USAID

The week of July 12th I started working with USAID. I am super interested in this agency and feel so lucky that I had the chance to do some work for them and get to know staff members and ask millions of questions. Curt, the Mission Director, is amazing. He has had a really impressive and accomplished career and everyone really respects him. Also, every time I have talked to him I have been really impressed with how intelligent and insightful he is. The kind of person I feel as if I could just stand next to long enough maybe some of his knowledge might just accidently drift into my head.

Anyway I met with him and he asked me to do research on options for country-owned sustainable health financing in Malawi, with a specific focus on HIV/AIDS treatment. I don’t have any education in public health, however I am fairly comfortable with policy research so I agreed (plus I am really intimidated by him so I probably would have said yes to any topic).

I also met with Patrick, the Program Officer, who I have met at lots of social events previously. Patrick is really “cool” and fun and smart. It was weird being with him in such a professional setting and seeing how dynamics change in the office. He asked me to go on site visits with Archangel (yes, that is a guy’s real name) as he did data quality assessments. My role would be to use the USAID standard checklist to evaluate how the programs we visited incorporated gender.

Both of these projects turned out to be awesome. I got to visit projects from several big-time NGOs that are working in Malawi. I loved asking questions about gender, which sparked really interesting conversations about at what point is it appropriate to challenge local culture to promote gender equity.

I also really got into the research that Curt gave me. I contacted USAID staff in several different countries in Africa asking their opinion about health financing. I also found a lot of interesting methods that are being used to financing health throughout the continent. I worked on this project for 3 weeks and finally presented it to Curt the week of July 26th.

When I walked into Curt’s office for our meeting I was surprised to see that he had printed off the paper I sent him and had clearly read the whole thing and had taken notes in the margins. We had a wonderful conversation and Curt posed some really insightful questions about the whole issue. He also told me about when he used to work in Rwanda, and we talked a little about the research I had done on Rwanda for my senior capstone. I felt really lucky to have been able to talk to someone so experienced about the development topics that I am so passionate about. Anyway at the end of our conversation he asked me to present my research to a group of mission employees on August 11th. I am so excited and twice as nervous!

Zambia

We didn’t have work the 5th or 6th of July. The US Embassy took July 5th off because July 4th landed on a Sunday, and July 6th is Malawi’s Independence Day, so we take that off too. Molly and I used the short week as an excuse to go on safari in Zambia

To be honest I wasn’t exactly out-of-my-mind excited about it. First of all it was kind of expensive. Second, I went on an amazing safari a couple years ago in the Serengeti and felt as though there was no way that this safari could top it. Third, while I think animals look cool I don’t think I get the same enjoyment out of staring at them as some people do. Fourth, safaris mean sitting in cars for a long time and not really moving for several days. Fifth, there is something kind of stereotypical and colonial about putting on khakis, hanging out with a bunch of white people, and paying Africans to point out their homeland to me.

Anyway, all that said it was a pretty cool experience. The first night I woke up and looked out my tent to see a hippo probably less than two feet from my head. It was just chillin’ and eating grass right next to my tent. I woke up about an hour later to see an elephant and its baby stroll by.

Independence Days

This weekend was full of parties. On Friday night there was an official party at the Ambassador’s house for July 4th. Important people in the Malawian government, other embassies, and big NGOs came. It was very glamorous and people brought around endless trays of wine and finger foods. I had a good time talking to a very diverse group of people. When I finally left the Ambassador’s house I went to a bar appropriately named Diplomats. It was Molly (my roommate), Doug (Facilities Management Officer, State), Youseff (USAID), Jason (Peace Corp staff), and I. Molly and Doug left early but the rest of us stayed and watched Ghana vs. Uruguay. The bar was packed with people. Everyone was supporting Ghana, hoping that an African team would prevail. However, as you know, Ghana lost and the whole crowd let out groan. I think the night might have turned out more lively had Ghana won. After the game we when to a night club and danced and danced and danced.

The next day we had the July 4th party for all Americans in Malawi. Again it was held at the Ambassador’s house. It was full of US Mission people, Peace Corp volunteers, and the occasional cluster of religious missionaries and NGO staff. It was a fun family-friendly event with face painting and cheeseburgers and a proliferation of American flags. After cleaning up the party a small group of State Department people stayed and drank and talked with the Ambassador. It was a nice atmosphere and really fun to have more in-depth conversations with these people and hear stories from their past posts.

Northern Malawi

The week of June 28 I traveled to Northern Malawi to review projects that have sent in applications for the Ambassador’s Self Help fund. This fund supports community initiatives that are aimed at increasing social or economic welfare. I am traveling with an FSN (foreign service national) named Victoria who is the project manager for the Self Help program.

I woke up Sunday morning at my house in Lilongwe and went jogging through the neighborhood and down this lovely dirt path that has a great view of the surrounding mountains. Victoria and Kenan (the driver) arrived to pick me up. We drove for almost an hour when I remembered that I forgot my wallet with all my money and my bank card. So we turned around, picked up my wallet, and set out again. We drove for about 4.5 hours and reached Mzuzu. There we had a quick pit stop and I bought the largest avocado I have ever seen. Another couple hours later we reached Karonga where we will be staying for two nights.

The next morning we drove from over two hours (mostly on a thin and pot-holed dirt road) to reach the first site. The road was gorgeous and twisted past Lake Malawi and up florescent green mountains. We saw a small twister on the lake that shot down from a heavy dark cloud. The car jostled from rut to rut. We saw groups of baboons clustered on the side of the road.

The site was a primary school on the very top of one of the mountains. The vista was beautiful and displayed the lake on one side and rolling mountains covered in crops wrapped around to form the rest of the view. The community had built the school because the next school was so far away that many children weren’t attending school. There were two dilapidated, dirt floor, thatched-roofed, brick structures that the students were currently learning in. There were only a couple makeshift wood benches enough for a few students to sit on. The community wanted Self Help funds to erect better school blocks that could keep the kids dry during rainy season and create a better environment for them to learn.

We visited many projects throughout the week. Several more for school blocks. One of the communities that proposed a school block project had 8 children hit by cars in the last couple years. A closer primary school would prevent them from having to walk so far on the busy road. Another project for school blocks was at a school for deaf children. It was a really interesting school that took kids from all over the country, taught them language skills, and worked to ready them for secondary school. Before we left they preformed a dance for us. We also visited project proposals for a family planning and maternal health clinic, HIV/AIDS meeting house, library, and water system. On Thursday I took the bus home from Mzuzu because I needed to be in Lilongwe for the embassy’s July 4th celebrations. Victoria and Kennan stayed because there were still more sites to visit.