Supporting Burma and China

Dear friends,

I know that some of you may be sitting at home anxiously wondering how some of the world’s leaders will respond to the disasters taken place in Asia, while wondering how you can assist yourself. I’ve thought a bit about how we can best support the displaced by following the news and donating to organizations that can place your funds most appropriately:

www.irawaddy.org (an independent publication of Burma and southeast Asia)
www.chinadaily.com.cn
(I don’t know how reliable these sites are but you’d get more information about the countries from their perspectives)

www.unicef.org (based on what I’ve seen in Malawi, they seem to give to established institutions, i.e. schools, health centers, and sometimes local organizations but doesn’t monitor the distribution of funds)

www.wfp.org (same as unicef, they seem to only give to established institutions but not much to local organizations)

www.redcross.org (it seems that Red Cross has the most leverage in terms of getting access and support to refugee camps)

If you would like to support other NGOs, I highly encourage you to go to www.charitynavigator.org and evaluate their ratings and effectiveness.

I’ve already gone ahead and did some research for some NGOs within China and Burma you can support from the ground. You can click on the link and view the ratings and websites of each NGO. These are the best NGOs (four stars) suggested by Charity Navigator:

CHINA:
· ACCION International
· Islamic Relief USA
· Mercy Corps
· Operation Blessing International
· PATH
· Project HOPE
· World Relief
· Kids Alive International
· Global Volunteers
· Doctors of the World-USA
· Half the Sky Foundation
· Church World Service
· Himalayan Cataract Project
· ADRA
· International Institute of Rural Reconstruction, U.S. Office
· China Care Foundation

BURMA:
· Action Against Hunger-USA
· Save the Children
· World Vision
· Kids Alive International
· Church World Service
· ADRA

And last but not least, sometimes the only and best thing to do is to pray which would never go unheard.

I hope this helps to make giving less stressful!

Blessings,
Elaine

Images of My Life in Malawi

Finally! Some pictures of my life in Malawi! Enjoy!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26853368@N04/

A Hiatus from Malawi

After 11 months in Malawi, I took a vacation with my family. We spent the first few days in Hong Kong before jetting off to Egypt. I would describe Egypt in one word: awesome! It was such a privilege to see a glimpse of the ancient life in Egypt. The moment we stepped off the plane we immediately started our tour. What better way to start than seeing the Giza pyramid and the sphinx? Our next stop was at the Cairo museum where most of King Tut’s 5,000-year-old relics remained on display, from the coffins that contained his internal organs to his golden mask. I practically came face to face with the man… because his mask was supposed to be an exact replica of his face so that his ka (spirit) would recognize him in the afterlife. Even though we spent our first night riding in a train from Cairo to Aswan, our accommodations on the Nile cruise was spectacular. During our 4-day journey on the Nile, we stopped at various ancient temples to admire the ruins and hieroglyphs. The Valley of Kings, where all the ancient rulers including King Tut were buried, was yet another site to be enjoyed. The stroll through the underground tunnels was hot and sweaty, but to have my nose almost touching the walls of pictographs was well worth it. Afterwards, we spent one night at the Red Sea… which wasn’t actually red. The water’s as clear and beautiful as it can be. Then, we went to visit the most popular temples in Luxor – Karnak being the largest in all of Egypt. Finally, we returned to Cairo and visited a mastaba, the original and oldest pyramid (believe it or not, the originals were ziggurats). It’s such a shame that so much of Egypt’s history has been damaged by the Crusades, colonization, globalization, but they’ve done more to preserve their culture and history than other countries have. I’d say the highlights were seeing these ancient relics that mystified the world for ages and watching the stories come alive on the walls. I could only try to imagine what life was like 5,000 years ago…

Then it was off to Singapore for 2 days. The Merlion is best known for its food, reflecting the conglomeration of Indian, Malay, and Chinese roots.

I’m nearing the end of my vacation. It has been such a pleasure to be able to eat Chinese food again… to drink soy milk that I don’t have to make from scratch… to be able to show my knees without worrying that others might think me promiscuous… to actually feel like I can breathe again without people gawking at me all the time… It’s nice to be able to step out of that environment and really appreciate the things that are taken for granted. The obvious is being able to eat the food I’ve grown up with all my life (not McDonald’s... I barely touched that stuff save for a few hashbrowns). For one thing, it feels nice to take hot showers… not pour cups of scorching hot water on myself when it’s 20 degrees out (in the winter). And actually use toilets that flush (the hole in the ground is not as bad as it might seem but it is when someone else uses your toilet and misses the hole). And I was finally able to catch up with all the world news… instead of receiving my Newsweeks a month or two late.

It’s hard to believe that I have another year left in Malawi without stepping foot on U.S. ground. I know it’ll fly by fast, because I have so much planned for this year. I have these to look forward to:
-my daily task of administering vitamins and recording children’s weights
-a proposal to USAID for building a shelter next to my health center, so that we can have shelter during hot and rainy seasons while weighing children and to provide a recreational center for youths
-providing technical assistance to a local community-based organization with HIV/AIDS, health, and income-generating activities
-my weekly meetings with our Youth Friendly Health Service Club and its committee
-teaching Life Skills (i.e., self-esteem, goal planning, relationships, communication skills) to secondary students
-working with the Debate Club and facilitating a tournament with 5 other debate clubs in our district
-introducing and implementing the Positive Deviance Hearth program to malnourished children and their mothers
-implementing and evaluating my nutrition program with the health workers and underweight/malnourished children
-facilitating the Sisters’ Club (a mentorship program) for at-risk primary girls
-organizing and implementing recreational activities at Camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World)
-cooing at cute little babies J

That’s it for now… I’ll just end this post with a link to view some pictures from my trip to Egypt.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26853368@N04/

Enjoy!

Best,
Elaine

HIV/AIDS in Malawi Continued…

So, in my last update, I talked about transmissions of HIV/AIDS in Malawi. This time, I want to talk about this program I’ve been conducting with my Malawian counterpart, a healthworker from my health center (he’s named after Davie Jones! Haha)

Anyway, we decided that we wanted to present the Hope Kit to 10 villages within and around our catchment area. The Hope Kit consisted of fun activities that explain how HIV spreads, how it works in the body, why people with HIV should not be stigmatized, etc. There were many visual and physical demonstrations and we chose the ones that were most fitting for the villages. We targeted 10 villages with risk factors of cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission and/or low school attendance. We spoke to the chiefs first and invited the youth clubs, the Village AIDS Committees, and a parent from each household to attend the event.

Little did I know what we signed up for.

There are moments when you think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.” I had quite a few of those Peace Corps moments because of this program. I should’ve known that there were reasons that these villages were at risk, meaning I had to trudge through muddy roads, rain, rivers, and jungles to get to these places. We visited one village where we tried to take the short path with our bicycles but the path wasn’t meant for cycling. (It turned out that the longer path was actually faster with our bicycles too.) I kept running into the maize stalks on my bike, and I fell a couple times, especially when going down some rocks. Then we went up, up, up the hill, then down the hill, then up again, then down, then up… Then there were the rivers. Two of them. O.K., they were more like streams, but being the klutz I am, I couldn’t avoid slipping into the water. And that wasn’t my first time. I slipped in another stream going to another village. You’d think the adventure ended there, but actually… we had to cross another stream to get to our next destination. But there were no stepping stones this time. Since my socks and shoes were already wet, I was ready to walk through the stream, but the chief wouldn’t allow me, so he picked me up and carried me across! Oh man, by the end of the day, I really had to laugh because I wasn’t expecting any of it.

I don’t regret any of it, though. These villages were remote and isolated, so they were probably neglected by a lot of their community workers and NGOs. Some villages were not even assisted by NGOs, so I knew they gained much from our presentation. My initial thoughts about the presentation were that it was too juvenile and seemed somewhat repetitive to a group of people who already knew about HIV/AIDS. But my Malawian counterpart explained to me how they were actually beneficial. Our first activity, “Fleet of Hope”, involved using pictures of people (father, mother, schoolgirl, witch doctor, etc.) to tell stories in which they are “sitting” in one of the boats of the ABC - Abstinence, Being Faithful, Condoms – or in the water with HIV. He told me that this activity allowed people to share messages with their spouses and communities without having to confront them since Malawians are non-confrontational: “This man is a farmer and has a wife. When he comes home from the gardens, he is faithful to his wife so they don’t have to use condoms and can avoid HIV transmission.” I was somewhat amused by one man’s “This man isn’t abstaining or being faithful but he uses condoms every time!” Our last activity, “HIV in the body”, uses people to represent the white blood cell, HIV, opportunistic infections, ARV, and the ABC, and mobilizes them to show how each functions in or around the body. This was perhaps the most educational activity, as most people are uneducated and have never fully understood the works of HIV and ARVs. But I think the most satisfying part for me is the Q&A. I’m amazed at the kind of myths and misunderstandings people have, and the Q&A is the opportune moment to debunk them. (I don’t want people to think that I’ve been doing all the work; I want to credit my counterpart for doing all of the work in Chichewa. I just sit there and look pretty! haha)

Malawians are fond of meetings, but I know that this was a special kind of meeting they’ve never attended before. All the meetings I’ve attended in Malawi have been - for lack of better words - boring. People really like to hear themselves talk, so they can talk for hours on end without ever making a point. So I was not surprised to find some villagers sulking (and even looking unhappy!) when we first appeared. But by the end of each and every presentation, despite sitting for 2-3 hours, the villagers were laughing and singing. The smiles beaming from their faces and their inquiries about our next visit are all the thanks I need. These are the moments when I think, “This is what Peace Corps is all about.”

Until the next Peace Corps moment,
Elaine aka “Ellen”

My Malawian counterpart and a villager sharing a story during "Fleet of Hope"

They're "greeting" (which symbolizes sexual transmission) in "Wildfire"

A woman trying to figure out if this man has HIV/AIDS or not

As for my cat...

I decided to name her "Wosaka" as in "Hunter". :)

She still has to learn to not poop and pee under my bed though...

and to live up to her name... HUNT down those rats and eat them!

It’s a vulture! It’s a toucan! It’s a…

vul-can with a mohawk?

I’m not talking about the Star Trek best known for “Beam me up, Scotty!”.

At first I thought the bird was a vulture because it was huge in size and had a neck that arched like a vulture’s. But the second time I saw it, I thought it was a toucan because it had a huge beak shaped like a toucan’s. But then I looked again closely the third time and it turned out the “beak” was actually a mohawk. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s a huge bird with a mohawk. And I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but a man said that its name was “Abambobobo”. (“Abambo” means “man” or “father”.) I tried to take a picture of it when it was in my backyard, but it didn’t come out well.

Something I do want to take a good picture of, though, are the baboons. I heard there are baboons in the trees around my area (though not near my house because I don’t have trees big enough to fit them), so I told my agogo (“grandmother”) that she would have to show me one day because I’d like to take pictures! I also heard there are alligators/crocodiles (same thing!) around my area too that wander from the river to eat the chickens! And hyenas are supposedly around looking for carcasses to feast on but I have yet to see them.

None of the baboons or alliga-codiles have made an appearance in or around my house, though I’ve seen a good number of other critters. There was an ugly toad in my house that wouldn’t leave even after I chased it out with a broom. I think it wants my cat to kiss it so it can turn into a prince, because it seems to keep coming back to her water can. (All she does is meow and drink next to it. I thought cats were supposed to torture anything that’s alive and moves!) Then, there are the lizards. What can I say? They like to eat the flies and poop anywhere they please. And last but not least, the cockroaches – the reason I don’t urinate for 12 hours straight. Well, I’m pleased to announce that they’ve been annihilated! I actually mixed water with the drug that we use to treat our mosquito nets and dumped it into my “toilet”. Next thing I knew there was a diaspora of cockroaches all over my backyard! When they kept trying to come into my house, I freaked out and ran to get my agogo. By the time I came back, they were either plopped over dead or eaten by the chickens (surely they had diarrhea after their meals). But now they’re gone! I still don’t use the toilet that much at night though because of other critters, like snakes, scorpions (one bit my medical in-charge), and… well, you get the point.

Anyway, there’s a lot I want to share because I’ve been thinking a lot about… a lot. Education, HIV, gender equality, famine, genocide, prostitution, rape, witchcraft… which I can’t possibly go into all at once, so I’ll start with HIV/AIDS. I know I mentioned it briefly in some of my updates, but I wanted to go into a little more details so that hopefully you'll get a better understanding of the plight that Malawians face.

According to National AIDS Commission of Malawi, 790,000 of HIV-positive clients are 15-49 year olds, roughly 14% of the total population, and 440,000 (12%) are 14 years old and younger (the high rate’s mostly from mother-to-child-transmission). 58% of adults infected are women. About 80,000 die every year due to opportunistic infections caused by AIDS. 46% of orphans are orphaned by AIDS. The number one death of HIV clients is TB, and the number of TB cases have tripled since 1990 because of HIV/AIDS. As of 2003, my district had a confirmed number of 18,000 people infected. You can go to http://www.aidsnac.malawi.net/ for more statistics and information.

Sex is the main mode of HIV transmission in Africa, especially Malawi. Unfortunately, many of Malawi’s cultural practices involve in sexual intercourse, such as:
-Chokolo is “wife inheritance”, which is commonly practiced in Islam (a few girls were telling me that Muslim women were not allowed to refuse men when they wanted them to be their girlfriends or wives)
-Kulowa kufa is “death cleansing”, which involves hiring a man to have sex with a widow the night of her husband’s death to “cleanse” her of grief
-Chinamwali is the initiation rite for boys, which involves women (usually sex workers) for them to have sex with (the idea is that they have to be “experienced” as adults)
-Fisi is “hyena”, which is an initiation rite for girls where “fisi” is hired to have sex with the girls to remove the “dust” from her body or else they would have “unsmooth” skin
-Hlazi is the giving of a man’s sister-in-law to his brother to thank him for caring for his wife properly
-“Entering oven” happens in the more rural areas where they believe that to bake bricks well, the bakers should sleep with young girls the night they’re baking bricks
-Tattoos done by witch doctors by use of razor blades (this one’s not sexually transmission but it’s common enough to be discussed)

And there are proverbs that even encourage people to indulge in sex while they’re young, such as Mkazi sachepa (“The girl is always ripe enough”) and Okaona nyanja anaona ndi mvuu zomwe (“When one visits the lake, he/she also visits the hippos”).

The good news, however, is that since Malawi recognized HIV/AIDS in their country in 1985 and the current president allowed international aid agencies to return in recent years, there has been a good amount of education and awareness about the cultural practices that contribute to HIV transmission. The most common one that’s still practiced in my catchment area is the initiation rite. Despite their awareness of how HIV can spread, some parents still believe some of the cultural myths and that they must “preserve” their culture by forcing their children to participate in the initiation rites despite their protests.

But there’s still much to be done. Now that they know how their cultural practices can transmit HIV/AIDS, there’s still a need to learn about other modes of transmissions. Apparently there are still myths and rumors going around, such as:
-Mosquitoes can transmit HIV because they suck people’s blood and insert them into other people.
-Condoms can cause cancer. (This might’ve been triggered by the onset of cancer cases when spermicide was introduced. It’s now banned.)
-A person can get HIV when a witch “magically” has sex with someone without his/her knowledge. (This one’s complicated.)
-The barber can transmit HIV because he uses the same clipper or razor to shave people’s hair. (There’s not enough blood to be transmitted through it.)
-Peanut butter is a medicine for HIV like ARVs. (It has been used as a nutrition supplement but does not directly repress HIV.)

And there are still more myths that I’m learning about on a continual basis. I know I’ve typed a lot of information here and I don’t want to overwhelm you, so I’ll save my update about the HIV/AIDS awareness outreach for next time.

Here's a picture to entertain you:

Think it's a normal ball? Usually it'd be made of plastic bags. But when I visited a village and we inquired about the contents within it, we learned that there were condoms within the ball. Ohhhh so THAT's where all the condoms are going! (But I was also kinda disturbed where the little kids got the condoms from.)

And one last thing – I’ll be traveling to Hong Kong and touring to Egypt in May! J The thought of Chinese food, Starbucks’ caramel frappuccinos, McDonald’s apple pies and yogurt parfaits, udons and chow mein and vermicelli and NOODLES (and a good number of other items I’ve requested from America) excite me like never before! Oh, that and seeing my family of course!

P.S. I don’t know if I’ve sent my recent address out because I’ve been losing a lot of mail through the previous address, so here it is:
PO Box 74
Chilembwe, Malawi
Central Africa

And for those who inquired about calling, you can go to http://www.callingcardoutlet.com/ and get a $20 phone card for 5 hours I think. And my number’s 001-265-947-67-54.

My unnamed cat and unwanted NGOs

I am now the proud mother of “Hey you” (or more like “Hey Kitty”)!

I received a new child amonth ago,but after twenty minutes, she (or is it he?) ran away after I left her with my friend. I thought all hope was lost because she didn’t come back (maybe she ran the whole 8 km home?), but the next morning, I woke up and heard a small meowlng. Lo and behold! There was my cat! Little did I know what was coming. Who knew parenting would be so hard? She wouldn’t stop crying (meowing) and I didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby (cat). I still don’t. I also didn’t know cats were so clingy! (Or maybe it’s just this one.) Or how difficult it is to potty-train! She keeps defecating in all the wrong places – even though the litter box sits there quite unused. After having this cat, I think I’ve given up on parenthood altogether.

“Hey you” slowly evolved into “Cleopatra” (don’t ask me how I came up with that name; I just did). Or “Cleo” if she is actually a he. But after talking to my brother who so kindly said, “After 3 weeks, that was the best you can name her?!”, I decided to resort to “Hey Kitty” again. (Hey, I wasn’t the one who named our white rabbit “Butterscotch”! I really wanted “Snow White”. Love you Eric! J) Then, he told me about a person named “Bacon” - “Here Bacon, have some fish!”… Nah. I actually wanted to name her “Nala”, you know, like from Lion King, because she looks so cute and adorable – just like Nala! J Of course my brother had to go and ruin it with “But EVERY cat looks like Nala!” So he suggested an African name – “What does ‘Nala’ mean in Chichewa?” Well… “ng’ala” (you gotta roll the tongue a bit there, like nnnnny) means “eye cataract” in Chichewa. No way. O.K., I guess I’ll try to find out what “Mighty Rat Killer” in Chichewa is even though it would be an 18-syllable name.

This bewildering experience with my cat has epitomized my wondering and confusion of “Exactly what am I doing here in Malawi?” It seems everything in my life has been put on hold – pause­ – that I’m really starting to wonder if I will accomplish anything. Time goes backward. Actually, time’s not a concept here. (When you mention time, they’ll point at the sky – that’s noon.) It’s like… Let’s…wait… how… about…tomorrow….. next week..… next month… actually……. Maaaayyyyyybeeeee neeeeeeeext year? Oh, you mean, like after I leave Malawi? I got pretty frustrated because a lot of my plans kept being postponed always because of some unknown scheduled events. I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing my supervisor respond to my scheduling inquiries with “no known activities yet”.

And sometimes I wonder if it’s really at all possible to introduce anything sustainable in Malawi. The whole Peace Corps jargon of “capacity building”, “technical assistance”, “sustainability” seems to be empty words to Malawians. What I hear is, “Where’s the money?”, “Why can’t you just give us money?”, “Give me money!”

They’ve convinced me. Money is the answer for everything.

How sad but true. How is it that I escaped from the materialism and greed of America only to find the very same tribulations in Malawi? I hate that. I hate that money is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and all they can think about is $$$ka-ching$$$money$$$kwachas.

I know as an American citizen, I’ll never (knock on wood) understand poverty (mostly thanks to welfare) and experience the effects of poverty – hunger, lack of basic needs and resources, inability to provide for health care, etc. – but is money really more important than knowledge, education, faith?

I know that as a 24-year-old volunteer with no masters or PhD, I’m oblivious to numerous factors that contribute to this beggar phenomenon in Malawi. I think the best thing to do now is to major in sociology, anthropology, economics, business, political science, development studies, and maybe even international studies, then maybe I’ll actually begin to understand. Maybe. But there are a few things that I do know:

There’s a dichotomy between foreign aid actually assisting the poor and actually creating helplessness (and laziness for others). NGOs come into Malawi (and other third-world countries as well) thinking that they know what’s best which actually ends up harming them more than they do good. And that’s just to give them a butt-load amount of money so that they can keep begging and asking for more money instead of learning how to work for it. How about teaching them new knowledge and skills? Giving them resources? Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that NGOs are not doing any of that because they definitely are doing a lot to help the Malawians, especially in stemming the tide of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

But when I wanted to teach my fellow health workers about nutrition and counseling mothers with malnourished children with food preparation skills, their first question was, “Will there be an allowance?” I didn’t know what to say, because I knew the first words out of my mouth would have been more than a mouthful. But thankfully, my Malawian counterpart intervened to explain that as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I only get “just enough [allowance] to survive” and that my role here is solely to provide “technical assistance” and not money. And I was appeased a bit when the supervisor of the health workers told them that the knowledge from the training in itself should be beneficial, and that as health workers, they should be trying to help these children – not just caring about how to gain money. But how funny that after I told them “no allowance”, they seemed to have lost all interest in my training.

What’s truly disturbing me is also how their beggar mentality can actually create more harm than thought possible. The previous volunteer before me had tried to implement a nutrition program in one of the villages teaching them how to use their locally available food in their homes and gardens to nourish their children properly. But it was a complete failure (the mothers failed to properly nourish their children). Why? Because they said, why can’t you just give us the food and money? Since they were used to an NGO giving them money and supplying them every time, they refused to learn this incredibly useful and sustainable skill that could nourish their children and make them healthy beings!

And I think the problem is just this: NGOs are so filthy rich that sometimes they seem to make rash decisions or plans that are not beneficial to the recipients. In a passing conversation with an employee from a NGO, I discovered that though it puts a lot of its donors’ money to good use, thousands of dollars were “lost” and not accounted for. That’s just how filthy rich they are.

And so they decide to create a divergence in the economics of Malawi by making all things (and jobs) foreign great and all things Malawian poor. For example: a ground worker (gardener) who works for an NGO makes almost 50% more money than a secondary school principal would. A counselor working for an NGO can have a starting salary of MK45,000 while the very same position in a government hospital provides a starting salary of MK7,000.

Hmm.

Well, gee, no wonder everyone wants to work for an NGO. So you can forget about working for the government of Malawi.

Sometimes, I just don’t get it. Why can’t NGOs match the needs of the economy rather than increase the standards that Malawi cannot match? One way would be to working hand-in-hand with the government to improve the salaries and knowledge of the health workers rather than developing their own work anomalies. I guess one way that can somewhat depict what I mean is this: a health worker attending a training workshop (i.e., home-based care, Village AIDS Committee, etc.) would receive MK2,000 in one day, whereas they receive MK5,000 salary in one month. Is it just me or is there something seriously wrong with that? No wonder the health workers wanted an allowance from my training workshop. So, now every worker’s goal is to attend these workshops so that at the end of the day, they can collect their 2 weeks’ “salary”. So much for encouraging them to gain this knowledge so they can be more efficient workers, which I’ve found doesn’t happen. At all. They don’t work. O.K., that may be an overstatement, because I admit there are a few who work hard and I do admire them because they take on so much baggage for other people. BUT out of the 19 health workers at my site, I’d say that only 6 of them actually work hard and only one of them is female.

I’m so frustrated by this whole experience. I can’t even begin to describe adequately what I’m seeing with my very own eyes the detrimental effects I’ve seen that some NGOs have on the villages. But of course nothing is ever plain black and white. I have to actually consider – do their benefits actually outweigh the costs? I mean, they really are producing a lot of benefits and improvements in ARV treatment for HIV/AIDS, development of HIV/AIDS education programs, etc. But should they really do it at the cost of hurting their economy and creating unsustainable development programs while creating a dependency on external assistance? So you can see what I have to constantly battle in my own mind. I have much I want to say about this paradigm, especially regarding how we can address these problems by changing the infrastructure of the NGOs’ approaches through monitoring and evaluating and accountability. Perhaps I will save it for next time… or maybe for a thesis paper.

So I thought I’d end this overbearing long update with an exciting news: I’m adopting Madonna’s niece!! Just kidding. I’m not adopting a kid anytime soon – especially not after having this “kitty/bacon/nala/eyecataracts/mightyratkiller”. But it sounds like my family might come to visit Africa (albeit not Malawi) in April or May! If this plan really goes through, it sounds like they’ll probably be my only visitors during my stint in Malawi! :)

P.S. K-Ci and Jojo are coming to Malawi! What in the world?! Oh the good ol' days...