Winds of Change

The winds of change are blowing, have been blowing for some time, through these mountains east of Vwaza Marsh. Mwazisi is on the cusp, the verge of apparently becoming an actual trading center. The World Bank has earmarked Mwazisi as an important area and plans to roll out a four phase infrastructure project to develop the village. Not sure exactly why Mwazisi, of all the villages in Rumphi West, was selected. Anyone who’s been here will tell you it’s a ghost town; a village once that began to grow but was abruptly abandoned with maybe 4 or 5 small shops making up the trading center.

My guess is it’s an important location for tourism, central to both Vwaza Marsh and Nyika and literally next to the border to Zambia. Considering also that after Mwazisi, the next village that will potentially be targeted is Hayway which is a border town and the last large community before Chilenda gate to Nyika and up to Chitipa. The DEB was also placed on a priority list for completion, probably because of the attention Mwazisi was getting from politicians. This is great news for me, makes my life easier if the funding gets here faster and they electrify the building (for free).

The four phase project, touted by the TA and MP as part of their “promises to the community,” is electrification, roads, water pipes, and telecom and internet. All financed fully under a World Bank ISP mandate, which also stipulates that all government buildings will be wired for free, so schools, health centers, and the DEB, which is technically also a government building. The electrification phase is poised to be completed by end of August, 2 years in the making. Between political, funding, and logistical hurdles, Mwazisi can finally see the light at the end of the development tunnel…and it’s fluorescent. They promised that once the electricity is in the other projects will just roll in easily and quickly.

Is this model sustainable, these large infrastructure projects? Who knows, but the community is pretty excited, as anyone would be. Sustainable is an interesting thing. Consider this: the last major infrastructure project, undertaken by the Malawian government, were telephone landlines to Mwazisi, by MTL. There was a service disruption, which as expected of MTL, they took quite some time to get to fixing. Eventually, people started cutting the wires down and using it as clothes lines or to hang bee hives. And by now all the lines from Mwazisi to Bolero have been cut down, all that remains are poles. Will ESCOM, the only Malawian electric company and contractor for this project, make the same mistake? We will see.

There are donors flinging money left and right in Mwazisi, it’s a crowded market. Thus, it's only inevitable that they cross swords and since I arrived in Mwazisi 2 months ago I’ve already crossed swords with several NGOs: DAMRA, Total Land Care (TLC), World Bank, NASFARM, etc. Most of these acronymed organizations, perhaps with the exception of TLC, seem to be in the business of giving, which is generally not sustainable in the long run. Every organization has different models, some based on funding, some on educating. Peace Corps focuses on the later; to educate and tries to stay clear of the funding business. Of course in a crowded market like Malawi, if you have one man offering to teach you to fish and one offering you free fish, which would you choose? Most consumers, as do Malawians, would choose the latter, which makes our jobs that much harder. Ah, the trials and tribulations of a PCV.

So what would you do? I could break out a SWOT analysis of Peace Corps versus competitor NGOs, but at the end of the day it’s a price war, and you hope that the other guy can’t last very long in the ring. Look around and you’ll see many abandoned buildings constructed by donor funds, like orphanages and schools that were never even used. I've seen some that have remained locked since their completion. I’m not saying funding is useless, if anything it the most important aspect, nor that the other model doesn’t work, but most of the time you notice it never sustains.