School trainings and Bureaucracy 101
Moni! That means hello in Chichewa, and is probably one of the 10 words I’ve learned since being here. I also learned that nobody really uses that word, so it barely counts. It’s a difficult language to learn, especially since it’s so phonetically and structurally different than Swedish and English, but I should admittedly put in a bit more effort.
Last week, we had several meeting to plan the school trainings in Kamphinda, Kaliwawala, Area 44, and Katantha. The idea is to teach students in primary school, between 11 and 13 years old, about human rights, land rights, and the benefits of registering land. Designing a curriculum that would make those subjects interesting to pre-teens was, let’s say, challenging. I kept thinking about what my interests were when I was that age, and how I might have reacted to a lesson in those subjects. We decided to use a series of drawings that we also use for the TOT Base that Matilda organized a few months ago, which depict different scenarios relevant to land rights and human rights. Pictures, we concluded, offered the best chance of engaging 11 to 13 year olds. Additionally, LUPPEN will recite a poem that is a sort of anecdote on the importance of land rights, as well as a song to be written and performed by the executive members of LUPPEN. I was fortunate enough to be able to hear the rehearsals, and look forward to sharing the performance with you all in the future! It was fun and productive to design a school curriculum.
Since then, not much has happened, which I think has been a valuable lesson for an intern in a country like Malawi. In order to conduct the school trainings, we need approval from various authorities at different departments within the municipal government. The most important of those authorities is the District Education Manager (DEM), who essentially decides whether or not what we want to do is relevant and therefore permissible. To make a long story short(er), we have to wait until Monday, at the earliest, to get on answer on whether or not the one-hour training we are doing in just four schools will be okay. So, the lesson is essentially that bureaucracy can be a serious hindrance to speedy implementation of development projects. And my feeling is that that is often the reason that many projects take much longer than one would expect, especially from the outside looking in.
In other news, I got to see a bit more of Malawi over the weekend. We drove through the beautiful countryside to Cape Maclear, a somewhat touristy-yet-charming beach and community nestled on a peninsula at the southern end of Lake Malawi. I’ll let the pictures describe the place to you. All in all though, it was wonderful to leave the city and relax in such a sublime environment.
Until next time!
