The Rain Has Begun.

Today it rained, no - poured, for an hour straight. It was amazing.
The more I travel, the more my appreciation for the weather grows. Especially clouds. I don’t know what it is about clouds and the sky, but I always find them beautiful. It is harder to see in cities like Toronto and Montreal where there is a thick layer of smog. But in the North and now here, the sky is clear and bright, or overcast with incredible cloud formations. One of my favourite things to do in Iqaluit was to check out the clouds at sunset. Here is a bit trickier as the sun sets in about 30 minutes – so you have to be on your game to catch it. But is just beautiful if you do.

Today was a day full of ups and downs. It is surprising to think back on the day and realize the wide spectrum of emotions that I ran through in less than twelve hours. I will organize this post by emotion (trying to spice things up for you a bit!):

Stubbornness: I woke up this morning and simply decided that I was not going to work. There was nothing that could have made me go into work at 7am today. Not a thing. Luckily I had a meeting close to my house at 10am and was able to justify working from home before hand (something I do frequently now).

Calm: I have started drinking instant coffee – ‘ricoffy’. I am not exactly sure why as I have never been a big coffee drinker. It is now part of my morning routine and I am beginning to appreciate the importance of morning routines. My old routine at school was to drag myself out of bed in the pitch dark, make a bowl of cereal, get back into bed, eat, and then go back to sleep for a few more minutes. Here, I get up fairly easily to a combination of beautiful sun and the squawking of my fan (it makes a horrible noise that I cannot figure out how to get rid of). Make my fake coffee and oatmeal and then sit on the couch to relax for half an hour and read one of the many magazines that my roommate’s mom sends her from Canada (for anyone who wants an entertaining and informative read – check out “The Walrus” – I am in love!). It gives the morning a sense of calm I have never felt before in Canada.

Clarity: I had an extremely productive hour and a half of work before my meeting. I find it much easier to work from home where it is quiet and there is air quality control. I have been working on a training for the volunteers who will be acting as research assistants for my community audit. It has been slow going gathering the needed information, tailoring to this context, formatting, etc. This morning the final details came together and it is now in a neat and organized manual entitled “Research Assistant Training Manual for the Community Audit on Gender-Based Violence Amongst Vulnerable Youth Groups”. It is so satisfying when the final product fits into a nice package.

Excitement: My meeting this morning was with Theatre For A Change. Theatre for a Change takes a unique approach to behaviour change in developing countries. They use theatre and drama techniques to educate and empower groups in society for positive behaviour change. They started in Ghana and had incredible success. They are currently starting in Malawi as their hub for east Africa. They are partnering with the Ministry of Education to train teachers on the behaviour change model to then be incorporated into mainstream curriculum. Their programming focuses specifically on human rights and girls’ rights. They use drama games to teach girls how to use their words, say ‘no’, express their own needs. It has also been highly effective in getting youth to talk about controversial and difficult subjects like HIV/AIDS. I was meeting with them concerning their new project focusing specifically on commercial sex workers. They have had fantastic success with a small pilot group in Lilongwe that through the group work with Theatre for a Change has increased their use of the female condom, learned to more assertively negotiate for safer sex, and most importantly, become hopeful that change is possible in Malawi and that they can help influence the change in people’s attitudes and treatment of sex workers. Inspiring. I am hoping to incorporate whatever groups of sex workers I meet through the audit into Theatre’s program. Please check out their website, it is wonderful.

Overwhelming Frustration: My project is at a stand-still. It is almost exactly half-way through my placement and my midterm report is due in Canada in two weeks. Slight problem is that there is not a whole lot to report. I am still stuck at item one on my seven-item job description. I am not sure where things have gotten off track as there is a long list of challenges in getting this audit off the ground. Perhaps I have not been assertive enough in asking for the help that I need. But I was trying not to harass anyone….. I was supposed to start research assistant training two weeks ago, but then found out that the office is closing for a month (long story, largely due to there not being enough money to pay the staff to stay in the office – so the director is calling it a ‘long vacation’). Therefore, the staff that would be trained to conduct the interviews would not actually be available to do them. So next idea was to find volunteers to do them – but again, I am not in a position to find these volunteers and find myself relying on someone else’s motivation and schedule to find them. Language – still trying to get all of the questionnaires translated into Chichewa – but I feel badly asking my colleagues to do it as they are already over committed on their own projects.
The biggest frustration has been trying to understand how I am supposed to be finding the participants of the audit. I need to find 72 teen mothers, sex workers, disables youth, and female heads of house who are willing to do individual interviews, and then a whole slew of youth to participate in focus groups. I was so confused about how this was supposed to happen: there is a specific protocol for going through the chiefs of each village to get their permission for working there. In Canada, I would simply put up posters, talk to the sex worker collectives, go to youth health centres –etc. I understand how Canada works. I do not understand how Malawi does. All of this came tumbling out to my wonderful co-worker Trish in a fit of frustration and despair, which culminated in the announcement that I would most likely be fired as the least effective Canadian intern in Malawi ever! She was reassuring and most importantly, finally walked me through the steps of how this was actually going to work out. Good news, there is a process of sorts for this type of research audit. There are defined channels through which to access participants. Bad news, at every step, I am relying on someone else to complete their task before being able to move on to the next step, which means that I am at the mercy of other people’s schedules….patience is a virtue in Malawi. I am not very good at it.

Quiet: Back to the rain. I was sitting in the office. Hot as usual. When suddenly I heard pounding on the roof. The rain had begun. A few minutes later the power went out (surprise!). At that point, there was nothing to do but wait it out. The library at the front of the building was quiet as usual. I went and sat on the porch watching the rain. It was almost silent on the street (a very rare occurrence). It was nice and quiet.

Happiness: After the rain slowed I headed for home, hoping to make it in time for my Chichewa lesson. It had been a few days since I have walked through Kawale 2, the neighborhood where my office is. I started walking and was immediately faced with the mud and large puddles – to which my flip-flops were no match. The women standing outside the grain grinding house next to the office were having a great time watching me pick my way through the muck out to the road. Very funny. Every day there are situations where if one does not have a good sense of humour you are screwed! Sometimes there is no way to win as the newbie white girl hanging out in a traditional Malawian neighbourhood.
I hit the road and suddenly a woman was shouting and yelling at me from her house – I looked up just in time to avoid the fallen electricity cable – it was nice to have the warning J The walk was shaping up well, and then soared off the charts when half-way up the road a group of about ten kids suddenly swarmed me. All screaming and laughing. There were all a little damp from the rain, and were clearly having a great time playing outside. A few had very good English and we started chatting. Names exchanged, I asked how school was this morning, tried out a few Chichewa words. I told them I had to go wait for my bus (‘basi” in Chichewa) and the boldest held out his fist – to tap to mine. I of course obliged and then all of the kids had to get in on it. When that novelty wore off, the same boy asked me if he could give me a hug. It was the first time any child here has asked if they could hug me. It was wonderful. I knelt down and got a big squeeze from this boy, and then all of his friends starting giving me hugs, some two at a time. This went on for about five minutes, until my bus came. It was the best I have felt since coming here. I constantly feel so separate from the world that I am living in: due to social class, money, language, location, transport…all I want to do is connect with the people I see everyday. I am hoping that this a sign that things are turning. And the best part; none of the kids asked me for money even once.