Failures

“We have had difficulties finishing a well here. Last year we dug a well but the rains started and the well collapsed,” said Chisenga, one of the hygiene promoters I am working with. “This year we started another well. The water technicians have finished digging – about ten meters deep – and the rings have been cast.”


Chisenga has been showing me around some of the villages he works in. Today we are walking through Lunga village. From what I have seen so far, Lunga is making great progress with the project. The densely populated village has a number of families with completed latrines and the young sanitation technician is enthusiastic to finish many more latrines this year.


We were standing at the well when Chisenga said “Oh, there is a latrine just over there. Let’s go and see it.” Chisenga led me around a house and through a small, dried up garden. When I saw how close the latrine was to the well I thought, “Oh crap”. Chisenga chatted to the sanitation technician about the owner of the latrine while I took a few pictures and made some estimations. The latrine was no more than 20 metres from the well. In order to avoid contaminating the well with fecal matter, a well shouldn’t be within 30 meters of a latrine, so this is obviously a problem.

This is a typical day out in the field for me. At least once a day I will observe how the project is not being implemented properly, and possibly doing more harm to the locals. (I say possibly because in the example of Lunga, the water the villagers are using might already be contaminated).

At first the failures made me feel extremely frustrated and sad. I thought that my role in the project was hopeless and I couldn’t help in anyway. Now, I am comfortable with the failure, or at least my role in all of it. My role is to gather lessons about why things aren’t working, and hopefully these lessons will be used to help things in Milenge, or other future projects.

Shark Hunting

The University of Waterloo chapter of EWB is exploring the topics of micro-finance and micro-lending this summer. That is, how do individuals finance their lives when they have little money to begin with? For example, a village woman may ask a bank for a loan to buy yarn and knitting needles. Then she knitts sweaters, sells them at the market, and uses the profit to repay her loan and pay for her childrens' school books. This post explores microfinance in Milenge.

There is no bank in Milenge. So if people need to borrow money, where do they get it? Loan sharks? Family? Neighbours? From my detective work, I don't think people in Milenge borrow money! "You can ask your neighbour to borrow a tomato, but you cannot ask to borrow money," explains my coworker, Eddy Chitalu. "That is because, in Milenge, it is common for someone to have a tomato, but uncommon for someone to have money."

I think people in Milenge only bite off what they can chew. That is, they only do what they can afford to do. A field worker, Maybin Chishimbe, is building an additional house and he told me, "It will only have a dirt floor. I will not use cement. The money to buy cement is the money to pay for my children's schooling." Mr. Chishimbe is making his own bricks in his front yard.

In the villages it is common to live off of subsistence farming (and therefore having money is not very common, as Eddy said). It is difficult to find vegetables or fish for sale in Milenge. The market is much smaller than any of the bustling markets I've seen elsewhere in Zambia. Milenge's market is one table, one restaurant, one bar, and four shops. Sometimes there will be no women selling goods at the one table. Most families either sell their food at the edge of the road by their homes or send their children to sell the food door to door.

I have seen villagers with the following livelihoods which make some money:

• Hammer mill owner - charges a fee for people wanting to grind maize kernels
• Restaurant/Bar/Shop owner
• Farmer - sells vegetables
• Fisherman - sells fish
• Beekeepers - take their honey to Mansa to be sold there
• Carpenters - will make you almost anything you need
• Women brewing beer for sale
  
• Charcoal burners
• Pieceworks such as washing clothes and building bath shelters

And then there are the government workers. In Milenge there are government workers that work in the boma (the "downtown" of Milenge) and that work at the schools and health clinics. I have found the livelihoods of government workers much different from everyone else in Milenge. The government workers have the money to buy food, instead of growing it. They are also the only people in Milenge I have heard talking about taking out a loan. My friend Charity (a secretary for the Ministry of Education in Milenge) explained to me, "If you need a loan, you must travel to Mansa and go to one of the banks there." Mansa is the nearest city, five hours away.

However, every person in Milenge has a different story and their livelihoods are complicated. To finish, I want to introduce you to two women I have become friends with in Milenge. Their names are Esther and Hennedy.

Ester is a preschool teacher here in Milenge, and lives in the Boma. She is 24 years old. She came to Milenge last February after finishing her grade 12 and plans on leaving Milenge in December. She lives with her sister and her sister's family in the boma. It has taken her a long time to finish grade school because her parents separated when she was in grade seven and her mother could not pay for further education. In Zambia, families must pay for their children's schooling after grade seven. After a few years, Ester and her mother started a business. They made table cloths and knitted a lining for the tablecloths. To start the business, Ester gathered some of her sorghum and sold it at the market. "That is how I got my capital,"she told me. She used the profits from this business to finish grade school in Mansa. Now, she is saving money to pay for a three year nursing program. "I wanted to join the army, but my friends talked me out of it." Esther is saving money from working as a teacher and selling "talk time" (pay as you go cell phone minutes) with a small profit. However, this will take time. One year at the nursing school costs 1,000,000 Kwacha and she needs to improve her mark in grade 12 science before the school will accept her. Esther says she would also like to start a restaurant in Mansa some day.

Hennedy lives in one of the most rural parts of Milenge: Mumbotuta ward. She is 21 and is a single mother of a five month old baby, Steward. I lived with Hennedy and her mother for five days. The family lives off of subsistence farming - they eat what they grow and do not buy their food. Every morning, Hennedy's mother and neighbours would go out in the field to gather food and return before lunch to start preparing the meal. "There is no cooking oil in Mumbotuta," Hennedy explained to me. So when the family ate chicken, the chicken was boiled, not fried. I think the only income Hennedy has is from her work with the WaterAid project. She is a hygiene promoter and makes 130,000 Kwacha per month. Hennedy spends that money on repairing the bicycle Water Aid gave her, clothes, and special food. "I like to buy some maize mealy meal. I cannot grow it because I cannot afford fertilizer." The family makes their own mealy meal from sorghum, which does not require fertilizer.

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Glossary:

• boma: the "downtown" of Milenge
• livelihood: what a person does to make a living. As a Canadian example, my mother's livelihood is teaching people how to play the violin. She uses the money her students pay her for food, paying bills, etc.
• subsistence farming: a household eats what they grow