Many of you have been wondering what’s been happening to my blog updates recently. I think the last time I wrote to you I was recovering from a weekend of lions, hippos and elephants. Well you be glad to hear that all is well in Chipata, Zambia and that yes I’m still alive.
In fact it’s been a hectic month here in my new home town. The month has been taken up with a Bob Marley memorial concert in Chipata at the weekend (which was a first in the Eastern Province). It was a great 2 day event, which was organised by a local Rastafarian band called The Radicals who have been working hard in the community of Chipata to encourage music, youths and culture to flourish in a town with so much untapped talent.
It’s also been a busy few weeks with lots of leaving parties for some of the VSO volunteers who have just recently finished their placements. All a bit sad really as you get really attached to the VSO Volunteer community here and when one of them leaves the nest, they leave a little hole. I think the only good thing about a VSO volunteer leaving the country is the copious amounts of leaving parties, which involve the obligatory wearing of the African shirt or dress whilst trying to dance like a Zambian and trying to keep a straight face and a dry eye through all the long speeches and of course you can’t have just one leaving do, you have to have a few in the lead up to the big day, so as you can imagine my social diary has been hectic! Esther, Tina and Aydel, if you’re reading this then I wish you all the best – Chipata is missing you!
It’s been all go on the work front too. Last month, 3 of my colleagues from Dzithandizeni Nutrition Group attended a 5 day workshop in the capital city of Lusaka where they received training from various guest speakers in how to ‘mobilise’ resources. As a resource mobilisation advisor myself (fundraiser to be specific), I was pleased to learn that a lot of the content at the workshop was focused around self-financing and not relying purely on external donors to fund your community development programmes. In fact there has been a lot of talk in the Development world about not relying on big foreign donor money as it’s not ‘sustainable’ and doesn’t create entrepreneurship amongst the community. This argument is strongly presented in the controversial book “Dead Aid”, which is a Zambian writer’s plea to the masses that Aid should be abolished, as it’s argued that Aid causes governments in developing countries to be dependant on the North and therefore less accountable to its people - opening up the way for corruption, unemployment and a lack of growth.
Despite some of the controversial arguments, I would agree with the writer that a step towards any situation which doesn’t leave you dormant after the money has dried up can only be a good thing. I think through external donor funding there have been some great steps towards development and some big funders have helped a lot of people, but when you go into the same communities again and they are still complaining of hunger it makes you wonder if handing out wads of cash really is a step towards ‘development’.
It’s great to know that Dzithandizeni are looking forward to also creating their own businesses so that they can start to earn their own money and provide locals with an opportunity to earn some money too. Although I can imagine it’s very hard to change the mindsets of people who are used to waiting for the next big donor in town to get out the cheque book. If the donor is keen to flash the cash, then who would blame them for reaching out to receive. We’ll wait and see.
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