Conclusion

This will be my last official post on this blog. I am no longer "in Zambia", I am in Canada; currently sitting in the basement of my parent's house in Ottawa, soon to make the transition back to Fredericton and back to my university life style.

My time in Zambia is over, but my placement is not. The Junior Fellowship Program is a 18 month commitment: 6 months of in Canada training after selection, 4 months of overseas work, and 8 months of advocacy, leadership, and experience sharing when back in Canada. This is the phase of my placement I'm entering now, and I'm pretty excited.

My transition from Zambia to Canada was pretty smooth. The issues I discussed in my post "Going Home" have not gone away, but they have been mitigated by the cushioning environment of EWB's 3 day return session in Toronto (mainly good because of getting to spend time with all the other amazing people in my program), and then things have been made even better by the excellent welcome I've received from my family and friends. Finally, the thing that is eternally keeping me from feeling too down about things is the certainty I feel that I will be back in Zambia/Africa; the how and when of it still needs to be worked out, but the feeling is there and that is good enough for now.

As I said above, I am now squarely entering the "in Canada" phase of my placement. As such, I was asked by EWB to develop in my final report an outline of the some of the messages I wish to convey from my placement to people back home. In the end I came up with four, which I will now quote word for word from my report. (Note that this report was being written to my partner, OPPAZ, in Zambia, and as such was meant for a Zambian audience).

Messages for Canada (written August 20th, 2007 in EWB final report for OPPAZ)

1. Poverty exists. Not many people in Canada fully realize that there is a world outside Canada. Additionally many people do not understand that the challenges facing people at the bottom of the economic ladder in a country like Zambia are far different form those Canadians deal with on a daily basis. There are serious problems and injustics that exist in the world, and I believe it's important for everyone in the world to be able to join together to address these problems as best we can. However, the first step is for people to be aware; it is one of my main goals to foster this awareness in as many people as I can.

2. Poverty is not simple. Many people in Canada simply see poverty as a lack of material possessions or financial wellbeing. This, I believe, is not the case. I made a statement earlier in this report that "not everyone who isn't rich is poor" and I firmly believe it. There are many aspects of life in Zambia that are vastly superior to the Canadian way of life. There are also many challenges and problems that need to be addressed. I think it's important for Canadians to be able to differentiate between the positive and the negative aspects of life in a developing country, and not see poverty as a universal condition.

3. Western assistance can help. Once people are aware about poverty, I believe it's important for Canadians, Zambians, and people from other countries areound the world, to begin working hand in hand, as equals, to help vulnerable people everywhere make improvements in their own lives. A lot of people in Canada are cynical about foreign aid; they believe it's a waste of money and only supports corruption, or they believe that it is so inefficient as to make it not worthwhile. While this is true in some cases, it is certainly not true in every case, and it doesn't need to be true in any case. We can make foreign assistance and foreign partnerships work for the benefit of everyone, and I believe that that is something which Canadians need to begin making a strong effort to do.

4. Western assistance can harm. Too many people volunteer in a country like Zambia believing that because their heart is in the right place, that everything they do will be unequivocally good. As I have discussed in the above sections, I do not believe this is the case. I think it's important for future Canadian overseas volunteers to begin thinking about both the positive and negative outcomes of their planned actions, and to begin adjusting those actions accordingly.

(end quoted section)

I felt at the time that these messages were simple enough to be able to discuss with just about anyone in Canada, but complex enough to also make them worthwhile for people to hear. I hope they have done the trick. I will now elaborate on one of them, which I feel I have failed to address adequately in this blog.

Poverty Exists

I have deliberately shied away from really mentioning poverty on this blog. I don't want to be one more pessimistic voice telling hopeless tales about Africa. Of course, I have seen so much hope in Zambia that to be that voice would have been impossible. However, by trying to hide poverty completely, I don't think I'm helping anyone there either. For this reason, I will tell one story and let people extrapolate it to the big picture however they want to.

On my second last day in Mpongwe, I went at lunch with my friend Elijah ("Mr. Daka in previous posts) to go get some food and play a game of pool. We were playing at a pool table outside a local bar, when I saw my friend Chris, who previously we had hired as an electrician to work on the dryer.

Excited to get the chance to say a proper goodbye to him, I went over and asked him how he was. "I'm not good" he replied. I asked him what was the matter. "You remember how I told you my baby was in the hospital?". I answered yes, even though I don't think he ever actually told me. Either way, whether or not I knew about the hospitalization was meaningless, because it wouldn't change what he said next: "My baby is dead".

Chris is a nice man, and a brilliant electrician. Hard working and industrious, in Canada he would be squarely in the middle class, with a nice house, a car, a happy family, and almost certaintly a living, breathing baby who he could watch grown up and develop the same way my parents have watched me. Instead, there he was, looking sad, lost, dispirited. Why did his kid, like so many in Zambia, have to die, when in Canada we almost surely have all the resources which could have let the child live.

I hesitated to tell this story. Even now I feel guilty about it. I feel like I'm using Chris, like I'm using my friend and his pain to make a point on this blog, to get people's attention, to attempt to make people feel what its like to live outside of the comfortable cushion that is Canada. However, it's the truth. 1 in 10 children die in Zambia before the age of 5. For the other 9 who survive, the life expectancy is less than 40 years. All of these people, all of these deaths, have faces connected to them, have stories connected to them. They are all someone's friend, someone's family, someone's child. They all matter. It's time that people start acting like they matter.

What you can do.

If you want to change the world, please don't rush overseas and try to make a difference. Stop, think, learn, think some more, and if you're still sure you want to go, and can articulate why you want to go, what you're trying to do, and what are the possible positive and negative outcomes and impacts from your planned actions, then please go and I'd say Zambia/Africa is lucky to have you.

So what else can people do? Really, infinite things. If you want to volunteer overseas, then put a little thought into it and you'll probably end up doing some really good work. If you want to work in Canada, then join an EWB chapter, or go to a protest, or write a letter to your MP, or read a book on development, or donate to a charity, or basically do anything that you feel is worthwhile (here are some more ideas). I will, in about a week, add my own page of links to this blog for people who want to learn more. The fight against poverty won't be over quickly, and so sustained passionate action on many fronts is what's needed. If everyone plays their part then maybe in 20 years stories like the one I told about my friend in Zambia will be firmly in the past.

Conclusions

I hope that anyone who has read this far has gained something from this blog, and therefore from my time overseas. I intend this blog to be in some small way a resource for future volunteers (EWB and other) and so will probably keep adding things to it as I sort through my pictures and notes from the summer. However, this is my last official post and will be the official conclusion of the blog. Comments are very much appreciated (I'm really curious who's been reading this), but silence is cool too. I've enjoyed writing in this blog for the last four months; it's been really nice to have a chance to share some experiences.

Thanks so much for everyone who has read this,

Owen

P.S. for all those UNB'ers, keep your eyes peeled to http://www.unb.ewb.ca/ for the fall's activities.

P.P.S. I added a new (old) post, labeled "Post 6: A Day in the Life". Check it out if you want.