Reflections

It’s hard to believe my placement is half over. However, that is the case, I’ve just come back from our mid placement retreat on Lake Kariba in southern Zambia. Lake Kariba is absolutely amazing... it’s the second largest man-made lake in the world, and is held back by an incredibly large dam (the Kariba Dam) which was once the largest dam in the world. I don’t have the exact statistic, but much of Zambia gets its power from the dam.

However, on the flip side of things, when it was built over 60,000 people lost their homes due to flooding. Additionally, over 100 billion litres of water is lost from the lake to evaporation every day. I’m not going to try to make an ethical pronouncement on the situation, but can only selfishly say that I really enjoyed visiting the lake and having some time to relax and reflect half-way through my placement.

Kariba Dam (for scale, the gates in the middle are 9mx8m each)

Yours truly on the dam.

Taking the amazing opportunity of having 16 EWB volunteers together in one place, our whole retreat was jam packed with workshops and exercises designed to make us think about how are placement and work are going, and what we can do to be more effective in the short time we have left here.

Rather than attempting to catalogue everything we did, I thought instead I’d share one of the most useful exercises and what I got out of it.

Not a bad place for a workshop.

On the second day of the retreat, we split up into focus groups, where each volunteer had a chance to lay out a problem they were having, and get advice on it from a large group of very intelligent people. The problem I had was a pretty big one: basically I felt like none of the things that I’m learning here were really relevant beyond my own small picture Zambian lifestyle. The problem is that everything I do is coloured by an amazing number of biases. Let me try to explain what some of these are:

1. Who I interact with.
A few weeks ago I was reading what I consider to be one of the better books on development ever written, and came across a pretty simply but chilling statement: "Those who outsiders meet and interact with are likely to be middle-aged or youths, male from dominant groups, and economically better off." (Whose Reality Counts, p 183). Following reading this I immediately made a list of the 15 people I most often interact with; the results came back with 13 men, and 2 women, all of whom were middle-aged or youths, and all of whom were relatively economically better off.

Further, there's the problem of language. It's fast becoming obvious that my Bemba skills are not going to progress much beyond where they are now (the ability to order food and shop for things in the market) before I leave. As such, I don't see myself having many deep conversations with people that I meet unless they speak English. The problem with this is that English here is nobody's first language. This means that anyone I can realistically interact with is well educated, and therefore comes form a relatively better off backround.

2. Where I've been.
The only two areas in which I've spent much time have been Lusaka (the Capital city), and the Copperbelt (the most highly developed area of the country), where Mpongwe is located. As such, fellow volunteers (the ones who have been here longer) estimate that I have seen only the most developed 10% of Zambia in terms of infrastructure.

Also, Mpongwe is only one community. There could be several just down the road that are completely different. However, without being able to spend equal amounts of time in each, there's really no way for me to tell.

3. When I'm here.

Right now in Zambia it's the dry season. Everyone has just finished their harvest, and supplies of both food and money are high. The dirt roards are easy to navigate on foot, bicycle, or car, and malaria and other diseases are not highly prevalent due to the lack of mosquito breeding. Essentially, I'm seeing the country only at its most prosperous and poverty-free time of year.

4. Who I am.

The fact that I'm white, that I'm a westerner, and that I've been raised and educated in Canada, has a phenomenally strong effect on my interactions with people here. Not only does it change how people view me, it also means that I'm surely misinterpreting a lot of what I see and hear around me. I can't escape the cultural lens through which I view everything.

Problem

These few things simply present a basic list of some of the many biases that exist in how I see Zambia. The risk, in my view, is that I will return to Canada with nothing relevant to say about poverty or development beyond the tiny little world that I inhabit here in Zambia. Even worse, I probably won't come close to understanding even this community. While I don't have all the answers, I will now share some of the advice given to me by my amazingly intelligent and useful fellow volunteers, as well as some of my own thoughts.

Solutions

Since I can't get away from the fact that these biases exist, I have to do my best to work through them. This, to me, is a better alternative than simply accepting them, and definitely better than not being aware of them at all. Luckily, my EWB Retreat friends were there to help.

In terms of validating my experience here, one of the most useful pieces of advice I received was also the first: don't think about large concrete things I've learned since I've been here, instead think about how I'll be different when I leave, and how I'll be better able to contribute to my EWB chapter in Canada. I like this because it essentially gives me a continued good reason me to be here, since I won't leave with a full understanding of poverty in Zambia.

The next good one, and something that I'm already trying, is to act on the spots that are controllable. I am actively trying to interact more with women in my community, and soon I am even moving to a new community (with a certain farmer named Mr. Silumbu) to get a more balanced view of life here. Also, at all times I am trying at all times to challenge my westerner viewpoint and to become more in tune with life in Zambia.

However, I can't change everything. I am here during the dry season; that is a fact. Also, I can only interact fluently in English (not much French here), which again can't be changed. Finally, there's not really enough time to see much of Zambia beyond the area I'm in. Still, there's no harm in trying to mitigate what I can mitigate.

Also, I've been advised that since it's impossible to know something about Zambia, poverty, or development with 100% certainty, no matter how much I try, than it's not wrong for me to make certain assumptions about what I've learned that might apply to the bigger picture. Also, I can cross-reference opinions and assumptions I have with other volunteers and people I meet in Zambia to get a clearer idea of what's accurate and what's not.

Finally, the most important thing I've learned is that understanding that I have biases is the most important thing I've learned. It seems other volunteers (not from EWB, of course) and development professionals frequently forget that assumptions based on limited experience and information don't apply universally to the bigger picture, and a lot of bad decisions and inaccurate statements have been made because of this. At least now, I'm less likely to fall into that trap.

For now, I'll just leave it at that, and finish off with a great list of advice that EWB long term volunteer Chad Hamre came up with. They aren't all applicable to me (it's a little late in my placement for some of them), but they're all definitely applicable to someone. Anyone thinking of volunteering overseas in the future, take note:

1. Trust learning from conversations with others, not just your own hands on experiences.
2. Get a translator, get out in the field, and try to do a study related to your project.
3. Hypothesize the effects of biases to better account for them.
4. Prioritize your learning; you can't learn everything, so focus the most on what you want to learn the most.
5. Understanding that there ARE biases is the most important thing.
6. Do an exchange weekend (visit another area or community).
7. Become an EWB long-term volunteer to get a more complete experience.

Anyway, I think I'll leave it at that for now. I'm moving to my new community in a few days, so expect some new pictures and stories in a few weeks about where I'll be living. It'll be sad to say goodbye to my current home, but nice to get a fresh perspective as well.

Take care everyone, wherever you are. I hope reading this was useful for someone.

Sunset on Lake Kariba