The Importance of Being Earnest
4 years ago
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, July 25, 2010
My intro in Chichewa
Ine dzina langa ndi Mike Dalious.
Ndimachokera ku America.
Mdimagwira ntchito ku Zomba City Council monga mulangizi waza HIV ndi Edzi.
Ndasangalala kukumana ndi inu.
Ndikuphunzira Chichewa pang'ono pang'ono.
Ndikusanglala ku Zomba!
Translation:
My name is Mike Dalious.
I am from America.
I work with the Zomba City Council as a HIV/AIDS advisor.
It is nice to meet you.
I am learning Chichewa little by little.
I am happy to be in Zomba!
I have got the greetings down and have started work on other useful phrases like "palibe vuto" = no problem and "tikupita" = let's go. The pronunciation is similar to Spanish, which is making the learning process a little easier for me. Fortunately, everyone I work with speaks English well, but they all enjoy teaching me new words and especially like hearing me say them with my funny accent.
Ndimachokera ku America.
Mdimagwira ntchito ku Zomba City Council monga mulangizi waza HIV ndi Edzi.
Ndasangalala kukumana ndi inu.
Ndikuphunzira Chichewa pang'ono pang'ono.
Ndikusanglala ku Zomba!
Translation:
My name is Mike Dalious.
I am from America.
I work with the Zomba City Council as a HIV/AIDS advisor.
It is nice to meet you.
I am learning Chichewa little by little.
I am happy to be in Zomba!
I have got the greetings down and have started work on other useful phrases like "palibe vuto" = no problem and "tikupita" = let's go. The pronunciation is similar to Spanish, which is making the learning process a little easier for me. Fortunately, everyone I work with speaks English well, but they all enjoy teaching me new words and especially like hearing me say them with my funny accent.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Settling in
My time in Malawi is off and running. I have been in Zomba for two and a half weeks now. I am starting to put the pieces of my work together at the City Council. Meeting after meeting has me learning more about the work which has already been done and the challenges that lie ahead. Office politics are beginning to emerge as I am being accepted as a colleague. Buying into the lunch cooked at the office for less than a dollar a day is changing people’s perception of me. Today our first department meeting gave me the opportunity to speak to everyone as a group and further define my role as a technical advisor. The work plan which I develop over the next few weeks will guide the rest of my time here. As I write it, eager to tackle all sorts of challenging tasks, I am sure that I am taking on too much. Working from the objectives to the activities to the indicators then outlining a timeframe for the work convinces me of this. It is a balancing act between spreading myself much too thin and having enough work should I run into insurmountable obstacles with one or more tasks. Accomplishing half of what I am outlining would be very satisfying, but I am guaranteed to learn volumes about response coordination and M&E regardless of what I am able to complete.
Outside of work I am also making steady headway. My house is beginning to become a home as I acquire more furniture, continue to clean and fix things. The garden which I started the first weekend I was here is now pushing carrots and the barebones grey water system that I am using has the backyard turning green. Every night my neighbor Kenny, a very smart 12 year old, comes over to play games on my computer and we make further plans for the garden. The neighborhood kids are still astounded by the sight of me on their streets, but I have started to befriend some of the older guys. And there is a sizeable number of expats around who have been cluing me into all the ins and outs of living life in Malawi. They will be nice to have around and provide a stark contrast to my service in Bolivia where I was in a one gringo town.
As this is not my first time living abroad in a developing or underdeveloped country (depending on how you choose to look at it), I am poised with some interesting questions. How much will I allow my previous experiences to define my current situation? How open will I be to being influenced by my surroundings versus how focused I will be on my objectives? And always in the back of my mind, Can I make a career out of this work? Can my desire for social justice and harmony combined with my intrigue for understanding how to navigate the multitude of intertwining relationships and systems in which each new society operates push me to continually uproot myself? Or will the stresses that accompany each move and the cravings, both societal and material, that are left unsatisfied by a nomadic life ultimately usurp the more noble cause? Or will I find a middle ground, a combination of the new and exciting with the enduring and comfortable?
For me there is no better place to be at present to ponder these questions and so many others. Settling into the warm heart of Africa is turning out to be all that I could have hoped for.
Outside of work I am also making steady headway. My house is beginning to become a home as I acquire more furniture, continue to clean and fix things. The garden which I started the first weekend I was here is now pushing carrots and the barebones grey water system that I am using has the backyard turning green. Every night my neighbor Kenny, a very smart 12 year old, comes over to play games on my computer and we make further plans for the garden. The neighborhood kids are still astounded by the sight of me on their streets, but I have started to befriend some of the older guys. And there is a sizeable number of expats around who have been cluing me into all the ins and outs of living life in Malawi. They will be nice to have around and provide a stark contrast to my service in Bolivia where I was in a one gringo town.
As this is not my first time living abroad in a developing or underdeveloped country (depending on how you choose to look at it), I am poised with some interesting questions. How much will I allow my previous experiences to define my current situation? How open will I be to being influenced by my surroundings versus how focused I will be on my objectives? And always in the back of my mind, Can I make a career out of this work? Can my desire for social justice and harmony combined with my intrigue for understanding how to navigate the multitude of intertwining relationships and systems in which each new society operates push me to continually uproot myself? Or will the stresses that accompany each move and the cravings, both societal and material, that are left unsatisfied by a nomadic life ultimately usurp the more noble cause? Or will I find a middle ground, a combination of the new and exciting with the enduring and comfortable?
For me there is no better place to be at present to ponder these questions and so many others. Settling into the warm heart of Africa is turning out to be all that I could have hoped for.
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