It is odd not doing anything development-y this summer, other than the occasional OID newsletter. (One should be out today! Srsly!) That's why it was good to meet up with my capstone group over the weekend. Planning the rest of our summer reminded me that I'm in deep water without those orange floaties on my arm.
On a marginally developmental note, I went up to NYC to see a play that was written by my freshman neighbor and produced from the guy down the hall from us. While catching up with other theater friends I found out that a mutual (theater) friend of ours is in Tanzania working in the summer at an orphanage. I need to get in touch with her to see what she does there. If you are NYC in the next week you should see it. It's a solid piece that has lots of promise and laughter. Still the River Runs
To those who are summer expats: How are you spending the 4th of July? Are other expats making a big deal of doing it authentically or do you end up with an amalgam of local, U.S., and other anglophone cultures? My first Thanksgiving meal abroad was turkey at an Irish pub in Tokyo.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
down to bidness
Hi everyone,
I found out yesterday when I was attending an anti-corruption community meeting in Polokwane that I received my work clearance (woohoo!). So, 27 days after I arrived to start my USAID internship, I can actually start. Working for the Democracy and Governance office, I'm going to be updating and creating site sheets on the projects they sponsor, including one on trafficking in persons and another on the women's justice and empowerment initiative.
RTI, a USAID partner, ran the anti-corruption meeting I attended. It included members of the Polokwane municipality. Many of them were very outspoken about what can be done to fight corruption and fraud in the city. These are two big problems in local South African governance. Apparently most local government officials are considered crooks. The municipality has set up a hotline that anyone can call anonymously to report fraud in government. However, there seem to be two main concerns from the audience. 1) most did not believe their identity would truly be kept confidential, despite assurances to the contrary and 2) some said the hotline would be used to lodge petty or unfounded complaints against people the caller didn't like. Several people seemed to already have certain incidents in mind when they spoke, like officials using government cars for personal use.
In the end it was good just to get out of Pretoria and see more of South Africa. I second those complaints about feeling cooped up where I am. More later.
Jessica W.
I found out yesterday when I was attending an anti-corruption community meeting in Polokwane that I received my work clearance (woohoo!). So, 27 days after I arrived to start my USAID internship, I can actually start. Working for the Democracy and Governance office, I'm going to be updating and creating site sheets on the projects they sponsor, including one on trafficking in persons and another on the women's justice and empowerment initiative.
RTI, a USAID partner, ran the anti-corruption meeting I attended. It included members of the Polokwane municipality. Many of them were very outspoken about what can be done to fight corruption and fraud in the city. These are two big problems in local South African governance. Apparently most local government officials are considered crooks. The municipality has set up a hotline that anyone can call anonymously to report fraud in government. However, there seem to be two main concerns from the audience. 1) most did not believe their identity would truly be kept confidential, despite assurances to the contrary and 2) some said the hotline would be used to lodge petty or unfounded complaints against people the caller didn't like. Several people seemed to already have certain incidents in mind when they spoke, like officials using government cars for personal use.
In the end it was good just to get out of Pretoria and see more of South Africa. I second those complaints about feeling cooped up where I am. More later.
Jessica W.
Monday, June 23, 2008
A Tale of Two Kinshasas
Finally yesterday I felt for the first time this summer like I'm really living in Africa. The past two weeks I've felt like I'm living in some weird alternate America where I'm rich enough to live in a huge and very nice house in the nicest part of town, and important enough to be driven around in armored vehicles and invited to fancy cocktail receptions and dinner parties.
There really are two distinct worlds here - the expat/embassy world, where the water that comes out of our kitchen tap is potable and we don't even notice power outages because our house has its own generator, we play tennis and swim and eat western foods and shop in grocery stores and eat in nice restaurants and drive nice cars. And this Kinshasa rarely interacts with the other Kinshasa, the one without running water or electricity or a functioning government. We see bits of this other Kinshasa from the car windows but the embassy is extremely protective and insists that we not walk around the city on our own. This is by far the largest income gap I've ever seen, and though there are certainly things about Kinshasa that remind me of Senegal or other developing countries I've seen, this is the first time I've lived in a war-torn, actual failed state.
Yesterday we felt a little stir-crazy from being cooped up in our compound all the time, so we (all the interns) found a car and driver and took a little road trip out to what used to be Mobutu's vacation/country home. It was built by the Chinese as a gift to Mobutu and looked like a smaller version of the Summer Palace in Beijing, with the covered walkways and elaborate Chinese paintings on the walls and ceilings. The palace was surrounded by thousands of acres of what used to be a thriving cattle ranch and pineapple plantation, but in the last decade or so of civil war and state collapse the palace, grounds and plantation had been abandoned, and the whole place was overgrown with weeds and in ruins that made it look a thousand years old instead of the forty or so that it actually was. I think a couple of families were squatting in the palace, and there were ducks wandering around through the empty rooms. Civil war is really devastating to an economy.
So hopefully we'll take more weekend trips that get us out of our little American bubble, and I think I'll be sent on at least one, maybe two site visits to USAID projects in other parts of the country, which should be pretty eye-opening.
A few random facts that I think are interesting:
Kinshasa is the biggest French-speaking city in the world, and by some estimates, as big as the next two (Paris and Montreal) combined
Photography is illegal. So I'm sorry I can't send pictures - I haven't taken a single picture and might not be able to the entire summer.
Everyone uses US Dollars - the largest Congolese franc note is worth less than $1, so people use USD for just about everything
Prices for everything are ridiculously high - it's really shocking, but I guess that's what happens when neither the agriculture nor the manufacturing sectors really function and absolutely everything has to be imported.
I've created a Google Map of Kinshasa that I add to every time I discover something new around town. If you're interested in seeing what the city and the roof of my house look like, here's the link: (look at the satellite view).
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=105585629350532448728.00044f79f58c997c7578d
One other exciting thing is that the embassy is officially part of the United States, so we have a US post office. This means you can send me letters or packages just like you would to someone in the US, with normal US postage, for the same price as a domestic letter or package. Likewise, I can mail letters and postcards from here with a normal stamp, so send me your address if you want a postcard! My address:
Cynthia Berning
Unit 2220, Box 188
DPO AE
09828-0188
There really are two distinct worlds here - the expat/embassy world, where the water that comes out of our kitchen tap is potable and we don't even notice power outages because our house has its own generator, we play tennis and swim and eat western foods and shop in grocery stores and eat in nice restaurants and drive nice cars. And this Kinshasa rarely interacts with the other Kinshasa, the one without running water or electricity or a functioning government. We see bits of this other Kinshasa from the car windows but the embassy is extremely protective and insists that we not walk around the city on our own. This is by far the largest income gap I've ever seen, and though there are certainly things about Kinshasa that remind me of Senegal or other developing countries I've seen, this is the first time I've lived in a war-torn, actual failed state.
Yesterday we felt a little stir-crazy from being cooped up in our compound all the time, so we (all the interns) found a car and driver and took a little road trip out to what used to be Mobutu's vacation/country home. It was built by the Chinese as a gift to Mobutu and looked like a smaller version of the Summer Palace in Beijing, with the covered walkways and elaborate Chinese paintings on the walls and ceilings. The palace was surrounded by thousands of acres of what used to be a thriving cattle ranch and pineapple plantation, but in the last decade or so of civil war and state collapse the palace, grounds and plantation had been abandoned, and the whole place was overgrown with weeds and in ruins that made it look a thousand years old instead of the forty or so that it actually was. I think a couple of families were squatting in the palace, and there were ducks wandering around through the empty rooms. Civil war is really devastating to an economy.
So hopefully we'll take more weekend trips that get us out of our little American bubble, and I think I'll be sent on at least one, maybe two site visits to USAID projects in other parts of the country, which should be pretty eye-opening.
A few random facts that I think are interesting:
Kinshasa is the biggest French-speaking city in the world, and by some estimates, as big as the next two (Paris and Montreal) combined
Photography is illegal. So I'm sorry I can't send pictures - I haven't taken a single picture and might not be able to the entire summer.
Everyone uses US Dollars - the largest Congolese franc note is worth less than $1, so people use USD for just about everything
Prices for everything are ridiculously high - it's really shocking, but I guess that's what happens when neither the agriculture nor the manufacturing sectors really function and absolutely everything has to be imported.
I've created a Google Map of Kinshasa that I add to every time I discover something new around town. If you're interested in seeing what the city and the roof of my house look like, here's the link: (look at the satellite view).
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF&msa=0&msid=105585629350532448728.00044f79f58c997c7578d
One other exciting thing is that the embassy is officially part of the United States, so we have a US post office. This means you can send me letters or packages just like you would to someone in the US, with normal US postage, for the same price as a domestic letter or package. Likewise, I can mail letters and postcards from here with a normal stamp, so send me your address if you want a postcard! My address:
Cynthia Berning
Unit 2220, Box 188
DPO AE
09828-0188
TIA = This is Africa!!
Since I'm the resident expert of USAID, I can authoritatively tell you that the wierdest place I have seen a USAID logo is the tattoo on the undisclosed location on my body which reads "From the American People". Giga giga.
(Caution: This blog post got a little long, but I had a lot to fit in. So feel free to take breaks while reading through it [I've provided resting points in the form of paragraphs, and there are pictures to keep you entertained]. Also be sure to drink plenty of water and take a walk at least once every two hours. And yes, the lake pictures are here to make you extremely jelous.)
(Also I didn't feel like uploading the pics to both spots, so if you want to see them go check out my original blog.)
Thanks to the movie Blood Diamonds (which stars Leonardo Dicaprio as a swashbuckling ex-mercenary – yeah, right) the phrase TIA, “This Is Africa” has become a popular way to explain why crazy things happen in Africa. As if only crazy things happen in Africa. I think it fits in with the dominant view that people have of Africa where the four horsemen of the apocalypse (war, famine, pestilence, and death) dominate the only headlines that escape the black hole of information that envelops the continent. It’s a trite and hackneyed statement that could be used to capture so much more…as I found out this weekend.
To me this weekend felt like a 30-minute sitcom sort of situation where so much emotion is packed into such a short time that it hardly resembles reality. You know how a major problem is introduced and 21 minutes later it gets resolved. Yeah, that’s kind of how the weekend was.
My week ended on a down note emotionally. A couple of things came to a head on Friday. The first is that I finally made it out to a market to buy some gifts for back home. One of the really difficult things about Africa is that a white person can’t go anywhere without having a thousand hands held out palm up asking for money. It makes it really hard to be a tourist, but at the same time, isn’t that what I came to see? In the moment, though, I struggle with how to deal with it and usually just mutter a “Sorry” and try not to make eye contact. As if making eye contact obligates me to stop or maybe just makes the encounter more personal. Sometimes I take advantage of the attention and stop to discuss their lives to get a first-hand account. I’ve had the best conversations through such encounters, but they always end up the same way. Just as I think I’ve made a friend in Africa, they ask me to come check out their booth or buy some of the necklaces. It feels like to them I will always be a dollar sign.
So obviously this gets magnified when a muzungu (white person) voluntarily enters a market, which I did on Friday. This time, however, with the intent to buy. Of course in these market situations they always start with an exorbitant price and hope that the muzungu doesn’t try to barter down. In these situations my competitive instinct always comes out. I ended up bartering down to some extremely low prices for some pretty nice carvings which they had done themselves, probably in the last day or two. Afterwards I ended up feeling terrible and overcome with guilt. This is the only money that these guys were going to make that day probably and I talked them out of something like $1.50. Did I really need that $1.50 more than they did? Of course not. So now even when I do give them money I felt bad. I wondered if this is how Africa would always be for me. That there would always be a barrier between me and the potential beneficiary of my perceived wealth. The outgoing American Ambassador of Malawi said as much to me. He told me that everywhere he goes people ask the US for money through him. He hardly had any Malawian friends because it was so hard for him to break through. TIA=This is Africa
The second thing weighing on me had to do with one of my security guards named Frank. One night after work I came through the gate and asked him how he was. This is usually a formality in Malawi where whenever you see someone you ask them how they are and it’s usually just a string of platitudes from there. But this time Frank said that he wasn’t doing okay. I asked him why and he showed me an insect bit on the back of his neck. Through broken English he said it was giving him a bad headache and making his whole body sore. He didn’t have any money for a doctor and he definitely couldn’t afford to miss a shift. So he was forced to come to work for his 12 hour over-night shift feeling terrible. The guards don’t even bring food for the shifts because they can’t afford it. I looked through my medicine travel kit and all I could find was some ibuprofen to give him. I gave it to him with some water and a banana and wished him well as I went to bed. The next evening I saw him again and again he wasn’t feeling great. The bite mark had gotten bigger. I gave him 2 more ibuprofen. A couple of hours later he knocked on my door and said that the medicine had helped him so much that he wondered if he could have more. My heart broke that this proud Malawian would be in such pain that he would break the rules of his job to come beg for some more medicine. I gave him enough to last through the night, but knew it wouldn’t solve the problem. This was the same week in which my other security guard told me that his 10 month old daughter had contracted malaria but had recovered, and even the computer technician at work had come down with malaria. And these are the people who actually have jobs and live in a relatively developed city. It all just became so heavy for me thinking about the 11 million people in this country who live in much worse situations. TIA=This is Africa
With all of that on my mind I headed out to visit Lake Malawi for the first time. Lake Malawi is third largest lake in Africa and is formed between the thousands of hills created by the escarpments of the Great Rift Valley. It’s supposed to be most endearing parts of “The Warm Heart of Africa”. It ended up being one of those instances in life where reality surpassed the hype. I took public transport to get there which allowed for some new forms of travel for this Texan wandering across the open plains of southern Africa. I left Lilongwe in a mini-bus with 17 other people and a sign on the back that said “No Fear”. Not a comforting sign when your crammed in like a sardine to the back seat. They call mini-buses “matolas” here in Malawi. Matola is Chichewa for “Close your eyes around corners!” Just kidding. It means mini-bus. The matola ride took 40 minutes to start as we waited for people to pile in. After two hours of driving we ended up in Salima which is about 20 km from the beach. From there I hopped on the back of a kid’s bike – a Malawian taxi. So add to my previous list of things on Malawian’s bikes a 182 pound Texan with a 40 pound rucksack in tow. It took him awhile to get going which drew laughs from the on-lookers. Then I loaded into the bed of the smallest Toyota pickup truck I had ever seen. There were 16 of us crammed in there along with two large baskets of tomatoes. Hold on to something!! This was a 40 minute drive to the beach. TIA=This is Africa!!
And finally, the beach. Boy, was it a sight for sore eyes. What an incredible view to behold in the middle of this dry continent. I camped out for the night and saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (pictured to the right). The powder blues and magentas of the sky overlooked the silvery water which seemed like an ocean of mercury. As I sat there in the cool night air I felt a thousand miles away from the crowded cities I had spent too much time in while in Africa. This ended up being the first time that I felt at home since I got here. Finally there were no people asking me for handouts. Out of sight, but definitely not out of mind. Even in this moment I couldn’t shake the emotional rollercoaster of the end of the week. But at the very least I felt like this great continent was reaching its giant arms around me and embracing me like a native son. As I looked out over the water I remembered Jodie Foster’s line at the end of the movie Contact where she’s supposedly overlooking all of the mysteries of the universe and she says “They should have sent a poet”. I felt like the most beautiful part of Africa was revealing itself to me in that moment. Suddenly all of the travel and fatigue was worth it. I was finally home. TIA=This is Africa.
One of the things I noticed while lying out on the lake enjoying some good books is how empty the skies are in Africa. I never really noticed it back home, but our skies are so cluttered with aircrafts. Maybe it’s because I only look up when I see planes flying. Maybe it’s because I lived right next to an airport and air bases in DC for the last year. But it feels rare to look up in the sky in the States and not see aircrafts, no matter how far out we are. Take a second to look up at the sky today and tell me what you think. But in Africa there is nothing above us. It’s a completely virgin sky…so natural. TIA=This is Africa.
At the same time, while I looked out over the pristine waters of Lake Malawi with fisherman busy at their vocation I was reading a book about some of the greatest tragedies that have befallen Africa in the last twenty years. In Central Africa there has been one genocide after another, and each time they dump the bodies in the rivers. As a result these waters are almost permanently stained, at least in the minds of those who witnessed the atrocities. It’s made it hard to look at waters in Africa and not think about the evil side of the continent. 300,000 killed in Burundi. 1 million murdered in Rwanda. 4 million dead in Congo. Each time the rivers ran red. This is the Africa that too often people choose to think about. And all the while Malawi has gone centuries without any major conflicts. This water has remained clean. TIA=This is Africa.
Even after such a beautiful experience, Africa was not finished revealing itself to me this weekend. Still a little heavy hearted after catching one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen (pictured to the left) I decided to head out on the arduous journey back to Lilongwe. As I was packing up my tent and leaving the campsite I ran into one of the venders who had come up to talk to me at the restaurant I ate at the night before. It was another conversation where I felt like we really got to know each other. We even realized that we shared the same name and had a good laugh over it. We called each other brothers – African Mike and American Mike. But at the end of it he invited me back to his shop to look at his key chains on which he could carve anybody’s name. I told him maybe in the morning on my way out just to get out of the situation. So on the way out that morning I had to walk back by his shop. I thought about trying to hitch a ride just to avoid another time when I had to disappoint him. But I kept walking and sure enough he was there waiting for me. African Mike greeted American Mike wearing a Houston Astros shirt he had found somewhere. I was in my Spurs shirt so we were in full Texas regalia. He told me to have a safe journey and then pulled out a key chain holder on which he had carved my name on one side and a rhinoceros on the other. I thanked him for it and asked him how much he wanted for it since I felt obliged to buy it now. He looked disappointed and said he didn’t want any money. I thought he was trying to get a pity donation, but he wouldn’t take any money. I practically tried to throw 500 kwatcha (~$3.50) at him but he wouldn’t take it. He just wanted me to have something to remember him by. So I took a picture with him (below) and headed down the road, almost emotionally overcome by my new African brother. TIA=This is Africa.
I kept walking down the road and all the little kids were yelling at me, saying “Hello! Hello! Hello!” This happens everywhere I go as if they just want to make contact with the outsider. At the same time they always keep their distance as if they don’t want to get THAT close to me. But for the first time since I arrived on the continent a little kid who must have been about 3 years old walked all the way up to me and grabbed my hand with the biggest smile on his face. And for about 100 meters we walked hand in hand as he kept saying over and over “Hello, hello, hello!” He seemed so proud to walk through his little village hand in hand with a giant mazungu. TIA=This is Africa.
I was going to write some snappy conclusion to this post. Something like, "For all it's problems there's still so much beauty in Africa". But that seems like such a hopeless way of summing up the weekend. All I can say for now is that I've got 8 more weeks here to try to learn a little more about Africa.
(Caution: This blog post got a little long, but I had a lot to fit in. So feel free to take breaks while reading through it [I've provided resting points in the form of paragraphs, and there are pictures to keep you entertained]. Also be sure to drink plenty of water and take a walk at least once every two hours. And yes, the lake pictures are here to make you extremely jelous.)
(Also I didn't feel like uploading the pics to both spots, so if you want to see them go check out my original blog.)
Thanks to the movie Blood Diamonds (which stars Leonardo Dicaprio as a swashbuckling ex-mercenary – yeah, right) the phrase TIA, “This Is Africa” has become a popular way to explain why crazy things happen in Africa. As if only crazy things happen in Africa. I think it fits in with the dominant view that people have of Africa where the four horsemen of the apocalypse (war, famine, pestilence, and death) dominate the only headlines that escape the black hole of information that envelops the continent. It’s a trite and hackneyed statement that could be used to capture so much more…as I found out this weekend.
To me this weekend felt like a 30-minute sitcom sort of situation where so much emotion is packed into such a short time that it hardly resembles reality. You know how a major problem is introduced and 21 minutes later it gets resolved. Yeah, that’s kind of how the weekend was.
My week ended on a down note emotionally. A couple of things came to a head on Friday. The first is that I finally made it out to a market to buy some gifts for back home. One of the really difficult things about Africa is that a white person can’t go anywhere without having a thousand hands held out palm up asking for money. It makes it really hard to be a tourist, but at the same time, isn’t that what I came to see? In the moment, though, I struggle with how to deal with it and usually just mutter a “Sorry” and try not to make eye contact. As if making eye contact obligates me to stop or maybe just makes the encounter more personal. Sometimes I take advantage of the attention and stop to discuss their lives to get a first-hand account. I’ve had the best conversations through such encounters, but they always end up the same way. Just as I think I’ve made a friend in Africa, they ask me to come check out their booth or buy some of the necklaces. It feels like to them I will always be a dollar sign.
So obviously this gets magnified when a muzungu (white person) voluntarily enters a market, which I did on Friday. This time, however, with the intent to buy. Of course in these market situations they always start with an exorbitant price and hope that the muzungu doesn’t try to barter down. In these situations my competitive instinct always comes out. I ended up bartering down to some extremely low prices for some pretty nice carvings which they had done themselves, probably in the last day or two. Afterwards I ended up feeling terrible and overcome with guilt. This is the only money that these guys were going to make that day probably and I talked them out of something like $1.50. Did I really need that $1.50 more than they did? Of course not. So now even when I do give them money I felt bad. I wondered if this is how Africa would always be for me. That there would always be a barrier between me and the potential beneficiary of my perceived wealth. The outgoing American Ambassador of Malawi said as much to me. He told me that everywhere he goes people ask the US for money through him. He hardly had any Malawian friends because it was so hard for him to break through. TIA=This is Africa
The second thing weighing on me had to do with one of my security guards named Frank. One night after work I came through the gate and asked him how he was. This is usually a formality in Malawi where whenever you see someone you ask them how they are and it’s usually just a string of platitudes from there. But this time Frank said that he wasn’t doing okay. I asked him why and he showed me an insect bit on the back of his neck. Through broken English he said it was giving him a bad headache and making his whole body sore. He didn’t have any money for a doctor and he definitely couldn’t afford to miss a shift. So he was forced to come to work for his 12 hour over-night shift feeling terrible. The guards don’t even bring food for the shifts because they can’t afford it. I looked through my medicine travel kit and all I could find was some ibuprofen to give him. I gave it to him with some water and a banana and wished him well as I went to bed. The next evening I saw him again and again he wasn’t feeling great. The bite mark had gotten bigger. I gave him 2 more ibuprofen. A couple of hours later he knocked on my door and said that the medicine had helped him so much that he wondered if he could have more. My heart broke that this proud Malawian would be in such pain that he would break the rules of his job to come beg for some more medicine. I gave him enough to last through the night, but knew it wouldn’t solve the problem. This was the same week in which my other security guard told me that his 10 month old daughter had contracted malaria but had recovered, and even the computer technician at work had come down with malaria. And these are the people who actually have jobs and live in a relatively developed city. It all just became so heavy for me thinking about the 11 million people in this country who live in much worse situations. TIA=This is Africa
With all of that on my mind I headed out to visit Lake Malawi for the first time. Lake Malawi is third largest lake in Africa and is formed between the thousands of hills created by the escarpments of the Great Rift Valley. It’s supposed to be most endearing parts of “The Warm Heart of Africa”. It ended up being one of those instances in life where reality surpassed the hype. I took public transport to get there which allowed for some new forms of travel for this Texan wandering across the open plains of southern Africa. I left Lilongwe in a mini-bus with 17 other people and a sign on the back that said “No Fear”. Not a comforting sign when your crammed in like a sardine to the back seat. They call mini-buses “matolas” here in Malawi. Matola is Chichewa for “Close your eyes around corners!” Just kidding. It means mini-bus. The matola ride took 40 minutes to start as we waited for people to pile in. After two hours of driving we ended up in Salima which is about 20 km from the beach. From there I hopped on the back of a kid’s bike – a Malawian taxi. So add to my previous list of things on Malawian’s bikes a 182 pound Texan with a 40 pound rucksack in tow. It took him awhile to get going which drew laughs from the on-lookers. Then I loaded into the bed of the smallest Toyota pickup truck I had ever seen. There were 16 of us crammed in there along with two large baskets of tomatoes. Hold on to something!! This was a 40 minute drive to the beach. TIA=This is Africa!!
And finally, the beach. Boy, was it a sight for sore eyes. What an incredible view to behold in the middle of this dry continent. I camped out for the night and saw one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen (pictured to the right). The powder blues and magentas of the sky overlooked the silvery water which seemed like an ocean of mercury. As I sat there in the cool night air I felt a thousand miles away from the crowded cities I had spent too much time in while in Africa. This ended up being the first time that I felt at home since I got here. Finally there were no people asking me for handouts. Out of sight, but definitely not out of mind. Even in this moment I couldn’t shake the emotional rollercoaster of the end of the week. But at the very least I felt like this great continent was reaching its giant arms around me and embracing me like a native son. As I looked out over the water I remembered Jodie Foster’s line at the end of the movie Contact where she’s supposedly overlooking all of the mysteries of the universe and she says “They should have sent a poet”. I felt like the most beautiful part of Africa was revealing itself to me in that moment. Suddenly all of the travel and fatigue was worth it. I was finally home. TIA=This is Africa.
One of the things I noticed while lying out on the lake enjoying some good books is how empty the skies are in Africa. I never really noticed it back home, but our skies are so cluttered with aircrafts. Maybe it’s because I only look up when I see planes flying. Maybe it’s because I lived right next to an airport and air bases in DC for the last year. But it feels rare to look up in the sky in the States and not see aircrafts, no matter how far out we are. Take a second to look up at the sky today and tell me what you think. But in Africa there is nothing above us. It’s a completely virgin sky…so natural. TIA=This is Africa.
At the same time, while I looked out over the pristine waters of Lake Malawi with fisherman busy at their vocation I was reading a book about some of the greatest tragedies that have befallen Africa in the last twenty years. In Central Africa there has been one genocide after another, and each time they dump the bodies in the rivers. As a result these waters are almost permanently stained, at least in the minds of those who witnessed the atrocities. It’s made it hard to look at waters in Africa and not think about the evil side of the continent. 300,000 killed in Burundi. 1 million murdered in Rwanda. 4 million dead in Congo. Each time the rivers ran red. This is the Africa that too often people choose to think about. And all the while Malawi has gone centuries without any major conflicts. This water has remained clean. TIA=This is Africa.
Even after such a beautiful experience, Africa was not finished revealing itself to me this weekend. Still a little heavy hearted after catching one of the most beautiful sunrises I have ever seen (pictured to the left) I decided to head out on the arduous journey back to Lilongwe. As I was packing up my tent and leaving the campsite I ran into one of the venders who had come up to talk to me at the restaurant I ate at the night before. It was another conversation where I felt like we really got to know each other. We even realized that we shared the same name and had a good laugh over it. We called each other brothers – African Mike and American Mike. But at the end of it he invited me back to his shop to look at his key chains on which he could carve anybody’s name. I told him maybe in the morning on my way out just to get out of the situation. So on the way out that morning I had to walk back by his shop. I thought about trying to hitch a ride just to avoid another time when I had to disappoint him. But I kept walking and sure enough he was there waiting for me. African Mike greeted American Mike wearing a Houston Astros shirt he had found somewhere. I was in my Spurs shirt so we were in full Texas regalia. He told me to have a safe journey and then pulled out a key chain holder on which he had carved my name on one side and a rhinoceros on the other. I thanked him for it and asked him how much he wanted for it since I felt obliged to buy it now. He looked disappointed and said he didn’t want any money. I thought he was trying to get a pity donation, but he wouldn’t take any money. I practically tried to throw 500 kwatcha (~$3.50) at him but he wouldn’t take it. He just wanted me to have something to remember him by. So I took a picture with him (below) and headed down the road, almost emotionally overcome by my new African brother. TIA=This is Africa.
I kept walking down the road and all the little kids were yelling at me, saying “Hello! Hello! Hello!” This happens everywhere I go as if they just want to make contact with the outsider. At the same time they always keep their distance as if they don’t want to get THAT close to me. But for the first time since I arrived on the continent a little kid who must have been about 3 years old walked all the way up to me and grabbed my hand with the biggest smile on his face. And for about 100 meters we walked hand in hand as he kept saying over and over “Hello, hello, hello!” He seemed so proud to walk through his little village hand in hand with a giant mazungu. TIA=This is Africa.
I was going to write some snappy conclusion to this post. Something like, "For all it's problems there's still so much beauty in Africa". But that seems like such a hopeless way of summing up the weekend. All I can say for now is that I've got 8 more weeks here to try to learn a little more about Africa.
Friday, June 20, 2008
House that USAID Built
Photo Courtesy: whiteafricanNot many USAID stickers around here, but wanted to play the home edition of the game. Thank you, flickr! This was a home in Kenya made of USAID food bags. Does that count?
This fork brought to you by USAID
Speaking of USAID stickers...
I've just received some interesting tidbits from my consulting teammates about The Brand. Apparently about 6 or 7 years ago USAID went ballistic with stickering everything and created a several-hundred-page document with minute details about branding and marketing. It even includes prescriptions for how large other organizational logos can be in comparison to USAID on a document. Everything has to be stickered, and I do mean everything.
I like Billie's question about weirdest places you've seen the stickers. I think we should start posting photos of USAID stickers in odd locations. So far the strangest thing I've seen here is a bunch of bags of cement on the street with the logo. Although actually everything in the dorms we are staying in is labeled too, including the bunkbeds, cabinets, and washing machine. Thank goodness for those nice folks at USAID, or I wouldn't have any clean clothes right now.
It occurred to me the other day as we were driving down to the Lake that this is the first time I've been in a country that is a USAID baby. Or maybe it's just the first time I've noticed it. But it's a little disconcerting to see all the billboards and stickers everywhere. I feel like we're only a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from having villages sponsored by Reebok or RightGuard.
I've just received some interesting tidbits from my consulting teammates about The Brand. Apparently about 6 or 7 years ago USAID went ballistic with stickering everything and created a several-hundred-page document with minute details about branding and marketing. It even includes prescriptions for how large other organizational logos can be in comparison to USAID on a document. Everything has to be stickered, and I do mean everything.
I like Billie's question about weirdest places you've seen the stickers. I think we should start posting photos of USAID stickers in odd locations. So far the strangest thing I've seen here is a bunch of bags of cement on the street with the logo. Although actually everything in the dorms we are staying in is labeled too, including the bunkbeds, cabinets, and washing machine. Thank goodness for those nice folks at USAID, or I wouldn't have any clean clothes right now.
It occurred to me the other day as we were driving down to the Lake that this is the first time I've been in a country that is a USAID baby. Or maybe it's just the first time I've noticed it. But it's a little disconcerting to see all the billboards and stickers everywhere. I feel like we're only a hop-skip-and-a-jump away from having villages sponsored by Reebok or RightGuard.
Millenium Challenge Epiphany
This is especially to all you who worked at MCC over the past year.
So I've been hearing all about this economic development grant that World Vision is supposed to be getting for the Northern Region of El Salvador. I'm almost positive more than one have asked me, "But MCC only gives to governments, how's that possible?" To which I shrug and say something smart like "Because God provides." Just kidding.
Anyway, so i figured out how it works the other day. You all are indeed correct that MCC only gives to governments in order to build institutional capacity. However, once the government (in this case the neoliberal, 13% tax rate government of El Salvador, who sells the success of globalization to its people in the form of malls and luxury car dealerships in San Salvador) gets it, they can contract out as much as they please. So in essence, instead of World Vision-US winning a USAID grant which they routinely do, World Vision El Salvador (with the help of World Vision-US) won a grant from the Government of El Salvador who won it from MCC.
What does this sound like to you? If you answered "development money laundering" you are correct.
So I've been hearing all about this economic development grant that World Vision is supposed to be getting for the Northern Region of El Salvador. I'm almost positive more than one have asked me, "But MCC only gives to governments, how's that possible?" To which I shrug and say something smart like "Because God provides." Just kidding.
Anyway, so i figured out how it works the other day. You all are indeed correct that MCC only gives to governments in order to build institutional capacity. However, once the government (in this case the neoliberal, 13% tax rate government of El Salvador, who sells the success of globalization to its people in the form of malls and luxury car dealerships in San Salvador) gets it, they can contract out as much as they please. So in essence, instead of World Vision-US winning a USAID grant which they routinely do, World Vision El Salvador (with the help of World Vision-US) won a grant from the Government of El Salvador who won it from MCC.
What does this sound like to you? If you answered "development money laundering" you are correct.
Sticker Sightings
Michael's mention of the USAID stickers reminded me of something - Where is the strangest place you have seen these stickers?
I'll go first:
1. In Jordan attached to the fire extinguisher in my hotel
2. At my office here in Ramallah stuck inside the cover of a book by a famous Palestinian poet who is an inspiration to Palestinian resistance.
Here people tend to roll their eyes and raise their eyebrows at the stickers. There are also these USAID billboards that people have written to our government to complain about. They are supposed to encourage young Palestinians to dream big and pursue a positive future...or something. Anyway the ones for boys show doctors and engineers. And the ones for girls show...you guessed it...teachers.
This week I was finally able to get out of the office and head to the field. Some USAID officials were visiting projects and I got to tag along. So I thought I’d detail the projects and give you a better idea of how your tax money is being spent abroad. If you didn’t know, everything that USAID gives to poor countries is tagged with the motto, “From the American People”. And, at least in Malawi, people seem to recognize some of the good work that the US is doing.The first project I visited is where I took the above picture. Everyone in the picture is infected with HIV/AIDS. USAID supports a consortium of organizations which does a lot of work with HIV/AIDS in Malawi – both treating victims and preventing the spread of the disease. Malawi has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS in the world, so this is one of the biggest programs we do. In this case the consortium, called I-LIFE, was distributing free cornmeal and pinto beans to 120 rural farmers infected with HIV/AIDS. I got a chance to interview a few of them after the project. As I was interviewing others jumped in and wanted to tell me how much they appreciated the grain and how important it was to them. One said the grain was 50% of the food their family eats in a month. Another said the grain would last three weeks. One lady said that she had 8 children and without the grain shipment she would not be able to feed them for the month.
I think the thing I noticed most about these victims of HIV is that they weren’t the emaciated faces with swollen bellies that you see on tv. They were relatively well-fed (for Malawians) and strong enough to carry 55 pound bags of grain on the tops of their head. I wondered if that really was thanks to the program of the US government. We picked this area because of its extra high HIV prevalence. So they were lucky enough to receive the rations of grain. But we only picked 8 out of 20+ districts in Malawi to give the extra food. So I wondered what the HIV victims in other district looked like. Maybe I’ll see them in the future.
The second project I saw was a hand-over ceremony for scientific equipment. It was at the Natural Resources College just outside of Lilongwe. This is one of the two main agricultural colleges in Malawi. USAID donated about $50,000 worth of mushroom spawning equipment. Yep, mushroom spawning equipment. You know, for spawning mushrooms…
The look on your face is the same one that was on my face when they told me why we were there. But it turns out that it’s actually very practical for small rural farmers. All across Malawi people are cutting down trees which they burn and turn into charcoal to be sold in cities or they simply use to cook their meals. They do this because it’s the only way to make money during the “Hungry Season” – the part of the year in between harvests when no more money is coming into the home. To prevent continued degradation of forest land donors are trying to come up with new income sources for rural Malawians. And one of the most profitable new sources of income, strangely enough, is mushroom farming (no, not those kind of mushrooms). As I learned, mushrooms can be grown in bags inside small houses (like the one pictured on my blog) that act as humidifiers. The great part is that mushroom plants continue to grow and produce mushrooms providing a steady source of income for almost no work (which is great for HIV victims who tend to have very little energy). The thing is that you have to have quality spores (basically seeds) to buy. But thus far Malawi hasn’t been able to produce quality spores. Thus the US government donated the machinery to produce mushroom spores, which then go to produce a sustainable source of income for some of the poorest and vulnerable Malawians. Very interesting stuff I’d say.
Beyond that getting out on the road afforded me the opportunity to notice a few more things about Malawi, such as:
-It’s very common for men to walk around with machetes in Malawi (something I got used to seeing in Central America), but it’s just as common to see people walking around Malawi with big stalks of sugar cane. They peal away the bark and gnaw on the sugar inside. Cheap snack.
-At the HIV site I noticed that when the audience applauded, they did so in synchronized fashion. It was really impressive. There was no cue for them. It was just that when it was time to applaud they all found the same beat at the same time. Then I was told what they were doing when a guy got up and asked them not to clap like that. As my interpreter told me, the synchronized clapping is reserved for chiefs and special guests (me). But the unsynchronized clapping that we’re used to hearing is how they clap normally.
-There’s a main highway in Malawi called the M1. It turns out that it’s really just a road with one lane going in each direction and no shoulder. And while you’re driving the M1, just like any other road in Malawi, you must keep a weather eye for obstacles such as goats, kids, bikes with incredible loads (see next bullet), and slow cars with way too many people in them for safety. There is never a relaxing moment for drivers in Malawi.
-One of the most noticeable things about traveling around Malawi is the role that bikes play in life. Bikes have really turned into the beasts of burden for Malawians. Each bike has a platform behind the seat for carrying loads such as: firewood literally piled 7 feet high which must weigh easily over one hundred pounds, sugar cane also stacked high, 40 gallon barrels, boxes of vegetables going to and from market, pots and pans, men riding behind and women riding side-saddle, goats, chickens, sides of beef, and 55 pound bags of USAID-stamped grain rations. And this is just in my first two weeks.
-Another interesting thing I noticed about Malawi is that I have only seen one woman riding a bike. But women are carrying just as many loads as men. Unfortunately for them, they carry their loads on their heads. I saw these two older women carrying 8 foot long bundles of limbs three feet in diameter. When I asked some Malawians about this they didn’t really know why women don’t use bikes. They said it wasn’t taboo or anything, it’s just something that women don’t do. One guy told me “Men come from very far, women, however, only travel a short distance”. I guess.
-Another fun fact about my life in Malawi is that the house I’m staying at doesn’t have satellite tv, instead it has The Armed Forces Network – the same programming offered to the military. The most interesting thing about AFN is that they don’t have any commercials. But since there are still breaks in shows they have to fill, they have produced public service announcements for all the military folks watching around the world. These are fun and very patriotic. For instance, they tell us that it’s no longer legal to bring back treasures from wars, the difference between general vs. special powers of attorney, how to get citizenship for your new wife, be sure to check your tire pressure, obey local laws, the history of the military, the origin of simper fi, and my favorite – Be sure to vote in November!! The Republicans need you!!!
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
You down with entropy?
I hereby officially announce that I've decided to re-invent myself as a B-girl. Pei is helping me perfect my moves. Check out my signature song here.But I digress. Pei and I are chillin' (literally) on a remote university campus in the mountains above Lake Atitlan in Guatemala, where we feel a little bit less like tourism development consultants and a little more like our parents just shipped us off to the crappiest summer camp ever. We eat in a mess hall that is just one song away from girl scout camp. Girl scout camp with only slightly more testosterone (read: only 4 members of our 24 member team are male) and a helluva lot more beans and tortillas. I'm all about checking out the local cuisine, but beans and tortillas three times a day has already started to get old.
Enough of the petty stuff. We have electricity most of the time and now we even have hot water in the showers, so really we can't complain too much. In other news, we are learning by sink-or-swim how development consulting really works. Or doesn't work.
Pei: As the only person here who knows absolutely nothing about tourism coming into this project, I've been acting rather hilariously as a crisis management/disaster response expert. My crisis management group is kind of the renegade team that everyone has to wait for at night to have dinner with because we've been meeting with every crisis management representative here at the Lake. Hearing about freaky disaster and crime stories everyday, but seriously, Lake Atitlan is pretty amazing. But anyway, I'd really like to not talk about tourism for a second. Jessie has assumed the new identity as B-girl Jessie, and we will be working on some badass dance moves. (Yeeah.. that's what we mean by REMOTE) Keep you posted. If the power stays on.
Jessie: Today I spent an hour sitting in an underground pit that used to be a traditional Mayan sauna listening to an old Mayan guy tell me in Spanish about how NGOs don't help anyone except for the people who run them, and in fact they are often doing harmful things to the environment in their naive attempts to make things better. This is just a small piece of the puzzle that my team is trying to put together - how do we identify what community-based tourism is, and how do we encourage communities to adopt the principles we identify in order to make their tourism operations more sustainable? We are visiting lots of communities around the lake to take a look at what they have going on and interview some key stakeholders. On Friday we are going to gander at the town where people go to re-align their chakras and practice their yoga positions. Today's visit was to the place where people go to get cheap drugs and/or study Spanish in outdoor garden schools. Two days ago we went to the town that has put into action a true community-based operation, right down to the women's weaving cooperatives and the tree-planting tours. What a mix. I have no idea how we're going to sew this all up into a cohesive presentation, let alone some sort of deliverable product. But I have to say, this is a pretty cool experience. Even with all the beans and tortillas.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Rwanda!
Thanks for sharing your experiences here. It’s nice to hear about what everyone is learning from all over the globe! As a proud member of IDS diaspora, I’m in Rwanda working for an itty-bitty community based organization called SEVOTA, which works with widows and orphans from the 1994 genocide. I will be conducting an evaluation of their HIV/AIDS support groups and education program.
So far my time here has been a flurry of adjustments and introductions. I’m living with a very kind and accommodating family in a relatively nice area. The house is big, but there is no running water. As an avid shower-er, I’m finding that this is the most difficult aspect of life here for me. That, and judging from the fact that I’m followed, touched, and yelled at by people who seem to be both amazed and frightened by my existence, I seem to have grown a second head.
Luckily though, other aspects of life here are much better than expected: the food is very yummy (I’m on a high-carb diet this summer), my French still works, the local language, Kinyarwanda, is coming along nicely, and I have electricity for at least the next two weeks! All very good things. Plus, I saw Anderson Cooper in the Kigali airport, which was pretty much the highlight of my life.
This week, I had my most impactful experience yet. Jen (my travel buddy) and I got to sit in on a meeting of a widow’s support group. The women shared what has happened to them over the past week, leaving me astonished as woman after woman shared horrendous stories as though they were routine… a woman with HIV explained that she’s getting sicker and sicker, another has a child in the hospital and can’t afford the bus money to visit her, one widow had to beg her neighbors for food this week, while another told the story of her son who is being teased because he is the child of a rape, several women reported that their homes had been destroyed during last week’s rainstorm, and the group commiserated about how a “genocidiare” still awaiting trial had recently paid off a local judge and been released. They ended with the affirmation that sharing each other’s burdens and knowing that others are experiencing the same things helps them to heal.
Finally, they read this Bible verse, “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:3-5). I have read this verse many times, but seeing heads nod as it was read to women who have seen their families killed, been raped by many men, and daily live in extreme poverty was incredibly humbling. Suddenly my own concerns of not being able to take a shower or call my family whenever I want to seemed pretty small.
The presence of the genocide is everywhere here and I’m still not sure how to interpret it. How do victims continue to live next door to their families’ killers? Before I came here I wondered how anyone could forgive something this horrible. After meeting the widows and seeing them cry fourteen years after the genocide ended, I understand that they have not forgiven. They are still forgiving and it seems must do so many times a day for the community to hold together.
I’m learning so much and am looking forward to the rest of my time here. I hope you all are happy and healthy wherever you are! I’ll talk to you again soon.
Stephanie
So far my time here has been a flurry of adjustments and introductions. I’m living with a very kind and accommodating family in a relatively nice area. The house is big, but there is no running water. As an avid shower-er, I’m finding that this is the most difficult aspect of life here for me. That, and judging from the fact that I’m followed, touched, and yelled at by people who seem to be both amazed and frightened by my existence, I seem to have grown a second head.
Luckily though, other aspects of life here are much better than expected: the food is very yummy (I’m on a high-carb diet this summer), my French still works, the local language, Kinyarwanda, is coming along nicely, and I have electricity for at least the next two weeks! All very good things. Plus, I saw Anderson Cooper in the Kigali airport, which was pretty much the highlight of my life.
This week, I had my most impactful experience yet. Jen (my travel buddy) and I got to sit in on a meeting of a widow’s support group. The women shared what has happened to them over the past week, leaving me astonished as woman after woman shared horrendous stories as though they were routine… a woman with HIV explained that she’s getting sicker and sicker, another has a child in the hospital and can’t afford the bus money to visit her, one widow had to beg her neighbors for food this week, while another told the story of her son who is being teased because he is the child of a rape, several women reported that their homes had been destroyed during last week’s rainstorm, and the group commiserated about how a “genocidiare” still awaiting trial had recently paid off a local judge and been released. They ended with the affirmation that sharing each other’s burdens and knowing that others are experiencing the same things helps them to heal.
Finally, they read this Bible verse, “Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:3-5). I have read this verse many times, but seeing heads nod as it was read to women who have seen their families killed, been raped by many men, and daily live in extreme poverty was incredibly humbling. Suddenly my own concerns of not being able to take a shower or call my family whenever I want to seemed pretty small.
The presence of the genocide is everywhere here and I’m still not sure how to interpret it. How do victims continue to live next door to their families’ killers? Before I came here I wondered how anyone could forgive something this horrible. After meeting the widows and seeing them cry fourteen years after the genocide ended, I understand that they have not forgiven. They are still forgiving and it seems must do so many times a day for the community to hold together.
I’m learning so much and am looking forward to the rest of my time here. I hope you all are happy and healthy wherever you are! I’ll talk to you again soon.
Stephanie
Friday, June 13, 2008
Life in Lilongwe
I've add some pics from the trip across Zambia on my Flickr site. If you haven't seen them, yet you can find them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27531054@N03/
Also, Cynthia gave me the good idea of creating a Google map of my little life in Lilongwe. You can find that here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&ll=-13.960557,33.80373&spn=0.073633,0.105743&z=13&msid=113365185812763974101.00044f873997a4090858a
Click on some of the tabs to get their descriptions. You can zoom in a bunch and actually see the building. You'll see the USAID office building where I work is a weird curved building. The other fun thing to note are the trails through brush around the buildings. The thing you notice most about Malawi is how much everyone walks. This is especially true in the morning and late afternoon hours when everyone is either walking to or from work. They walk so much that all of the grassy areas have well-defined trails that look as though they've been there for centures. Which they probably have.
So I thought I'd use this blog space to explain to folks back home why I'm here and what I'm doing. As you could probably guess, Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. But really I think ranking poor countries is a dumb, useless thing to do. They're poor. Do you really need to compare who's the poorest of them all? I mean, does it really matter that one country's citizens make about $300 a year and another country's citizens make about $500? The point is they're all poor. So I won't say that Malawi is less developed than other areas. What I will say, though, is that Malawi has some big problems they need to overcome. Among those are a large HIV positve rate (about 15% of the population), high Malaria rates (One of the security guards at my house just took his 10 month old daughter to the hospital for Malaria. Thankfully she is doing better), tuberculosis, and poor economic opportunities.
The US government, along with other donors such as the UK, the EU, the UN, and China, are all working to improve life for ordinary Malawians. About 75% of the $100 million the US spends here goes into the health and education sector. The rest goes towards agriculture mostly. One of the things I've been asked to do within all of that is help come up with success stories for USAID projects. It's pretty helpful for me because it allows me to get in and see all of the projects being done. Soon I'll make trips out to the field to interview beneficiaries and get their side of the story.
Also, I'm getting to do some analysis on effective ways to improve the Justice sector here and see how it can be improved. I got to meet the Solicitor General at a meeting this week where they were discussing Judicial reforms.
My day gets started around 7:30 and finishes around 5:00. This allows us to take half of Friday off, which I used today to play golf with some coworkers. Golf if cheap enough here for us to have a caddy, which I've never had. My caddy was named Lewis and was from the central region of Lilongwe. As I talked to Lewis it was interesting to hear his perspective on politics. The political parties in Malawi are all based on what region you're from. The former dictator of Malawi, Hastings Banda, was from the Central region. When I asked Lewis about Banda, he quickly corrected me: "Do you mean Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda?". Oh yeah, that's the one I meant. Of course he thought Banda was great and all of the problems in Malawi have come from the people who replaced him. People from the other regions think that Banda was a brutal dictator that ruled his country with an iron fist. Stories of Banda's strong rule are everywhere. He banned the book "Africa on a Shoestring" because it criticized his regime. He banned Malawian flags from being displayed for no apparent reason. And he changed his official title to President for Life Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Everyone thought that he would die in office. Instead he got kicked out at the ripe old age of 94 and ended up living to 101. Life is good when you're a dictator in Africa. They still celebrate Banda Day here in Malawi, and there's a huge Mausuleum/Monument dedicated to the man. I mean Jefferson Monument-sized monument.
I get to interact with Americans and Malawian in my office. Most of the people in the office are Malawian. In my two meetings today, 7 of 10 in one meeting and 8 of 12 in another meeting were Malawian. So while I'm not exactly living with Malawians, I get to have a somewhat filtered perspective on life in Malawi from my co-workers. In my mind I think that I need to see poor people in order to get to the "real" Malawi. But I think that's unfair to Malawi. I wonder if it's because of my Western bias that I think that the "real" Malawi has to be poor. As if the folks I'm working with are somewhat less African or less Malawian because they've got steady jobs and aren't pushing bananas or cell phone minutes on me on the street. The truth is that it's all Africa. It's all Malawi. Some are doing better than others, and hopefully in the future all Malawians will have the chance to have such jobs if they so choose.
So that's a little on my work here in Malawi. The other aspect is that there's really a tight ex-pat community here that really tries to fill up social calendars. I didn't spend a single evening at home this week until now because I've been invited to so many events. Not to brag, but one of the events was a poker night with my bosses, the heads of the USAID mission, where I ended up walking away with most of their money. I'm not sure if this was the best way to start off my internship here, but as a Texan I felt obliged to teach these northerner a lesson. God Bless Texas.
This weekend I'm heading off to a sailing club and will visit one of the Malawian churches for some cultural exchange. Next weekend I hope to hit Lake Malawi which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Africa. I'll be sure to snap lots of pictures.
Also, Cynthia gave me the good idea of creating a Google map of my little life in Lilongwe. You can find that here: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=h&msa=0&ll=-13.960557,33.80373&spn=0.073633,0.105743&z=13&msid=113365185812763974101.00044f873997a4090858a
Click on some of the tabs to get their descriptions. You can zoom in a bunch and actually see the building. You'll see the USAID office building where I work is a weird curved building. The other fun thing to note are the trails through brush around the buildings. The thing you notice most about Malawi is how much everyone walks. This is especially true in the morning and late afternoon hours when everyone is either walking to or from work. They walk so much that all of the grassy areas have well-defined trails that look as though they've been there for centures. Which they probably have.
So I thought I'd use this blog space to explain to folks back home why I'm here and what I'm doing. As you could probably guess, Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world. But really I think ranking poor countries is a dumb, useless thing to do. They're poor. Do you really need to compare who's the poorest of them all? I mean, does it really matter that one country's citizens make about $300 a year and another country's citizens make about $500? The point is they're all poor. So I won't say that Malawi is less developed than other areas. What I will say, though, is that Malawi has some big problems they need to overcome. Among those are a large HIV positve rate (about 15% of the population), high Malaria rates (One of the security guards at my house just took his 10 month old daughter to the hospital for Malaria. Thankfully she is doing better), tuberculosis, and poor economic opportunities.
The US government, along with other donors such as the UK, the EU, the UN, and China, are all working to improve life for ordinary Malawians. About 75% of the $100 million the US spends here goes into the health and education sector. The rest goes towards agriculture mostly. One of the things I've been asked to do within all of that is help come up with success stories for USAID projects. It's pretty helpful for me because it allows me to get in and see all of the projects being done. Soon I'll make trips out to the field to interview beneficiaries and get their side of the story.
Also, I'm getting to do some analysis on effective ways to improve the Justice sector here and see how it can be improved. I got to meet the Solicitor General at a meeting this week where they were discussing Judicial reforms.
My day gets started around 7:30 and finishes around 5:00. This allows us to take half of Friday off, which I used today to play golf with some coworkers. Golf if cheap enough here for us to have a caddy, which I've never had. My caddy was named Lewis and was from the central region of Lilongwe. As I talked to Lewis it was interesting to hear his perspective on politics. The political parties in Malawi are all based on what region you're from. The former dictator of Malawi, Hastings Banda, was from the Central region. When I asked Lewis about Banda, he quickly corrected me: "Do you mean Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda?". Oh yeah, that's the one I meant. Of course he thought Banda was great and all of the problems in Malawi have come from the people who replaced him. People from the other regions think that Banda was a brutal dictator that ruled his country with an iron fist. Stories of Banda's strong rule are everywhere. He banned the book "Africa on a Shoestring" because it criticized his regime. He banned Malawian flags from being displayed for no apparent reason. And he changed his official title to President for Life Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda. Everyone thought that he would die in office. Instead he got kicked out at the ripe old age of 94 and ended up living to 101. Life is good when you're a dictator in Africa. They still celebrate Banda Day here in Malawi, and there's a huge Mausuleum/Monument dedicated to the man. I mean Jefferson Monument-sized monument.
I get to interact with Americans and Malawian in my office. Most of the people in the office are Malawian. In my two meetings today, 7 of 10 in one meeting and 8 of 12 in another meeting were Malawian. So while I'm not exactly living with Malawians, I get to have a somewhat filtered perspective on life in Malawi from my co-workers. In my mind I think that I need to see poor people in order to get to the "real" Malawi. But I think that's unfair to Malawi. I wonder if it's because of my Western bias that I think that the "real" Malawi has to be poor. As if the folks I'm working with are somewhat less African or less Malawian because they've got steady jobs and aren't pushing bananas or cell phone minutes on me on the street. The truth is that it's all Africa. It's all Malawi. Some are doing better than others, and hopefully in the future all Malawians will have the chance to have such jobs if they so choose.
So that's a little on my work here in Malawi. The other aspect is that there's really a tight ex-pat community here that really tries to fill up social calendars. I didn't spend a single evening at home this week until now because I've been invited to so many events. Not to brag, but one of the events was a poker night with my bosses, the heads of the USAID mission, where I ended up walking away with most of their money. I'm not sure if this was the best way to start off my internship here, but as a Texan I felt obliged to teach these northerner a lesson. God Bless Texas.
This weekend I'm heading off to a sailing club and will visit one of the Malawian churches for some cultural exchange. Next weekend I hope to hit Lake Malawi which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places in Africa. I'll be sure to snap lots of pictures.
Aftermath
Yesterday was the final day of the big Brookings-Google PHEV event and I am still absolutely knackered. We had an amazing turnout, so much so we nearly had an issue with the fire marshall. I listened to some amazing speeches from and dialogue between people at the top of their field. There were some boring ones as well. Luckily, there were few-if any-lectures with power point slides. We also got great media exposure, which I realized means that there are story packages on CNN, Bloomberg, and the like in the middle of the day for a few minutes and not brought up in the national conversation.
I am now in the afterglow/hangover from the event. The first reason is that I noticed how much of a bubble people get into when working on events and projects. When you are in it, you (meaning I) expect it to completely change the world. Stepping out of the bubble you see that it has made little effect on the general population. You start to come to terms with the fact that you are now a pebble tossed in to the sea and are making waves that will take a long time to reach the shore. (ooh metaphor!)
The second reason only affects me: The main reason I was hired was to assist with this event. Now the guillotine is hanging over me as I wait for a last minute reprieve because of these weeks of good (Nay, excellent!) behavior.
Edit: OH! I forgot why I was going post today: Got an e-mail from Brookings Global Dev with papers from an event they had in May: What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small
I am now in the afterglow/hangover from the event. The first reason is that I noticed how much of a bubble people get into when working on events and projects. When you are in it, you (meaning I) expect it to completely change the world. Stepping out of the bubble you see that it has made little effect on the general population. You start to come to terms with the fact that you are now a pebble tossed in to the sea and are making waves that will take a long time to reach the shore. (ooh metaphor!)
The second reason only affects me: The main reason I was hired was to assist with this event. Now the guillotine is hanging over me as I wait for a last minute reprieve because of these weeks of good (Nay, excellent!) behavior.
Edit: OH! I forgot why I was going post today: Got an e-mail from Brookings Global Dev with papers from an event they had in May: What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Like Jessica Alba
Ok, my post has nothing to do with Jessica Alba, that's what my friend Josh said to me just now, and it's just as good a title as any.
I'm leaving for the airport in... 7 hours, and instead of packing (or sleeping), I'm hanging out with friends. I'm all about good time management.
At any rate, I'll be in Guatemala for about 2 months, working at first with a team of fellow "consultants" from GW on a tourism development project with Counterpart International. After the rest of the team comes back to DC at the end of June, I get to hang out and do follow-up on the project. I feel like a team mascot these days. In true development fashion though, I'm completely in limbo about what my duties are and I don't even know where they want me to work or for how long. This all makes me a little nervous, especially since I won't have any hometown support, so wish me luck as I hit the ground running and try to negotiate my terms!
I'm leaving for the airport in... 7 hours, and instead of packing (or sleeping), I'm hanging out with friends. I'm all about good time management.
At any rate, I'll be in Guatemala for about 2 months, working at first with a team of fellow "consultants" from GW on a tourism development project with Counterpart International. After the rest of the team comes back to DC at the end of June, I get to hang out and do follow-up on the project. I feel like a team mascot these days. In true development fashion though, I'm completely in limbo about what my duties are and I don't even know where they want me to work or for how long. This all makes me a little nervous, especially since I won't have any hometown support, so wish me luck as I hit the ground running and try to negotiate my terms!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
"It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself"
Here's an excerpt of an email I just finished. As I was rereading it, I was struck by this piece that I wrote because it just sounded so unlike me. El Salvador is now classified a middle-income country after the census the government completed and made public about two weeks ago (amid many questions of their actual ability and trustworthiness to perform an unbiased and representative census). Even though the country is relatively better off than many countries in the region, it still has about 15% of it's population living in extreme poverty (maybe a bit less since the last IDB report), horrible income inequality, human development that's in past the century mark relative to the rest of the world. But anyway, the anger hasn't been as present as the hope for me, and that's the surprising thing about this email:
"I've honestly been more struck by the hopeful pictures of an extremely hardworking and street-wise population with a shit-load of problems to deal with. I visited this slums made out of cardboard and plastic... it's freakin horrific, but to be honest I was still more struck by the fact that their community organization had organized a volunteer work crew to dig a ditch in order to run pipe to a clean water source about half a kilometer away (pipes bought by collective contributions of the residents... in extreme poverty). Curse of the commons what? Did you say extreme poverty doesn't exist in urban slums, Inder? Ahem... wrong."
I don't know if you have had any moments where you've laughed at something you learned in Inder's class, but I was pretty satisfied that my first recollection of something I learned there was blatantly wrong. There's worse or equal poverty in the cities as there is in the countryside (i've been to both, but not EVERYWHERE).
"I've honestly been more struck by the hopeful pictures of an extremely hardworking and street-wise population with a shit-load of problems to deal with. I visited this slums made out of cardboard and plastic... it's freakin horrific, but to be honest I was still more struck by the fact that their community organization had organized a volunteer work crew to dig a ditch in order to run pipe to a clean water source about half a kilometer away (pipes bought by collective contributions of the residents... in extreme poverty). Curse of the commons what? Did you say extreme poverty doesn't exist in urban slums, Inder? Ahem... wrong."
I don't know if you have had any moments where you've laughed at something you learned in Inder's class, but I was pretty satisfied that my first recollection of something I learned there was blatantly wrong. There's worse or equal poverty in the cities as there is in the countryside (i've been to both, but not EVERYWHERE).
I'm no hero...just a Texan.
Hey gang, I finally got settled in enough to check out our fabulous blog. So good to hear everyone's stories. I've already got mine going, but I'll start posting to both places to save you sometime. But rather than post all my old posts here I'll just give you the link and let you read them. Keep on truckin'!!
http://africancowboy.blogspot.com/
Btw, I just paid a dollar for a beer. I heart Africa!
http://africancowboy.blogspot.com/
Btw, I just paid a dollar for a beer. I heart Africa!
development limbo
Hello everyone
I am in Pretoria, South Africa and winter is approaching quickly. That means it is beautiful and sunny almost all of the time, but chilly in the morning and evening. I have been here going on two weeks but haven't started working much as I wait for clearance from USAID, easily the most organized and progressive of all U.S. government agencies (please note sarcasm). In the meantime I'll be volunteering with RTI, one of their partner organizations, to do audits of South African government rape crisis centers. Should be really great work. Rape and violence against women are a terrible problem here.
This country, from what I've seen so far, is really a study in contrasts. Everyone who can afford it lives in rather nice homes guarded by gates, fences, and security systems (often big, scary dogs, too). Those who can't afford it fend for themselves. There are lots of homeless people, most of whom are probably immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other countries. The current social climate is fairly tense because of the recent xenophobic violence.
Two things everyone seem to rally around, however, are the national soccer team, called Bafana Bafana, which means 'our boys' who are getting ready for the Africa Cup, and the national rugby team, the Springboks. They just beat Wales in a big match last weekend.
I am enjoying reading your posts. Keep them coming.
Jessica W
I am in Pretoria, South Africa and winter is approaching quickly. That means it is beautiful and sunny almost all of the time, but chilly in the morning and evening. I have been here going on two weeks but haven't started working much as I wait for clearance from USAID, easily the most organized and progressive of all U.S. government agencies (please note sarcasm). In the meantime I'll be volunteering with RTI, one of their partner organizations, to do audits of South African government rape crisis centers. Should be really great work. Rape and violence against women are a terrible problem here.
This country, from what I've seen so far, is really a study in contrasts. Everyone who can afford it lives in rather nice homes guarded by gates, fences, and security systems (often big, scary dogs, too). Those who can't afford it fend for themselves. There are lots of homeless people, most of whom are probably immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and other countries. The current social climate is fairly tense because of the recent xenophobic violence.
Two things everyone seem to rally around, however, are the national soccer team, called Bafana Bafana, which means 'our boys' who are getting ready for the Africa Cup, and the national rugby team, the Springboks. They just beat Wales in a big match last weekend.
I am enjoying reading your posts. Keep them coming.
Jessica W
in your face
In the almost four weeks that I've been in Cambodia I've had some great experiences and seen some really cool stuff, but for the most part it has been along the lines of a world traveler/tourist, and not a development professional. Thankfully, that changed yesterday when I got the opportunity to travel out to the Kampang Chhnang District where my NGO's water purifier factory is (though I'll use the term loosely because it's a building with one machine, a few kilns, and about 15 employees). It was great to get out to a non-touristy part of the country where kids stare at you simply for being white (ok, great but unnerving). It also gave me the difficult but priceless experience of taking development, something I've read and opined over for years, and shoving it right in my face.
We got out to the factory in a pickup truck. I got to spend the drive talking to my coworker who speaks English quite well. It was a fun and sometimes funny conversation (he's an exceedingly nice person) until we got to talking about siblings. He asked how many were in my family, and I replied that I had an older brother and a younger brother. When I inquired about his family, he told me he has two younger sisters, and had an older brother and an older sister. Yes, had. They, along with his mother, were killed by Pol Pot's regime; they tried to escape to the refugee camps in Thailand but they were too late. They, along with one third of Cambodia, were killed in a madman's agrarian "revolution".
It isn't like I didn't expect to meet people who suffered from such a recent genocide, but it still hit me hard. I was sitting beside a person who lost two siblings and a parent to the Khmer Rouge. For some horrible reason I've had a couple friends my age lose siblings recently, and I have trouble comprehending what they must go through. As impossible as that is to wrap my head around, something like this is just beyond the pale. I kept quiet as he told me about it because I couldn't even imagine what to say. He went on to tell me how his family was from the Kampot province, but moved into Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge fell because there were just too many memories at home, and because so many of their neighbors were killed. At that point I managed to stammer out an awkward "I'm very sorry".
Touring the factory was really interesting. I'll spare the boring technical stuff but explain how it works; they take a ball of clay, mix it with rice husks and stamp it into a pot shape. They then fire it in a kiln which burns away the husks and leaves the clay porous enough for water to seep through. Then they brush the inside of the pot with colloidal silver, an element with antibacterial properties. And there you go, WHO-level water quality for an affordable price.
Many of the people working at this factory (and working hard) were young. Not insanely illegal or immorally young, but young. One girl who was maybe 12 was working the whole time I was there. We stuck around through lunch, and so did she for at least half an hour, working by herself shaping the clay molds (they get paid by the pot, so she was probably just trying to make some more money).
I understand that it's a very good thing that she has this opportunity to work and bring money for her family, and that these opportunities are a massively important step towards development. Still, as I watched her working diligently, all I could think of was "it's June 10, she should have just gotten out of school and should be playing with her friends at a pool." It's so ridiculously unfair that just by being born in Cambodia this girl is working while kids from the US get to be.......well........kids.
So the point I'm trying to make in this very long and very rambling post is that this experience is both fantastic and difficult because it allows you to understand the truths of developing countries on a more fundamental level. I can watch a documentary on the Khmer Rouge and be haunted by it, but then I can turn it off and go do something else. Or I can muse about how hard people in developing countries have to work, but I can explain it away by citing Sach's ladder of development and acknowledging that it's still an important step for them. At GWU I can put the book down, I can change the channel, I can change the conversation. But here, everything is right up in your face. You can turn, and it's still there. It helps me understand (not know, but understand) that development isn't a topic or issue, it's an existence.
But it still doesn't help me understand how I could have a coworker, so incredibly friendly and with such a great sense of humor, who has had most of his family murdered, or to watch a young girl work at a factory without seeming to even understand that people her own age a world away would laugh at the idea. This is the first difficult thing I've experienced over here that I truly hope I'll never get used to. Culture shock may pass, and you can always learn languages to make your experience easier, but it is my sincere hope that these types of things continue to piss me right off until the day I die or fix them. I hope the same for all of you.
We got out to the factory in a pickup truck. I got to spend the drive talking to my coworker who speaks English quite well. It was a fun and sometimes funny conversation (he's an exceedingly nice person) until we got to talking about siblings. He asked how many were in my family, and I replied that I had an older brother and a younger brother. When I inquired about his family, he told me he has two younger sisters, and had an older brother and an older sister. Yes, had. They, along with his mother, were killed by Pol Pot's regime; they tried to escape to the refugee camps in Thailand but they were too late. They, along with one third of Cambodia, were killed in a madman's agrarian "revolution".
It isn't like I didn't expect to meet people who suffered from such a recent genocide, but it still hit me hard. I was sitting beside a person who lost two siblings and a parent to the Khmer Rouge. For some horrible reason I've had a couple friends my age lose siblings recently, and I have trouble comprehending what they must go through. As impossible as that is to wrap my head around, something like this is just beyond the pale. I kept quiet as he told me about it because I couldn't even imagine what to say. He went on to tell me how his family was from the Kampot province, but moved into Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge fell because there were just too many memories at home, and because so many of their neighbors were killed. At that point I managed to stammer out an awkward "I'm very sorry".
Touring the factory was really interesting. I'll spare the boring technical stuff but explain how it works; they take a ball of clay, mix it with rice husks and stamp it into a pot shape. They then fire it in a kiln which burns away the husks and leaves the clay porous enough for water to seep through. Then they brush the inside of the pot with colloidal silver, an element with antibacterial properties. And there you go, WHO-level water quality for an affordable price.
Many of the people working at this factory (and working hard) were young. Not insanely illegal or immorally young, but young. One girl who was maybe 12 was working the whole time I was there. We stuck around through lunch, and so did she for at least half an hour, working by herself shaping the clay molds (they get paid by the pot, so she was probably just trying to make some more money).
I understand that it's a very good thing that she has this opportunity to work and bring money for her family, and that these opportunities are a massively important step towards development. Still, as I watched her working diligently, all I could think of was "it's June 10, she should have just gotten out of school and should be playing with her friends at a pool." It's so ridiculously unfair that just by being born in Cambodia this girl is working while kids from the US get to be.......well........kids.
So the point I'm trying to make in this very long and very rambling post is that this experience is both fantastic and difficult because it allows you to understand the truths of developing countries on a more fundamental level. I can watch a documentary on the Khmer Rouge and be haunted by it, but then I can turn it off and go do something else. Or I can muse about how hard people in developing countries have to work, but I can explain it away by citing Sach's ladder of development and acknowledging that it's still an important step for them. At GWU I can put the book down, I can change the channel, I can change the conversation. But here, everything is right up in your face. You can turn, and it's still there. It helps me understand (not know, but understand) that development isn't a topic or issue, it's an existence.
But it still doesn't help me understand how I could have a coworker, so incredibly friendly and with such a great sense of humor, who has had most of his family murdered, or to watch a young girl work at a factory without seeming to even understand that people her own age a world away would laugh at the idea. This is the first difficult thing I've experienced over here that I truly hope I'll never get used to. Culture shock may pass, and you can always learn languages to make your experience easier, but it is my sincere hope that these types of things continue to piss me right off until the day I die or fix them. I hope the same for all of you.
Monday, June 9, 2008
48 Hours
We are less about 48 hours away from the beginning of this conference. At the end of last week I was feeling a skosh demoralized as I had less and less to do. Today has erased all that. All the people I have been waiting on are getting off their duff and giving me the info. We've got nearly a full house, so if you are in town and want to sign up for all or part of it, you must do it quickly. Getting tons of videos on the Rechargeit.org site. Some are quite interesting. I hope to twitter from the conference so people will know what it's like.
I am so happy to hear from everybody as they travel the world/DC. Even if the topic seems banal, I love hearing every bit of it. Photos are awesome, too.
...other than the first sentence this post had nothing to do with 48 hours. Hmm...
I am so happy to hear from everybody as they travel the world/DC. Even if the topic seems banal, I love hearing every bit of it. Photos are awesome, too.
...other than the first sentence this post had nothing to do with 48 hours. Hmm...
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Valley of Hammocks
Greetings from San Salvador, one of those cities that makes you wonder who the idiot was who decided to put a city here. San Salvador is home to almost 30% of the population of El Salvador (mas o menos 5.7 million people), and we are all living in the shadow of an active volcano. I mean really... were they just too tired to cross to the other side of the mountains? Did they not know how close the coast is (<30km)? So the name "Valley of Hammocks" is because there are so many earthquakes, that most of the poor people in San Salvador just sleep in hammocks so the tremors don't wake them up.
There's much to share about my trip, especially as I enter my 5th week here, 4th week at Vision Mundial where I'm doing more than some gringo probably should be doing.
But more than anything, I wanted to put myself out there a little bit and admit that doing this living abroad thing is just hard. In part, it's because I came in highly unprepared to survive on my Spanish ability (it's getting better after a month... going to church in Spanish is kind of interesting. When you don't know the language, I focus on the structure of things to guide me along a lot, and i feel more like an anthropologist or sociologist than a wanna-be economist). But I think being away from family, close friends, and significant others flatly sucks too, beyond the language barrier. To all the Peace Corps vets, I don't know how the hell you do twenty seven months of this, because to me, the romance of travelling the world wore off a while ago, and it's been a month. So this isn't the "maybe I'm not cut out for this whole development thing after all" blog post... but maybe the one to offer some encouragement to anyone who is in DC or at home, cuz i'd certainly like to be there a lot of the days I spend here. Not all, but some.
There are so many good reasons for me to be here, but one thing I do know, is I'm certainly no field junkie (BRW).
YOU: post immediately upon completion of this entry, now.
There's much to share about my trip, especially as I enter my 5th week here, 4th week at Vision Mundial where I'm doing more than some gringo probably should be doing.
But more than anything, I wanted to put myself out there a little bit and admit that doing this living abroad thing is just hard. In part, it's because I came in highly unprepared to survive on my Spanish ability (it's getting better after a month... going to church in Spanish is kind of interesting. When you don't know the language, I focus on the structure of things to guide me along a lot, and i feel more like an anthropologist or sociologist than a wanna-be economist). But I think being away from family, close friends, and significant others flatly sucks too, beyond the language barrier. To all the Peace Corps vets, I don't know how the hell you do twenty seven months of this, because to me, the romance of travelling the world wore off a while ago, and it's been a month. So this isn't the "maybe I'm not cut out for this whole development thing after all" blog post... but maybe the one to offer some encouragement to anyone who is in DC or at home, cuz i'd certainly like to be there a lot of the days I spend here. Not all, but some.
There are so many good reasons for me to be here, but one thing I do know, is I'm certainly no field junkie (BRW).
YOU: post immediately upon completion of this entry, now.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
New Blog Alert
Alright after struggling with self-consciousness, my enjoyment of reading all of yours has pushed me to get a blog up and running. You can read it here if you are interested. Even in the day of the blog I, like all of you probably, am still frustrated by how much I can't share with my family and friends.
Keep writing, thinking, sharing.
Greetings from Amman!
Hellooooo! I know, I know. I'm not an '09 IDSer, but I thought this blog was such a great idea that I wanted to be a part of it! (well, umm, there's also the fact that I'm spending my summer in Jordan as an Advocacy Project (AP) Peace Fellow, working with AP's partner Landmine Survivors Network, and I thought this was a perfect place to promote my blog.) I have enjoyed reading everyone else's blogs thus far and look forward to all the rest as the summer (and everyone's work around the world) gets under way!
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Beautiful DC Day
I'm falling in love with early summer in DC. I don't feel like I'm in a sauna, but I still can get a bit of sun.
We're currently working on putting bios together for the speakers. Many recognizable names in government. Senator McCain looks like he'll give us a recorded statement and we are in talks with Senator Obama. It's amazing to see all the different bits of a conference begin to come together: catering, A/V, speakers, rsvps, etc. We're even going to have a webcast!
I was putzing on the web looking for websites to give me more events and international development news and found some RSS feeds at USAID that are quite interesting. There are fact sheets, press releases, and more available.
http://www.usaid.gov/rss.html
I also have a webpage of shared articles of International Development, Environment, and a couple more humorous postings.
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/09828636587778791096
We're currently working on putting bios together for the speakers. Many recognizable names in government. Senator McCain looks like he'll give us a recorded statement and we are in talks with Senator Obama. It's amazing to see all the different bits of a conference begin to come together: catering, A/V, speakers, rsvps, etc. We're even going to have a webcast!
I was putzing on the web looking for websites to give me more events and international development news and found some RSS feeds at USAID that are quite interesting. There are fact sheets, press releases, and more available.
http://www.usaid.gov/rss.html
I also have a webpage of shared articles of International Development, Environment, and a couple more humorous postings.
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/09828636587778791096
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Development Related
Started my internship today and the founder of the organization said to me:
"We are doing development under occupation. We make things look better for ourselves and our communities and maybe down the road it will have some impact but it isn't real development. The type of change and development that Palestine needs cannot be accomplished under occupation." Paraphrasing here but I thought it was interesting and relevant to some of our discussions in Dr. Gow's class.
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