Please read the post I wrote last night but I've just seen the results of the census that was actually being taken whilst we were here 2 years ago and I thought it was something to be shared.
In terms of water and sanitation:
Progress in bringing running water to people's homes has been much slower than electrification. In 1997, 8.5 per cent of houses had piped water, inside or outside the house. By 2007, that figure had risen to 10.1 per cent.
10.3 per cent of the population drew their water from public standpipes, and 14.1 per cent had access to a protected well or borehole with a pump. But most of the population still obtain their water from unprotected sources. 46.9 per cent use traditional wells without any hand pumps, and 17.3 per cent simply take their water from a river or lake.
The majority of homes - 54.3 per cent - have no sanitation at all, not even a simple pit latrine. This is actually a substantial improvement on 1997, when 66 per cent of homes had no latrine.
Other interesting things include the life expectancy which is around 50 and the fact that 47% of the population are under the age of 15.
When you take into account that the Diocese of Niassa covers the poorer end of the country, you start to get an idea of the situations we're working in and the challenges that exist. Summaries of the census can be found at allafrica.com. (Work and poverty, Definitive results, Birth, death and fertility)
Tuesday 24 November 2009
Monday 23 November 2009
A day in the life...
I had a fun weekend with a walk out to visit some of the Iris missionaries on Saturday and then church and a chilled afternoon yesterday. I thought it might help you understand where I am and what I'm doing a bit more if I told you in a bit more detail about one day... and that is today. Monday. I don't really have a typical day as such but this is probably fairly standard for a day in Lichinga.
6:15 Alarm goes off although I'd been awake for a while because the crows were having a party on the roof (metal roof = amplified noise!). I woke up to find I'd fallen asleep reading last night (wasting a lot of battery in my head torch!). I'm reading "The secret room" which is about Corrie Ten Boom. It's really good.
6:30 Electricity is working but unfortunately our kettle isn't. I fill a bucket with some hot water from the 2 ring gas stove and then water from the tap and have a "shower". Breakfast is a bread roll with peanut butter.
7:00 I continue to translate/ work out a table for identifying the cause of problems with Afridev hand pumps. Tomorrow I'm going up to the lake shore and will be looking at 5 or 6 pumps which aren't working but obviously it's no good them needing someone like me to always fix them. I found a good diagnosis table in a manual on the internet in English so Rebecca translated most of it but we've been struggling with technical terms. "rising main pipe", "cup seal", "pump rods" etc!
7:30 The little girl who lives opposite knocked on the door just to give me a good morning hug!
8:00 Rebecca goes to morning prayer (which happens every Mon and Friday here at KuchiJingi, the Diocean site). I am supposed to go to Estamos with Mario but there's a delay finding a car. Estamos are a local company who were set up to work with WaterAid. They still do a lot of water and sanitation work but also do some public health stuff too. Very useful contacts.
8:45 We finally leave and speak to someone at Estamos who told us on Thursday that today would be a good day to go and see one of the Afridev pumps that they've put in so that we can take it apart a bit. Turns out they're all pretty busy and we go with a lady who doesn't really know anything about pumps. It also turns out that they hadn't warned anyone we were coming so when we arrive at the village the chief is not around and neither is the person who has the keys to the pump and well. This also happened at the second village.
9:30 After learning how NOT to go about working with communities we arrive back at Estamos and learn that there is someone going to Chimbonila to do some work with latrines but that he could first look at a pump that there's a problem with. Chimbonila was where I was for a few days last week and it was nice to go this time in a car and not by chapas (public transport).
10:30 We arrived at Chimbonila and I finally got a chance to consolidate everything I'd read about the Afridev pumps and see how to dismantle one and what the most likely problems were. I also learnt the Portuguese names for the parts and my pump chat is now a lot more sophisticated than my everyday chat about the weather etc! O well! I left Chimbonila feeling nicely confident about the work this week.
12.30 We arrived back at the office and did some more on the diagnosis table.
1:30 Lunch at Marios. Rebecca and I go there every day for lunch and it's always great. Today was rice with a sort of bean and vegetable tomatoey thing! It was good! His two kids are very sweet and the eldest, Shirley, who's just 3, has just begun to trust me and so she came to give me a hug and have a chat! Sammy, who's 1 I think, still isn't sure what to make of me!
2:15 Back at the office and I do some more reading of the pump manual and read about how to work out what type of soil you're working with! I also went and checked the warehouse at Kuchijingi to see if we had the tools that you need to take Afridev pumps apart. The warehouse was a bit of a mess so we left the man in charge of it to sort it out a bit but we never found anything useful.
3:00 We have a call from Estamos to say we can borrow their tools for the week so Mario and I drove down to pick them up. We then went to a hardware store that Rebecca and I had discovered sold spare parts for the pumps and picked up some of the pieces that are most likely to break to take with us. The communities should have been given spare parts and in the interest of ownership will have to pay to replace parts. It's a bit of a difficult and unknown situation with the pumps that we're visiting. The follow up and recording of the installations and training was not really done at all so we're not sure how much the communities know about how to maintain the pumps or whether they will have the tools and manuals that are supposed to be left with anyone who has one built. Highlights a lot of interesting thoughts about the way development is done.
4:30 Back at the office. I scanned one of the simple Portuguese manuals that the communities should have and which Estamos had lent us so I can take copies with us tomorrow. I also scanned useful pages from my textbooks so that I don't have to take them with me.
5:30 We lock up and head home (about a 1 minute walk). The photo in this blog is Rebecca's house. I scan the Africa guidebook for ideas for a Christmas trip whilst Rebecca skpes home and then I start cooking. I fried up some potatoes, with onion and garlic then added a load of shredded cabbage and grated carrot and some herbs. We had that with some beans. I've been experimenting quite a lot with cooking but this was a sucessful experiment - it was yummy!
That pretty much brings me to sitting down and writing this. I will now go and pack for the next week (and Rebecca has just reminded me not to forget my swimming costume because bathing for the next week is in Lake Niassa!) and then go to bed. It's been really hot today and I'm exhausted. I won't be in touch for the next week but will still have my phone. Very sad to be missing Andy's birthday this week, and Rebecca who's American, is sad that her family are all together for thanksgiving. Technology is amazing though and it's great to be in touch as much as I am.
6:15 Alarm goes off although I'd been awake for a while because the crows were having a party on the roof (metal roof = amplified noise!). I woke up to find I'd fallen asleep reading last night (wasting a lot of battery in my head torch!). I'm reading "The secret room" which is about Corrie Ten Boom. It's really good.
6:30 Electricity is working but unfortunately our kettle isn't. I fill a bucket with some hot water from the 2 ring gas stove and then water from the tap and have a "shower". Breakfast is a bread roll with peanut butter.
7:00 I continue to translate/ work out a table for identifying the cause of problems with Afridev hand pumps. Tomorrow I'm going up to the lake shore and will be looking at 5 or 6 pumps which aren't working but obviously it's no good them needing someone like me to always fix them. I found a good diagnosis table in a manual on the internet in English so Rebecca translated most of it but we've been struggling with technical terms. "rising main pipe", "cup seal", "pump rods" etc!
7:30 The little girl who lives opposite knocked on the door just to give me a good morning hug!
8:00 Rebecca goes to morning prayer (which happens every Mon and Friday here at KuchiJingi, the Diocean site). I am supposed to go to Estamos with Mario but there's a delay finding a car. Estamos are a local company who were set up to work with WaterAid. They still do a lot of water and sanitation work but also do some public health stuff too. Very useful contacts.
8:45 We finally leave and speak to someone at Estamos who told us on Thursday that today would be a good day to go and see one of the Afridev pumps that they've put in so that we can take it apart a bit. Turns out they're all pretty busy and we go with a lady who doesn't really know anything about pumps. It also turns out that they hadn't warned anyone we were coming so when we arrive at the village the chief is not around and neither is the person who has the keys to the pump and well. This also happened at the second village.
9:30 After learning how NOT to go about working with communities we arrive back at Estamos and learn that there is someone going to Chimbonila to do some work with latrines but that he could first look at a pump that there's a problem with. Chimbonila was where I was for a few days last week and it was nice to go this time in a car and not by chapas (public transport).
10:30 We arrived at Chimbonila and I finally got a chance to consolidate everything I'd read about the Afridev pumps and see how to dismantle one and what the most likely problems were. I also learnt the Portuguese names for the parts and my pump chat is now a lot more sophisticated than my everyday chat about the weather etc! O well! I left Chimbonila feeling nicely confident about the work this week.
12.30 We arrived back at the office and did some more on the diagnosis table.
1:30 Lunch at Marios. Rebecca and I go there every day for lunch and it's always great. Today was rice with a sort of bean and vegetable tomatoey thing! It was good! His two kids are very sweet and the eldest, Shirley, who's just 3, has just begun to trust me and so she came to give me a hug and have a chat! Sammy, who's 1 I think, still isn't sure what to make of me!
2:15 Back at the office and I do some more reading of the pump manual and read about how to work out what type of soil you're working with! I also went and checked the warehouse at Kuchijingi to see if we had the tools that you need to take Afridev pumps apart. The warehouse was a bit of a mess so we left the man in charge of it to sort it out a bit but we never found anything useful.
3:00 We have a call from Estamos to say we can borrow their tools for the week so Mario and I drove down to pick them up. We then went to a hardware store that Rebecca and I had discovered sold spare parts for the pumps and picked up some of the pieces that are most likely to break to take with us. The communities should have been given spare parts and in the interest of ownership will have to pay to replace parts. It's a bit of a difficult and unknown situation with the pumps that we're visiting. The follow up and recording of the installations and training was not really done at all so we're not sure how much the communities know about how to maintain the pumps or whether they will have the tools and manuals that are supposed to be left with anyone who has one built. Highlights a lot of interesting thoughts about the way development is done.
4:30 Back at the office. I scanned one of the simple Portuguese manuals that the communities should have and which Estamos had lent us so I can take copies with us tomorrow. I also scanned useful pages from my textbooks so that I don't have to take them with me.
5:30 We lock up and head home (about a 1 minute walk). The photo in this blog is Rebecca's house. I scan the Africa guidebook for ideas for a Christmas trip whilst Rebecca skpes home and then I start cooking. I fried up some potatoes, with onion and garlic then added a load of shredded cabbage and grated carrot and some herbs. We had that with some beans. I've been experimenting quite a lot with cooking but this was a sucessful experiment - it was yummy!
That pretty much brings me to sitting down and writing this. I will now go and pack for the next week (and Rebecca has just reminded me not to forget my swimming costume because bathing for the next week is in Lake Niassa!) and then go to bed. It's been really hot today and I'm exhausted. I won't be in touch for the next week but will still have my phone. Very sad to be missing Andy's birthday this week, and Rebecca who's American, is sad that her family are all together for thanksgiving. Technology is amazing though and it's great to be in touch as much as I am.
Wednesday 18 November 2009
I arrived!
Hi!!
I've just managed to get on the internet for the first time since I left home last Monday and it's great to feel like I am still on the same planet!
The journey here was LONG! I arrived in Lichinga at about 8pm on Wednesday after 3 days of travelling. The last day was particularly exciting with 2 minibuses (one of which stopped for a while whilst the driver got done for speeding), 2 cycle "taxis" (which are interesting to balance on with 20kg on your back!), 1 pick up which ran out of diesel 4 times on the way and one hitched lift in a car (which also ran out of diesel!). I did wonder why I didn't fly to Lichinga (it was because of cost) but then it was an adventure. As Ed's mum put it so well: an adventure is an inconvenienve rightly construed! When I arrived there was no internet, phone line, mobile signal or uber fast pidgeons which made letting people know I'd arrived safely a little difficult! I stayed with the Bishop of Niassa (Mark, and his wife, Helen) as Rebecca was away in Zambia. The view from their house is stunning. You can see right across to Lake Niassa and the sunset every day is beautiful. On Friday I visited a village fairly nearby to see a hand dug well they had built to get a taste of what kind of things are going on in the Diocese.
I spent the weekend at the lake shore for the Diocesean Family Day at the cathedral. It was completely mad but also great! The morning service on Sunday lasted 5 hours(!!!) and on Sunday Mark baptised 52 babies as well as dedicating a chapel. There were also lots of choirs there from around the Diocese and the singing was incredible and so loud! Just amazing! It was also VERY hot, in fact it's been pretty hot all of the last week really with some impressive storms in the afternoons. Today's a bit miserable though!!
The last 3 days I've been at another village observing an agriculture training workshop where Michael (a Mozambican) was teaching an Equipa de Vida (see the last post!) how to use land productively and how to make compost. It was a tiring few days for me, particularly trying to listen to Portuguese all the time (which is improving already, slowly!). I'm also trying to get used to the food again (the first day in the village I had Nsima and usipa for lunch and rice and beans for dinner - the Cobue song was stuck in my head girlies!).
I'm now back in Lichinga and now that Rebecca is back I'm also in the house I will be living in for the rest of my time here which is lovely despite Rebecca's welcome note which listed the things which didn't work!) I think I will really feel at home here. The internet is also now working AND I have a Mozambique sim card so I feel a bit more contactable. I also have a bike so can get myself around! Thanks very much to everyone who's text or emailed. It's made my first week a lot easier as I try to settle in. I'm really looking forward to starting work and feeling more useful (I hope that happens).
I do have a postal address here and things can take 10 days to 2 months to arrive but apparently letters are usually fine if you feel so inclined! Drop me an email if you want it because I don't really want to post it on the internet. Also, my skype address is joanne_lambert.
Right I'm off to the office now but glad to have got in touch. Not a very exciting post this one!
Jo
I've just managed to get on the internet for the first time since I left home last Monday and it's great to feel like I am still on the same planet!
The journey here was LONG! I arrived in Lichinga at about 8pm on Wednesday after 3 days of travelling. The last day was particularly exciting with 2 minibuses (one of which stopped for a while whilst the driver got done for speeding), 2 cycle "taxis" (which are interesting to balance on with 20kg on your back!), 1 pick up which ran out of diesel 4 times on the way and one hitched lift in a car (which also ran out of diesel!). I did wonder why I didn't fly to Lichinga (it was because of cost) but then it was an adventure. As Ed's mum put it so well: an adventure is an inconvenienve rightly construed! When I arrived there was no internet, phone line, mobile signal or uber fast pidgeons which made letting people know I'd arrived safely a little difficult! I stayed with the Bishop of Niassa (Mark, and his wife, Helen) as Rebecca was away in Zambia. The view from their house is stunning. You can see right across to Lake Niassa and the sunset every day is beautiful. On Friday I visited a village fairly nearby to see a hand dug well they had built to get a taste of what kind of things are going on in the Diocese.
I spent the weekend at the lake shore for the Diocesean Family Day at the cathedral. It was completely mad but also great! The morning service on Sunday lasted 5 hours(!!!) and on Sunday Mark baptised 52 babies as well as dedicating a chapel. There were also lots of choirs there from around the Diocese and the singing was incredible and so loud! Just amazing! It was also VERY hot, in fact it's been pretty hot all of the last week really with some impressive storms in the afternoons. Today's a bit miserable though!!
The last 3 days I've been at another village observing an agriculture training workshop where Michael (a Mozambican) was teaching an Equipa de Vida (see the last post!) how to use land productively and how to make compost. It was a tiring few days for me, particularly trying to listen to Portuguese all the time (which is improving already, slowly!). I'm also trying to get used to the food again (the first day in the village I had Nsima and usipa for lunch and rice and beans for dinner - the Cobue song was stuck in my head girlies!).
I'm now back in Lichinga and now that Rebecca is back I'm also in the house I will be living in for the rest of my time here which is lovely despite Rebecca's welcome note which listed the things which didn't work!) I think I will really feel at home here. The internet is also now working AND I have a Mozambique sim card so I feel a bit more contactable. I also have a bike so can get myself around! Thanks very much to everyone who's text or emailed. It's made my first week a lot easier as I try to settle in. I'm really looking forward to starting work and feeling more useful (I hope that happens).
I do have a postal address here and things can take 10 days to 2 months to arrive but apparently letters are usually fine if you feel so inclined! Drop me an email if you want it because I don't really want to post it on the internet. Also, my skype address is joanne_lambert.
Right I'm off to the office now but glad to have got in touch. Not a very exciting post this one!
Jo
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