Warm Heart of Africa

Welcome to my Blog!

First of all, I would like to state the following post(s) solely come(s) from the author's, Karina Redick's, feelings, beliefs, and perceptions and may not be replicated in any form to represent the organization Engineers Without Borders Canada, UK, or US or McMaster University and its affiliates.

"EWB"=Engineers Without Borders Canada.
"Mac"=McMaster University.
"JF" = Junior Fellow

I have set up this account in order to keep in touch with friends, family, and fans (ha). If I have invited you to follow this blog, then you most likely already know it's purpose. If not, I will do a quick introduction and update:

My name is Karina Redick, and I am a second year Nursing student from McMaster University who has been accepted for the Junior Fellowship Program with the McMaster EWB chapter in Hamilton Ontario. This means I am taking a plane to Malawi on May 7th and returning (tentatively) on August 21st. While I am there, I will be working with the Water and Sanitation team that EWB has there. Part of the WatSan strategy right now is working alongside the District government (one beneath the national gov.) to improve the water pump placements in the country. Not only are wells placed unproductively in places they are not needed, but over 30% of the pumps are broken and abandonned. EWB recognizes the problem facing the WatSan in Malawi is the government's infrastructure. "Approximately $1.5 billion has been invested in rural water access in the past 20 years, during which time the number of unserved people has risen six-fold" (see attached document "Overview of Waterpoint repair in Malawi for full document). Because the infrastructure of the government is failing, policies now direct the responsibility of water point repair to the rural communities owning them. This process is called "Community Based Management", where spare parts, funds, and repair skills are available at the community level. This is a more sustainable and ideal method of water point repair, but there are many struggles with organizing and building the infrastructure of that system.

OKAY...now you can breathe :) Sorry if I lost you in that last paragraph! It's hard to explain such a specific complex process in four short sentences. I will attach the document on the Overview of Waterpoint repair in Malawi if I can! :)


I have created this blog so that my friends, family, Mac's EWBers, and the McMaster community can keep up to date with what I am doing in Malawi. I will share frustrations, enlightening moments, exciting updates, the food I am eating, my goals as a JF, and much more. I will have limited internet access while I am there, so these updates will most likely come every (other) week.

The first thing I wish to share is a fear I have.

I am afraid that when I go to Malawi, I will learn more than I teach. I am worried that the people I meet, the experiences that I have, and the exciting moments I encounter will benefit me more than the district that I am going there to help. I understand that this is usually a reality in the development sector, but I've been thinking about it a lot lately.

Thank you for taking the interest in reading this blog,
Unfortunately this post is a little dry. I will be posting on this blog whenever I learn something new in my development training before pre-departure trainingin TO. So there will be more than logistics coming soon!! :)

bye for now,
Karina