It's time

Tomorrow's the big day - my Travers project starts rolling out on CBCNews.ca. We'll kick off with an interview with the good folks at Ottawa Morning (you can listen online if you aren't in Ottawa) and you will also hear me on your local station later this week after I spend six hours in a radio booth talking to 31 different hosts. 

Please let me know what you think. I hope it lives up to expectations.

All of the colour

I was going to write an actual post, but it's late (okay, 9:30 p.m. local, but for some reason in Tanzania I function like I'm 70) so instead I offer some photos of my recent trip to Tabora region. It's a relatively rural area with the country's worst indicators. Despite that, it struck me as less impoverished than Singida - the houses I could see from the roads we travelled seemed sturdier and larger, fewer people seemed to be just hanging out or standing around, and most people's clothes were cleaner and in better condition. I'll have to do a bit of digging to find out which region actually has the higher income to see if those observations are born out in fact.

On a totally unrelated note, thank you to those who have been asking about my dad. He got out of the hospital soon after I left and he is doing really well. He had great care.

Before I get to more of the loveliness...behold the bathroom I had for the past two nights.

There was a showerhead...which was rusted over and didn't work. 

I now have much improved accommodation in a much bigger centre. Never has a lukewarm-to-cold shower made me as happy as today's.

I'm on the road again tomorrow to do more interviews, and trying to cram in one or two on Friday, but I'm starting to sort of hope they fall through so I have some time to transcribe and just gather my thoughts a bit. I have transcribed most of the first two days of interviews, but I have another three days' worth to do, nevermind what I gather tomorrow. Plus I should be blogging! The internet situation the first half of this week didn't help with that.

Anyway. Loveliness abounds, even steps away from that bathroom.

I have not screwed with this photo in any way. The light is just magical here. (Laura Payton)

Me with a Care Canada community health worker in Tabora region.

Members of a village savings and loan program. (Laura Payton)

This is where we had lunch yesterday. (Edited to add: the food was delicious. But I'm not sure how hygienic it is). (Laura Payton)

I'm here!

It's the end of my first work week in Tanzania and I have to keep reminding myself that I've made it. It's been a blur so far, mostly because I got right to work due to the schedule of one of the NGOs whose project I was visiting.

I arrived in Arusha Tuesday night and left Wednesday morning for Singida, a rural region with the main town about a five-hour drive south-west of Arusha. Most people there depend on farming for a livelihood, although it sounds like it's mostly to feed their families: I was told a few times that "My husband doesn't have a job, he's a farmer."

It was a quick re-introduction to how differently people live than the majority of Canadians. One woman close to my age has six children and primary school education. When I told her we were about the same age, she laughed like I was making a hilarious joke. Once I started interviewing, I realized there was more than a Swahili-English language barrier: the words and concepts used in international development have very little meaning to someone with almost no education who likely hasn't travelled outside her region.

I visited several sites for the World Vision Canada project in Singida, which ended at the end of March (the staff have been kept on for a few months to wrap it up). Unsurprisingly, the people I spoke to want it to continue for at least another two years. While the doctors I interviewed have relatively pricey requests like a new operating theatre, other health workers hope for more simple items. One nurse said she'd really like a light for the exam room so they can insert IUDs (a form of long-term birth control) there rather than trying to get into the district's only operating theatre. A community health worker said he'd like some rain gear or even an umbrella because when he visits families during the rainy season, his materials get soaked.

The first visit has me energized and raring to go to the next location. More photos to come next week.

My Travers Fellowship pitch

The following is an edited version of my pitch, which I submitted in November, 2014.

In January, 2010, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told a group of elite global economic leaders in Davos, Switzerland that Canada was going to make the health of mothers, newborns and children the focus of his time as chair of the G8 and G20.

Harper was more associated with Tim Horton’s and hockey - not to mention cold, hard political calculations - than with international development and multilateralism. He isn’t exactly known as a softie and he’d often criticized the UN. But there he was, telling an international audience that Canada cared about maternal, newborn and child health and that it was shocking how appallingly the world had fared so far in lowering deaths among the world’s poorest. Progress on those two Millennium Development Goals (reducing child mortality, also known as MDG 4, and improving maternal health, MDG 5) was slowest of the eight global targets, which were created in 2000 and aim to improve life in developing countries.

The statistics Harper cited were dire, even after years of slow improvement: more than half a million women died in pregnancy every year, while nearly nine million children died before their fifth birthdays.

(Those numbers have since improved: in 2013, an estimated 289,000 women died in pregnancy or labour and 6.3 million children died before their fifth birthdays.)

Later that year, Harper announced $2.85 billion from Canada, for a total of $7.3 billion in aid from countries around the world. The support for maternal, newborn and child health, or MNCH, would be known as the Muskoka Initiative. He also pushed for more accountability in how that money was spent, co-chairing a UN commission with Jakaya Kikwete, the president of Tanzania. Harper has since pledged an additional $3.5 billion for 2015 to 2020.

The money would go to everything from micronutrients and vaccinations to training health workers and educating women about their health: simple and often cheap ways to save millions of lives.

2015 is the deadline for those MDGs, and June will mark five years since the world, led by Harper, zeroed in on maternal and child health. I want to research and report on whether Canada has made a difference, both financially and through our attempt to take the lead, and look at what comes next.

In September, 2015, the UN sets its post-2015 goals. Negotiations are underway and have whittled down a list of 40 goals to 17, each with multiple targets. Many experts believe ending child marriage should be one of those goals, a push Canada seems primed to support: Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird has already been advocating to end child marriage, something that would go far in helping improve a number of the MDGs. [APRIL 12, 2015 NOTE: Baird has since retired from politics. Rob Nicholson is now Canada's foreign affairs minister.]

This is the perfect time to visit some of the projects and countries affected by the Canadian funding to see whether the Muskoka Initiative has actually made a difference.