I would guess that a lot has gone on ever since I last wrote. I actually haven’t had the luxury of following current news so the only things I know are that the NCHE has done something terrible and that Parliament is now in session. This article would have ideally been about the proceedings in the house we call our parliament. I am pretty sure that there were a couple of blunders worth a paragraph or two there but since I failed to capture that, I will tell you about my week instead.
I, for some reason happen to be writing from some place (which I won’t disclose for security reasons) far from the usual Lunzu.
I have been moving around the southern and eastern parts of the country trying to gather some facts for some international organization called World Vision. I never saw myself acting in the capacity of a data collector, but here we are. It is not so bad, after all. I have actually learnt a couple of things that I wouldn’t have known if I had stayed at home over this period.
I guess I would do you good if I paid you the courtesy of telling you what I am doing in the middle of nowhere. World Vision has worked with communities in the country for 15 years and the mentioned period accounts to a “phase” of some sort for them. The completion of such a period called for an evaluation of the projects and that is where brilliant people like me came into play (yeah, I said it). Here we are, on what was supposed to be a nationwide tour. That is it in a nutshell.
Evaluating the interventions of an organization as big as WV required a huge work force and that invited people from all walks of life. Well. We got together and right from the training some people reminded the rest on how not to act when in a group; unnecessary comments and questions, overdressing, pestering women and all the other bad things all Richie Online readers shouldn’t do. The first week introduced me to some of the greatest fishers of attention that I have ever seen. Some people just want to be noticed wherever they go and they would do anything to achieve that. In this case? Weird dress codes, those comments we talked of, unnecessary questions, jumping into chats and many other things I didn’t observe.
What happened during training wasn’t important, though. The period was just full of lessons of how not to act around people, like I said. The past week, however, has brought me in touch with some realities that I think I will live to keep in memory.
The first thing that I have come in contact with is the extent and magnitude of poverty in the country. I have written a number of articles about poverty but I did not know what it was like out there. The conditions that people are living in out there are not fit for anything human and people should be ashamed when they say that the economy is growing or whatever they say, because the situation on the ground is just not as reported. We have people who lack basic things like food and housing and that makes me feel like I am very privileged to be in the position of complaining about electricity. Words cannot describe it all, but readers, anthu akuvutika. The worst part about it is that the very same people lack the most basic social services and some have to cycle for more than two hours to get to the nearest health center. People are getting into primary schools with o idea of where they will end up after the eight classes. I think it is time we changed the approach to eradicating poverty, and after seeing what I have seen, I am afraid I don’t know what sort of approach we can take.
On a lighter note, interacting with people from different places has been a great experience. I come from a profession where talking to people is a daily thing and some of you who deal with people in your professions know how fun it is to chat with people. There are those times that you go out as a know-it-all only to learn a lot. Point? Never undermine anyone because you never know how much they have to offer to you.
I guess we left the sad stories bit a bit too early, because the week just taught me of how unprofessional people can be. Most organizations and projects have standard operating procedures to ensure a certain standard of the output and it is amazing to learn how people break these rules for no apparent reason at all. I have written about how people shouldn’t work solely for money and while I agree that money is the motivation for most of the work we do out here (except for writing on Richie Online because people don’t get paid for writing here), we should learn to have the aims of the person who hired us at heart. The spirit of workmanship has disappeared from many and it probably one of the most important reasons we are not progressing as a country. People just don’t care about the work, so long s they get the money. So many examples I would have cited, but I guess they are not important. I would probably be talking about the same things you do in your college or workplace, anyway.
This has been a hectic but rather fruitful week. The week has given me a reason to remind you that our country is still economically poor and that you and I need to do something about it. It has also given us all a reason to reflect on workmanship and to work the way we would have wanted someone we hired to work, even when the work we are doing doesn’t directly benefit us. I didn’t mention this but one of the things I have observed is the alarming rate at which the environment is being degraded. It is high time all of us became part of the solution.
By the way, we had trouble in Zomba early this week because people thought we were somehow connected with the mysterious blood markings that were found on the walls of some houses in the Chingale area in Zomba. You just got to love supersitition.
Happy Friday and blessed weekend everyone and a happy birthday to Charles Lipenga.
