Possible dissertation topic

Since the masters program I'm about to start is 9 months of classes and (approximately) 3 months of writing the dissertation, I've been trying to think of a dissertation topic so that I lay the groundwork ASAP. Three months for writing is NOTHING so I want to have a topic chosen in order to have as much time as possible for actual research.

I just had a lightbulb go off in my head and I want to write it down before it fades or goes away. This is REALLY rough as I just thought of it about 20 minutes ago. I'll be sure to share more as I flesh it out in a much more academic fashion.

A bit of background first, however: During my summer in Malawi, I observed the absolute saturation of the country with NGOs. I think just about every big NGO has several projects throughout, and there are certainly countless others. The Danes, the Japanese, the Americans, the EU, the Swiss, the Italians, the Scottish... you name it, they're probably there. If you are a Malawian and somehow get a job with an NGO, you are considered to have "made it." Government ministers and NGO workers have the highest status and highest income in the country. That being said, you can imagine the amount of dependency this has created, not just in terms of income.

I had a long talk with Dustin, the Executive Director of Bola Moyo, last night. Bola Moyo is the non-profit I worked with my last year in Portland, and they are also the organization I worked with when I was actually in Malawi. What has impressed me so much about Bola Moyo is that Dustin and Cara have emphasized self-determination from the beginning. (This may seem incredibly obvious, but believe me, most NGOs don't even consider doing this.) They asked Malawians what they needed and wanted instead of assuming that they needed a hospital or school, etc. Bola Moyo has now existed in some form for about four years now. Dustin was telling me that he wants to actively head toward making Bola Moyo self-sufficient. They've been spending several months out of the past five or so years in Malawi, working closely with staff. The goal was always to eventually have the project become self-sufficient, but now they want to make serious strides toward doing that as soon as possible. (Self-sufficiency in this case would involve getting the organization involved with other foundations to secure streams of funding; but the actual work in all senses would be Malawian-driven.)

I'm all for this, of course. What IS so-called development if not a direction toward self-sufficiency, after all? However, I've had a few concerns pop into my head. Foremost in my mind is some type of resistance to organizational self-sufficiency that I observed in a lot of Malawians themselves. I suspect Bola Moyo will experience this to some degree with various staff members as they make strides toward self-sufficiency. I can't say why this is the case, exactly -- whether they resist it because becoming detached from azungu (whites) decreases their funding and their prestige (I was astonished to see and experience for myself how racialized everything is in Malawi) or any other host of reasons. But this resistance to self-sufficiency indicates not only a lack of self-confidence but a lack of dignity. What are the causes behind this? What legacy (in terms of colonialism, institutions, politics, indigenous culture, etc) lies at the origin of this phenomenon? I would want to conduct interviews with Malawians and long-term foreign residents of Malawi to examine these attitudes and the origins thereof.

This would certainly require some amount of fieldwork and in essence it would be a case study. I don't know if LSE allows "case studies" in masters dissertations, but it's worth thinking about at least.

the greatest lesson

Sometimes life just works out. Most of the time, in fact.

This may seem like the most cliché statement of the year, or even a bit pointless, but for me it's been an absolute revelation. This has been my strongest lesson from Africa and from the past year of my life.

Those who know me well (such as my darling husband) are probably quite aware that in general I've been a pessimist in life. I haven't wanted to give up control of a lot of things for fear that they will just automatically fail without my constant influence. I don't know if the course of my life has taken a turn for the better recently, or if I'm just able to open my eyes and see the wonderful aspects of my life now. But everything is working itself out, even though I'm not worrying about every single last detail. This is really quite amazing to me. The trick is, it works out in the end. The means of getting to the end are often incredibly different than what I'd envisioned.

A former professor of mine contacted me this evening (one of my favorites of my undergraduate career) to tell me that he'd had a dream about me last night - that I was telling him and a group of people that I was happy with the course of things. He said it struck him that I was literally beaming with happiness.

And the truth is, I am happy. Happier than I've ever been in my life, especially with the course of things. That doesn't mean I remember to be happy every moment. I still struggle with being happy. But in the general sense, this is the place I have come to. It fills me with wonder.

Because of this, I especially love my Rob Breszny this past week:

Taurus Horoscope for week of September 11, 2008

After studying the astrological omens, I had a psychic vision of you jumping up and down, screaming with joy as if you'd won the lottery. That doesn't necessarily mean you will actually win the lottery, though. My visions are usually symbolic, not literal. So what does it mean? It could prophesy the imminent arrival of a good surprise. It may signify that your physical vitality will be exceptional, or maybe you will be visited by an exhilarating revelation about the future. To get yourself in the proper spirit, why not jump up and down and scream for joy right now? Then keep doing it at least twice a day until the breakthrough actually occurs.