ABSTRACT
This chapter recounts the author’s four years as the representative of the US NGO Pact in Zambia, at this time ravaged by AIDS. He worked with Zambian CSOs to understand that good service delivery was constrained by unhelpful laws – advocacy for better laws was needed. The author had a free hand to offer training in advocacy and good governance in Pact’s name. The Government of Zambia was unhelpful, even obstructive, to this work of CSOs, claiming that it infringed on the government’s work; CSOs pointed out that many laws were unhelpful to the poorest. Working in advocacy, however, also worried both CSOs and the public – seeming to many to be too close to despised politics. Working out who was arguing on behalf of whom, who had asked them to do so, on whose authority, and who should fund it were the hot topics in the training courses.
By chance, the author also witnessed a UNICEF Ambassador: Ian Dury, British punk rock singer and victim of polio, was enrolled to help UNICEF Zambia with its polio vaccination programme, showing himself off memorably as a warning to children and someone who could have been helped if he had had the vaccination.
