Well well well...

Where do I start?

There have been some words going around that I had malaria for the second time, although I did think this at first it ended up being a bowel infection (which I realized I was spelling bowl in so many emails...) that threw me into a clinic and made me miss 4 days of work. The cause, food poisoning. From where? No clue.

Work has been going well as of lately. I have been able to develop some capacity building session for my co workers, they are planned for the end of the month. Before they can happen I need to conduct an assesment of their strengths and weaknesses in the area of market facilitation. This will enable me to understand what kind of workshops to run, I feel it is important to work on the weaknesses but I will try and do one session to improve on their strengths and see how we can leverage the situation with those.

But that was the week of Canada day, what about the week that passed?
Well this week was holidays for most of Zambia. The Monday and Tuesday were national holidays so there was no work but to top it off my co workers decided to an additional two days for other holiday time (or as they referred to it, american holidays....I still have no clue what that means).

This left me with a whole lot of time to explore the city and visit people that I have been meaning to.

I traveled to two weddings on one Saturday which was great. To my surprise, the weddings here are very similar to those in Canada in regards to the ceremony and reception held. The major difference which makes the weddings wayyyyy better here is the choreographed dancing of the wedding parties into and out of each event. I cannot explain it in words but I have a video to show once I return to Canada. They must spend weeks practicing for this.

I visited the university here to meet with the student union in search of development groups here in Zambia. I was lucky to find a group that just started last year at the university called the Millenium Development Goals group. They are working to promote the MDGs around campus through outreach events. I have set up a formal meeting with them on Tuesday to get more information. So if you read this and have any questions for me to ask them either email me at tony.fedec@gmail.com or post it as a comment below.

In one of the photos below you will see a large group a people, that is my friend Kalaba and her family. I met her when I was in South Downs. She told me that she would be moving back to the city to upgrade her schooling so that she could become a teacher and I promised her that I would go visit her when she did. I had a great time meeting all her neices and nephews as well as her many sisters and mother. The experience really showed me how tied people are here to their families, that they will cram 12 people into a house that we would deem fit for 3 just to get by. They do it and they are happy. This is a great example of love here, how much everyone works for one another.

Ah but these are all the things I have been doing. I have trouble expressing how these things make me feel and I do not think I share those inner feelings enough.
As of lately I have been feeling like shit here. It was troubling me why I was never really content with myself in Kitwe and constantly gloomy on the inside. After some serious reflection and lots of writting and talking I got to the root of my problem. Well there are two problems, I will start will the lesser.

Coming here I romantisized the idea of living in a rural area where I would be doing development work and getting a "true" Zambia experience. When learning that I was coming to a urban area I was disapointed but got over it because I was still going to have a unique and amazing time (which I am). But the thoughts still lingered. After almost two months here I was realizing how much of a "easy" life I have been living. I can eat whatever I want, I can do what I want...nothing really feels inaccessible to me. The food does not make me uncomfortable, things don't seem odd anymore.....I feel like I am at home but not at home.

But maybe I just want to struggle all the time? I don't know but I know that feeling comfortable here sucks for me because I expected to feel uncomfortable throughout the whole journey and I am linking this to how urban and western influenced city life is here. I have decided to try and cut out as many city aspects as possible but it is very difficult when acutally living in the city. It would be like trying to breathe only the oxygen in the air when in reality there is so much more you get without having any control over it.

The other, more depressing realization is my desensitization to street poverty. At first it bothered me and I would give out money from time to time but as time goes on my perception of the poor in streets has been thrown into the background just like the tall buildings and shops around town. I just don't recognize them with any emotion. Fuck that sucks to say.

Seeing kids dig through the trash and bed for money, blind elderly people being escorted around by their grandchildren asking for food, women laying in the street asleep but with their handout hoping that someone with give them cash as they sleep so they can wake up with money for food. It makes me wonder why am I working in agriculture in rural areas when there are so many problems in the city. Farmers in those areas, although they are not going GREAT are doing well. They have food, land and water. Sure it is hard fucking work but at least they have it. These poor people have nothing...NOTHING.

I am not saying I do not see the value in my work but I am dying to know the programs set in place for the urban poor. To me, these are the poorest of the poor. The ones without a roof, never knowing what they will eat next. I better understand (I think I do by seeing it...but I really don't understand the true meaning) the saying to only have the shirt on your back. These people only have that. Some don't.

I have been trying to bring these people out into the front of my view and treat them not as the horizon but as a major focus as a walk through town. But then what? So I notice these people...do I just give them all money? Impossible...This is where I am lost. And it KILLS me. I don't know what to do.

But I plan on finding out more.

I hurts to think that every minute you spend looking for answers and ideas to help those who need it, they are still suffering. It is "comforting" to think that maybe your work will eliviate the pain in the future but it is still not stoping that of which is in the present. You can never cut off the pain immediatley, you can only slow it down and hope it will stop in the future.

You could relate it to physics. When a body is moving it contains energy, to stop it you have to remove that energy. The energy is moved through some medium which lets the energy travel through it at some rate. The higher the rate,the faster the energy can move through it. If the rate was infinite then all the energy could pass through it instantaneously...

Let poverty be this body.The this enegy be the causes to poverty.The medium is the people working to end poverty.The rate is the work that is being done.

Which areas do you focus on to increase the end of poverty. Do you make the medium larger (by adding more people) or do you try and increase the rate (the quality of work being done). It one at a higher order than the other (exponential function) or all they all linear (thus incresing at the same rate...).

I don't know.I would like to find out.

I am really learning that poverty sucks. I hate to use that word as it does not convey the awfullness I feel.

I don't want to leave on a low note but I feel as if there is not other way to because a positive one would just be hding the truth.

I hope you enjoyed the physics lesson.

Much love,
Tony

After looking over this I realize how much I wrote. EEsshh (Zambia term for "whoa").