Graham Lettner's blog

The grass is green, the trees are green, the maize is green—its all green, green, green.

It’s Malawi in February.

Well, being a huge suck, I’ve started playing Christmas tunes quietly on my laptop during breaks at the office. I’m heading back home for the holidays soon and so try as I might, I’m having a tough time not day-dreaming about family, turkey, and snow.

I’ve decided to try something different.

Enos Banda, the farmer I live with, needs fertilizer for this year’s crop. The cost of fertilizer, however, is beyond his reach. Each bag costs 10 000 Malawian Kwacha, about what an average Malawian worker takes home in a month. Of course, as a subsistence farmer, Enos doesn’t bring home a salary. To cut to the chase: options are limited.

But then again, Enos is playing host to a white man from Canada.

A good man.

I’ve met him. His name is Stephen Carr.

He and his wife Anne live on Zomba plateau. He’s English, so is she. They keep two dogs, Nala and Vespa.

I arrived to visit him early Friday afternoon, expecting a two-hour meeting. I ended up staying for dinner and sleeping in his guest house. I came expecting a brisk business-like Q & A. I heard as many work related thoughts as I did stories of African farmers and of farming Africa.

I commute each day from the village where I live to the research station where I work. It takes maybe 20 minutes by bike, or just over half an hour if I run. Near my home in the village, the scenery is still very rural—small fields and barnyard animals. As I get closer to work the landscape slowly starts to change—better roads, a small market, a school, some nicer, brick government houses, and then the research station itself.

Engineers Without Borders hosts the site my.EWB.ca where members across Canada and overseas often discuss and debate all types of development issues. There’s a running thread questioning the effectiveness of the Malawian government’s agriculture input subsidy. I added to the discussion from my own perspective on the ground. I’ve taken the ideas I contributed and formatted them into the post below.

On the topic of the Malawian agriculture input subsidy, I’ve had two separate conversations that helped to round out my perspective.

[img_assist|nid=2863|title=Duncan McNicholl|desc=|link=popup|align=left|width=0|height=]Each year, Engineers Without Borders produces a calendar that highlights a different overseas volunteer and their project for each month of the year. I wrote this short piece below for the upcoming 2009 EWB calendar to go with a photo taken by Duncan McNicholl, an EWB member from UBC who worked with me for the summer. It’s probably the most economical description I’ve got of my work in Malawi.

I like looking at the Moon because it reminds me that I live on a planet in outer space.

As soon as I remember this, I immediately begin imagining outer space, where moons circle planets, planets circle stars, and stars dance about in galaxies.

Last night, standing outside looking at the Moon, I forgot something important. For a minute or two, I got to thinking that the Moon and I were fixed objects, two things stopping late at night to stare at each other. I fooled myself into forgetting that the Moon and I are actually both traveling very, very fast.

My current working hypothesis is that much international development doesn’t create positive impact because projects are seen as providing solutions to problems. This might not be an obvious flaw, but its consequences are easy to spot.

No water in a community? Drill a borehole. Farmers aren’t growing enough food? Provide subsidized fertilizer. A local market for sorghum flour is going unfulfilled? Set up a local mill for a cooperative to run.

The weekend in Nkhata Bay could be summed up with a picture and a caption. The picture would be of a sparkling blue lake, and the caption: “Shut up and swim.”

By Sunday night at five, we were back on the road. Just the three of us—John-Paul, Duncan, and I—as the girls decided to skip work and stay an extra day.

Our food supplies were roadside scones, a bunch of bananas, and a jar of peanut butter. We hiked up the only road out of town to catch a transport to the nearby police check-stop. This is where busses traveling south from Mzuzu would stop, and where we would get on.