I spent a few months living in Switzerland the year after high school and in that time I was introduced to football (that’s soccer to you Canadians) and the die-hard fans that follow each team. I was even in the country for the 2008 Euro championships (which Switzerland co-hosted with Austria)- this was definitely a highlight experience of my time in Switzerland. I watched many football games on TV (and celebrated many victories) but I must confess- I have never been to an actual match. As a result, Malawi Monday number three is:
Go to a Malawi Flames Game.
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Swim/Snorkel/Sail/Kayak in Lake Malawi
Lake Malawi is the third largest lake in Africa; sharing its shore between Mozambique, Tanzania and Malawi. The lake is huge! Stretching 365 miles from North to South and 52 miles across, its dimensions give it the nickname the Calendar Lake. It is thought to have more species of fish than any other freshwater body of water on Earth! The abundance of fish makes the lake an important part of the Malawian economy.
Lake Malawi
The lake boasts miles of sandy beaches and is a popular destination for water sports. Lake Malawi National Park is located at the south end of the lake and is the only park in Malawi dedicated to protecting the aquatic life and habitats in the lake.
Lake Malawi
Kayaking!
I can’t wait!
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My friend Tobi posted this on her Tumblr the other day and it really freaked me out.
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I forgot to mention this in previous posts and it is definitely time to mention it now. The INDEV class of 2012 has created a group called INDEVOURS in order to fundraise for our upcoming placements. These placements are quite costly and we are looking for donations to help offset the cost; our goal is to raise 30 000 dollars! If you would like to support INDEVOURS, you can click here for more information and the link to our online donation page.
We also have several events planned in the upcoming month. If you are in Waterloo on Canada Day, come up to Columbia Lake for the fireworks- INDEVOURS will be selling glowsticks! We are also hosting a kids film festival at the Princess Twin Cinema in Waterloo on July 9th and 10th. There will be lots of fun events for kids so come on down.
And you can always follow our blog, our twitter thing and our Facebook page!
A couple weeks ago there was a stir-up between the President of Malawi and Fergus Cochrane-Dyet, the UK High Commissioner (you can read the story here). The ambassador was asked to pack his bags and was booted out of the country. Cochrane- Dyet brought more than his bags home with him however; he also took back his aid dollars. The UK is Malawi’s largest donor, contributing 20 percent of the aid budget, or the equivalent of about 120 million USD annually (foreign aid accounts for 40 percent of the national budget each year). It is a significant amount of money, especially for a country reliant on aid.
Worse yet, several other donors have threatened to freeze aid if President Bingu wa Mutharika doesn’t get his act together. Mutharika has now drafted a “Zero-Donor Budget” to prove that Malawi can function without donors, but critics say that this is completely unrealistic and are speculating the severe impacts if this budget was put into place.
What sectors will suffer the most due to impending budget cuts? The IRIN states that health care, an area that is significantly funded by donors, will be hit the heaviest. The nation’s supply of anti-retrovirals are covered mostly by foreign aid, and in a country with a prevalence for HIV/AIDS the consequences are dire. In the agriculture sector aid has funded a subsidy program that has significantly improved agricultural production in recent years. Cutting the program will affect the country’s food supply and will impact the economic growth which has been on a steady incline for several years.
I don’t feel I am qualified to comment on President Bingu wa Mutarika and the way he does his job, but being able to swallow pride is an important quality for a leader of any country. Unfortunately, Mutarika and his government officials will not suffer from the budget cuts, but the people of Malawi will. I am a supporter of placing less importance on aid but it needs to be done gradually; the shock of a rapid decrease of financial resources is going to cause a lot of trouble in the future. What do you think the effects of the Zero-Donor Budget will be for Malawi? What area will feel it most?
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A few days ago, I mentioned in a post that I was compiling a list of things I want to do while in Malawi and would post some of them on the blog. Well, today I am introducing Malawi Mondays! Every Monday (for the rest of the semester at least) I will post something I am hoping to accomplish in Malawi. Some will be big, some will be small, and I am posting them in no particular order.
Climb Mount Mulanje.
Located southeast of Blantyre, Mount Mulanje is Malawi’s highest peak at 10,000 feet. The mountain boasts a rich diversity of plant, animal and bird species making it an International Biosphere Reserve. I am definitely going to have to practice my mountain climbing skills before I attempt Mount Mulanje but I am sure the scenery will make it worth the effort.
Also..a fellow classmate who is going to Vietnam for placement just blogged her list of things to do on placement..check it out
In less than three months* I will enter a brand new country with a culture completely different from my own; it is exhilarating just to think about the possibilities of this adventure, but I also have to come face to face with my apprehensions. The impending language barrier I will face when I arrive in Malawi is one of my biggest fears. For me, speaking English while travelling has always been an asset. The world (or the parts I have been to) has become so accustomed to accommodating English speaking tourists it was never hard to get around.
Malawi’s official languages are English and Chichewa but I am told that only a small portion of the population speaks English. I am not expecting it will be too difficult to get around, especially in Lilongwe (the capital) where I am living. I intend to learn how to say general phrases like “Hello my name is Kathleen” and “How do you get to the train station” soon after I arrive, but there is another aspect to a language barrier I am concerned about.
Have you ever had trouble understanding a word when talking to someone whose native tongue isn’t the same as yours, and realize it is because there is no equivalent in your language? That pretty much sums up my fear. Not being able to understand words and nuances that makes each language so beautiful is what frustrates (and terrifies) me. I know it takes time and you can’t learn a language overnight but I tend to get impatient with the process. I want to be able to immerse myself as fully as I can into Malawian life but without knowing the language, it will be hard to do so right off the bat.
Speaking of languages, today I watched a TED talk by Patricia Ryan called “Don’t Insist on English” (check it out here) and she got me thinking about language barriers. Patricia spoke about how English is accepted globally as an equivalent to intelligence, but what are we missing out on by insisting the world speaks English? It is like the non-equivalency of words between two people who don’t have the same native tongue; what are we missing out on by demanding a translation? Not everyone can learn five languages, but shouldn’t we be a bit more lenient with words? We might be able to find new solutions to our problems if we would only embrace the difference between languages instead of trying to mainstreaming them. It’s a valuable lesson that I definitely need to put into practice while on placement.
* I finally got my travel itinerary last week! I leave Toronto on September 7 and arrive in Lilongwe on September 9. 80 days until the adventure begins!
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Have you ever heard of Aelita Andre? Probably not, but you will soon enough. Aelita is an up and coming painter from Australia. Her art sells for thousands of dollars, she just opened her first solo exhibition in New York and her work is being compared to greats like Picasso and Pollack. With these achievements, one expects Aelita Andre to have spent years and years learning her craft and studying with the best painters in the world. However, there is an interesting fact about Aelita that makes her art so intriguing.
Aelita Andre is four years old.
That’s right, four years old. Both of Aelita’s parents are artists, so of course they were delighted when their daughter (at the ripe age of one) crawled onto a canvas and started finger painting. Most parents would be upset about paint on the wall, but Aelita’s parents felt they had a child prodigy on their hands. They promptly took her paintings to a curator in Melbourne and the rest is history.
I spent some time looking at Aelita’s paintings and I admit she has talent for a four year old. I mean, I am not an art expert, but I can definitely tell her paintings were a lot better than my muddled, blobby finger paintings from pre-school.
But she is four years old. Despite the fact that she might be talented, how can you compare her art to the work of Picasso? What happens in five or ten years, when people realize she really isn’t that talented? Our society (or her parents) has put an extreme amount of pressure on this kid to be something great. I think it is super that she is encouraged to do something she loves but isn’t this jumping the gun a bit?
I am still trying to grapple with this idea. What do you think? Do we pressure our children to be overachievers and ultimately set them up for failure? Or should we encourage children to build on a glimmer of talent in child’s play, no matter how young?
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- Unicorns and Dragonfly by Aelita Andre
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- Coral Nebula by Aelita Andre
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- Yellow Thinking Man by Aelita Andre
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Well, I am over halfway done my last semester here at University of Waterloo and things are really starting to get busy with group projects and final papers. I don’t have any final exams this semester (hurrah!), which means that the last two weeks of the semester are going to be deathly. Despite six semesters of university experience under my belt, I have yet to learn the lesson of doing my work early and I just know I have several all-nighters and many pots of coffee yet to come in the next few weeks.
I don’t know if I mentioned this before but this semester about 20 out of 26 people in my cohort is living in the same residence together (where many of us lived together in first year). We have class together every day, we live together, we eat together and we go out together; if we weren’t close before, we are definitely reaching dysfunctional family status by now. I have to admit, as much as I roll my eyes at my classmates, I am going to miss them all next year while we are flung across the planet for placement.
Speaking of placement, the Malawi adventure of 2011 begins in less than 90 days! After three years of waiting, I am finally allowed to get excited about placement! There is so much to do in the next three months; placement is going to be here before I know it. I have started to put together a list of things I want to do while I am on placement, and as I develop the list I will share some of it on my blog. As we get closer to my date of departure, I am sure I will have more exciting updates and I promise to keep you posted.
Katie
North Americans often think we have the best solutions for the South in terms of development; we pour millions of dollars into alleviating hunger through aid and in developing “new and improved” systems of agricultural productions. However, while we impose our ideas on others, we are killing ourselves by all the junk we eat. How can we claim to be capable of helping others when we are part of this extremely unhealthy system?
