My first trip to the field

The DAPP truck rattled over dusty red-dirt roads surrounded by fields of savannah grasslands as I traveled with Matimba to the Makafu school in the Munkochi. Matimba is a Programme Officer, in charge of the Child Aid project in Munkochi and we were headed to a community workshop led by Mudsta-Kunda, an area leader in Munkochi. After an hour of travel, we were about 40km away from the town of Kapiri Mposhi and arrived at a village school.

Students dressed in their uniforms were playing in a nearby field and others were studying when we arrived. Matimba and I entered an empty classroom where Mudsta-Kunda was leading a health workshop on maternal health, infant care and HIV/AIDS for 14 members from villages in the Munkochi community.

All village members attending the workshop are Village Action Group coordinators in their communities. They volunteer to work with DAPP to learn about practices that will improve their communities and train others in new practices.

In this workshop all 14 members of the community took several hours from their day—even though it is the harvest season—to learn about child care and maternal health during pregnancy and after birth. Infant mortality here is 182 deaths before the age of five per every 1000 children born and 73 mothers die from complications related to child birth per 1000 children born.

I sat with Matimba on the grass as the community members were being broken into groups. Mudsta-Kunda asked them to list danger signs of an unhealthy baby. Together they identified the risk factors and a representative from each group shared their knowledge with the rest of the group. The groups correctly identified most warning signs and Mudsta-Kunda only added two additional factors that they were unaware of.

I was impressed to see their level of commitment to improving the health in their community. They moved onto discussion of prevention of transmission of HIV from mothers to children and how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS. Each one of these community representatives will lead five Village Action Groups of 20 people organized into committees around agriculture, hygiene, health and child development.

“The village coordinators, they love doing this work for their community” Matimba told me. Matimba, Mudsta-Kunda and I left the school in the afternoon back over the roads as we passed huts with thatched roofs and some with tin roofs not far from the road. The community leaders returned to their villages ready to share the knowledge that will help save mothers’ and children’s lives.

New EWB overseas partner: Development Aid People to People in Zambia

In just 12 days, I’ll be at the air port on my way to Zambia with the Z-Unit (aka. EWB’s 2008 Junior Fellow volunteer team Zambia). The Z-Unit—9 other EWB volunteers and myself—be volunteering in Zambia for 3 ½ months with local organizations.

I’m feeling a whole mix of feelings about this opportunity to learn about human development in Africa. I’m psyched for what I can learn in this time form Zambians about their daily challenges and perspectives on life, but part of me is also a little scared at being confronted with some sad realities.

Zambia is 165^th on the Human Development Index (HDI) and a higher number is not a good thing. This HDI indicator means that the level of literacy, life expectancy, education and health is low in Zambia compared to other countries. Compared to developed countries whose Under 5 Mortality rate is 8 deaths/1000 births or below, for example, the Under 5 Morality rate is 157/1000 live births in Zambia (see the other Zambia stats. at the side).

So far the details of what I’m doing are a little vague, but I’ll try to paint the general picture. I’ll be working with Development Aid People to People in Zambia (DAPP) on one of the Child Aid projects they have running. The organization seems to be fairly large with 19 projects running reaching over 300 000 people and over 50 000 households are involved in the Child Aid projects. It's also a new overseas partner for EWB so I'll be helping uncover more detail on its development approach.

In DAPP’s words the philosophy behind the Child Aid projects is to strengthen “capacity and ability of families to improve their own lives and secure a healthy and sound upbringing for their children. The projects embark upon training of individuals as well as empowering communities to take charge of the development process.”

My work will most likely be classified under the Improved Income or Sustainable Agriculture areas of this project with a women in charge of the daily implementation in one of these areas in Kapiri in central province north of the Capital, Lusaka where people speak Bemba. I might even be involved with research into certain income generating activities such as micro enterprise, bee farming or fish farming. Microfinance is about providing financial services to the poor such as small loans of a few hundred dollars. The poor then use their micro enterprise as a way of generating more sustainable income and paying the loan back. With all the development buzz about microfinance—2005 was even the UN-declared year of microfinance—I’m looking forward to the chance to see how these activities look in practice Zambia.

There are literally hundreds of questions in my head about the on the ground development reality in Zambia. Just a few of the questions that come to my mind now are: What problems are the biggest problems affecting people’s livelihoods in the village I’ll be staying in? How do development workers listen to the needs of the poor? What happens when he poor want luxury consumer goods (ie. TVs, radios etc), not sanitation? Do development workers ever contradict the wants of some members of the community? Who conceives of a project or program and how does the participatory process look like for implementing it? Do non-governmental organizations and policy-makers coordinate their efforts in Zambia?

If anyone has some of their own questions, feel free to share it here and I’ll see if I have the opportunity to answer them. More questions are bound to arise for me as I get to my placement so MAC EWB and everyone else be prepared for stories and insights as this blog unfolds. Shaaleenipo! (Goodbye in Bemba, one of the 72 Zambian languages).