Market Research!!!

Wohooo!!!! I've been doing looooooads of this over the past 3 days!

The organisation I'm working with does an ongoing programme entitled the "Basic Needs Basket". The research I was describing in my earlier post was a new measure to try and extend this same programme, which has been running in urban centres in Malawi for years, into rural areas. What they do is they spend 3 days to a week going around various urban marketplaces - we did 9 over the last 3 days - and get quotes for, say, potatoes, onions, fish, vegetables, etc sufficient to feed a family of 6 for a month. They then publish this information, and compare it to people's actual incomes on a monthly basis. I've been asking lots of questions about it since I started and the disparity between the cost of living here and the amount people actually make is shocking!!

It's now estimated that it costs just under 50,000 Malawian Kwacha (approx. 250 euro) per month to feed an average family of 6. By way of contrast - a shop assistant at a popular supermarket here earns about 3,000 MK - 8,000 MK per month (approx. 15 - 40 euro). I'm not kidding - they've actually asked people this, this is what they get paid. A police officer gets between 15,000 MK and 30,000 MK a month (75 - 150 euro). So, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that the majority of Malawians fall depressingly short of earning enough to fulfil their basic needs. The government-designated minimum wage here is the equivalent of a couple of cent per day.

So, armed with my sunhat - which was a pain in the bum to lug around with me - my sunglasses and a big bottle of Factor 50+, off I set to scour the marketplaces for the best value spuds I could find! I had a great time - I know I keep raving about my colleagues here but they really are fantastic. I've learned some basic Chichewa from them already - "Moni" (Hello/general greeting), "Muli Bwanji?" (How are you?), "Ndili Bwino, kainu?" (Im fine, how are you?), "Zikomo Quambiri" (Thanks very much), "Dapita" (Goodbye), "(Mu)Ana" (child/children). I'm probably after spelling ALL of those wrong, but then, I have seen none of this written down, I'm just learning how to say it so I'm probably spelling it all very phonetically. I'm hoping to get lessons soon!

The kind of foods they eat has been a real eye-opener! Almost all of the fish they eat is dried, which I hadn't really encountered before I came here. And they're so TINY!! They eat this kind of dried fish, heads and all, called kapenta - it's a pale beige colour and bout half an inch long, they often mix it with tomato paste, apparently, and eat them whole. They're supposed to be delicious, but I haven't tried them yet. I might be convinced sometime, but I'll have to work up the courage :-D Some of the larger fish have been guteed and opened up to dry, and to be honest they look more gruesome than appetising, but they're cheap so people eat them. No lemon-and-herb crusted sole fillets on a bed of Cos lettuce for these people. Oh no - but it's still interesting to see!

One thing a colleague of mine bought that it very popular in Malawi, which I will decidedly NOT be sampling, is mphalabungu. To cut a long, gross story short, it's a type of dried tree worm that, en masse, greatly resembles the droppings of a tiny mammal. "Ew ew ew ew" would sum up my reaction to it, at the time. My colleagues thought it was hilarious, my process of initial curiousity, followed swiftly by absolute revulsion. Needless to say, my curiousity didn't quite stretch to a bowl of mphalabungu stew or something. Another one I won't be trying, but which we didn't see at market, is ngumbi, a kind of giant white ant that I understand tend to be spit-roasted before eating. Both are supposed to be quite tasty, but I think I'll opt for taking my colleagues' word for it...

But I've learned a lot, even in such a short time! I've had conversations with people in situations I'm still struggling a bit to get my head around, and I think that I'm beginning to come to an understanding of the reality of abject poverty that I never could have obtained through study at college. To add to this, a lot of what I read about it in an academic context seems to make a bit more sense to me, now that I have a practical grasp of the issues involved too, so that's great. It is hard - there's no getting across to someone who hasn't seen it, what it's like to speak face-to-face with someone who laughs hysterically when you ask them how much (on average) they spend per month on the hairdresser. Not my question, I might add!! But regardless of what anyone might say, I think it's good to be affected by it, to some extent.

Before I got this gig with Trocaire, I had an interview for another placement in Kenya where I was asked to outline my biggest weakness. I always think this is such a ludicrous question - I mean, who really answers this honestly in an interview context?? "Well, I'm a complete scatterbrain and I'd forget my head if it wasn't screwed on" would be a completely honest answer, LOL! But another one I thought of, which didn't make me sound like a dithering idiot, was my sensitivity. In a sense, I think it's both a strength and a weakness. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm an enormous softie. I cry at films, I cry at book, I cry at songs, I cry at stories on the news, I cry at pictures... the list goes on. I find it very hard to see people scrape a living out of the ground, living in a dwelling made entirely of mud and grass, with no food, what little clothes they have torn and ragged, little or no access to medical treatment, sick and hungry and tired, and grateful for the kind of things I take for absolute granted - and not feel like crying from sadness and a little bit of niggling guilt.

I am convinced that telling them this lost me the placement. They had been really positive about me up to that point, and I suppose that to an extent I can understand where they are coming from in not wanting a huge softie on placement with them. But I in no way meant that I was going to spend the entire 6 months in hysterics and not doing anything constructive. I simply meant that I can't view poverty dispassionately. I don't think this makes me a great person - I just think I need to get up off my ass and do something with my passion. Why is it considered a bad thing to be sensitive about this? I don't know. Personally, I think a great deal more harm than good has been done by those who view poverty entirely in an empirical, macro-economic sort of way, like a series of numbers and statistics on a page. How can you hope to solve the issue of poverty if you don't feel the urgency of it, or if you don't understand its personal aspect?

M'eh. I'm whinging again - sorry, I've been doing a lot of that lately! Big shout out to my friend Savannah with her Fairtrade sugar from Malawi! Both Fairtrade sugar and Savannah rock my socks!!

I think that's all for today, my fingers hurt. :-D