On the edges of Lake Malawi

I have just returned from the amazingness of an EWB retreat in Malawi. Last Wednesday I started off to Lusaka where I met up with the rest of the Zambian JFs. The next morning at 3:30am we woke up and made our way to the bus station to start our journey to Malawi. Along the way, we had some mechanical issues... we had been driving for a few hours, I was chatting with Tony beside me about books and movies and Vicki was half asleep on my other side when all of a sudden there was a huge bang and the bus started bumping around a lot more than usual. We slowly pulled over and piled out of the bus to see this:

(Blown up bus tire)

So we waited for about an hour and a half for a jack to move that tire from the front of the bus to the back (there were four back wheels and only two front). While we were waiting a nearby community heard that there was a bus full of people sitting on the side of the road including eight mzungus. So we had all kinds of people come to sell us everything from popcorn to drinks to bananas and much, much more! By the time we were back on the road, we were all feeling pretty full. And, finally at around 9pm we were reunited with our Malawian friends in Senga Bay.

I've got to say, the setting of our retreat was one of the most beautiful places I have seen. Right on the edge of Lake Malawi, we were surrounded by rolling hills, lush forests and the view of the distant landscape of Mozambique across the lake. I went for a swim every morning before breakfast and usually at least once more during the day.

(I was very happy to be on the lake)

(Beautiful view one morning when we had gotten up to watch the sun rise and go for a swim)

The retreat itself was amazing. We had all thirteen of the southern Africa JFs and about half a dozen of the long term volunteers. We had plenty of great discussions about our placements, development and where the next couple months are going. It's also impossible to get that many super awesome people. together and not have a really good time and delicious food. Between intense sessions we squeezed in a whole bunch of swimming, beach volleyball, hackysack, cowboy princess spoon and extreme jenga!

(The whole crew of us on a little boat cruise)

As far as learning that I gained from the retreat, we had a lot of time to talk about the challenges that we are facing in our placements and communities, our impact plan for the next couple months and get feedback and ideas from other JFs and long term volunteers. EWB is going through some pretty big, exciting organizational changes as well so we talked a lot about that and how organizational change works. The thing with it is that many of these changes are very core level, revolving around values, identity and culture. Although changes like this could be super helpful in making an impact in our partner organizations, they are also super difficult to do because they require a lot of time and trust. I don't think I ever realized just how fundamental it is until the changes started happening within EWB. So for a JF, most of us are focusing our efforts on less fundamental but still hopefully helpful areas where it is possible to create change in just a few months.

(Discussing the challenges we are facing)

Another super valuable part of the retreat was the opportunity to connect with Thulasy and the rest of the IDE JFs. A lot of the challenges that we are facing are quite similar between field offices but some are also very different. Each of us has some kind of plans for looking at a different area of market facilitation, so I'm really excited to see how everything comes together at the end.

That's about it for me right now. Right now, I'm thinking a lot about how I can take everything that I've seen, learned and experienced and share it with EWB, the UofA chapter, my friends and family. If you have any ideas of things that you would like to see or hear about I would love to chat. So my question is what would help to give Canadians a meaningful connection to Zambia and work in the agricultural sector?

Cheers!