Sustainability and a Soft Heart

It always amazes me how just when my feet are steadying on the new ground I tread, that the end lurks nearby, and change is yet again ready to sweep me off my feet.

When I first got to Malawi, I'd constantly asked why, and had to take deliberate time to pause and ponder my actions. I can now say that I'm getting into the swing of things. I'm adapting to the culture, to the TIA(this is africa) moments, and to the heartbreaking realities of nationals.

Within my first weeks here, my heart broke upon hearing that Ninth Grade girls were dropping out of school at an alarming rate of 1/5 due to pregnancies. I paused too long and pondered too much, and the opportunity to run workshops with these girls passed me by as they began their winter vacation. I still wonder if I could have helped even one girl if I had acted sooner.

Then, our day guard told us of his inability to pay for his son's high school tuition. We brainstormed ways to help and were fairly set on an AmazonFresh-type service. Again, I paused and had to ponder this idea. When I could no longer sit still, I talked to the guard and on the fly proposed that his wife cook us dinner twice a week. We pay her a salary that allows exercise books for his 4 youngest children, and hopefully helps in paying the high school tuition as well. However, this service needs work. What will happen when we're gone? I can't quite place a checkmark in the sustainability box.

One evening, we discovered our night guard's son was in the hospital. Asking if he was doing ok, the guard replied that yes, he was ok, but the doctor said that he needs Sobo to boost his sugar levels, and he couldn’t afford to buy it. Sobo is a juice concentrate - a small bottle costs no more than $1CDN. Our guard's son was in the hospital, and he couldn't afford the $1 it would take to make him better. The next day, we gave our guard the largest bottle of Sobo we could find. Pineapple (: Was that a sustainable action? Probably not, but at times like this, compassion triumphed sustainability, and a soft heart triumphed over a strategic action plan.

Lastly, Kathleen and I saw a crippled old woman at the market dragging herself along. We avoided eye contact, and sat on the ground eating our snack. We must have had 8 bags full of groceries, but quickly shook our heads as she reached out her hand, begging. She dragged herself along, and stopped 5m away from us. As we snuck glances at her, we decided to offer her some fruit and cookies.

After 7 weeks and meeting face to face with poverty, injustice, and illness, my heart continues to break with every struggle I hear and to be uplifted with every ray of hope. After 7 weeks, I've learned that I could have all the money in the world, I could have intelligence that revolutionize systems, I could have compassion that cries at the sight of suffering, but if I have not love, I am nothing. What good is money if I don't love the poor I am supporting? What good is intellect if I don't love the beneficiaries of systems change? And what good is compassion if I don't love enough to act on my heartbreak? Nothing. Nothing is anything without love.

Yes, there are times when questions of sustainability arise. These questions should be raised a majority of the time. But also there are times, when before judging and trying to make a strategic move, it's important to simply be human and love. To let love just overwhelm you and do what your heart reveals is the right thing to do. And these moments, moments where you just love, are byfar the sweetest ones (:

10/50 = too many

this morning i went out with the water&sanitation team to a sanitation training. the training is for members of a village in which we recently rehabilitated a well and teaches the importance of hand washing, etc. to avoid fecal-oral diseases such as cholera.

before the training started, we had the chance to speak to headmaster emmanuel of the secondary school which was allowing us the space for training. for the sake of conservation, i asked him how long he'd been headmaster, how many students he had, how many went on to college, etc. this year is his 10th, there are 300 students across the 4 grades, and about 3-5 go on to college every year, he responded. emmanuel went on to disclose his school's problem: young pregnancies. this school year alone, 10/50 first year girls have dropped out due to pregnancies.

10 out of 50.

i stared at him with a dropped jaw and felt shocked, sad and mad all at the same time. i was shocked that this statistic was so large, sad that these girls would never be able to see their dreams come true, mad that they didn't make better decisions for themselves. i looked into the faces of the girls around me and couldn't help but wonder which face would soon disappear from the school due to pregnancy. "they don't value their education" he explained.

endless questions overflowed my brain's capacity: what do these girls dream of? what will it take to decrease these numbers? why does this happen? and most haunting "what should i do? what can i do?"

so i offered to talk to the girls and lead a workshop for them. on what? i have no idea. maybe on leadership, decision-making, realizing dreams.

any advice is most welcome and needed (HE).

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and some fun stuff:
great great weekend (:

friday night; watched jack&the beanstalk at the international school, babysat for the eggerts, watched madagascar(go africa!), and stayed up talking to kathleen until 1am - weee party animals.

saturday: zomba market and bargained (YES, me, bargaining) 3 chitenges for 1500MK, went to thomas' 5th birthday extravaganza, and a bbq/meetup across the road that was full of masters'/phd students researching for the world bank

sunday: went to church in blantyre, split a boneless chicken lunch with kathleen since my order was missed, then no longer available, played volleyball(YES, me, volleyball!) with local volunteers, went to the local hangout to watch the confederations cup final (where this malawian man kept chanting "O-BA-MA O-BA-MA")

discussing ways that fecal waste can make its way to your mouth

paying attention in training, realizing the importance of hand washing

kathleen and i found a baby boy with asian eyes to bring home (:

im hungry.

my first full week in malawi involved 4 hosted dinners in a row, a chichewa lesson, liwonde prayer day, and 2 days out in the field.

on wednesday, i went out with the world food programme(wfp) staff to do food distributions. wfp has a FoodforWork pilot wherein beneficiaries work certain tasks and are paid with food. i asked kathleen what she usually does for lunch when she's out in the field and she said "oh, well we don't really eat lunch when we're in the field". oh...ok. i brought a kitkat bar along with me "just in case".

by 11am, we were at our 2nd distribution centre and the men had to pick up more food from the warehouse. i stayed at the school with another woman. the younger children were already done school and sat in front of me staring. after my failed attempts in conversing in english and chichewa, i decided to organize a game: boys catch girls. this took 15min. for the next 2h, we played any game i could recall from my childhood. 2h later the men return and we proceed with the distributions. by this time, i was feeling a bit lightheaded thanks to the hot village sun - what a change from the mountains. i take a sip of water and feel slightly better. the lightheadedness continued and mixed in with feeling faint. i continued to find comfort in water. i felt like throwing up but had nothing to throw up. at 630pm (almost 12h since breakfast), i finally sit down for a meal.

yes, maybe i was being a bit dramatic but eating 2 meals a day is not the norm for me. yes, i could have eaten the kitkat, but it wasnt something i'd be able to share with my 3 coworkers. no, i was not going to faint, so i just sucked it up. if my coworkers are not eating, i didn't feel that i needed to either. this is culture and i didn't want to be a weak little canadian girl.

the reality is, hunger and poverty is real. it's rampant. and this experience was a lesson in humility and simplicity. i'm learning to be sincere in giving thanks for food rather than just saying the words. most malawians can only afford to eat 1-2 meals a day. most times, the meals are the same: nsima, vegetables, and sometimes a bit of meat. one coworker was asked by a malawian "i heard in canada, you eat something different for 3 days". all she could do was smile and brush it off because in canada, it's very easy to eat something different everyday for a month.

so there you have it. the girl that loves food went struggled through 12h without eating (:

world food programme projects

water & sanitation projects

what are you passionate about?

the latest buzz in the gta has certainly been surrounding the tamil protesters. how 5000 gathered and shut down the gardiner after news that at least 378 civilians had been killed in a safe zone. i support neither the genocide occurring or the unlawful act of the protesters, but am amazed at the action being taken.

i've grown up in the gta and have never heard, nor have ever thought that such a thing could happen. there have been many protests in and around toronto, but never like this.

so i think about my beliefs, and what i would stick up for. if there was a civil war going on in the philippines that i believed was unjust, would i protest? clean water is my soft spot, but would i protest in hopes of getting the government to take action on the 1.1 billion people without clean water? in fact, is there any cause that i would be willing to run onto the gardiner and stop traffic for?

right now, my answers would be: i don't know, i don't know, and i don't know.

this brings me back to the vision of the icare project: getting people to care, and to be passionate about a social issue, any social issue. for some people this issue is buried deep down inside, and for others, you can see it in there eyes. even the people with the hardest hearts surely must care about something. stray animals or runaway teens, refugees or quietness in the community, anything really.

i think the shutdown was fuelled by a desperate passion for the issue the protesters believed in. in a way, this challenges me to be more active and less passive concerning issues i feel strongly about. less blogging, more action. less thinking, more doing.

passion: clean water
action: everything it takes to provide everyone access to clean water and nothing less

what would you do to seek justice for what you truly believe in?

world water day

for the 1.1 billion people in the world that do not have access to clean water
for the 4500 children that will die today due to water-related illnesses
for the women and young girls that walk over 3h a day to get water for their families

world water day

HELP is coming.