pamoja

In Kiswahili, pamoja means together.

Together, we can accomplish anything. Alone, you, or I, can accomplish very little. True in just about every domain of life, but particularly salient, necessary really, for work in global health and development.

The title comes from three motives: 1) It’s Swahili, a tribute to Kenya, my first introduction to and love of Africa; 2) I’ve probably written thousands of papers in my academic career and I’ve never been able to start a single one of them without a title–I just can’t do it, some sort of mental block or something; 3) the meaning seemed to fit.

I begin this blog as I begin a summer job with The Millennium Cities Initiative of The Earth Institute. I’m conducting a gender-based needs assessment and costing analysis in the city of Blantyre, Malawi in order to determine the specific needs and costs of interventions that will promote women’s equality and empowerment, and ultimately to attract foreign direct investment that will enable the city of Blantyre to achieve Millennium Development Goal 3: promote gender equality and empower women. Basically, I’ll be meeting with people in government ministries, non-governmental organizations, community organizations, women’s rights groups, hospitals, schools, etc. to gather information about gender issues (read: women’s inequality) in Blantyre.

I’ll be in Malawi until the very end of June, then I travel back to Eldoret, Kenya to continue my work with street children, building a team of colleagues to begin working towards solutions for street children in Eldoret, and to conduct an ethnographic/qualitative research project with street children and their families that will ultimately inform the development of these programs/solutions.

I’m hoping this blog will “accomplish” several things. First, and a bit selfishly, it allows me to process and write about my experiences, without daily journaling, because journaling is boring, constraining, and just kind of sucks (if this ever begins to read like a journal… first I did this, then I did that, etc, please tell me). Second, I hope to share, inform, and educate in the small way that I can, about the tiny sliver of “global health and development” within which I’m working, and about the wonderful people I meet and places I see along the way. Third, I hope this blog can connect–people, places, ideas, information, problems, and solutions. We are truly part of a singular human race, and together…

In some Swahili dialects, particularly Sheng,which most of my Kenyan friends speak (but not in pure, formal Swahili as I’m told by my Tanzanian friends), pamoja is used to end a conversation, as in pamoja–”we’ll be together again”. So with that…

pamoja,

merc.