The Life Aqauatic

So this isn’t exactly the coast nor am I near the lake, and I am definitely not really doing any diving but working near fish ponds is good enough for now. Did I mention I got a red hat? (no speedo..phew).

I am working our here with the World Fish Center. Its an international Org that develops and disseminates aquaculture technologies to increase food security in “developing nations”. (I hate this term…developing nations means to me that there are nations developed and nations that are striving to reach that point…when everyone knows that those that are “developed” are unsustainable and those that aren’t developed could never really uphold the resource consumption levels that are integral to developed nations. I will use 3rd world instead.).

Anyways, work has been incredibly interesting these past few days. I’ve gone over my project plan with various levels of staff, and gotten “buy-in” or approval from those that mattered, which makes me hope that I am heading in the right direction. Often things change, especially in the third world, I know, and it is just that way. Things go wrong, people have other problems and entire projects can get benched…but I will try my best to keep this on track!

I am working on spreading Catfish spawning practices to local farmers in the area. Farmers here, who do the typical agriculture stuff, are approached by World Fish Center, in conjunction with ither the Ministry of Fisheries or with other NGOs , to convert their agriculture farm to one of Integrated Agriculture-Aquaculture. This means that they rear fish on their farm (ergo fish farming) and thier inputs into the pond are farm wastes, like maize bran, goat feces and casava leaves. The manuer and leaves etc compost and add to overall nutrients in the pond from which phyto plankton etc grow which the feed eat....if they don't already feast on leaves or the maize bran.

As for the catfish spawning part. Local farmers usually buy thier stock of fish from the national aquaculture center or the ministry of fisheries, but if they could cause thier fish to spawn then they wouldn't have to "buy" anything. So thats where science and me come in. In Egypt they found a technology using netted cages, hapas, to spawn catfish. Now I am just running an experiement to see if this technology can really fly in Malawi.

As for the scene: picture blue skys, rows of grass encased retangular ponds disappearing into a mountainous horizon. There are a couple of palm trees scattered and a herd of goats that pass through. A red bricked office building lies at the head of all of this and that is where a little office with three windows lies, which is mine. This is my work place.

Welcome to Malawi!!

Well I’ve been in Malawi now for nearly 2 weeks and things are fine…especially since my lost luggage was found and I forced South African airlines to pay me for my “expenses.” I am in a little area in a valley called Domasi. The closest town is Zomba and it, at its best, looks like a ramshackle version of a street in Kensington Market (Toronto). There are two main streets or bits to it. One street has the fancy banks and gas stations, and one or two shops. The second street holds a myriad of little vendors that have built shacks to sell their second hand clothing, cell phone access, or what have you. Actually the choice is quite good. Behind these vendors are a few more shops that carry sort of a pathetic stock of clothing, but a good stock of groceries and other odds and ends. Scattered throughout this street, which can’t be any longer than 700m, are a bunch of mini-buses yelling their departure locations. In a nutshell the perfect amount of K-os. For those that travelled with me to Kenya it kinda looks like Ngong.

But the best part about Zomba is the fact that it is surrounded by beautiful plateaus. But anyways Zomba is ½ an hour away, and I don’t think I will be moving there this month.

As for Domasi where I live….everything is nice and rural except for the hand full of institutions that have chosen to build up their offices here. I’ve met a lot of people around here and they, as most country folk, greet me vigorously every time I see them and remain eerily friendly. Last week I was going to visit a friend out of the village and people I didn’t know asked me how I was, where I was going and when I will return. These same people mostly knew my name and that I worked in Fisheries.
But I’ve acclimatized and freely give out that kind of info, because either way they will find out from others. For all you Tamil folk…its similar to Jaffna, except the level of poverty here is higher so the houses are mostly mud or clay based. Cement is too expensive a commodity to be purchased by the average. I live in a concrete guest house with couches and a working TV in the common room, and that is way above average for the common villager.

Right outside my concrete room, as I rent a room in a guest house at present, is a field. Perhaps best described as a southern Ontario corn farm scene, with the odd banana and papaya tree thrown in, except that the soil is red and beams through the cornrows and also through the sun scorched brown grass. Things at present are really dry, as it is the dry season.

I wake up every morning to a seriously bright sun that rises at 5am, and oddly enough I tend to fall asleep at 9-10pm at night as there is generally not much to do past dark (6pm). Reading and more reading has become my choix de jour….which is really not me. Especially since I’ve been almost anti-social these past days.

But on the bright side, work seems to be fantastic. I pretty much am sure I am going to like all my co-workers. There is a good dose of work ethic at the centre but there is also the easy-going African attitude mixed in, which is key. Basically everyone tends to work long….but not exactly hard. In the sense that we could have a “big” project coming up and people will stay late, come in on the weekend etc. But they won’t really stop their chats and computer games during the day to attack the project. At first it seemed odd, and I almost got frustrated but then I realized that in general all these people weren’t stressed out and still enjoyed their job.

When I got here to work I was presented with my own office, email address and laptop! Definite “Bling” for this area, but so appreciated by me, as in general resources are limited here. There are few computers with Internet, in fact many of us just cue for the one communal computer in the library and use it to do our work. This is a little ridiculous if you think that this centre is the Southern Africa region international head-quarters. There are at least 4 other countries that the center regularly works with and the director is always away on flights, in meetings or at conferences. Makes me think how well off we are in the west as even the humblest of operations would have infinite materials in their office.

Ann's Pictures from Sri Lanka - Summer 2005

Check out my pictures from Sri Lanka:
Click here to see the Sri Lanka pictures

Prelouge

Its May of 2005 and I have finally taken the plunge. I stopped talking about what I wish I could do and just decided to do it. You see since I graduated University I had planned on doing many things, teaching English in Japan, applying for a masters program, working in international development or something of the sort. None of my plans included social services and Hamilton, which is where I ended up. Living at home was part of one of my plans, what could be sweeter than mom’s cooking, but I never expected it to last 2 years nor did I think I would become settled. Unfortunately that is how I started feeling, settled. So naturally I started freaking out, internally of course, I was nearly 25 and working in a job that I didn’t exactly choose (it more chose me) and wasn’t sure of where my life was going. So then in one fowl swoop I quit my job, which was difficult, said good-bye to the family, equally as difficult, and packed my bags. The summer that followed, had me globe trotting from Kenya, to Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and even Japan. I learned a lot about myself and my heritage on this trip. Met some fantastic people including some family memebers that I had never visually connected with before. The trip was basically the breath of fresh country air that I needed after spending so much time in a cooped up apartment in the city.