant honking horns fills the air. The windows of passing cars are drawn down, with straight arms and clenched fists proudly extending out of them. Every minute or two, a transport truck drives by with 30-odd men chanting in chorus in the back.

I have a feeling of curious and anxious anticipation. For the first time, I feel nervous about the days to come.

In the two months since the death of the last president, Levy Mwanawasa, Zambia has been in the grip of feverish political campaigns. Passions rage over whether Rupiah Banda, Mwanawasa’s former Vice President of the same Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD), or Michael Sata, a veteran Zambian politician and leader of the Patriotic Front (PF), should take Mwanawasa's place. The remaining two candidates are seen as outsiders.

Having arrived in Zambia just as the current campaigns were getting underway, I can attest to heated emotions on both sides. Here in Lusaka, as well as in urban and populated Copperbelt Province, Michael Sata is said to enjoy overwhelming support – from passing conversations and daily jaunts around Lusaka, it would seem that a Sata victory is all but inevitable.

Yet Zambia is not a country of only cities, and Rupiah Banda’s support comes largely from distant Eastern Province and other rural areas that us city-dwellers all too easily discount. I’ve found grasping the political situation extremely difficult, since I hear sensible and educated predictions coming from both sides. The newspapers are so evidently aligned to party interests that extracting meaningful information is difficult.

Having witnessed the build-up to Kenya’s catastrophic election last year, I can’t help but notice certain similarities. Namely, I see massive segments of society resolutely and closed-mindedly siding with a single candidate, with little intermingling or exceptions to the rule.

Despite this, I’ve been told to rest at ease. Zambians are peaceful people. As its neighbouring countries fought bloody wars for decades, Zambia hosted refugees and lived in peace. In fact, I have been consistently surprised by the warmth and generosity of friends and strangers alike. I’m not a fan of ethnographic generalizing, but the Zambians I’ve met exhibit this peacefulness, and I think that counts for something.

That’s why I’ve maintained a relaxed air over the last couple months. No matter the inevitable disappointment one large swath of the country will face, politics are politics, and Zambians will move on. Crucially, Zambian politics lack the clear-cut tribal dimensions that allowed the Kenyan political crisis to become an ethnic one.

“We want change, we want change,” is the chant coming from one of the transport trucks overloaded with excited Sata supporters, as I walk home on the evening before election day. In these and other chants from the dozens – hundreds – of passing vehicles I see on my short walk home, there is no uncertainty.

I am reminded of a few days ago, when I asked my well-educated Zambian French teacher if it was even possible for Rupiah Banda to win the election fairly, and he replied with a resounding no. If Banda wins, he said, he will have cheated.

It is unclear to me who will win this election. Accusations of fraud will likely emerge from either losing party. We can only hope that the process is credible and the transition smooth.

If the election is not fair, I am hard-pressed to see how people as excited and polarized as Zambians are now, even with their famously peaceful dispositions, won’t fight – vocally or physically – for their concerns.

Letter to the editor

2008-10-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

From the Times of Zambia, Monday, October 27, 2008, pg. 6:

One peaceful Zambia

IN these heated political times, let us not forget the history of peace and harmony all Zambians can be proud of.

This week, October 27 to November 2, besides being election week, is also the Global Week of Action to Ban Cluster Bombs.

To this day, seven out of Zambia’s nine provinces are contaminated by landmines and other explosive remnants of war. Innocent Zambians continue to bear the brunt of conflicts fought decades ago by foreign armies.

Despite this, Zambian activists are pioneering disarmament campaigns all over the world. As we speak, demining teams are active in seven provinces preparing to remove all landmines from the ground by 2011.

Two weeks ago, 42 Zambian activists gathered at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka to mobilise forces in the campaign to ban cluster bombs, which are like landmines because they indiscriminately harm civilians, especially women and children.

This December, governments from around the world will meet in Oslo, Norway to sign the groundbreaking Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Regardless of which party wins Thursday’s election, Zambia will sign the treaty, continuing the country’s proud tradition of nonviolence.

Louis Century, Zambian Campaign to Ban Landmines, Lusaka.

The financial crisis in Zambia

2008-10-27T01:45:00.000-07:00

In a country where 63% of government revenue comes from two primary resources, copper and cobalt, fluctuations in demand for these products internationally bear consequences.

Zambia is not directly affected by the global financial crisis, since it doesn't have any stake in the troubled Western banks and lending institutions, but it is suffering from decreased copper demand. While surging Chinese demand for primary resources contributed to a boom in Zambia's mining sector, with $900 million in Chinese investments pledged up to 2010, reductions in Chinese demand as a result of the financial crisis have equally far-reaching effects.

The current selling price for copper is $1.69 per pound (October 27, 2008), as weak as it's been in three years. The monthly average for September was nearly double that at $3.17 per pound. Zambia's currency, the Kwacha, has lost 25% of its value to the dollar in the two months I've been here (4,500 Kwacha to the dollar, from 3,500), which bodes well for my spending powers but not for the 13 million Zambians who lack the luxury of foreign currency.

If the impending global recession lasts as long as people are saying it will, American homeowners won't be the only ones to suffer. On Thursday, Zambians will elect a new president to lead the country through these tumultuous times, setting him up for a challenging term indeed.

Thanks to Alex for this story.

The Century's president

2008-10-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine…

It’s early 2009, say February or March, and President Barack Obama has just set out on his first foreign engagement, one of the earliest trips abroad by a newly elected president. His first stop is Johannesburg, South Africa, where he shares the stage with anti-apartheid heroes Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, speaking in front of fifty thousand jubilant South Africans. Next, President Obama flies northwards to Kisumu, Kenya, in the home province of his late father, where the local airport has just been renovated for the explicit purpose of accommodating Air Force One (click here for the plans). He receives a roaring Kenyan welcome.

I know there are still two weeks to go, and videos like this one remind me to take nothing for granted, but can’t I dream a little?

When it comes to politics, I follow the party line – the Century family party line, that is.

My grandparents Jack and Marcia Century (third and fifth from the left) doing their part in conservative stronghold Calgary, Alberta.

Cardboard cut-out Obama, fresh from an engagement at the local mall, with my brother Adam Century (the bright red tomato in the middle) and his fellow Williams College freshmen.

"Four Princesses and a President-to-be": The newest party member, six-year-old Lena Century, with an Obama pin to make all Century’s proud.

Some thoughts on HIV/AIDS

2008-10-20T03:50:00.000-07:00

Recently, I noticed this display while walking in downtown Lusaka. I had heard of such fallacious fabrications in the past, but reading this banner and the collection of “news” articles on either side of it dumbfounded me all the same.

This view is not widely shared in Zambia. Yet it helps to explain the sheer complexity of combating HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last I heard, Zambia has a 15 percent adult prevalence rate, which is actually lower than previous figures. The country is ranked 165 out of 177 in terms of the UN Human Development Index.

With increasingly cheap and available anti-retroviral drugs, many have become optimistic for the future. But the other day, a doctor told me that free anti-retrovirals have been a mixed blessing for Zambia. Now that it’s possible for people with HIV/AIDS to lead productive lives for several years, the fear of contracting the virus is less potent than it once was. In this logic, while addressing the suffering of HIV/AIDS patients, free anti-retrovirals ignore or even compound the social causes of the epidemic – gender violence, promiscuity, cultural norms, and so on.

I don’t purport to offer any solutions. I simply wanted to shed light on the multifaceted nature of the issue, as I’ve experienced it in Lusaka. My own work – disarmament issues, including landmines and other small arms – is more clear-cut, in my mind, allowing for a more well-defined outlook and restful conscience. I admire those who grapple with HIV/AIDS in all its complexity and contradictions.

Mid-October weekend

2008-10-19T13:24:00.000-07:00

On Friday afternoon, during a rainstorm that offered fleeting relief from days of escalating heat, I began my birthday weekend with a much-needed nap.

I had just finished three days of intensive work on project plans for persons with disabilities. (I’ve been putting off writing about my work on disability and small arms issues, but I'll write soon!)

After my nap, my housemates prepared dinner and baked a cake and we had a relaxing birthday evening at home. On Saturday starting at lunchtime, we invited most of our friends over and enjoyed the day by our pool. Cold beer, upbeat Zambian tunes, smoky charcoal barbecue… it was a great birthday, and a good distraction from the reality of being far away from family and friends.

Among the guests was Samuel, a first-year art student at a local college who my housemates Bart and Anke – creative industry researchers from Holland – have been working with. Samuel is a prodigy painter and drawer. His work is breathtaking, even though he’s had almost no formal training.

He and his art school friends also make for a hugely entertaining party. We spent much of the afternoon and evening singing and dancing – or in my case, humming unintelligibly and mimicking other peoples’ dance moves.

For my birthday, Samuel drew me in blue pen.

Contrary to what the portrait might suggest, my nose has not been flattened, my mouth still looks like it used to, and I have not gained any weight since coming to Zambia. To his credit, he drew it in blue pen in about 15 minutes.

From top to bottom, me by the pool; Samuel, James and Dickson dancing; Bart and Alex stoking the BBQ; Samuel.

This is a photograph Samuel took with Anke's small digital camera. I'm blown away every time I look at it. But I'll let you see what you want in it, instead of unloading my subjective views on you.

Zambia and the CCM

2008-10-12T12:16:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the meeting Dr. Bob and I have been planning for the last couple weeks was a total success. "Zambia and the Convention on Cluster Munitions: Reporting Back and Moving Forward" assembled an impressive group of Zambian doctors, activists, journalists, police, and many others who have been involved in disarmament and disability issues in Zambia. Although no cabinet ministers could make it – they're in their home constituencies frantically campaigning to keep their jobs – turn-out still exceeded expectations, with 42 participants.

Zambia is not affected by cluster bombs, but the country has played a major role in the international campaign to ban them. The Oslo Process began in February 2007 with a declaration to achieve by the end of 2008 a legally binding instrument to ban cluster bombs. In May of this year in Dublin, 107 states agreed to adopt the Convention on Cluster Munitions, which will be opened for signing in Oslo in December. During this time, members of the Zambia Mine Action Centre and Zambian civil society, including Dr. Bob, have been at the forefront of treaty negotiations. Friday's meeting brought together all those involved to regroup and strategize – to ensure that Zambia signs the Convention and to plan for domesticating the Convention in Zambia.

Meanwhile, if you haven't already, sign the People's Treaty and help push governments to bring the Convention to fruition this December. Cluster bombs are indiscriminate and senseless weapons, as this Human Rights Watch video makes abundently clear. The Cluster Munition Coalition, which spearheaded the campaign to ban cluster bombs and includes Mines Action Canada and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, for whom I'm working, was recognized for its efforts by being nominated for this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms. Sheila Mweemba, director of the Zambia Mine Action Centre, in the middle.

Dr. Bob convening the meeting.

Let it rain

2008-10-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

After 42 days of unabated, beat-down-on-your-back African sun, rain has finally arrived. It came earlier than expected – the rainy season doesn’t begin until late October or November – and man, did it come.

The air is cool and fresh, rich with the smell of plants and rejuvenated growth, a stark contrast to the searing heat and dust-filled air I’ve been breathing in since my arrival in Zambia.

I’m sitting by the window, looking out over the garden and pool area, avoiding incoming spray. It’s as if the potency of the rainfall had to equalize that of the sun, so that in the absence of oppressive sunlight, there can only be thundering downpour.

You may not be able to relate to my overwhelming sense of relief at the arrival of wet weather. And it may take as little as a week or two of rain for me to start complaining all over again and longing for the heat. For the moment, I’m thoroughly enjoying the change.

Rain beating down on my paradise garden that once was.

Yes, Doctah!

2008-10-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

My supervisor, Dr. Bob, a medical doctor-turned-disarmament activist, is most often referred to simply as Doc or the Doctor (Doctah here in Zambia) – even at the hospital, where you’d think having the name Doctor would get a tad confusing. It took little time for me to understand how it’s possible to distinguish oneself as the doctor in a hospital full of them. The man is quite possibly the most gifted networker I’ve ever known, effortlessly charming local activists, public officials, international diplomats and common Zambians alike.

Lunchtime at the hospital where I work normally consists of Dr. Bob entertaining a crowd of doctors and nurses on the latest developments in Zambian politics. Standing in the same open area day after day, Dr. Bob waves down passersby, asking their opinions on the issue at hand, or teasing them if he knows them personally. “If X candidate wins in Y region, I tell you, hair will grow from the palm of my hand,” he yells across the hall. “No, you don’t understand!” He grabs someone’s hand and insists, “individual hairs will sprout from my palm!”

When he came across an ID card for one of the presidential candidates, he began flashing it to colleagues and friends, pleading, “have you seen this patient? I can’t find this patient, he’s a patient of mine!” I only recently found out that most of Dr. Bob’s usual lunchtime crowd comes from another part of the country as he does, and overwhelmingly supports the archrival of his chosen candidate. Something about his character makes arguing singlehandedly against large numbers utterly enjoyable for all involved.

Even on the public minibuses, where political passions are extreme, and often augmented by the effects of alcohol, Dr. Bob engages the crowds, wielding only his disarming social skills as self-defense. Since much of our work involves meeting with people and moving around, I have spent many hours witnessing these kinds of social interactions. I chip in occasional jokes and remarks – Dr. Bob’s trusted sidekick, you could call me – and thoroughly enjoy it.

Granted, there are side effects to his gregariousness. Punctuality isn’t one of his strong points. But Dr. Bob shatters the social guards of the people he encounters, and in so doing offers me a wonderful glimpse of Zambian life, one that I might not otherwise have access to.

A view of the massive University Teaching Hospital at night.

The hospital by day. Conveniently, most of the individuals and organizations Dr. Bob and I work with are based here. It's also located a stone’s throw from my house.

Melting Alaska

2008-10-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Recently, British newspaper The Guardian reported on the “the world’s first climate change refugees”: the Yup’ik Eskimos of Alaska, USA. Melting ice in southwest Alaska has forced an entire community to permanently relocate, after 2,000 years of living in the area.

With all the hype about Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, I was reminded of this article. I wondered, is Palin – the global warming denier that she is – aware of this tragic development in her home state?

Then, remembering a Youtube video posted by a friend, another question crossed my mind. Has Palin ever heard of The Guardian newspaper? I wasn’t sure if The Guardian was included in “all of them, any of them that um, have been in front of me over all these years,” which is what Palin replied when asked for specific examples of newspapers and magazines she sought information from.

After yet another good chuckle about Palin's ever-amusing incompetence, the seriousness of her stance on global warming sunk in. In the clever words of the article, "Alaska's new lipstick-wearing pitbull megastar, Sarah Palin, is intellectually challenged when it comes to global warming." Mixing up words and blanking out on newspaper titles is one thing; suggesting that humans have had no role in climate change is quite another.

The sky is for birds, not missiles

2008-10-03T01:19:00.000-07:00

Young Louis campaigning for peace and disarmament, May 1993.

My mom emailed me this photo last week, saying her class of art students at Concordia was amazed by the deep meaning of the scene, considering my current work. Some would call it coincidence. In any event, I will take credit for some of the drawings (the rest go to my second grade Banff Elementary School classmates), and the purposefully child-like writing style of the letters LOUIS (part of the anti-war message). I didn’t demand a cut of the profits because, well, the blanket was donated… to me.

For more of Barbara Todd's art, click here, here, or here.

Al Jazeera and the news

2008-10-01T00:24:00.000-07:00

Since my landlady recently installed satellite television, I’ve been enjoying the luxury of 24-hour news on Al Jazeera and the BBC. Concerning Al Jazeera specifically, this is the second time I’ve been able to watch their news on a regular basis (in Nairobi, it was one of only three staticky channels I picked up). It continues to baffle me how such a powerful and well-respected international news agency could hold such baseless Al Qaeda connotations in North America.

It occurred to me that BBC or CNN surely would have jumped at the chance to break the news of an Osama bin Laden video or two, wouldn’t they? He just happened to send them to Al Jazeera instead, the most-watched network in the Middle East. Al Jazeera competes fiercely with premiere networks in all corners of the globe. The deep resources and far reach of Al Jazeera has even been known to lure prominent media figures away from the competition (Sir David Frost’s weekly Frost Over the World jumps to mind). As far as Islamic bias goes, I’ll quickly mention that last week’s special, The Promised Land, offered a thoroughly informative and impartial (as is possible) account of the birth of Israel.

My Al Jazeera rant aside (okay one last spiel: check out Control Room, a documentary on, you guessed it), I don’t think it’s merely because I have satellite TV that the news of late seems busier than usual. Here are three stories that have occupied my mind.

Over the last year, I’ve been casually following news of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, but the last few weeks have blown all benchmarks out of the water. This article tells of the local pirate economy that has developed in semi-autonomous Puntland, including white-collar accountants and negotiators, thousands of workers, and an annual ransom-generated revenue that surpassed Puntland’s $20 million budget last year. As I write, over a dozen boats are under pirate control, and a Ukrainian arms shipment apparently destined illegally for South Sudan is docked up with 33 Russian battle tanks on board. Modern-day pirates, I’ll be damned.

Closer to home, I came across this Margaret Atwood article through a friend, and thought I should share it with all of you – Canadians and non-Canadians alike. As you may know, the United States isn’t the only country with an election fast approaching. Canada (and Zambia, for that matter) is also in the heat of campaigning, as Conservative Stephen Harper is standing for re-election and vying for a parliamentary majority. Margaret Atwood passionately reminds us of the value of the arts and creative industries to our country, and the indifference “Mr. Harper” affords them. (If you’ll allow me one more political jab, the Canadian International Development Agency’s International Youth Internship Program, of which I am a part, has suffered relentless cutbacks under Harper’s government; it’s quite plausible that I would've missed the boat if I’d waited another year.)

Lastly, even here in Lusaka, Zambia, the geographic centre of Southern Africa, the intricacies of American news events have reached life-or-death proportions. Everybody is following the US election, and now the financial crisis too. My one anecdote should tie this otherwise meandering blog post together. A couple of days ago, Al Jazeera was discussing Sarah Palin’s recent catastrophic performances on TV, and then showed a clip… of Tina Fey impersonating Palin on Saturday Night Live! The catch? Unless I missed it (I was watching intently), there was no mention that this was in fact a comedian impersonating Palin, and not the vice presidential candidate herself. Excepting a small SNL logo in the top left corner of the screen, Tina Fey appears to have successfully passed herself off as the 44-year-old hockey mom from Alaska, to thousands (millions?) of viewers around the world.

(I just realized this Al Jazeera slip-up doesn’t exactly reinforce my argument about the quality of their news; I don’t hold it against them.)

Gratuitous photo of pretty Lusaka flowers.

Money, it's a gas

2008-09-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it, as good blogger “eatanicecream” pointed out, I’ve become lazy.

I should’ve known you’d be tired of “One survivor’s story” after a week and a half.

Well, I’m back. I just got home from a draining two days of immigration wrangling, which I won’t elaborate on because all ended well (and I’d rather not risk ruffling any feathers – my $300 “temporary permit” should be ready in a few days). Immigration permits, like most things in Zambia, aren’t cheap.

Which brings me to the topic of this blog post: money! After enduring the shockingly high cost of living in Nairobi for six months last year – as an unpaid intern, no less – I figured smaller, less developed Lusaka would be a walk in the park in comparison. How horribly wrong I was.

Being landlocked, Zambia must import almost everything overland via other African countries – including, crucially, fuel. Gas prices hover in what I thought was exclusively social-democratic Scandinavian territory, around $3 per litre. Anything that’s transported using fuel (just about everything) bears costs to show for it.

Taxis are a common cash grab, since walking after dark isn’t advised, and taxi drivers have to pay for gas, after all. Even the public minibuses charge around a dollar a ride, which seems cheap but adds up. As for food, I’m fortunate to live near various small vendors, but rising global food prices mean even a few bananas or tomatoes don’t go for cheap. (You may hear me whine from time to time about my scanty CIDA budget, but the reality is that most Zambians live on a fraction of it – and their bananas and tomatoes don’t cost any less than mine.)

I enjoy cooking and spending time at home, and I walk to work, so budgeting hasn’t been too difficult. Nonetheless, I was more than relieved to discover a glorious vegetable market last Tuesday, a mere 10-minute walk from my house. Taking place every Tuesday evening in a large sheltered area behind a church, the market is full of life and activity, and just about any produce you could hope for. The very reasonable prices are fixed, which means no hassle with bargaining.

My shopping routine now consists of one heaping bag of fruits and veggies every Tuesday evening, and whatever odds and ends I need throughout the rest of the week. Though seemingly minor, the cost savings have been enough to ease at least a little bit of budgetary stress, and I eat better too!

View of the Tuesday market at sunset, around 6:00pm.

One survivor's story

2008-09-14T04:55:00.000-07:00

As Dr. Bob was away at conferences for much of my first two weeks, I spent most of my time getting to know his partner organizations.

Last Friday, I learned about the work of the Zambia Mine Action Centre, the governmental department responsible for fulfilling Zambia's Ottawa Treaty obligations. After a long and drawn out process, ZMAC has finally begun a landmine impact survey, carried out by Norwegian People's Aid, to uncover exactly how much land is mined and what demining needs to be done. Although Zambia is not as affected as many other countries, the lack of information has been devastating for development and tourism – a plot of land with one suspected mine, even if it’s not actually there, is as unusable as one with hundreds of mines.

IRIN published an excellent article on the landmine situation in Zambia, "Zambia: A deadly reminder of the hospitality of the past," in which Mr. Yona Phiri, a prominent Zambian landmine survivor, was interviewed. Yona lost his right leg when he was 16 years old and struggled to even move around. Over the course of two decades, he singlehandedly fought for the Zambian government to provide him with the attention and care he knew he deserved. 28 years later, Yona is still struggling to get such basic services as transport to and from the hospital for appointments – and he is one of the lucky few survivors to live in Lusaka, relatively close to the services he needs.

Yet his resourcefulness is startling. He now has stable employment as a welder and moves around on crutches with ease. As I waited to meet him a couple weeks ago, I was surprised to see him arrive by bicycle, sweating from the long ride from his home to the hospital downtown. We talked about his and my backgrounds, the landmine and disability movements in Zambia, and of course the three cardinal conversation topics of the country: football, religion and politics.

Addressing a gap in Zambian civil society, Yona has set up the Zambia Foundation for Landmine Survivors, an organization to be comprised of landmine survivors and disabled persons as members. His goal is to create a common voice for the disparate struggles of survivors across the country. Personally, I see great potential in the Foundation to achieve social change – Yona is an inspiring leader, and there is much yet to be done.

On Saturday, I attended one of the Foundation's meetings. Besides Yona, founding members include two teachers, a nurse, an ex-military deminer, an accountant, a journalist, a reverend, a disabled rights advocate, and a sociologist, among others. Facing dire funding constraints, the Foundation has thus far failed to gather even the one million Zambian Kwacha (around $300 US) needed to register as an official organization. Following registration, the Foundation will have the legitimacy needed to submit project proposals and raise funds.

I hope to scrounge up the remainder of this registration fee (a negligible sum in fundraising terms), and then to help the Foundation get off its feet in what spare time I have. I feel strongly about the nobility of their cause – to give landmine survivors and disabled people active membership in a meaningful, nation-wide organization. I only hope that they will be able to overcome the many obstacles they are sure to face. Besides lacking the funds to register, the Foundation has little to no access to computers or printers, complicating seemingly basic activities.

Yona on his bicycle, prosthetic leg and all.

Founding members of the Zambia Foundation for Landmine Survivors (plus me).

My humble abode

2008-09-14T02:01:00.000-07:00

Upon arriving in Lusaka, I quickly became aware of the troubles other interns and expats faced in finding accommodation. I met another CIDA intern who had been sleeping in a hostel tent for six weeks, working 40 hours per week, yet to find a proper place to rent. I devoted my first few days to preventing this situation at all costs.

Though I got in touch with many people and pursued various avenues, I ended up at my current residence after a roundabout and hugely coincidental sequence of events:

- Met two Dutch students who thought there was a spare room in their house, but couldn't help me until landlady returned from Holland.
- Met American researcher on public minibus, who invited me to a barbecue.
- At BBQ, met Greek photographer who knew of Swedish expat who had recently left Lusaka; Greek didn't know where Swede lived, but knew taxi driver who drove Swede around.
- Called taxi driver, who agreed to take me to the house.
- At house, landlady was away; longtime maid told me there was definitely a room, and agreed to show me around.
- In kitchen, was surprised to find same two Dutch students eating dinner.
- After calling landlady in Holland and pleading our homeless cause to her, Canadian tent-dweller and I both moved in temporarily; there were two rooms available, but questions over whether landlady would want to rent the second room.
- Landlady returned and decided to rent only one room.
- Canadian and I flipped a coin (very suspenseful); I won!
- A few days later, landlady decided to rent second room after all... this is where I, ex-tent-dwelling Canadian and five others will be living for the next four-and-a-half months:

The place is idyllic. Lovely pool, beautiful vegetable garden, free range chickens, wireless Internet, 5-minute walk to work. My room is the window on the left. So for those of you worrying about my trials and tribulations in Africa, just imagine me sunbathing in the pool during lunch hour in, say, mid-October (before the rainy season comes and the above paradise abruptly ceases to exist).

Chipolopolo 1 - Togo 0

2008-09-13T23:52:00.001-07:00

At 4:00am on Wednesday morning, my two Dutch housemates and I woke up in pitch darkness and made our way to the inter-city bus station in town. By 6:30am, we found a bus going to Copperbelt Province, where Zambia would be playing Togo in a World Cup qualifier later that afternoon. Around 1:00pm, after a long and bumpy ride, we arrived in Chingola, and linked up with a group of die-hard Lusaka-based fans (like ourselves) to find tickets and complete the last leg of our journey.

Fifteen minutes before the 2:00pm kickoff, the three of us, along with four others I had invited, marched into the Chililabombwe stadium sporting Zambian colours of green, red and yellow. We encountered roaring cheers, partly because of general excitement about the game, and partly, I think, because of the novelty of seeing seven confused looking 'muzungus' (white people) wading through a sea of football-loving Zambians. I managed a few snapshots on our way around the stands.

Zambia's Chipolopolo (Copper Bullets) scored the first and only goal. The celebration was raucous. If not for this fence and an abundance of police officers, the pitch would surely have been swarmed with fans. The match turned out to be dominated by the Chipolopolo, whose only fault was a complete lack of finishing touch. The score could easily have been 5-0. Mind you, Togo's Arsenal-based superstar, Emmanuel Adebayor, refused to fly to Zambia reportedly because of rumours that his plane would crash; Togo's coach quit over internal disputes one week prior; and the Chipolopolo dedicated the match to Zambia's late president, making the stakes of winning quite high indeed.

After halftime, we switched ends to continue to watch Zambia's offense from up close. In this picture, you see the overcrowded bleachers, the blooming jacaranda trees surrounding the stadium, and a Zambia corner kick in action (Zambia in white).

If only North American sports fans were this creative.

Zambia's love of football is surpassed only by its devotion to Christianity – why not to combine the two?

After the game, us seven muzungus and our fellow Zambian fans caught a minibus and then a bus back to Lusaka, completing a marathon 22-hour day. The bus, which left around 8:00pm that night, was a quarter full of singing and drinking football fans. Until around midnight, the driver blasted song after song about the Zambian football team – apparently, there is an entire industry of pop music devoted to the Chipolopolo. After resigning to the fact that sleep was simply not an option, I came to really enjoy the celebration. Driving across the Zambian countryside, bopping in my seat to nationalistic football songs, I felt a part of something special.

Since the tragic 1993 plane crash that killed almost the entire Zambian football team, the state of the country's football hasn't been the same. But the love of the game is there. I think it's only a matter of time before Chipolopolo re-enters the vocabulary of football fans the world over.

A state in mourning

2008-09-07T05:53:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone and welcome to my blog!

As this is my first foray into the world of blogging, you’ll have to bear with me as I orient myself and settle into some kind of routine. I am writing from Lusaka, Zambia, where I have just begun a CIDA-funded internship with the Zambian Campaign to Ban Landmines. The program is administered by Mines Action Canada, a coalition of Canadian NGOs devoted to stopping the use and addressing the humanitarian costs of landmines and cluster bombs.

I arrived in Lusaka a week ago last night, and found myself immersed in the nation-wide mourning of a well-regarded late president, Levy Mwanawasa, who died on August 19 after six weeks of critical care following a second stroke. The Zambian national football team postponed its World Cup qualifier with Togo; shops, restaurants and bars are forbidden from playing pop music – Christian gospel is all that can be heard; newspapers and billboards seem to contain more messages of condolence from local companies than news articles or ads. Driving in from the airport, I passed a Batman-like beam of light apparently emanating from the president’s yet-to-be-buried body.

But on Wednesday, the day that would have been his sixtieth birthday, the president was finally buried. Tomorrow, September 8, marks the end of a three-week period of national mourning, and life is expected to resume its normal course – or rather, all the events and activities that have been put on hold will pile one above the other, and, parallel with fast-approaching elections in Canada and the US, the race for the Zambian presidency will begin in full swing. (Also – probably the topic of my next post – the Zambian football team plays Togo and I reserved tickets!)

My first impressions of Lusaka have been entirely positive. Compared to Nairobi, where I lived for six months last year as a UNHCR intern, Lusaka is smaller, quieter and cleaner. It still has the familiar orangy-red dirt sidewalks and dust-filled air, and the sweet smell of burning garbage brings back memories, but the diesel fumes are less pervasive, the traffic less infuriating, and the persistent touts nowhere in sight. Further, Zambia lacks an African language that is spoken by more than 20-odd percent of the people (unlike Swahili in Kenya), making English the most widely-spoken language in the country – I have yet to come across a Zambian who couldn’t utter at least a few words to send me in the right direction.

Of course, this expatriate perspective does not cover the expansive ‘compounds’ that surround Lusaka, bearing an all-too-close resemblance to Nairobi’s infamous slums. I have not yet encountered signs of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia, where well over a million people currently live with the virus. I understand that regular funerals are a part of life here. My work, though focused on landmines and cluster bombs, will spill over into the many interconnected projects that comprise Zambian civil society and address problems of health and development in the country.

In my first week here, I met many of the people I will be working with, all involved in some way or another with landmine and disability work: social activists, medical practitioners, journalists, landmine survivors and public servants, few of whom are limited to one of these categories. My supervisor, Dr. Bob Mtonga, is a regional leader in countless major campaigns, traveling the world advocating against nuclear weapons, landmines, cluster bombs and small arms, publishing on all of these issues in Zambia’s national newspaper, all the while working as a medical doctor addressing HIV/AIDS among youth, diabetes, and landmine victim assistance, among other issues. I understand that he also writes poetry and enjoys fixing things – to pass the time, you know. It’s a pleasure to work with him.

Closing in on the end of my inaugural blog post, I already see that I’m going to have to work harder at filtering down my experience – so much has already been left out. Let this be an introduction. In the coming months, I hope to share with you the perspective of an ordinary Canadian on this exciting and fast-changing African city, and hopefully nearby areas and countries as well. Most importantly, I will write of my experience working with Dr. Bob and the mine action movement in Zambia, which I am so fortunate to be a part of. Please feel free to share your thoughts – I and others would love to hear them!

Louis