Hello Everyone!

My name is Nick LeBlanc. I’ve just come back home from a three-month internship in Mzuzu, Malawi; I found internet to be quite a hassle while there and so I didn’t bother to post on this blog during my stay, but now that I’m home I want to give you a quick rundown of my time abroad.

I was working at Mzuzu University’s Water and Sanitation Centre of Excellence; while I went over chiefly to do groundwater research, my main projects actually wound up consisting of curricula development. I worked on the development of tangible course material, performed a full evaluation of the university’s degree program in Water Resources Management and Development and made recommendations on how it could be restructured and improved to increase the quality and continuity of the students’ education, and I ultimately designed and implemented a new degree program in Integrated Sanitation Management to address the significant need for quality education in sanitation and its relationship with environmental issues. I worked on a number of other projects within Land Management and Sanitation while there as well, but my most significant contributions were to curricula.

I am in my final year of Civil Engineering at the University of New Brunswick and I intend to do both a BEd and a Masters in Hydrogeology, so this internship provided me with a really good basis in each of those fields. I specifically want to work with the interrelationship between groundwater and sanitation (particularly in terms of contamination) and so Mzuzu proved to be an excellent place of study. I am continuing my work with Mzuzu University and will be submitting a proposal to them in the coming months regarding groundwater contamination from pit latrines. I established a wonderful network of both personal and professional contacts while I was in Malawi and so it is a pleasure to continue working with them.

I could really never say enough about my time in Malawi. It was so enriching…I learned a great deal about myself, and a great deal about the world. The people in Mzuzu are incredibly friendly and welcoming and have such a pure perspective of life, free of the common stressors that I identify with my home culture. Malawians certainly have stressors, of course, many of which are the same as ours, but they respond differently to those stressors; they have a relaxed nature, as though something in their culture has established an inner peace in them that allows them to transcend the trivialities of daily life. They are wonderful people. They are so eager to shake hands, to talk with you, and to learn from you. One man told me about how instrumental it could be for he and I to share our views of the world with each other, given our different backgrounds. I asked him what he meant by instrumental and he told me that it really depended upon how I defined an instrument. They are full of wisdom and they embrace you with their culture, sharing their understanding with you gradually as you become a member of their community. Once you have introduced yourself to a person there, they will not forget you, and they will hail you at every opportunity. I managed to pick up a bit of the local language (Chichewa, although Tumbuka is also quite dominant in the northern parts of Malawi) and this greatly enhanced my experience. Everyone in Mzuzu can speak English reasonably well, but to address them in Chichewa or Tumbuka and share your knowledge of the language impresses them and they are enthusiastic to teach you more, which is a delightful way to meet people and learn from them.

Personal development really played just as large a role in my internship as academic or professional development did; indeed, I would be inclined to say that it was the most important part of my time in Malawi. I became close with many Malawians and they taught me so many things about myself and about life that I could never have grasped without leaving Canada, because I simply did not have the context here to think from such a different horizon. Coming back to Canada, I see life and my culture’s response to life in an entirely new light. I feel more objective and more confident because of that objectivity. My work in Malawi has solidified my career intentions, has enforced the theoretical principles of my education with practical experience, and has opened my eyes to ideas that I never would have even realized that I was blind to. My time there was ineffably worth my while; it didn’t define me, per say, but it allowed me to understand the definition of myself, and that is an invaluable attainment. I commend all of my fellow SFD participants for seizing this opportunity to furnish their minds and broaden their realms of experience; my own experience with this program was truly remarkable and inspiring and I wish this for everyone else in the program, and everyone who is not in the program.

Be safe, smile big, dance lots, rock hard, and enjoy yourselves!

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