Long Overdue Update

So it has been a long time since I last updated this blog. Since my last post a lot has happened, and through it all, getting myself together and writing a post became very difficult.

Soon after the last post tragedy struck in the village. Miriam Mwamba, the head teacher at our nursery school passed away while giving birth to her second child. It was incredibly sudden and absolutely heart wrenching... The baby, at the time, survived, but Miriam had a series of seizures and passed away about 24 hrs after the delivery. After a couple of days there was a funeral held. It was incredibly emotional. Even I, who only knew her for a few months, had a really hard time holding it together. Seeing the first born girl and Alex, the husband, was really difficult. And that day marked, by far, the hardest moment of my Peace Corps service. I have seen a great deal of death and dying in the villages over the last year and a half, but this is as close as it has gotten to me.

After allowing some time for everything to start to settle, and trying to allow all the dust to settle to see what all of us were left with, I started to assess where we were. Miriam was the foundation of the school, and to imagine it continuing without her was almost impossible. Also Alex, who is one of the people who had everything to do with all of the project we were working on at the moment, had moved to Kasama, and will likely never return here for good.

To add even more tragedy to the heartbreaking loss, Alex also lost the child, whom he named after Miriam after her death, to Pneumonia. I could not believe it when he told me. No one should have to go through so much suffering.

As you could imagine for me, or the village for that matter, to rebound from such a loss is incredibly difficult. Maybe because of the death, or possibly partly because of that change in seasons and work loads, I saw a great deal of the motivation to start and maintain projects dwindle. The Nursery school, which was already hurting financially, now had a stigma attached to it, and a lot of the villagers did not want to participate in propping it up.

The stigma I am talking about apparently is pretty deep rooted in a pseudo-belief in Sorcery. any people in the village believed that since Miriam and Alex started the Nursery School, that someone who was jealous put a curse on them and the school. Therefore no one wanted to be a part of it. I also soon found out that this worry about jealousies and whatnot extends to any project that is started that seemingly benefits one or a small group of people. It is really interesting to see how this belief in Sorcery is manifest. People tell me they don't believe in it, but it is very clearly often the explanation used for anything unknown. The headmaster of my school put it best when he said "Oh, I don't believe in Sorcery or any of that stuff... but it exists!"

On top of all of that, we also had some corruption issues with some of the new staff at the clinic. There has always been distrust between Government workers (Clinic, School, Court, Agriculture office) and the people residing in the village (farmers, carpenters, etc.). The Average villager in Mwamba truly believes that those coming from the cities ae just stealing money that is supposed to go towards developing the village. I must say I can't blame them. It is everything they have known up until now. So this adds a whole new dimension to my work. We need to find a way for everyone to work together, and for everyone in the village to feel like they both have a stake, and have some say over projects that are to come.

I think this experience speaks volumes about the difficulties of development work. It took me 7 months in my village to begin to understand some of the complexities and undercurrents in the society I am living in. To believe that a NGO can roll into a village and build a water pump without such an understanding is not only misguided, but also simplifying a complex society in a very insulting way. This is really one of the reasons I believe in the Peace Corps philosophy and paradigm. There are lots of things we can improve upon, but some of the basic tenants in place, I can confidently say, are among the best that currently exists.

So, back to my situation... By the beginning of July, I have become a bit frustrated by the lack of movement in the projects we have set up. I think it really is a combination of many things. Luckily, I have been able to get away for a bit. The first half of July was doing some Peace Corps work in the town close to my village, and the second half was going on Vacation with some family, and also with a friend that came for a couple of weeks.

It gave me some time to get away and regroup. When I get back, there will be a lot of change. I will be moving houses to a proper mud hut, I will be living next to the head man of a nearby village (and hopefully eating with them daily), there should be more clinic staff to work with, and my mind will be renewed. I am trying to look at this as a fresh start, and a time to make a final push, in these next 9 months, to buckle down and guide some improvement to the lives of some of the villagers. I think being equipped with a new and fresh perspective, and learning from all of the past mistakes, will inform a more positive and productive direction.