My Kingdom for a connection

Well, I just finished a half hour of typing updating everyone. Ironically as the title shows, I started off with a description of all the internet connection difficulties I have been having. Of course when I hit post the whole thing failed and deleted everything that I had written.
Now I have used up almost all of my lunch hour so will just have to give a quick synopsis.
We have found a place to live which has relieved a lot of stress and we are only two days overdue from when we were supposed to be out on our own. Thankfully WUSC has put us up for a few more days. Janna is looking at furniture as we type this, the cheapest option is to find guys on the side of the road who build it from whatever wood they have access to. We will need to get beds, chairs, tables, a stove, a fridge and anything else that we might need. At first that seemed daunting but after the difficulty getting the house it seems like less of a challenge. Our Regional Director who is based in Botswana is here in Lilongwe and she has mobilized some resources to help us out, as well as taking all the volunteers out for a nice dinner last night.
Minimum wage was raised today and worker groups are quite happy about the spike even though it didn’t get to the level they lobbied for. The new minimum wage is 129.30 Kwachas for urban workers and 95.45 Kwachas for rural workers. On top of this urban workers get a housing allowance of 12 Kwachas / day while rural workers get 10 Kwachas / day. To put this in perspective one Canadian dollar is trading at about 140 Kwachas and the place we found which was the cheapest one we could find that would fit our family plus Heather was 80 000 Kwacha a month. Houses sell for prices like, 7 million Kwacha. Despite these surprising figures it really is quite a hike as the previous minimum wage was 87.50 Kwachas plus a 9 Kwacha housing allowance / day for urban workers and 66.50 plus a 7 Kwacha housing allowance for rural workers. Also, unlike Canada the rural population is far larger than the urban with about 85% of the population falling under the rural worker category.
On Monday and Tuesday I took part in meetings at the World Bank on their proposal for the implementation of weather insurance for crops. It was an interesting two days, especially since the model they are looking at is so different than what we used in Ontario. They are going for a fully private model with no financial inputs from government. As well there will be no coverage for yield loss or income loss. It will be an indexed insurance tied solely to rainfall amounts measured at government rain stations. It the rain is too little or too much a payment will be triggered, but this is where the significant difference comes in. The only access to this insurance will be in a bundled package with private bank loans so the payments will go directly to the bank to come off of the amount owing. In this way it is similar to fire insurance that you might have bundled with your mortgage. The main idea behind it is to try to improve access to credit for farmers as only about 6% are eligible for credit at this point in time and if there are more guarantees for the bank they will be able to expand their lending clientele. The main stumbling block may be the fact that the farmer pays 100% of the fees, and that it may not be optional. It is projected that this might only cost about 4-5% of the loan but that can be a lot when income is so tight.
Anyways it was interesting to observe all the parties, farmers, banks and insurance representatives discuss the various ways to run the program and even little steps can add up to big change eventually.

Beginning the House Hunt

Today will be our fourth day in Malawi. So far things have been good but we are still trying to wrap our heads around the city and getting ourselves set up. We are being put up for two weeks in a guest lodge which is like a house for rent where you get a room and then share the kitchen and common area with other guests. It is in Area 3 of the city which is how Lilongwe is organized, neighbourhoods are given numerical designations. The only trick is that as far as I can tell there is not any clear system for this numbering as Area 3 has Area 9 to one side and Area 37 on the opposite side. As well there is an Area 47 relatively close by but I don’t see most of the other numbers that lead up to 47 on our map. Either they don’t exist or they just don’t make it on our map, I’m not sure. We have these two weeks to find a school for Regan and we also must find a house. As far as schools go we have found one called Mt. Sinai which seems like it will be a good match. The hours of school here are quite different though as she will have to be there at 7:15 a.m. and then is done at 3:30 p.m. We still have to work out the logistics as the work day here goes from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with a one hour lunch. Our first day of work is tomorrow but at first we are allowed to get organized as we have to be out of this guest house and into our own place within two weeks of arriving. We went looking at some houses for rent yesterday as unfortunately we have discovered you are on your own to find your own place which is difficult without transportation and without knowing which areas are acceptable. Thankfully one of the workers from the organization a woman who is also a volunteer is with was able to drive us around. We have been getting some advice that some areas of the city wouldn’t be suitable because of the amount of attention foreigners would attract could be a security risk. The problem is that the few areas we looked at yesterday that are considered good choices for foreign volunteers are quite expensive. As well due to the unique layout of the city we are not sure how to effectively get around without a car yet prices are also high in this area. A used car that is about 15 years old here starts at $5000, something a little out of the range of volunteers. Most foreigners here are getting paid salaries that put them in quite a good position with regard to Malawian costs. What is truly surprising is how expensive Lilongwe is considering it is considered to be one of the ten poorest nations on earth. It is much different than my experience in Brazil where I could get by on a few dollars a day. Gas prices here are more expensive than Canada and buying a new bicycle here still costs at least $125. My suspicion is that there are ways to live more cheaply but it will take a while to learn them. A Canadian couple that we visited yesterday so that we could get a sense of their house versus their monthly rent showed to us that it could be done as there rent was half the rent of the houses we saw and it was really nice. The house we saw were not the best, in fact some were a little depressing due to their poor state of repair. When we ask how to get the deals though we are told that it is hit and miss and takes having connections. That is all well and good, but with only two weeks to find a place we don’t have time to make connections. Janna and I are hoping that the organizations we will be starting with tomorrow might be able to help us. That is what WUSC has stated is how it works but we have also been told that the partner organizations don’t have the resources or time to help us. I guess we will see tomorrow.

In the land of Prester John

Our short layover in Ethiopia was in the capital city, Addis Ababa, a city of about 3 million people. It was founded in by Emperor Menelik in 1887. This relatively young city belies the ancient history of Ethiopia which is unknown by many in the West. The line of emperors of Ethiopia claim direct descent from King Solomon of Old Testament fame, claiming that the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Bible was from Ethiopia and that she bore a son through Solomon. This began an unbroken chain of emperors that only ended in a coup in the 1970’s when Haile Selassie was smothered in his sleep. An interesting aside is that the Ethiopians claim that they hold the Ark of the Covenant (yes, the one Indiana Jones was looking for) in one of their churches in Axum. An interesting book about this is called The Sign and The Seal by Graham Hancock. As well it is most likely Ethiopia that was the site of the fabled Christian African kingdom talked about in Europe since just after the fall of Rome. In fact when Portuguese sailors first sailed into the Indian Ocean part of their mandate from the King of Portugal was to find the Kingdom of Prester John and make an alliance with them. It is quite interesting that Ethiopia was a Christian island surrounded by both Islam and tribal religions cut off from the rest of the Christian world but it managed to survive. Anyways, exploring Ethiopia will have to wait for another trip as our layover was only for about an hour before we left for Malawi.

In the U.A.E.

Well, we have made it to the Republic of Malawi. We flew from Toronto straight to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), which was approximately a twelve hour flight. The flight was one of the most relaxing we have taken before as the service was wonderful and the entertainment options were the best we had ever seen.
Dubai is an interesting city. It is not that old as far as cities in the Middle East go as it was founded as a fishing village in 1830, but it has truly grown from its humble roots. There is the remains of a fort built in 1787 that was built to protect the landward approaches to the town and has also served as a palace and a jail but it is now a museum. Apart from this fort there is not a lot of visible history in Dubai. It is more accurate to describe the city as a monument to shopping malls and I have to admit that there is not much to appeal to me. Everyone keeps asking us if we have been to the Mall of the Emirates which is the largest tourist attraction in Dubai but all we did in our layover was go to an area called Madinat Jumerah to eat on the advice of the tourist booth. I had some authentic Dubai food, which was basically chicken and rice. It was good, but not much different than chicken and rice as you would imagine it. The Dubai "shops" we were sent to was really just a mall disguised as an "old style" outdoor Arabic market, just one that has a Starbucks and sells really expensive Western clothing and is actually inside a climate controlled mall. This area was beside the famous Palm Island that was completely manmade and has a trunk that is all shopping and entertainment areas and the leaves are high priced housing. Dubai was interesting to see but for me the nine hours was probably enough time for me unless I came to spend a large amount of money.

Next we flew to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, a country full of history. More on that soon.

Jules

Pre-Departure Shin-Dig

Our pre-departure get together on January 12, 2008 was a wonderful energizer. It was so great to have so many friends and family come out to show their support for us and our upcoming adventure. I want to truly thank everyone who came out and I hope that you had close to the great time that we had. Everyone was very supportive and the cards, gifts and sentiments written in our book truly brought smiles to our faces. Thank you all for coming.
I need to thank Brian Yasvinski for helping us out by storing one of our king mattress box springs which we just couldn’t fit into our storage containers that we put our stuff into for the year. Packing them was akin to playing Tetris and we did quite well but we just couldn’t fit in the one of the two box springs. (Thanks Brian)
I also want to thank Janna’s parents, Chris and Lisa, for all their support including letting us stay with them for a week and driving us to the airport. (as well as storing the four bags of stuff we had to veto from our repacking due to size and weight constraints) I also want to thank Megan and Paul for their support and my parents for their generous support of our opportunity in Malawi.
Janna and I both feel very lucky to be able to take this opportunity to volunteer in Malawi and are grateful to our employers (and our managers who made it a reality) for the ability to take a leave of absence.
We will give an update as soon as we can once we find some internet access in Malawi, which might take a little bit while we try to get oriented.

Thanks again to everyone,
Jules

You can check out Janna's blog as well

http://canadiansinmalawi.blogspot.com/

Countdown

So for those that aren't aware, on January 14th, we are off to Malawi - we will be in the capital city, Lilongwe and Regan will go to school there. Janna and I are both WUSC volunteers and we are being sponsored to go over through a program called Uniterra.The point of Uniterra is to sponsor skilled volunteers to go overseas and use their skills with various local organizations. We will both be working with different organizations on the ground there - I will be a lobbying and policy analyst with the Farmer's Union of Malawi, a national organization representing the different commodity groups working to improve access to markets and stabilize the industry (agriculture is the primary (and pretty much only)) industry in Malawi. Janna will be working with an agriculture and rural development organization called Cadecom as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist. Monitoring and Evaluation in developing countries is a bit controversial (debate over appropriate indicators etc.) so she is sure to have an interesting time.We would happily welcome visitors while we are there - the country sounds very diverse and we can't wait to get out exploring on weekends! We each get 4 weeks of vacation, and are planning to add on a few weeks of travel after our contracts are done as well.