Friday night I bummed around, talked to Joe. Saturday morning I woke up and breakfast came at half seven. Except it was just bread, butter and jam with some sort of orange beverage (Fanta? SoBo orange squeeze?) because the power was out. I hadn’t noticed since it was light and I hadn’t tried to turn on the TV yet. Of course, once the power came back on and I did try to turn on the TV, nothing came out since they seem to have not paid the bill. I kept getting notices all week in my little message box, but I figured they’d pay it. Then again, Fred told me that he didn’t get paid yesterday along with several other lower tier employees, so I’m a little more concerned about that. I’ll have to chat with Fred on Monday before I pay my bill so I can have words if necessary.
More breakfast came, which was good. Then I bathed and went downtown. I had to stand in the giant ATM line again since I gave all my cash to S yesterday. I guess I should have brought my checkbook for the Money Bureau. After that I went to the Old Town Mall, which wasn’t all that. I went to Shoprite for really the first time, and it was amazing. It had a ton of stuff. I even found a cheap wine bottle opener so I can have cheap South African wine. The minibus back was annoying. First it was totally empty, and then these two guys got on and squeezed next to me, and everyone else who got on had to climb over them to get in back. Assholes. Then the bus didn’t leave forever, trying to fill up. But no one wanted to get on, so give up already. Then I couldn’t get the driver to just friggin’ pull over where I wanted. He kept saying, Capitol Hill? And I’m like, No! Here!
I vegged at home a bit and then went to see if Cloud was open. It doesn’t open until 5, so I said fuck that. I wandered through the area with the library and British Council and ended up on the road to Four Seasons Center, so I walked that way. The walk over seemed not so bad, but the walk back seemed long. Once home, I felt sticky and my feet were filthy, so I bathed them briefly. This somehow caused a flood in the hallway which is separated from the bathroom by entire closets… and the water came from the ceiling! The guy who came to mop the floor said something was wrong with the “geyser (?)” and if there was a kink in the shower hose, it backs up. What fucked up plumbing! He said there is another room like this one if it continues to be a problem. I took the opportunity to complain about the TV too.
The boss came to get me around 6, and we went to her house for a quick dinner. Then we were off to a music thing at the girls’ school. It was basically a bunch of faculty and local expats singing along with a pretty good local band. Some of it was pretty great, and some of it was just awful. Made me want to karaoke. I’m the oldest daughter’s BFF, so I spent a lot of the evening chatting with her when I wasn’t chatting with the adults. The younger daughter totally ignores my existence. Upon returning home to put the girls to bed, we noted the older one’s stuffed cheetah was missing, so K and I went back to look for it. We did find K’s sweatshirt she hadn’t realized she left, but no cheetah.
Sunday I was mostly a bum but went out for a walk in the afternoon. I walked through the Taipei Gardens, which was amusing to see in Malawi. I ended up over by the mausoleum for former President Banda, which was rather pretty. Then I went to City Centre from the back side and realized there is a whole courtyard and other stuff beyond the front. I wonder if it’s full of annoying people on Saturdays or if those folks are confined to the front.
Today I went to the Money Bureau, since K had told me that apparently they are threatening to close them unless they join up with banks, and the deadline is tomorrow. I guess there is no regulation currently. On the way, I saw a guy selling a cat on the side of the road… I had seen a guy with two cats a week or two ago, and when cars would go by he’d swing them out like they were bananas. Totally hilarious and awful.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
TGIF
Apparently some girls drowned in the river, and that’s why there were a lot of people at the bridge the other day. I don’t know if there were rescue teams that attracted attention or what.
Wednesday night, I bummed around and decided to make a giant pot of tea. I made it in the French press, which meant that it just steeped and steeped. I think between the caffeine and the acidity, my stomach was ruined. I slept like crap the whole night and dreamed about work. Bleh. I woke up the next day with my stomach still miserable, so I skimped on breakfast (no greasy sausage or potatoes for me) and lurched out for the four CBO meetings I had to deal with. They all went pretty well, and only one involved singing and dancing, and that was because they were actually anticipating that CARE would be there a bit later with cameras to film them. Clarifying this did not keep them from doing their whole spiel for us, however.
So I lived through the meetings, still really friggin’ glad to have S around to help explain things in more detail to people. Afterwards, we dropped S off at her house and I had G drop me off at mine. I took a 2-hour nap and felt better enough to venture to People’s. Actually, I tried first to go to the Money Bureau so I could pay S today, but it closes at 4. And opens at 8:30, meaning I can never go before or after work. People’s such a useless supermarket. The only really useful thing I bought was bread. This is why I need a car to go somewhere else; if I had felt better I could have minibused, but that just wasn’t going to happen.
I watched TV and saw the intro to a really old cartoon called The Raccoons that I had completely forgotten about. I watched a thing on Jack Osbourne trying to get in shape to climb a mountain. Joey called later and we went through my mail and talked about some delicious lasagna he might make me when I get back. I really can’t wait to get back home. Yesterday, between the not feeling well and the closed money bureau and the useless supermarket and the irritating people who always bother me at City Centre, I just really hated Malawi. But that happens away from home.
Today we had the last three CBO meetings, none of which involved singing and dancing. Then I tried to go to the money bureau in old town, but it was closed. Being Friday (and probably also because it was the end of the month), all the banks had huge lines. I got in a giant line for the NB ATMs, which only let me take out a portion of what I really wanted… basically I had to pay S for 4 days instead of 5, promising the rest on Monday. To be fair, she was only here like an hour on Monday, and only part time every day, but whatever. She saves my ass. Anyway, I wish I had checks and a credit card that would be useful in Malawi.
Back at work, I discovered that there is a source of delicious beverages for MK40 in the microprojects office down the hall. I got a Cherry Plum SoBo, which is sooooo delicious. Malawians love their soda beverages.
I pondered going to Cloud tonight, now that Joe and I talked about Italian food, but maybe I’ll go to the mall tomorrow and hit Mama Mia’s instead. I just hate having to take a taxi home from so close to my house, but I probably shouldn’t walk either. So I’ll probably just bum around. Tomorrow I’m going to a concert thing with the boss’s fam, which should be fun.
Wednesday night, I bummed around and decided to make a giant pot of tea. I made it in the French press, which meant that it just steeped and steeped. I think between the caffeine and the acidity, my stomach was ruined. I slept like crap the whole night and dreamed about work. Bleh. I woke up the next day with my stomach still miserable, so I skimped on breakfast (no greasy sausage or potatoes for me) and lurched out for the four CBO meetings I had to deal with. They all went pretty well, and only one involved singing and dancing, and that was because they were actually anticipating that CARE would be there a bit later with cameras to film them. Clarifying this did not keep them from doing their whole spiel for us, however.
So I lived through the meetings, still really friggin’ glad to have S around to help explain things in more detail to people. Afterwards, we dropped S off at her house and I had G drop me off at mine. I took a 2-hour nap and felt better enough to venture to People’s. Actually, I tried first to go to the Money Bureau so I could pay S today, but it closes at 4. And opens at 8:30, meaning I can never go before or after work. People’s such a useless supermarket. The only really useful thing I bought was bread. This is why I need a car to go somewhere else; if I had felt better I could have minibused, but that just wasn’t going to happen.
I watched TV and saw the intro to a really old cartoon called The Raccoons that I had completely forgotten about. I watched a thing on Jack Osbourne trying to get in shape to climb a mountain. Joey called later and we went through my mail and talked about some delicious lasagna he might make me when I get back. I really can’t wait to get back home. Yesterday, between the not feeling well and the closed money bureau and the useless supermarket and the irritating people who always bother me at City Centre, I just really hated Malawi. But that happens away from home.
Today we had the last three CBO meetings, none of which involved singing and dancing. Then I tried to go to the money bureau in old town, but it was closed. Being Friday (and probably also because it was the end of the month), all the banks had huge lines. I got in a giant line for the NB ATMs, which only let me take out a portion of what I really wanted… basically I had to pay S for 4 days instead of 5, promising the rest on Monday. To be fair, she was only here like an hour on Monday, and only part time every day, but whatever. She saves my ass. Anyway, I wish I had checks and a credit card that would be useful in Malawi.
Back at work, I discovered that there is a source of delicious beverages for MK40 in the microprojects office down the hall. I got a Cherry Plum SoBo, which is sooooo delicious. Malawians love their soda beverages.
I pondered going to Cloud tonight, now that Joe and I talked about Italian food, but maybe I’ll go to the mall tomorrow and hit Mama Mia’s instead. I just hate having to take a taxi home from so close to my house, but I probably shouldn’t walk either. So I’ll probably just bum around. Tomorrow I’m going to a concert thing with the boss’s fam, which should be fun.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Dimebag
I tried to post my vids to youtube, but they're not working... soon.
On the way back from the meetings, there were a buttload of people at the bridge... I don't know what they were looking at, and the few we tried to ask seemed to also have no idea, they just noticed the commotion and wanted to see too. So, I think it was a self-perpetuating mob.
I went for a walk near work before grabbing some lunch. I didn't see too much that was interesting. The place near work where I got lunch gave me a dimebag of salt to go with it.
On the way back from the meetings, there were a buttload of people at the bridge... I don't know what they were looking at, and the few we tried to ask seemed to also have no idea, they just noticed the commotion and wanted to see too. So, I think it was a self-perpetuating mob.
I went for a walk near work before grabbing some lunch. I didn't see too much that was interesting. The place near work where I got lunch gave me a dimebag of salt to go with it.
Singing and dancing
This morning my RA and I went to see a couple of the community-based organizations to get some guidance on the project. The first one was a ways out, south on the M1 and then down the turnoff to Bunda for a ways. We got there and were met by a bunch of youth singing. A man took my bag, despite my insistence that I would really prefer to hang onto it, but he wanted to carry it for me into the meeting room. The meeting room had a desk with a chair behind it that was for me to sit in. The table was covered in health brochures, old and newish. At first it seemed that we'd be meeting with about 5 people, already more than expected, but then like 15 more adults filed in and sat on the benches along the wall, and about a million young people and children came in to sit on the floor. Instead of the audience of one or two I had expected going in, I now had a packed room. Or rather, my RA had a packed room because she had to do most of the explaining anyway. She totally could rebargain her pay after today, because she was my savior in that place.
The CBO leader gave this whole speech, translated by S to me, about the CBO and all the things it was trying to do, and all the things that were lacking like soccer balls and other things to occupy young people so they don't have sex, proper training for people at all levels of the organization, medical supplies, help to write good grants, etc. So they were glad to see me! I felt like, yeah, get ready to be disappointed because I just want to do a tiny study about radio. In all fairness, it's good to know about these things, even if I am not prepared to do anything now, because maybe in the future I will be in a place to say, hey, I know a bunch of people who could use some soccer balls or help writing a grant and get them the hookup.
S described the study and figured out the info we needed. She totally ruled today. After the meeting, we went outside and there was singing and dancing and a play. I recorded some of the singing and dancing with my camera. I'll try to post it, if I can, maybe on youtube. It was all cool, but definitely not what I had expected. The second meeting was much more what I planned for: a brief meeting with one person in an office. Either way, it seems that the groups will help us get folks to be in the study and help us find good places to do it, so rah.
We have three or four meetings tomorrow… I was exhausted after the two we had today, so I hope these are all lowkey.
The CBO leader gave this whole speech, translated by S to me, about the CBO and all the things it was trying to do, and all the things that were lacking like soccer balls and other things to occupy young people so they don't have sex, proper training for people at all levels of the organization, medical supplies, help to write good grants, etc. So they were glad to see me! I felt like, yeah, get ready to be disappointed because I just want to do a tiny study about radio. In all fairness, it's good to know about these things, even if I am not prepared to do anything now, because maybe in the future I will be in a place to say, hey, I know a bunch of people who could use some soccer balls or help writing a grant and get them the hookup.
S described the study and figured out the info we needed. She totally ruled today. After the meeting, we went outside and there was singing and dancing and a play. I recorded some of the singing and dancing with my camera. I'll try to post it, if I can, maybe on youtube. It was all cool, but definitely not what I had expected. The second meeting was much more what I planned for: a brief meeting with one person in an office. Either way, it seems that the groups will help us get folks to be in the study and help us find good places to do it, so rah.
We have three or four meetings tomorrow… I was exhausted after the two we had today, so I hope these are all lowkey.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Iron stomach
I had a salad last week for lunch (more like cole slaw without mayo... I added Nali, and it was okay), so my advisor asked me today if it was okay. I'd forgotten salad is one of those things to be wary of in developing countries, I guess because you can't do much to get bad things off of salad parts. I was like, nah, salad was fine. And then I told him I'd been drinking the tap water here too. He said my name in a scolding way. I told him it's totally chlorinated and it's *fine*. It's treated water; in the village I'd be way more careful. Maybe I just have low perceived risk because nothing bad has happened, but I think I'm not that sensitive to changes in water.
I made the rest of those phone calls and managed to schedule all but one group. Rock star!
I made the rest of those phone calls and managed to schedule all but one group. Rock star!
I hate phones
I hate making phone calls to people I don't know sooooo much. I have a hard enough time communicating in any oral way, and the phone just makes it a million times worse. I'm trying to call people from all these groups that BRIDGE has worked with before so that I can meet with them later this week and see if they can help me with my study. After 2 calls I'm drained and I need to talk to like 7 more. Gah! I was originally going to pawn this off on a woman here who has worked with all these people before, but she's at a workshop today and tomorrow. Damn workshops.
Is people
After work Friday I hung out with my advisor at his hotel, sitting out by the pool. Pools are awesome. It was kind of weird hanging out with my advisor… a lot of faculty in the department seem to have very social relationships with their advisees (mostly the women, I guess), but that’s not really been my case. Which I’ve liked in a way. But when you’re a million miles from home and there’s nothing else to do on Friday, might as well hang out. We talked about lots of random stuff, and some grant ideas (can’t leave behind work entirely).
I talked to Joey when I got home. He continues to be a rock star. And we continue to be able to crack each other up.
Today I left the house late-ish. I went by City Centre, but it was so intolerable that I jumped on the nearest minibus and went downtown. The purveyors of goods at City Centre need to realize that no one comes around there because they pounce on every mazungu that gets within 100 feet of them and hound them until they have to get rude. Seriously, I don’t want your stuff. It’s not my fault it’s Saturday and no one is around and you’re broke and you can’t figure out that everyone is in old town. I’ll buy things when I want to buy things, and my only obligation is to treat you with respect. Please do the same and take the hint when I tell you for the fifth time that I’m not interested.
I mean, something I’ve noticed is that white people really don’t walk around Lilongwe. They get in cars and go where they want to go and don’t walk amongst the people. So mazungu who are walking around stick out like a sore thumb and attract all sorts of attention. Which makes them want to figure out how to not walk around also, because it’s honestly sort of embarrassing. I took the minibus to the markets. I walked around and didn’t face the same entreaties to buy things (it’s just so damn crowded, there’s no time to waste wooing one potential customer), but I got a million weird looks. I decided this was because I was wearing shorts, which women don’t really do here. So I got a chitenje (a big piece of fabric women wear for skirts/wraps), which I had wanted to do anyway cuz they’re purdy, and put that on. Well that didn’t help me blend in at all! Everyone seemed totally amused! Several men said I was dressed very well, and I couldn’t tell if they were being sincere or just polite, because they were clearly entertained. So, I just stuck out like a sore thumb all day, and at first I didn’t care, but it was extremely tiring after a while.
As I headed toward Shoprite for some air conditioning, a couple of young men, level 4 students, came up to walk with me. They were cool; they’re from the lake area and like to give tours. They’ve also learned the art of the soft sell. They showed me where an outdoor food market was, and led me to a courtyard where there is sometimes traditional dancing (we missed it). Then we chilled in the courtyard and had some drinks, which the talkative one, Brian, bought, and we chatted about all things Malawi. Eventually the sell came – they made jewelry! It helped them that they make cool jewelry and this was actually something I am interested in buying for myself and for gifts. They were a pretty good price too. So, I still ended up getting a sales pitch, but a much better one than City Centre! These guys could easily go into business anywhere, because they have clearly figured out how to connect with a client.
So that was actually pretty fun, and it was cool to hang out with people who know things and are willing to share them with me. Part of the conversation was really interesting from a work perspective. Brian talked about all the kids people have when they are too poor to take care of them. And then he talked about how people in the villages drink this beer, and it’s very bad because it brings HIV into the community. Filling in the mediators, he noted that older men drink the beer and feed it to girls, and pay the girls, and this is all child abuse really, but it fuels HIV. It’s always interesting to hear the “epidemiologist on the street” point of view, particularly when it contains so much truth.
On the note of babies, there is a huge difference in how many pregnant women and babies I’ve seen around here compared to the States. Which any population indicator would also tell you, but it’s a different thing to actually see it in person. Bumps and babies all over!
After old town I met up with my advisor in City Centre, because he wanted to buy curios and inexplicably likes to buy them there instead of in old town. It was just as intolerable as before. My friend, Erics, who sold me postcards before, was just as relentless this time in insisting my advisor buy some cards. He finally did just to get rid of the guy.
I came home and chilled and there was another power outage, which caused me to miss the end of the Red Sox/Yankees game they were replaying. It came back on just before I went to dinner with the BRIDGE crew. We went to this place called Baba’s in old town across the river; who knew you could find such delicious Indian food in Malawi! It was awesome.
Sunday I went to meet up with my advisor and a woman who came up from Blantyre to meet with us. She graduated from the MPH program at Hopkins and is doing stuff with big clinical trials down there. I took the minibus downtown and intended to take another one up to Cresta, but I ended up just walking. We sat outside, and I didn’t think I was really in the sun, but one arm and my entire neck was sunburned afterwards. I stopped by the Foodzone that is there to grab some things and took two minibuses home. My strawberry yogurt busted open while being squished in the minibus, and it got all over. Boo. At least there was most of it left for eating; it’s local, and much better than the other weird stuff I had before in that it actually tasted like strawberries.
Upon my return home, I bummed around and couldn’t get motivated to do much of anything. I eventually watched Soylent Green, which I had never seen. This, however, is better than Joe, who had never even heard of Soylent Green, meaning I could not shout the punchline like Charlston Heston does at the end. Booo.
I talked to Joey when I got home. He continues to be a rock star. And we continue to be able to crack each other up.
Today I left the house late-ish. I went by City Centre, but it was so intolerable that I jumped on the nearest minibus and went downtown. The purveyors of goods at City Centre need to realize that no one comes around there because they pounce on every mazungu that gets within 100 feet of them and hound them until they have to get rude. Seriously, I don’t want your stuff. It’s not my fault it’s Saturday and no one is around and you’re broke and you can’t figure out that everyone is in old town. I’ll buy things when I want to buy things, and my only obligation is to treat you with respect. Please do the same and take the hint when I tell you for the fifth time that I’m not interested.
I mean, something I’ve noticed is that white people really don’t walk around Lilongwe. They get in cars and go where they want to go and don’t walk amongst the people. So mazungu who are walking around stick out like a sore thumb and attract all sorts of attention. Which makes them want to figure out how to not walk around also, because it’s honestly sort of embarrassing. I took the minibus to the markets. I walked around and didn’t face the same entreaties to buy things (it’s just so damn crowded, there’s no time to waste wooing one potential customer), but I got a million weird looks. I decided this was because I was wearing shorts, which women don’t really do here. So I got a chitenje (a big piece of fabric women wear for skirts/wraps), which I had wanted to do anyway cuz they’re purdy, and put that on. Well that didn’t help me blend in at all! Everyone seemed totally amused! Several men said I was dressed very well, and I couldn’t tell if they were being sincere or just polite, because they were clearly entertained. So, I just stuck out like a sore thumb all day, and at first I didn’t care, but it was extremely tiring after a while.
As I headed toward Shoprite for some air conditioning, a couple of young men, level 4 students, came up to walk with me. They were cool; they’re from the lake area and like to give tours. They’ve also learned the art of the soft sell. They showed me where an outdoor food market was, and led me to a courtyard where there is sometimes traditional dancing (we missed it). Then we chilled in the courtyard and had some drinks, which the talkative one, Brian, bought, and we chatted about all things Malawi. Eventually the sell came – they made jewelry! It helped them that they make cool jewelry and this was actually something I am interested in buying for myself and for gifts. They were a pretty good price too. So, I still ended up getting a sales pitch, but a much better one than City Centre! These guys could easily go into business anywhere, because they have clearly figured out how to connect with a client.
So that was actually pretty fun, and it was cool to hang out with people who know things and are willing to share them with me. Part of the conversation was really interesting from a work perspective. Brian talked about all the kids people have when they are too poor to take care of them. And then he talked about how people in the villages drink this beer, and it’s very bad because it brings HIV into the community. Filling in the mediators, he noted that older men drink the beer and feed it to girls, and pay the girls, and this is all child abuse really, but it fuels HIV. It’s always interesting to hear the “epidemiologist on the street” point of view, particularly when it contains so much truth.
On the note of babies, there is a huge difference in how many pregnant women and babies I’ve seen around here compared to the States. Which any population indicator would also tell you, but it’s a different thing to actually see it in person. Bumps and babies all over!
After old town I met up with my advisor in City Centre, because he wanted to buy curios and inexplicably likes to buy them there instead of in old town. It was just as intolerable as before. My friend, Erics, who sold me postcards before, was just as relentless this time in insisting my advisor buy some cards. He finally did just to get rid of the guy.
I came home and chilled and there was another power outage, which caused me to miss the end of the Red Sox/Yankees game they were replaying. It came back on just before I went to dinner with the BRIDGE crew. We went to this place called Baba’s in old town across the river; who knew you could find such delicious Indian food in Malawi! It was awesome.
Sunday I went to meet up with my advisor and a woman who came up from Blantyre to meet with us. She graduated from the MPH program at Hopkins and is doing stuff with big clinical trials down there. I took the minibus downtown and intended to take another one up to Cresta, but I ended up just walking. We sat outside, and I didn’t think I was really in the sun, but one arm and my entire neck was sunburned afterwards. I stopped by the Foodzone that is there to grab some things and took two minibuses home. My strawberry yogurt busted open while being squished in the minibus, and it got all over. Boo. At least there was most of it left for eating; it’s local, and much better than the other weird stuff I had before in that it actually tasted like strawberries.
Upon my return home, I bummed around and couldn’t get motivated to do much of anything. I eventually watched Soylent Green, which I had never seen. This, however, is better than Joe, who had never even heard of Soylent Green, meaning I could not shout the punchline like Charlston Heston does at the end. Booo.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Cha bwino
I had another thought of Chichewa I can actually remember. Cha bwino is basically the same as esta bueno. It really means "good thing," but same timing.
Week 2: Faster than the first
First off, thanks to another benefactor, Jenn, for adding to my sister’s contribution of a Flickr pro account. I’m good for two years now!
Monday was quite busy! I went to my meeting, where we made lots of changes to the survey, which I then had to actually make in the document. Then I went to lunch with my advisor and one of the women in charge of the project at this place that was totally the Malawi version of every fast food place in the US that makes wraps and that kind of thing. Heavy on the chicken, because that’s the most popular meat here. It was the ultimate in non culture shock, but they did make it pleasantly spicy, and there was a bottle of peri-peri (hot spicy herb sauce that is way better than Tabasco) for dipping the French fries (chips) in.
We then trekked out to the workshop to start going over the survey with the interviewers. The place was in the southern part of town, and we drove down this road that had tons of furniture along it! Like, tons of booths with bed frames and poofy couches and chairs. Some of the booths sold coffins; apparently not too long ago pretty much all the places along there sold coffins. Apparently there is less demand for coffins, or some people decided to move their skills to furniture. The poofy couches are all kinds of wonderful garish colors like deep fuchsia velvet. I’ll try to take a photo of the lobby furniture at the hotel, which is more of a gold color.
The workshop was interesting. We had both the Chichewa version of the survey (which was unfortunately at least 2 iterations old in terms of numbering and coding, and also we had new questions) and the English version, and we were going through the instructions in both languages. People would pipe up with questions and issues with the translation, and it was lively, considering how boring it actually was. We didn’t even get through the first section of the survey, but it’ll go faster tomorrow.
I used the minibus to go home for the first time Monday. The new secretary lives up the street from me, so she showed me the ropes. We stood on the side of the road until an Area 12 bus pulled up (that’s the area just past 11). Some people got out, but there were still many people in there. Tinkhani and I crammed into a seat that normally would fit one. Another couple of people crammed into the seat in front of us. All of these seats were rickety, which served to be able to move them a bit to cram more people in more efficiently, but made sitting kind of precarious until everyone got in to balance them. Once all the seats were full, like three more guys, including the money collector, just kind of crouched inside by the sliding door. We stopped at the gas station to fuel up, all crammed in. A few people got off south of City Centre. Then we got off right at my street. Tinkhani told me that when we got off, they said that one munthu and one mazungu were getting off. She said that munthu means person, and mazungu means white, like white folks aren’t people. I thought that was kind of funny, even though I guess it’s probably totally offensive.
So, the minibuses aren’t so difficult, even if they are insane. They’re a very efficient way to move people around the city!
I got home Monday to hear the news that one person had been killed in two shootings at VA Tech. After about an hour, the press conference happened and the numbers shot to 20+ only to go above 30. It was definitely one of those freaky news-watching experiences, esp with the time difference and all this happening during the evening news here.
The international news coverage of this incident has been really interesting. In addition to CNN, which was mostly US feed for the first couple of days, I watched BBC and Sky. These guys are really the liberal media! BBC had a guy on that was basically like, yeah, the US has lots of crime and we’re sadly kind of getting used to these kinds of shootings. Both networks have been talking about gun control in the US in this mystified kind of way about the culture of gun rights, with a tone that this should *obviously* lead to some kind of serious discussion about guns with a realization that it probably won’t. The CNN feed, on the other hand, has mostly focused on the need to improve security on campuses, with discussions even of things like random bag searches and metal detectors. Yeesh.
And then of course there was the whole news of like 200 people being blown up in Iraq, but somehow that seems less worthy of attention because it’s become so common. I think the shock over the VA tech incident has been about right; it’s our lack of shock over these other deaths that is a problem.
Joe called late Monday night to say he was getting calls from the media to comment on the story. He taught during winter term and will teach during summer term a course on school and youth violence, which includes a class on rampage school shootings. So he’s something of an expert. He wrote a column in the Sun for Thursday, and Baltimore folks can see him on WBAL Saturday morning. I’ve had the strange mix of feeling proud that Joe gets to talk about something he knows about and sadness that this expertise is useful at such a terrible time!
Tuesday, I took the minibus to the office. It picked me up right near the Villa, and it wasn’t even full! But soon it was, as they pretty much make stops until it’s crammed beyond belief. I was sitting in a seat shoulder to shoulder, and we still fit another person (a girl who appeared to be at the workshop, oddly… I should have just followed her all the way in). The driver came to pick me up from the officce and told me he’d gone to my house first… oops. People keep telling the poor drivers different things, and they end up with the wrong directions. He took me to the workshop, where it seems they had barely started.
Listening to people speak about half the time in Chichewa was interesting. I didn’t really pick much up, but it’s funny how the patterns of speech are similar and different from us. There’s much more coordination of responses like yes and no (yes being a sort of affirmative sounding grunt, no being “ayi”) than there would be in a similar group in the US. But when there is discussion or joking around the cadences are similar. Actually, Chichewa reminds me of Spanish or Italian a little because the ways vowels and consonants alternate. But there are a lot more m, n, k and z sounds.
We went to lunch at this delicious Indian place that has several branches throughout Lilongwe. It’s good, but we ate there like every day this week, so I think I’m good for a while.
After more workshopping, Rajiv wanted to grab a beer after work. I’m not one to say no to beer, so I went with him and the driver to his hotel, which is much nicer than mine. We had a beer, but we weren’t exactly chillaxing because first we went through the survey to make cuts (it’s hugely long in English, which is even longer in Chichewa since there aren’t simple words for things like “never” and “feelings”). I grabbed a cab home; I expected to pay about $10, but it was more like $6, which I thought was a bargain. There are no meters in the cabs here, just negotiation. But the guy offered 1000 kwacha, and my hotel was kind of far, so I just didn’t even bother to bargain.
Wednesday morning, the driver came to get me to take me to the workshop. We finished going through the survey in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went out to a village called Maenje or Mnchezi, not sure, in the Traditional Authority (kind of like a county) of Chitukula. It was just past these giant maize silos that are near the airport. The juxtaposition of the giant shiny metal silos with the short scrubby mud color of the town was quite something. I took a few photos of the place. I was the most popular visitor; my advisor, being Nepali, has somewhat darker skin and was less obviously out-of-place than I was. I’m pretty dang white. So all the little kids stared and followed me around like I was from another planet. They were fascinated. I helped G through an interview, taking notes along the way about things we needed to change or reword. I thought the village was kind of awesome, but maybe that’s because most of the buildings were tiny like me. They were close together and laid out very differently from modern towns.
Last night I watched the news and when it got boring, I tried to get inspired to do something. But instead I fell asleep at around 7:30, with all the lights on, for about two hours. Then I got up and went to bed. Seriously lazy. But when you get up at 6:30 every day, there are limited ways to get in 11 hours of sleep. Thursday was more workshop, to see how interviews went and to make final changes. Today I’m back in the office and trying to catch up on all my email, blogging, and photo postage.
Now that the survey is going forth, I will turn to working on my study. In the course of visiting the village, I realized that you don’t have to go very far from Lilongwe to be in a really different place, and maybe I can do my study in the outskirts. This has a major advantage budgetwise, in that we can leave and come back every day, so there will be no accommodations to worry about. We have contacts in the surrounding areas, so I can get in touch with them to help me find rooms and help recruit. One disadvantage is that people are close enough to the city to get, like, every radio station, making it possible for them to have listened to the program, but I think that there’s probably so much competition that this is not a problem.
Speaking of the radio, I learned several useful Chichewa words while going through the survey this week. Wailesi is radio… it’s basically wireless pronounced the way they pronounce things here. Same with EZDI, which is AIDS. The ‘i' on the end is pretty silent… just a lift from the ‘s’ sound. Pologalamuyi is program; a lot of the time ‘l’ sounds like ‘r’, and they add vowels, so this crazy-looking word sounds pretty much like program. I have also learned that first person verbs start with ndi and second person is mu. I also learned that the way I say twenty is really twenny, which our translator mocked me for, as people in Malawi actually bother to pronounce t’s. Stop being a British colony already!
Okay, time to do some work before I knock off for the day.
Monday was quite busy! I went to my meeting, where we made lots of changes to the survey, which I then had to actually make in the document. Then I went to lunch with my advisor and one of the women in charge of the project at this place that was totally the Malawi version of every fast food place in the US that makes wraps and that kind of thing. Heavy on the chicken, because that’s the most popular meat here. It was the ultimate in non culture shock, but they did make it pleasantly spicy, and there was a bottle of peri-peri (hot spicy herb sauce that is way better than Tabasco) for dipping the French fries (chips) in.
We then trekked out to the workshop to start going over the survey with the interviewers. The place was in the southern part of town, and we drove down this road that had tons of furniture along it! Like, tons of booths with bed frames and poofy couches and chairs. Some of the booths sold coffins; apparently not too long ago pretty much all the places along there sold coffins. Apparently there is less demand for coffins, or some people decided to move their skills to furniture. The poofy couches are all kinds of wonderful garish colors like deep fuchsia velvet. I’ll try to take a photo of the lobby furniture at the hotel, which is more of a gold color.
The workshop was interesting. We had both the Chichewa version of the survey (which was unfortunately at least 2 iterations old in terms of numbering and coding, and also we had new questions) and the English version, and we were going through the instructions in both languages. People would pipe up with questions and issues with the translation, and it was lively, considering how boring it actually was. We didn’t even get through the first section of the survey, but it’ll go faster tomorrow.
I used the minibus to go home for the first time Monday. The new secretary lives up the street from me, so she showed me the ropes. We stood on the side of the road until an Area 12 bus pulled up (that’s the area just past 11). Some people got out, but there were still many people in there. Tinkhani and I crammed into a seat that normally would fit one. Another couple of people crammed into the seat in front of us. All of these seats were rickety, which served to be able to move them a bit to cram more people in more efficiently, but made sitting kind of precarious until everyone got in to balance them. Once all the seats were full, like three more guys, including the money collector, just kind of crouched inside by the sliding door. We stopped at the gas station to fuel up, all crammed in. A few people got off south of City Centre. Then we got off right at my street. Tinkhani told me that when we got off, they said that one munthu and one mazungu were getting off. She said that munthu means person, and mazungu means white, like white folks aren’t people. I thought that was kind of funny, even though I guess it’s probably totally offensive.
So, the minibuses aren’t so difficult, even if they are insane. They’re a very efficient way to move people around the city!
I got home Monday to hear the news that one person had been killed in two shootings at VA Tech. After about an hour, the press conference happened and the numbers shot to 20+ only to go above 30. It was definitely one of those freaky news-watching experiences, esp with the time difference and all this happening during the evening news here.
The international news coverage of this incident has been really interesting. In addition to CNN, which was mostly US feed for the first couple of days, I watched BBC and Sky. These guys are really the liberal media! BBC had a guy on that was basically like, yeah, the US has lots of crime and we’re sadly kind of getting used to these kinds of shootings. Both networks have been talking about gun control in the US in this mystified kind of way about the culture of gun rights, with a tone that this should *obviously* lead to some kind of serious discussion about guns with a realization that it probably won’t. The CNN feed, on the other hand, has mostly focused on the need to improve security on campuses, with discussions even of things like random bag searches and metal detectors. Yeesh.
And then of course there was the whole news of like 200 people being blown up in Iraq, but somehow that seems less worthy of attention because it’s become so common. I think the shock over the VA tech incident has been about right; it’s our lack of shock over these other deaths that is a problem.
Joe called late Monday night to say he was getting calls from the media to comment on the story. He taught during winter term and will teach during summer term a course on school and youth violence, which includes a class on rampage school shootings. So he’s something of an expert. He wrote a column in the Sun for Thursday, and Baltimore folks can see him on WBAL Saturday morning. I’ve had the strange mix of feeling proud that Joe gets to talk about something he knows about and sadness that this expertise is useful at such a terrible time!
Tuesday, I took the minibus to the office. It picked me up right near the Villa, and it wasn’t even full! But soon it was, as they pretty much make stops until it’s crammed beyond belief. I was sitting in a seat shoulder to shoulder, and we still fit another person (a girl who appeared to be at the workshop, oddly… I should have just followed her all the way in). The driver came to pick me up from the officce and told me he’d gone to my house first… oops. People keep telling the poor drivers different things, and they end up with the wrong directions. He took me to the workshop, where it seems they had barely started.
Listening to people speak about half the time in Chichewa was interesting. I didn’t really pick much up, but it’s funny how the patterns of speech are similar and different from us. There’s much more coordination of responses like yes and no (yes being a sort of affirmative sounding grunt, no being “ayi”) than there would be in a similar group in the US. But when there is discussion or joking around the cadences are similar. Actually, Chichewa reminds me of Spanish or Italian a little because the ways vowels and consonants alternate. But there are a lot more m, n, k and z sounds.
We went to lunch at this delicious Indian place that has several branches throughout Lilongwe. It’s good, but we ate there like every day this week, so I think I’m good for a while.
After more workshopping, Rajiv wanted to grab a beer after work. I’m not one to say no to beer, so I went with him and the driver to his hotel, which is much nicer than mine. We had a beer, but we weren’t exactly chillaxing because first we went through the survey to make cuts (it’s hugely long in English, which is even longer in Chichewa since there aren’t simple words for things like “never” and “feelings”). I grabbed a cab home; I expected to pay about $10, but it was more like $6, which I thought was a bargain. There are no meters in the cabs here, just negotiation. But the guy offered 1000 kwacha, and my hotel was kind of far, so I just didn’t even bother to bargain.
Wednesday morning, the driver came to get me to take me to the workshop. We finished going through the survey in the morning, and then in the afternoon we went out to a village called Maenje or Mnchezi, not sure, in the Traditional Authority (kind of like a county) of Chitukula. It was just past these giant maize silos that are near the airport. The juxtaposition of the giant shiny metal silos with the short scrubby mud color of the town was quite something. I took a few photos of the place. I was the most popular visitor; my advisor, being Nepali, has somewhat darker skin and was less obviously out-of-place than I was. I’m pretty dang white. So all the little kids stared and followed me around like I was from another planet. They were fascinated. I helped G through an interview, taking notes along the way about things we needed to change or reword. I thought the village was kind of awesome, but maybe that’s because most of the buildings were tiny like me. They were close together and laid out very differently from modern towns.
Last night I watched the news and when it got boring, I tried to get inspired to do something. But instead I fell asleep at around 7:30, with all the lights on, for about two hours. Then I got up and went to bed. Seriously lazy. But when you get up at 6:30 every day, there are limited ways to get in 11 hours of sleep. Thursday was more workshop, to see how interviews went and to make final changes. Today I’m back in the office and trying to catch up on all my email, blogging, and photo postage.
Now that the survey is going forth, I will turn to working on my study. In the course of visiting the village, I realized that you don’t have to go very far from Lilongwe to be in a really different place, and maybe I can do my study in the outskirts. This has a major advantage budgetwise, in that we can leave and come back every day, so there will be no accommodations to worry about. We have contacts in the surrounding areas, so I can get in touch with them to help me find rooms and help recruit. One disadvantage is that people are close enough to the city to get, like, every radio station, making it possible for them to have listened to the program, but I think that there’s probably so much competition that this is not a problem.
Speaking of the radio, I learned several useful Chichewa words while going through the survey this week. Wailesi is radio… it’s basically wireless pronounced the way they pronounce things here. Same with EZDI, which is AIDS. The ‘i' on the end is pretty silent… just a lift from the ‘s’ sound. Pologalamuyi is program; a lot of the time ‘l’ sounds like ‘r’, and they add vowels, so this crazy-looking word sounds pretty much like program. I have also learned that first person verbs start with ndi and second person is mu. I also learned that the way I say twenty is really twenny, which our translator mocked me for, as people in Malawi actually bother to pronounce t’s. Stop being a British colony already!
Okay, time to do some work before I knock off for the day.
Monday, April 16, 2007
First weekend
First, thanks to Am for buying me a pro account on Flickr. Now all my photos will stay up!
I worked on the survey all Friday afternoon trying to make sure all the coding and skip patterns were right, as well as numbering all the new questions without disturbing the variable names of all the repeat questions. That was sort of a challenge. I got home feeling really worn out, and it was about ten seconds before I totally broke down. I managed to not really cry the whole week since I was so busy, but the thought of being lonely all weekend was just too awful to deal with. That and just thinking about how I was going to figure out these minibuses and my stupid phone and all this weird new crap, I just felt so overwhelmed. But all is well, and my weekend was quite busy.
Friday night I watched all three episodes of Dexter I had left. Omigod, they were so friggin great. Seriously, people, this is a show to pick up on DVD if you haven’t seen it.
I had trouble getting to bed that night. And by trouble, I mean it took me all the way to 11 to get to bed. I got up after 7, which I think is the latest I’ve gotten up since I’ve been here. I went down to see if breakfast was ready, and while I waited a few minutes, I talked to Fred. He asked what I’m doing with work, and I told him how I was working with a group that does HIV/AIDS stuff. It became a kind of mini-education session as he started to ask about why mosquitos don’t transmit the virus and if sharing razors does. Then he asked me if I thought that God had brought the virus. I said that it was hard to know what God does. But for us we tell people that they can do things to keep from getting the virus. It was an interesting slice of all the issues we deal with in HIV prevention, the misconceptions and cultural beliefs that come into play.
Breakfast was good. My egg was scrambled today. I brought a magazine down with me so I could eat and read… it’s become damn near impossible for me to just eat without doing something else. No one else was at breakfast, although I thought I saw multiple plates being prepared. Maybe everyone else just eats later, or maybe it was for the guys who work here. A mystery, this place.
K came to pick me up with her daughters in tow. One is eight and a half and seemed kind of surly at first, but she got to be in a better mood and seemed to like me a lot once she figured out I would talk to her. The other is five, a little redheaded sprite with a funny cute accent I assume she picked up at school or somewhere, because mom and dad have very American accents. We went to a place that is a fair walk from mine called the Four Seasons center. It’s a combination of shops, a couple of restaurants, and some gardens. So that’s good to know about. Then we went to where the Foodworth’s is to get a video for the, to recharge my phone with more minutes, and to grab some groceries. The youngest had a birthday party to go to, so we dropped by their house and I met K’s husband. He’s cool. Kirsten gave me a French press they have that they don’t use, and a couple of plastic plates since I only have a bowl.
Then we went to the birthday party. I think the original plan was just to stay a little while and then bug off so K could take me home and get her husband to hang out at the end of the party. But I ended up being there the whole time and hanging out with the girls while K picked up her husband during the party. The party was at this ridiculously nice house in the neighborhood where all the ambassadors live. It had this huge backyard garden place where they had a big inflated slip’n’slide set up and one of those bouncy castle slide things. Most of the people there were involved with some kind of health or development program. There was all kinds of food and a really well-stocked bar for these parts.
I’m glad I got to go to Foodworth’s in a car, so I could get some oranges, which are a bit heavy to transport that far without a car. I didn’t get anything that needed refrigeration really, since I don’t have a fridge, which was good since my bags were in the car for a while. But I did buy a chocolate bar that got really melty, but resolidified. It was delicious.
I went out to see the Capital Hotel, finally, since it’s like a two-minute walk. It has nice grounds, and a pool, and a couple of restaurants and a few shops (and they sell recharge vouchers for my phone, which is good to know). They also have a business center there with internet. Oddly, things at the hotel seem to have more hours Sunday than on Saturday, which is really backward from the rest of the city.
I talked to Fred again when I got back. Fred would really like to find a better job or go back to school to become an electrician or driver. He says that maybe I have been sent by God to help him accomplish these things, but I think he’s pretty good at making his own luck. He’s definitely become my go-to guy for cultural interpretation. This afternoon, however, we talked about action movies. Someone in his village has a DVD player and they watch all kinds of action movies. His favorite? Chuck Norris. He’s never seen Walker, Texas Ranger, though, so I need to figure out a way to get him some episodes, because it’s really the only thing to do for someone who clearly loves Chuck Norris so much.
We also talked about how in Mulanje, where he’s from originally, Europeans parachute off the big plateau there and scare the crap out of the villagers below.
One thing I’ve noticed here is that people are a little bit nosy. Maybe some of it is just being protective. I don’t know what it is. But the driver for BRIDGE, whenever I am going somewhere from work, he asks where I am going. On Wednesday, I brought some oatmeal in for lunch (I’m weird, I know, but it was easy to bring), and he was like, you should try some food from here. It was in a polite way, but it was still kind of like all in my business. Likewise, at the Villa, people always seem to want to know what I’m up to when I’m headed to the gate for a walk. Fred is the nosiest (and will often then stop me to talk to me for a while), but they’re all kinda that way. It’s very odd!
Saturday night, I went out to dinner with K, her husband, and this guy who is doing some stuff with the project next week. We went to this Mediterranean place that was pretty tasty. We just ordered their giant appetizer thing where they basically brought out every appetizer they have. The consultant guy is usually in Zimbabwe, so we talked a lot about how much it sucks right now. We also talked about how it is customary here for there to be a lot of greeting, and there’s this whole illusion of wanting to see how someone is doing, and then you preface your actual point with, “By the way…”
Sunday, I lazed around all day, even taking a nap a few hours after I got up. Then I went over to the hotel and emailed some folks. I went down to the garden restaurant and had some wine and a salad and just chilled. It was nice. I went to K and B’s for dinner with my advisor, which was tasty fun. After dinner we had this liqueur called Amarulla, I think, which is basically Bailey’s with a bit of orangey fruit flavor infused. It’s pretty great.
This morning I was about to go downstairs for breakfast when I heard a knock. It was breakfast! In my room! I kinda like that much better, because then I can watch the news. They showed the weather map of the nor’easter that is all over the east coast. Gross. It’s already hot here today before 8. Today I am going to pay the Villa for me first week, and I discovered that they charge like 12 dollars for laundry. At first I felt like maybe I don’t want to pay that and I should just do laundry at Kirsten’s, but now I’m thinking that if the grant is paying for the hotel anyway, maybe I don’t care. Now that I’m here, I, of course, wish I had brought a different distribution of clothing. But it will get cooler, and then maybe some of these longer sleeved shirts will be useful.
Oh! It’s Patriots Day! Boston Marathon is going to suck hardcore today. I watched it on TV a few years ago when I was stuck in the hospital for that diet study, and it made me tired to see people run all the way from Framingham to downtown. That’s a long drive!
Gotta go to the workshops now!
I worked on the survey all Friday afternoon trying to make sure all the coding and skip patterns were right, as well as numbering all the new questions without disturbing the variable names of all the repeat questions. That was sort of a challenge. I got home feeling really worn out, and it was about ten seconds before I totally broke down. I managed to not really cry the whole week since I was so busy, but the thought of being lonely all weekend was just too awful to deal with. That and just thinking about how I was going to figure out these minibuses and my stupid phone and all this weird new crap, I just felt so overwhelmed. But all is well, and my weekend was quite busy.
Friday night I watched all three episodes of Dexter I had left. Omigod, they were so friggin great. Seriously, people, this is a show to pick up on DVD if you haven’t seen it.
I had trouble getting to bed that night. And by trouble, I mean it took me all the way to 11 to get to bed. I got up after 7, which I think is the latest I’ve gotten up since I’ve been here. I went down to see if breakfast was ready, and while I waited a few minutes, I talked to Fred. He asked what I’m doing with work, and I told him how I was working with a group that does HIV/AIDS stuff. It became a kind of mini-education session as he started to ask about why mosquitos don’t transmit the virus and if sharing razors does. Then he asked me if I thought that God had brought the virus. I said that it was hard to know what God does. But for us we tell people that they can do things to keep from getting the virus. It was an interesting slice of all the issues we deal with in HIV prevention, the misconceptions and cultural beliefs that come into play.
Breakfast was good. My egg was scrambled today. I brought a magazine down with me so I could eat and read… it’s become damn near impossible for me to just eat without doing something else. No one else was at breakfast, although I thought I saw multiple plates being prepared. Maybe everyone else just eats later, or maybe it was for the guys who work here. A mystery, this place.
K came to pick me up with her daughters in tow. One is eight and a half and seemed kind of surly at first, but she got to be in a better mood and seemed to like me a lot once she figured out I would talk to her. The other is five, a little redheaded sprite with a funny cute accent I assume she picked up at school or somewhere, because mom and dad have very American accents. We went to a place that is a fair walk from mine called the Four Seasons center. It’s a combination of shops, a couple of restaurants, and some gardens. So that’s good to know about. Then we went to where the Foodworth’s is to get a video for the, to recharge my phone with more minutes, and to grab some groceries. The youngest had a birthday party to go to, so we dropped by their house and I met K’s husband. He’s cool. Kirsten gave me a French press they have that they don’t use, and a couple of plastic plates since I only have a bowl.
Then we went to the birthday party. I think the original plan was just to stay a little while and then bug off so K could take me home and get her husband to hang out at the end of the party. But I ended up being there the whole time and hanging out with the girls while K picked up her husband during the party. The party was at this ridiculously nice house in the neighborhood where all the ambassadors live. It had this huge backyard garden place where they had a big inflated slip’n’slide set up and one of those bouncy castle slide things. Most of the people there were involved with some kind of health or development program. There was all kinds of food and a really well-stocked bar for these parts.
I’m glad I got to go to Foodworth’s in a car, so I could get some oranges, which are a bit heavy to transport that far without a car. I didn’t get anything that needed refrigeration really, since I don’t have a fridge, which was good since my bags were in the car for a while. But I did buy a chocolate bar that got really melty, but resolidified. It was delicious.
I went out to see the Capital Hotel, finally, since it’s like a two-minute walk. It has nice grounds, and a pool, and a couple of restaurants and a few shops (and they sell recharge vouchers for my phone, which is good to know). They also have a business center there with internet. Oddly, things at the hotel seem to have more hours Sunday than on Saturday, which is really backward from the rest of the city.
I talked to Fred again when I got back. Fred would really like to find a better job or go back to school to become an electrician or driver. He says that maybe I have been sent by God to help him accomplish these things, but I think he’s pretty good at making his own luck. He’s definitely become my go-to guy for cultural interpretation. This afternoon, however, we talked about action movies. Someone in his village has a DVD player and they watch all kinds of action movies. His favorite? Chuck Norris. He’s never seen Walker, Texas Ranger, though, so I need to figure out a way to get him some episodes, because it’s really the only thing to do for someone who clearly loves Chuck Norris so much.
We also talked about how in Mulanje, where he’s from originally, Europeans parachute off the big plateau there and scare the crap out of the villagers below.
One thing I’ve noticed here is that people are a little bit nosy. Maybe some of it is just being protective. I don’t know what it is. But the driver for BRIDGE, whenever I am going somewhere from work, he asks where I am going. On Wednesday, I brought some oatmeal in for lunch (I’m weird, I know, but it was easy to bring), and he was like, you should try some food from here. It was in a polite way, but it was still kind of like all in my business. Likewise, at the Villa, people always seem to want to know what I’m up to when I’m headed to the gate for a walk. Fred is the nosiest (and will often then stop me to talk to me for a while), but they’re all kinda that way. It’s very odd!
Saturday night, I went out to dinner with K, her husband, and this guy who is doing some stuff with the project next week. We went to this Mediterranean place that was pretty tasty. We just ordered their giant appetizer thing where they basically brought out every appetizer they have. The consultant guy is usually in Zimbabwe, so we talked a lot about how much it sucks right now. We also talked about how it is customary here for there to be a lot of greeting, and there’s this whole illusion of wanting to see how someone is doing, and then you preface your actual point with, “By the way…”
Sunday, I lazed around all day, even taking a nap a few hours after I got up. Then I went over to the hotel and emailed some folks. I went down to the garden restaurant and had some wine and a salad and just chilled. It was nice. I went to K and B’s for dinner with my advisor, which was tasty fun. After dinner we had this liqueur called Amarulla, I think, which is basically Bailey’s with a bit of orangey fruit flavor infused. It’s pretty great.
This morning I was about to go downstairs for breakfast when I heard a knock. It was breakfast! In my room! I kinda like that much better, because then I can watch the news. They showed the weather map of the nor’easter that is all over the east coast. Gross. It’s already hot here today before 8. Today I am going to pay the Villa for me first week, and I discovered that they charge like 12 dollars for laundry. At first I felt like maybe I don’t want to pay that and I should just do laundry at Kirsten’s, but now I’m thinking that if the grant is paying for the hotel anyway, maybe I don’t care. Now that I’m here, I, of course, wish I had brought a different distribution of clothing. But it will get cooler, and then maybe some of these longer sleeved shirts will be useful.
Oh! It’s Patriots Day! Boston Marathon is going to suck hardcore today. I watched it on TV a few years ago when I was stuck in the hospital for that diet study, and it made me tired to see people run all the way from Framingham to downtown. That’s a long drive!
Gotta go to the workshops now!
Friday, April 13, 2007
Maheu? Ew.
I got home from work, put my stuff away and changed real quick so I could run to the supermarket and get some coffee and anything else I found. Which wasn’t much. People’s is no Shoprite. Or Foodworth’s for that matter… at least that place had soup. I got a can of instant coffee, a bag of Malawi tea, some more weird yogurt, white raisins, and a beer! Carlsberg (of Denmark, same as you see there) is like the official Malawi beer after Chibuku Shake Shake (which I didn’t see, but I wasn’t really looking). I neglected to bring both my mini wine bottle opener and my beer bottle opener that I had removed from my keychain for some reason at some point. But, beer can be opened with pliers and various other tools, whereas wine cannot.
On my way in, a man had walked next to me and said he wanted to show me some postcards on the way out. I figured I could lose him. But when I emerged from the store, he found me. And then this other kid came up, and then there was a third guy talking to them, and it was chaos. I said I had to get home before dark, figuring this would get rid of them, but they tagged along, almost all the way home! They were all right, just crazy persistent, and very willing to let me know how broke they were but how they weren’t beggars because they were selling stuff and working. We were to my street, so I figured if they were willing to walk all that way, I might as well buy a postcard from each. It was like $5 for two, but they’re actually kind of neat, in a touristy way.
I knocked my jar of peanut butter on the floor and it major cracked. I put lots of ziplock bags around it, so maybe it will be okay until I can procure some other container. I like my peanut butter. It occurred to me after that I have all these cabinets, one of which could easily be used as a pantry… better than using the TV as a shelf.
I worked on TASS reports and went to bed around 10:30 (after playing around with the Composer function on the Nokia I’m borrowing). At 5 I woke up to pee and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I got up, had some food and coffee, and worked on the TASS reports more. Around 7 I was about to shower when there was a knock at my door. It was one of the Villa guys letting me know it was time for breakfast. I didn’t know there was a time! I promised to be down in 10 after showering. Breakfast was even more elaborate today and involved not just toast but also eggs, home fries, and a little sausage that tasted like chorizo. It was tasty, but it’s funny how everything is just a little bit off of what it tastes like at home. I seemed to be the only person at breakfast, and I’m not actually sure there is any other guest there right now. At any rate, it’s really strange because I feel like I get this royal treatment… I’ve felt that a lot here. I guess it’s partly the nature of tourism that guests get treated well. But it also feels like there’s a little bit of it that’s about me being a white foreigner.
I just wanna be normal peeps!
Despite eating basically two breakfasts, I am already hungry at 11. I think I’m actually just tired.
Breakfast made me sad because it reminded me of how Joe makes me breakfast. This morning we type-chatted on Skype, and he stayed up way late. It’s hard going into the weekend because I won’t have internet, although I am going to explore the nearby Capital Hotel and check out the internet café at City Centre tomorrow. Things close early tomorrow, though, and Sunday is apparently dead (thanks, missionaries!), so I have to find ways to entertain myself this weekend. Joe might try to find a calling card, if he can get through. My advisor has not been successful so far. I called my phone from the office just now, though, and it worked okay, so it just seems to be a problem of outsiders connecting to the cell network, which Kirsten says is a common problem.
One of the guys here brought me something he wrote to edit this morning. It’s like I’m internationally known as someone who edits things. I finished the TASS reports and decided to get some lunch. I got this drink called Super Maheu from Zambia called Chocolate ‘n Milk. The ingredients, however, include neither of these things. Maize meal, sugar, sweetener, preservative, enzyme, flavourant. It tastes like corn with Smarties crushed up in it, and it has a thick and slightly gritty consistency. Every time I take a sip I’m like, ew weird! Huh. Hmmm. Mmmm? And then the taste goes away and I take another sip. They gave me a straw to go with it, so I decided to make it all the more ridiculous and drink with it. I tried to drink it for a while, but I just couldn't. It kind of reminded me of that barium stuff I had to drink when I had appendicitis. I got some water out of the fridge instead.
The samosees I got with it I have much clearer feelings about: delicious! They’re filled with ground beef and onions. Can’t go wrong with that.
In research news, we decided to go with the original four districts that we surveyed for the last midterm. My advisor had also realized that it was weird to do the unsurveyed four but thought it was necessary for programmatic reasons. When in actuality no one had thought much about it. I’m sure this will lead to a flurry of activity this afternoon when Kirsten returns from her morning meetings. In the meantime I have to get this survey tidied up because the numbering and coding is a mess.
On my way in, a man had walked next to me and said he wanted to show me some postcards on the way out. I figured I could lose him. But when I emerged from the store, he found me. And then this other kid came up, and then there was a third guy talking to them, and it was chaos. I said I had to get home before dark, figuring this would get rid of them, but they tagged along, almost all the way home! They were all right, just crazy persistent, and very willing to let me know how broke they were but how they weren’t beggars because they were selling stuff and working. We were to my street, so I figured if they were willing to walk all that way, I might as well buy a postcard from each. It was like $5 for two, but they’re actually kind of neat, in a touristy way.
I knocked my jar of peanut butter on the floor and it major cracked. I put lots of ziplock bags around it, so maybe it will be okay until I can procure some other container. I like my peanut butter. It occurred to me after that I have all these cabinets, one of which could easily be used as a pantry… better than using the TV as a shelf.
I worked on TASS reports and went to bed around 10:30 (after playing around with the Composer function on the Nokia I’m borrowing). At 5 I woke up to pee and couldn’t go back to sleep. So I got up, had some food and coffee, and worked on the TASS reports more. Around 7 I was about to shower when there was a knock at my door. It was one of the Villa guys letting me know it was time for breakfast. I didn’t know there was a time! I promised to be down in 10 after showering. Breakfast was even more elaborate today and involved not just toast but also eggs, home fries, and a little sausage that tasted like chorizo. It was tasty, but it’s funny how everything is just a little bit off of what it tastes like at home. I seemed to be the only person at breakfast, and I’m not actually sure there is any other guest there right now. At any rate, it’s really strange because I feel like I get this royal treatment… I’ve felt that a lot here. I guess it’s partly the nature of tourism that guests get treated well. But it also feels like there’s a little bit of it that’s about me being a white foreigner.
I just wanna be normal peeps!
Despite eating basically two breakfasts, I am already hungry at 11. I think I’m actually just tired.
Breakfast made me sad because it reminded me of how Joe makes me breakfast. This morning we type-chatted on Skype, and he stayed up way late. It’s hard going into the weekend because I won’t have internet, although I am going to explore the nearby Capital Hotel and check out the internet café at City Centre tomorrow. Things close early tomorrow, though, and Sunday is apparently dead (thanks, missionaries!), so I have to find ways to entertain myself this weekend. Joe might try to find a calling card, if he can get through. My advisor has not been successful so far. I called my phone from the office just now, though, and it worked okay, so it just seems to be a problem of outsiders connecting to the cell network, which Kirsten says is a common problem.
One of the guys here brought me something he wrote to edit this morning. It’s like I’m internationally known as someone who edits things. I finished the TASS reports and decided to get some lunch. I got this drink called Super Maheu from Zambia called Chocolate ‘n Milk. The ingredients, however, include neither of these things. Maize meal, sugar, sweetener, preservative, enzyme, flavourant. It tastes like corn with Smarties crushed up in it, and it has a thick and slightly gritty consistency. Every time I take a sip I’m like, ew weird! Huh. Hmmm. Mmmm? And then the taste goes away and I take another sip. They gave me a straw to go with it, so I decided to make it all the more ridiculous and drink with it. I tried to drink it for a while, but I just couldn't. It kind of reminded me of that barium stuff I had to drink when I had appendicitis. I got some water out of the fridge instead.
The samosees I got with it I have much clearer feelings about: delicious! They’re filled with ground beef and onions. Can’t go wrong with that.
In research news, we decided to go with the original four districts that we surveyed for the last midterm. My advisor had also realized that it was weird to do the unsurveyed four but thought it was necessary for programmatic reasons. When in actuality no one had thought much about it. I’m sure this will lead to a flurry of activity this afternoon when Kirsten returns from her morning meetings. In the meantime I have to get this survey tidied up because the numbering and coding is a mess.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Nsima and beef
First of all, I'd just like to say that I'm glad most of you are asleep when I post, so I have time to remove notes to my boyfriend that I accidentally pasted into my post. Maybe I shouldn't keep those notes in the same document...
Second, I went and got some nsima and beef for lunch today. The meal was $1.71, and the place I got it was this little restaurant where the women served things from lots of crockpots. It smelled kind of like a barn, but the food was tasty (I brought it back to the office, though). Nsima is a corn mash that looks a lot like really thick mashed potatoes. But it's a lot denser and stickier. And it's pretty bland. But, it's tasty enough with the "relish," which is the stuff that comes with it. Today this was beef (some of which was extremely chewy, but most of which was tasty), beans and some kind of green vegetable all chopped up in a delightful sauce. The sauce made the nsima taste lots better. I felt bad that I couldn't eat all the nsima, but it was a ton... kind of like all the rice they give you when you get takeout some places.
Second, I went and got some nsima and beef for lunch today. The meal was $1.71, and the place I got it was this little restaurant where the women served things from lots of crockpots. It smelled kind of like a barn, but the food was tasty (I brought it back to the office, though). Nsima is a corn mash that looks a lot like really thick mashed potatoes. But it's a lot denser and stickier. And it's pretty bland. But, it's tasty enough with the "relish," which is the stuff that comes with it. Today this was beef (some of which was extremely chewy, but most of which was tasty), beans and some kind of green vegetable all chopped up in a delightful sauce. The sauce made the nsima taste lots better. I felt bad that I couldn't eat all the nsima, but it was a ton... kind of like all the rice they give you when you get takeout some places.
Power Out
After work, I came home and turned on the TV to VH1 Europe. I’m pretty sure only me and Lanz Stopar of Slovenia were watching, because he was the only person who requested things on VH1 Jukebox. One of these songs was Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time.” Upon further review, I’d like to amend my statement that she was wearing assless pants in this video. While I have a particular pair of assless pants in mind, she was not wearing them in this video. Instead she was wearing a black strip of fabric that made a V in the front covering her hoohah and boobs, and was basically a thong in the back, She had some kind of fishnet body suit over it. Amazing.
This video was so amazing that it killed the power. This was actually the second time power died where I was yesterday. When I was at the grocery store that morning the power went out briefly. I’m glad I got that flashlight. I put up the bednet and watched Dexter. The power came on after a couple of hours, and I went to bed because I got so sleepy in the dark.
I woke up at quarter to five, reaching new heights of ridiculousness in my sleep schedule. I had some peanut butter and bread (Malawi peanut butter is really tasty, by the way), and then bathed. The shower/bath went much better today, as I was more efficient about washing my hair first while the water was definitely hot, and then putting water in the bathtub for the rest of washing. So I was warm the whole time. I wandered out around 6 to see if the supermarket was open, but it doesn’t open until 8. Maybe I’ll try to go tonight before it closes at 6, or just wait until the weekend. When I returned, the man at the Villa who seems to be in charge of things reminded me that they serve breakfast, with the implied message that I should really come down and eat. So I did after a while, and they fed me tea and toast. I figured this would be a cup of tea and a plate of toast, but it was much more elaborate. First, there was a tray with a teacup and saucer, the teabag, two spoons, a pitcher of milk, and a whole bowl of sugar. Then there was another tray with a plate with two slices of toast, another plate with two pats of butter, and an opened can of the strangest jam I’ve ever had. It was like spreadable candy. But it had a taste I acquired once I realized the butter was kind of odd. There are a lot of dairy products around here that apparently don’t require refrigeration, and they are interesting.
I came into work and called the district coordinators. One said he would email me the information I needed, but I got a message later that he had called to say the power was out there. The other talked so fast that I could not understand him, but I think he told me that he needed to get one last piece of info, and it would take 2-3 days. After that I tried to talk to Joe again on Skype, with hilarious results. The delay is just amazing. The chat is much faster, so he’d type something, and then about 10 seconds later I’d hear him type. It also apparently hogs the limited bandwidth we have here… it’s like using the internet in 1996!
Kirsten and I went to a meeting with the guy in charge of the consulting company running the survey. I came to realize how difficult sampling really is. It sounds so straightforward in my proposal: “In each of the four districts, 240 respondents age 16 to 65 will be recruited, for a total of 960. Multi-stage sampling will be used to select respondents. Each study location is divided into a number of enumeration areas (EAs). Through proportional random sampling, EAs will be selected from each study location. Within each EA, a list of households will be created and households will be sampled in proportion to the number of them in the EA. Within each sampled household, the interviewer will make a list of all household members 16 to 65 years old and then will randomly select one to be the respondent. Either one young adult (younger than 24 years old) or one older adult (24 years or older) will be selected from each household on a rotational basis; this is to ensure that both younger and older adults are sampled in adequate numbers for comparison purposes.”
But this does not really being to describe what is going on. Within each district there are subdistricts called Traditional Authorities. Within each TA there are villages. We need to know the populations of these so that we can randomly select a proportional number of people to be interviewed. Getting this information is difficult enough, apart from its accuracy. All this sampling ahead of time tells you is how many houses per village to visit. It doesn’t nail down who exactly to visit. This happens in the village during the field work. Basically, you have all these interviewers who scatter out to places, and somehow at the end of the day you want to get not only the right number of interviews, but you also want half male, half female and half youth (under age 25) and half adults (overall and by gender). And the field teams have to figure out how to get from place to place with maps that may not be accurate and that don’t show you important information such as, it’s not actually a mile to the next village, because there’s a huge hill in the way.
So, there’s that. I don’t envy the folks who have to figure that out. In the course of discussing the survey (which I have to go through and renumber, because it’s a mess, and it will be a bitch to try to keep question numbers the same from the last midterm when there are new things inserted everywhere), we came upon a major question. There are 8 districts in which BRIDGE has been doing the project. We surveyed 4 in the midterm survey, with the intent to survey all of them in the final survey. But USAID added 2 years to the contract, so the final survey will be in 2009. Hey, we said, why don’t we do a midterm survey in the other 4 districts. So now, a year and a half has passed between the last midterm survey. The question was raised, how do we compare the midterm survey results, because not only are they completely different districts, they are completely different time points. Which led Kirstin to ask, very astutely, does it make sense to do this survey in the other 4 districts? Does it make more sense scientifically to re-do the first four, so we can compare over time? This is a really good question, so we’re going to talk to Rajiv today to figure out whether we need to hurry and change plans while we have the chance.
We came back here, where I was almost done typing this when the power went out. Kirsten said they’re cleaning the turbines at the main power station, which has reduced their capacity, and thus there have been rolling blackouts. This particular one killed my computer in a way that caused me mild panic for several minutes. Once I removed and replaced the battery, all was well, and now I’m plugged into the power strip instead of the wall in the hopes that this will do something better should the power go out again.
I think I’m going to wander out for some lunch… maybe today I will try some local food!
This video was so amazing that it killed the power. This was actually the second time power died where I was yesterday. When I was at the grocery store that morning the power went out briefly. I’m glad I got that flashlight. I put up the bednet and watched Dexter. The power came on after a couple of hours, and I went to bed because I got so sleepy in the dark.
I woke up at quarter to five, reaching new heights of ridiculousness in my sleep schedule. I had some peanut butter and bread (Malawi peanut butter is really tasty, by the way), and then bathed. The shower/bath went much better today, as I was more efficient about washing my hair first while the water was definitely hot, and then putting water in the bathtub for the rest of washing. So I was warm the whole time. I wandered out around 6 to see if the supermarket was open, but it doesn’t open until 8. Maybe I’ll try to go tonight before it closes at 6, or just wait until the weekend. When I returned, the man at the Villa who seems to be in charge of things reminded me that they serve breakfast, with the implied message that I should really come down and eat. So I did after a while, and they fed me tea and toast. I figured this would be a cup of tea and a plate of toast, but it was much more elaborate. First, there was a tray with a teacup and saucer, the teabag, two spoons, a pitcher of milk, and a whole bowl of sugar. Then there was another tray with a plate with two slices of toast, another plate with two pats of butter, and an opened can of the strangest jam I’ve ever had. It was like spreadable candy. But it had a taste I acquired once I realized the butter was kind of odd. There are a lot of dairy products around here that apparently don’t require refrigeration, and they are interesting.
I came into work and called the district coordinators. One said he would email me the information I needed, but I got a message later that he had called to say the power was out there. The other talked so fast that I could not understand him, but I think he told me that he needed to get one last piece of info, and it would take 2-3 days. After that I tried to talk to Joe again on Skype, with hilarious results. The delay is just amazing. The chat is much faster, so he’d type something, and then about 10 seconds later I’d hear him type. It also apparently hogs the limited bandwidth we have here… it’s like using the internet in 1996!
Kirsten and I went to a meeting with the guy in charge of the consulting company running the survey. I came to realize how difficult sampling really is. It sounds so straightforward in my proposal: “In each of the four districts, 240 respondents age 16 to 65 will be recruited, for a total of 960. Multi-stage sampling will be used to select respondents. Each study location is divided into a number of enumeration areas (EAs). Through proportional random sampling, EAs will be selected from each study location. Within each EA, a list of households will be created and households will be sampled in proportion to the number of them in the EA. Within each sampled household, the interviewer will make a list of all household members 16 to 65 years old and then will randomly select one to be the respondent. Either one young adult (younger than 24 years old) or one older adult (24 years or older) will be selected from each household on a rotational basis; this is to ensure that both younger and older adults are sampled in adequate numbers for comparison purposes.”
But this does not really being to describe what is going on. Within each district there are subdistricts called Traditional Authorities. Within each TA there are villages. We need to know the populations of these so that we can randomly select a proportional number of people to be interviewed. Getting this information is difficult enough, apart from its accuracy. All this sampling ahead of time tells you is how many houses per village to visit. It doesn’t nail down who exactly to visit. This happens in the village during the field work. Basically, you have all these interviewers who scatter out to places, and somehow at the end of the day you want to get not only the right number of interviews, but you also want half male, half female and half youth (under age 25) and half adults (overall and by gender). And the field teams have to figure out how to get from place to place with maps that may not be accurate and that don’t show you important information such as, it’s not actually a mile to the next village, because there’s a huge hill in the way.
So, there’s that. I don’t envy the folks who have to figure that out. In the course of discussing the survey (which I have to go through and renumber, because it’s a mess, and it will be a bitch to try to keep question numbers the same from the last midterm when there are new things inserted everywhere), we came upon a major question. There are 8 districts in which BRIDGE has been doing the project. We surveyed 4 in the midterm survey, with the intent to survey all of them in the final survey. But USAID added 2 years to the contract, so the final survey will be in 2009. Hey, we said, why don’t we do a midterm survey in the other 4 districts. So now, a year and a half has passed between the last midterm survey. The question was raised, how do we compare the midterm survey results, because not only are they completely different districts, they are completely different time points. Which led Kirstin to ask, very astutely, does it make sense to do this survey in the other 4 districts? Does it make more sense scientifically to re-do the first four, so we can compare over time? This is a really good question, so we’re going to talk to Rajiv today to figure out whether we need to hurry and change plans while we have the chance.
We came back here, where I was almost done typing this when the power went out. Kirsten said they’re cleaning the turbines at the main power station, which has reduced their capacity, and thus there have been rolling blackouts. This particular one killed my computer in a way that caused me mild panic for several minutes. Once I removed and replaced the battery, all was well, and now I’m plugged into the power strip instead of the wall in the hopes that this will do something better should the power go out again.
I think I’m going to wander out for some lunch… maybe today I will try some local food!
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Shopping success
I mostly bummed around the office this morning, and then I went to Shoprite in Old Town to get a water kettle. First I went to the Forex to get some kwachas, and I exchanged a $100 bill, which gets a whopping exchange rate of 146 kwacha on the dollar. This made my wallet very fat. I got a water kettle, but it has a South African plug, so then I had to get an adapter. I also needed a SIM card forthis phone that Kirsten gave me, so we went to the little electronics store to get both.
Shoprite was seriously huge. I didn't really have time to do a lot of shopping, but it was like a grocery store in the US, basically. With weirder stuff, but still. Old Town is waaaaay busier than Capital City, and I'm going to have to figure out the minibuses so that I can go there on Saturday and stave off boredom.
Cell phones here are kind of way better than in the US. They're basically all pay-as-you-go, and with the phone in hand, it was just a matter of forking over like $2 to get the card to pop in it. There are some magic rules about adding minutes and how long you can make outgoing calls depending on the amount you spent to recharge the phone, but it's still way better for my purposes.
Gwen just said on hi on gmail from Holland, and she's in the same time zone!
Shoprite was seriously huge. I didn't really have time to do a lot of shopping, but it was like a grocery store in the US, basically. With weirder stuff, but still. Old Town is waaaaay busier than Capital City, and I'm going to have to figure out the minibuses so that I can go there on Saturday and stave off boredom.
Cell phones here are kind of way better than in the US. They're basically all pay-as-you-go, and with the phone in hand, it was just a matter of forking over like $2 to get the card to pop in it. There are some magic rules about adding minutes and how long you can make outgoing calls depending on the amount you spent to recharge the phone, but it's still way better for my purposes.
Gwen just said on hi on gmail from Holland, and she's in the same time zone!
Coffee procured!
Mmm, instant coffee with powdered milk. Turns out there are supplies in the kitchen.
I'm going to Shoprite in old town later to see if I can get a water kettle.
I've also been tasked with calling the district coordinators to be all WTF, why haven't you given us the info we need about how many people are in each area so we can sample, fools.
I'm going to Shoprite in old town later to see if I can get a water kettle.
I've also been tasked with calling the district coordinators to be all WTF, why haven't you given us the info we need about how many people are in each area so we can sample, fools.
Coffee
It's 11:22, and I am falling asleep. I know I got up like 5.5 hours ago, but still. I just realized my problem is that I haven't had any coffee today!
I'm also kind of thirsty, which probably doesn't help.
Maybe I should break my addiction, but I am sooooo dragging.
I kinda feel like I should do things in the office like work on the questionnaire, but I really want to go tour the town. I haven't been to old town yet. It's just weird because it seems to be expected that I will be here, which is not something that has been the case for a long time.
I'm also kind of thirsty, which probably doesn't help.
Maybe I should break my addiction, but I am sooooo dragging.
I kinda feel like I should do things in the office like work on the questionnaire, but I really want to go tour the town. I haven't been to old town yet. It's just weird because it seems to be expected that I will be here, which is not something that has been the case for a long time.
End of travel; day 1 in Lilongwe
In Jo’burg, I went to bed sometime after 9 and got up just after 6. The weather in Jo’burg was really lovely in the morning (high was going to be 25C, which I calculated to be 77F). I got to the airport and checked in, but before I could get my boarding pass, I had to go to the ticket counter and get an old school ticket. Weird. No one has those anymore. Security was nothing compared to the US. I just had to remove my laptop, and there appeared to be one guy both shlepping things onto the conveyor and watching the metal detector. I think there must have been another guy reading the xray. Maybe.
After passport control, I entered a huge duty free mall. It’s seriously giant. I saw a thing for tax refund for tourists, but upon reading their brochure, I saw that I needed some kind of official tax invoices from the place of purchase. I vaguely remember the South African Airways website asking me if I needed one, but I thought that was something else. I’m sure they make a killing off of ignorant people like me. Whatever, it’s grant money anyway. I waited at the “gate”, which was really a bus depot kind of thing, waiting to get on a shuttle to the plane. There was this monitor that was like 3D – it was totally nauseating.
The plane was really nice. US airlines totally suck in comparison to international carriers. The lunch was delicious (Lunch! On a 2-hour flight!), and it even came with real silverware. I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane to really see Lilongwe coming in, which was a bummer. The airport was pretty small. There were lots of people standing up on a balcony when we got there. We piled on a shuttle to go the like 50 yards to the terminal. Passport control took a long time, but customs was a breeze… I think they only actually care about people who live there bringing back cool shit without paying taxes on it. Either that or when I told the guy I was working with Malawi BRIDGE, he figured I was good.
The BRIDGE project has a few drivers. The one who picked me up was Gift (?), who was nice. We stopped by my room, and it’s just fine, so I emailed Esnart to say I’d been hooked up. Although the boss said I’d probably be meeting with the guy with the house in the next couple of days, so he might convince me otherwise. After the hotel, we went to exchange some moolah. The exchange rate is 145 Kwacha on the dollar for twenties, but only 110 for fivers. They don’t care for small bills. It was mega hot, in the 80s or so. After stopping at Foodsmiths so I could get some water (for $0.53), we went to the office. Kirsten gave me a tour… it’s basically a big room with these kind of neat wooden dividers… kind of a mix between cubicles and real offices. The walls have these windows in them that I also have in my hotel, which is several slats of glass that can be opened like a venetian blind. One of the women is on vacation this week, so I used her computer and waded through my email on the slow internet connection. I have an office too, but it’s going to take a little while to get my computer connected to the network.
The work schedule at BRIDGE is really early. Kirsten said most people are there from 8 to 5. Apparently the minibuses stop running at like 5:15, so people need to get out early. In the next few days, the new secretary there, who lives up near me, is supposed to help me figure out the minibuses, because I can’t have drivers drive me around all the time, especially once the survey workshops start and more important people (read: my advisor) will need transport.
I got home and unpacked my stuff. There are like 4 closets in this room. Three have shelves, and one has a bar, but there are no hangers. I still need to figure out where laundry will happen. And food. I wish I had been able to find a water kettle that switched voltage… maybe I’ll find one here. The BRIDGE office had one. Foodworths seemed to have a decent amount of stuff, but it’s not very close by. It might be minibus accessible, however. It seems like a lot of people drive and walk here, even though it’s just not possible to walk everywhere because things are fairly spread out. Also, there aren’t sidewalks everywhere.
The TV in the room is way better than I expected, given the few channels in the hotel in Jo’burg. It has real stuff, like CNN, MTV, etc. Except that whatever versions of these stations I have, they actually show, like, news and music and stuff. It’s sort of awesome, actually. No internet, though. I’d gladly trade TV for internet.
I went out to see what rooms are downstairs. There is a common area with couches and TV, a room with like a dining room table and 4 chairs, and a kitchen. I walked outside and down to the road with the intention of maybe getting some dinner. The guard started chatting with me. His name is Fred, and he’s 25. He was telling me that he had been in school, but that his father had died and he had to quit. So now he was working as a guard for the guesthouse, but it was only 4000 Kwacha a month (just under $30, less than what I’m paying everyday for the hotel), which wasn’t enough for him and his sister and brother. He wants a better job, and so he was eager to talk to me, because, hey, I might be able to hook him up. He was pretty cool, but by the time I was done talking to him, it was dark, so I kind of had to go back inside. I was too tired to figure out food, so I just bummed around under the bednet. When I was outside, I thought I felt some mosquitos (must buy DEET), but in my room I didn’t really see any. I just kind of like hanging out under it. I’m just super glad my power adapters work, because even without the internet, I can type things and watch movies. I can also charge my phone to use as an alarm clock. But not while I’m charging the computer battery because there’s only one plug.
It gets dark here earlier, since we’re near the equator. It was totally dark by 6:30.
I went to bed shortly after 9 again, and I woke up around 5:45. It was just starting to get light out. I bathed, by which I mean I sat in the bath and scrubbed myself. There’s a shower head on one of those movable tube thingies. But there’s really no where to hang it *up*. So I bathed, and then washed my hair, but I only got like 5 minutes of hot water out of the thing, so I know now to do my hair first.
I left the house at like 6:30 to go wander around. I walked all the way down to Foodsworth, which is far, to grab some groceries. I knew where it was, so I just kind of wandered there. Unforrtunately, I took a circuitous path where I thought the British Council was (I was right), and therefore missed that there is a People’s Supermarket much, much closer to home. But that’s okay, I didn’t mind the walk. Except that when I started, it was pleasantly cool and breezy, and by the time I returned, it was sunny and hot. It’s much cooler in my room. I ate the exotic breakfast of strawberry yogurt, bread with peanut butter (but bread from a bakery!), and corn flakes. Culture shock!
While out on my walk, I noticed a lot of minibuses going by to different places. I didn’t see any white people on any of them, so I’m sure I’ll be the total weirdo once I start riding them.
When I was walking home with the groceries, first a woman who was walking the same way took one of my bags to help me out, and then as I was almost home a young man did the same thing. Either I looked like a total wimp ambling up the street with my bags, or people are just helpful here.
After passport control, I entered a huge duty free mall. It’s seriously giant. I saw a thing for tax refund for tourists, but upon reading their brochure, I saw that I needed some kind of official tax invoices from the place of purchase. I vaguely remember the South African Airways website asking me if I needed one, but I thought that was something else. I’m sure they make a killing off of ignorant people like me. Whatever, it’s grant money anyway. I waited at the “gate”, which was really a bus depot kind of thing, waiting to get on a shuttle to the plane. There was this monitor that was like 3D – it was totally nauseating.
The plane was really nice. US airlines totally suck in comparison to international carriers. The lunch was delicious (Lunch! On a 2-hour flight!), and it even came with real silverware. I was sitting on the wrong side of the plane to really see Lilongwe coming in, which was a bummer. The airport was pretty small. There were lots of people standing up on a balcony when we got there. We piled on a shuttle to go the like 50 yards to the terminal. Passport control took a long time, but customs was a breeze… I think they only actually care about people who live there bringing back cool shit without paying taxes on it. Either that or when I told the guy I was working with Malawi BRIDGE, he figured I was good.
The BRIDGE project has a few drivers. The one who picked me up was Gift (?), who was nice. We stopped by my room, and it’s just fine, so I emailed Esnart to say I’d been hooked up. Although the boss said I’d probably be meeting with the guy with the house in the next couple of days, so he might convince me otherwise. After the hotel, we went to exchange some moolah. The exchange rate is 145 Kwacha on the dollar for twenties, but only 110 for fivers. They don’t care for small bills. It was mega hot, in the 80s or so. After stopping at Foodsmiths so I could get some water (for $0.53), we went to the office. Kirsten gave me a tour… it’s basically a big room with these kind of neat wooden dividers… kind of a mix between cubicles and real offices. The walls have these windows in them that I also have in my hotel, which is several slats of glass that can be opened like a venetian blind. One of the women is on vacation this week, so I used her computer and waded through my email on the slow internet connection. I have an office too, but it’s going to take a little while to get my computer connected to the network.
The work schedule at BRIDGE is really early. Kirsten said most people are there from 8 to 5. Apparently the minibuses stop running at like 5:15, so people need to get out early. In the next few days, the new secretary there, who lives up near me, is supposed to help me figure out the minibuses, because I can’t have drivers drive me around all the time, especially once the survey workshops start and more important people (read: my advisor) will need transport.
I got home and unpacked my stuff. There are like 4 closets in this room. Three have shelves, and one has a bar, but there are no hangers. I still need to figure out where laundry will happen. And food. I wish I had been able to find a water kettle that switched voltage… maybe I’ll find one here. The BRIDGE office had one. Foodworths seemed to have a decent amount of stuff, but it’s not very close by. It might be minibus accessible, however. It seems like a lot of people drive and walk here, even though it’s just not possible to walk everywhere because things are fairly spread out. Also, there aren’t sidewalks everywhere.
The TV in the room is way better than I expected, given the few channels in the hotel in Jo’burg. It has real stuff, like CNN, MTV, etc. Except that whatever versions of these stations I have, they actually show, like, news and music and stuff. It’s sort of awesome, actually. No internet, though. I’d gladly trade TV for internet.
I went out to see what rooms are downstairs. There is a common area with couches and TV, a room with like a dining room table and 4 chairs, and a kitchen. I walked outside and down to the road with the intention of maybe getting some dinner. The guard started chatting with me. His name is Fred, and he’s 25. He was telling me that he had been in school, but that his father had died and he had to quit. So now he was working as a guard for the guesthouse, but it was only 4000 Kwacha a month (just under $30, less than what I’m paying everyday for the hotel), which wasn’t enough for him and his sister and brother. He wants a better job, and so he was eager to talk to me, because, hey, I might be able to hook him up. He was pretty cool, but by the time I was done talking to him, it was dark, so I kind of had to go back inside. I was too tired to figure out food, so I just bummed around under the bednet. When I was outside, I thought I felt some mosquitos (must buy DEET), but in my room I didn’t really see any. I just kind of like hanging out under it. I’m just super glad my power adapters work, because even without the internet, I can type things and watch movies. I can also charge my phone to use as an alarm clock. But not while I’m charging the computer battery because there’s only one plug.
It gets dark here earlier, since we’re near the equator. It was totally dark by 6:30.
I went to bed shortly after 9 again, and I woke up around 5:45. It was just starting to get light out. I bathed, by which I mean I sat in the bath and scrubbed myself. There’s a shower head on one of those movable tube thingies. But there’s really no where to hang it *up*. So I bathed, and then washed my hair, but I only got like 5 minutes of hot water out of the thing, so I know now to do my hair first.
I left the house at like 6:30 to go wander around. I walked all the way down to Foodsworth, which is far, to grab some groceries. I knew where it was, so I just kind of wandered there. Unforrtunately, I took a circuitous path where I thought the British Council was (I was right), and therefore missed that there is a People’s Supermarket much, much closer to home. But that’s okay, I didn’t mind the walk. Except that when I started, it was pleasantly cool and breezy, and by the time I returned, it was sunny and hot. It’s much cooler in my room. I ate the exotic breakfast of strawberry yogurt, bread with peanut butter (but bread from a bakery!), and corn flakes. Culture shock!
While out on my walk, I noticed a lot of minibuses going by to different places. I didn’t see any white people on any of them, so I’m sure I’ll be the total weirdo once I start riding them.
When I was walking home with the groceries, first a woman who was walking the same way took one of my bags to help me out, and then as I was almost home a young man did the same thing. Either I looked like a total wimp ambling up the street with my bags, or people are just helpful here.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
I made it!
Hey everyone! I made it to Lilongwe! Here are the notes I compiled through last night (more on Lilongwe later):
Friday I began the great voyage. I ended up taking a cab to the airport with Joe, because my turn signals died on my car, and the already wary boy really didn’t want to drive it back after that. I managed to pack all my stuff into my big duffel, my rolly red carryon, and my laptop bag, making me rather mobile. Mostly I packed toiletries and random crap like scissors. I figured I can wash clothes and buy cheap new things like skirts. I do wish that I had considered ahead of time that aerosols aren’t really allowed in checked baggage (there are supposed to be more nuances to the rule, but they get all lost in practicality), because that’s how I bought my bug spray. I had to hand it off to Joe at the airport, but I’m glad I asked ahead of time. I don’t really want TSA rooting through my luggage if I can help it.
We got to the airport and tried to have breakfast. The only thing outside security was Starbucks, which has terrible food. There was a lot of crying involved. I procrastinated going through security until 20 minutes until my departure time, seeing as security had basically no line. As soon as I started through it, my name was called for “final boarding” on the PA. WTF? I hurried through, put on my sneakers as they called again, and sprinted to the end of the hall toward my gate. Basically, the first flight had been cancelled (thanks shitty weather!), and so there was mega standby for my flight, making my seat a hot commodity. The stupid thing was that I had checked a bag that they would have had to unload from the plane, which would probably have messed up the departure time, leaving me all that many more minutes to scream at the gate agents about how they suck and gave my seat away way too friggin early (ticket says 15 minutes, most regs say 10). But I made it, so no harangue-age was necessary.
We had to go through de-icing, and they stuff they sprayed on the plane clouded the windows and was pink and gooey. It was like Ghostbusters instead of de-icing!
I arrived in ATL and grabbed my bags, found the MARTA, and headed north. I got to the station closest to Emory and decided that since there weren't really any cabs around, I would try the 6 bus. It worked out pretty great. I love public transit! I met up with my sis, showered, and went to the wedding stuff. It was too cold for the lovely outdoor garden wedding they had planned, but it was still great and a ton of fun. Sunday I checked out, met up with Pro and Emily, and hung out in the lounge with them and the happy couple and other peeps. Eventually they all went to Waffle House, dropping me off at the MARTA on the way. I was slightly freaking because Afsheen had said that ATL was very strict about baggage rules, and that for international departures they wouldn’t take bags after 90 minutes before departure. I made it with several minutes to spare, but some poor Delta agent got the brunt of my panic when the stupid online check-in machine wouldn’t read my passport and kept telling me I had to go to the line instead of just letting me try the damn thing again. But it all worked out.
Once on the plane, our departure time was delayed. Someone wasn’t on the plane, so they had to unload his bag. Many, many minutes after our scheduled departure time, said moron shows up. He was some rednecky looking dude with a Jack Daniels baseball cap. He’s lucky more people didn’t notice him get on and/or be crazy enough to beat his ass. The captain came on the PA several minutes later and, barely concealing his irritation, announced that our missing passenger had arrived, but his bag had been way in the back of the cargo hold, so they had to unload all the bags, basically. And now they had to re-load them, including this guy’s. Thanks a lot, guy.
On the flight, they filled us with many beverages and dinner. It got dark around 7:30pm EDT, which is 11:30 in Senegal (where we will stop around 5am) and 1:30am in Johannesburg/Lilongwe.
We arrived at Dakar, Senegal at 1:20am EDT, 5:20 there, 7:20 in Jo’burg. Landing in Dakar was weird. It was strangely dark out, and the darkest parts seemed to have the most prosaic buildings. Upon landing, people got off the plane (apparently using stairs to the tarmac, as we weren’t close enough to the building for the regular jetway), and a slew of people in airport fluorescent yellow vests came from the back stairs to “clean.” But actually what they did was inspect all the seats, pulling out the seat cushions and rummaging through the seat pockets. They also were making sure all the overhead baggage belonged to someone. It was weird. We were there about an hour, but we didn’t get to leave. A few folks got on, but I still had no seatmate, so woo.
With the back door open, I could smell the air from outside. At first something about it reminded me of being in Europe. I think my brain just processed it as “foreign” air. It smelled humid and salty and oceany, which is actually more like a foggy summer day in Boston. But maybe something was different about the water itself, making it smell a little different.
Sunrise was about an hour later, after we were back in the air. This means that the plane only had 6 hours of night. I slept more after breakfast, but it was only marginally helpful. They did serve ice cream (those little Haagen Daaz containers). This flight is all about sleeping and eating.
I went to the bathroom, where turbulence began, which was fun. I returned from the bathroom to see the coast of Africa (Namibia, if the inflight map is to be believed). I took a couple of photos from the window. I wanted to get a better shot of the coast, but I was too late. Further inland, the big smooth sand surface turned into bumpier sand more cut by water. It actually looked like parts of New Mexico, although drier. Later on, things got real flat and empty, and it looked just like west Texas. It was like flying to Albuquerque.
I landed in Jo’bug, and one of the first things I saw upon departing the plane was a billboard… owned by Clear Channel. Not too exotic. Getting through customs turned out to be all too easy. When I got off the plane, I got into a big line to get my passport stamped. My particular agent didn’t ask me any questions at all. Then I got my bag and went to the “Nothing to Declare” side of customs. I handed my form to a guy who just seemed to be collecting them and nothing else, and then I walked right out of the terminal. I could have had all kinds of stuff in my bags! Nope, nothing to see here!
As I walked away, however, a man in an orange jumpsuit came up and said something about my bags. I thought he was some kind of inspector guy, but it turns out he was a porter and wanted to help me get my bags to wherever I was going. I tried to fend him off, knowing I’d have to tip him, but it just wasn’t worth fighting about it, and it turned out the shuttle stop was kind of far. My shuttle arrived after a while, and we departed for the various affiliated hotels. So far I haven’t really hit any major culture shock. The road to the hotel reminded me of a major road into Montreal, in that it looked like a slightly funky version of many highways in the US with factories and big billboards and car dealerships and crap like that next to it. Only thing is that they drive on the other side of the road and in the other side of the car. Weird. I kept feeling like everyone was going the wrong way.
My room was super interesting. It’s pretty tiny, but for one person it was just great. The bathroom was not entirely a separate room, as you will see in photos, but it was separated enough for my purposes. The plug was different from the one I have, so I used the last of my battery juice to upload photos and type some notes. It was so great to shower. The shower is kind of a step off the ground, but there was excellent water pressure and temperature. I didn’t get any dinner, since I didn’t get any cash, but I feel like I ate a bunch on the plane. I watched TV, although there were only like 6 channels, but they’ve had things like ER and Sopranos. They’re all at least a season behind, and they are featuring some things that went away a while ago (I saw a commercial for Chicago Hope, of all things). I watched part of a soap opera called Scandals! It was multi-lingual, which was fun (English subtitles too for those parts). I noticed in Jo’burg that people in multiple languages seem to say numbers in English. I heard an Indian guy do it, and I saw it on TV. Oh! On this news program where the guy was talking, and sometimes he made little clicky sounds! Clicky sounds! Are the best!
Once I get to Lilongwe, I have to decide what I’m doing for housing. I got an email from my contact in Lilongwe that she finally heard back from her friend (who worked on the last BRIDGE midterm survey) and I could stay at his house in his guest room. I kind of feel like I don’t want to, because I think it’s further from actual stuff in town and I kind of don’t want to have to deal with people at the end of the day. I figure I’ll see what the hotel is like and get a sense of whether there is some advantage to this guy’s house (wireless internet would be a pretty big draw). I just don’t want to offend either this woman or her friend, esp if the friend goes to any trouble to get his guest wing ready for me. Either way, it’ll cost about the same, I think.
Friday I began the great voyage. I ended up taking a cab to the airport with Joe, because my turn signals died on my car, and the already wary boy really didn’t want to drive it back after that. I managed to pack all my stuff into my big duffel, my rolly red carryon, and my laptop bag, making me rather mobile. Mostly I packed toiletries and random crap like scissors. I figured I can wash clothes and buy cheap new things like skirts. I do wish that I had considered ahead of time that aerosols aren’t really allowed in checked baggage (there are supposed to be more nuances to the rule, but they get all lost in practicality), because that’s how I bought my bug spray. I had to hand it off to Joe at the airport, but I’m glad I asked ahead of time. I don’t really want TSA rooting through my luggage if I can help it.
We got to the airport and tried to have breakfast. The only thing outside security was Starbucks, which has terrible food. There was a lot of crying involved. I procrastinated going through security until 20 minutes until my departure time, seeing as security had basically no line. As soon as I started through it, my name was called for “final boarding” on the PA. WTF? I hurried through, put on my sneakers as they called again, and sprinted to the end of the hall toward my gate. Basically, the first flight had been cancelled (thanks shitty weather!), and so there was mega standby for my flight, making my seat a hot commodity. The stupid thing was that I had checked a bag that they would have had to unload from the plane, which would probably have messed up the departure time, leaving me all that many more minutes to scream at the gate agents about how they suck and gave my seat away way too friggin early (ticket says 15 minutes, most regs say 10). But I made it, so no harangue-age was necessary.
We had to go through de-icing, and they stuff they sprayed on the plane clouded the windows and was pink and gooey. It was like Ghostbusters instead of de-icing!
I arrived in ATL and grabbed my bags, found the MARTA, and headed north. I got to the station closest to Emory and decided that since there weren't really any cabs around, I would try the 6 bus. It worked out pretty great. I love public transit! I met up with my sis, showered, and went to the wedding stuff. It was too cold for the lovely outdoor garden wedding they had planned, but it was still great and a ton of fun. Sunday I checked out, met up with Pro and Emily, and hung out in the lounge with them and the happy couple and other peeps. Eventually they all went to Waffle House, dropping me off at the MARTA on the way. I was slightly freaking because Afsheen had said that ATL was very strict about baggage rules, and that for international departures they wouldn’t take bags after 90 minutes before departure. I made it with several minutes to spare, but some poor Delta agent got the brunt of my panic when the stupid online check-in machine wouldn’t read my passport and kept telling me I had to go to the line instead of just letting me try the damn thing again. But it all worked out.
Once on the plane, our departure time was delayed. Someone wasn’t on the plane, so they had to unload his bag. Many, many minutes after our scheduled departure time, said moron shows up. He was some rednecky looking dude with a Jack Daniels baseball cap. He’s lucky more people didn’t notice him get on and/or be crazy enough to beat his ass. The captain came on the PA several minutes later and, barely concealing his irritation, announced that our missing passenger had arrived, but his bag had been way in the back of the cargo hold, so they had to unload all the bags, basically. And now they had to re-load them, including this guy’s. Thanks a lot, guy.
On the flight, they filled us with many beverages and dinner. It got dark around 7:30pm EDT, which is 11:30 in Senegal (where we will stop around 5am) and 1:30am in Johannesburg/Lilongwe.
We arrived at Dakar, Senegal at 1:20am EDT, 5:20 there, 7:20 in Jo’burg. Landing in Dakar was weird. It was strangely dark out, and the darkest parts seemed to have the most prosaic buildings. Upon landing, people got off the plane (apparently using stairs to the tarmac, as we weren’t close enough to the building for the regular jetway), and a slew of people in airport fluorescent yellow vests came from the back stairs to “clean.” But actually what they did was inspect all the seats, pulling out the seat cushions and rummaging through the seat pockets. They also were making sure all the overhead baggage belonged to someone. It was weird. We were there about an hour, but we didn’t get to leave. A few folks got on, but I still had no seatmate, so woo.
With the back door open, I could smell the air from outside. At first something about it reminded me of being in Europe. I think my brain just processed it as “foreign” air. It smelled humid and salty and oceany, which is actually more like a foggy summer day in Boston. But maybe something was different about the water itself, making it smell a little different.
Sunrise was about an hour later, after we were back in the air. This means that the plane only had 6 hours of night. I slept more after breakfast, but it was only marginally helpful. They did serve ice cream (those little Haagen Daaz containers). This flight is all about sleeping and eating.
I went to the bathroom, where turbulence began, which was fun. I returned from the bathroom to see the coast of Africa (Namibia, if the inflight map is to be believed). I took a couple of photos from the window. I wanted to get a better shot of the coast, but I was too late. Further inland, the big smooth sand surface turned into bumpier sand more cut by water. It actually looked like parts of New Mexico, although drier. Later on, things got real flat and empty, and it looked just like west Texas. It was like flying to Albuquerque.
I landed in Jo’bug, and one of the first things I saw upon departing the plane was a billboard… owned by Clear Channel. Not too exotic. Getting through customs turned out to be all too easy. When I got off the plane, I got into a big line to get my passport stamped. My particular agent didn’t ask me any questions at all. Then I got my bag and went to the “Nothing to Declare” side of customs. I handed my form to a guy who just seemed to be collecting them and nothing else, and then I walked right out of the terminal. I could have had all kinds of stuff in my bags! Nope, nothing to see here!
As I walked away, however, a man in an orange jumpsuit came up and said something about my bags. I thought he was some kind of inspector guy, but it turns out he was a porter and wanted to help me get my bags to wherever I was going. I tried to fend him off, knowing I’d have to tip him, but it just wasn’t worth fighting about it, and it turned out the shuttle stop was kind of far. My shuttle arrived after a while, and we departed for the various affiliated hotels. So far I haven’t really hit any major culture shock. The road to the hotel reminded me of a major road into Montreal, in that it looked like a slightly funky version of many highways in the US with factories and big billboards and car dealerships and crap like that next to it. Only thing is that they drive on the other side of the road and in the other side of the car. Weird. I kept feeling like everyone was going the wrong way.
My room was super interesting. It’s pretty tiny, but for one person it was just great. The bathroom was not entirely a separate room, as you will see in photos, but it was separated enough for my purposes. The plug was different from the one I have, so I used the last of my battery juice to upload photos and type some notes. It was so great to shower. The shower is kind of a step off the ground, but there was excellent water pressure and temperature. I didn’t get any dinner, since I didn’t get any cash, but I feel like I ate a bunch on the plane. I watched TV, although there were only like 6 channels, but they’ve had things like ER and Sopranos. They’re all at least a season behind, and they are featuring some things that went away a while ago (I saw a commercial for Chicago Hope, of all things). I watched part of a soap opera called Scandals! It was multi-lingual, which was fun (English subtitles too for those parts). I noticed in Jo’burg that people in multiple languages seem to say numbers in English. I heard an Indian guy do it, and I saw it on TV. Oh! On this news program where the guy was talking, and sometimes he made little clicky sounds! Clicky sounds! Are the best!
Once I get to Lilongwe, I have to decide what I’m doing for housing. I got an email from my contact in Lilongwe that she finally heard back from her friend (who worked on the last BRIDGE midterm survey) and I could stay at his house in his guest room. I kind of feel like I don’t want to, because I think it’s further from actual stuff in town and I kind of don’t want to have to deal with people at the end of the day. I figure I’ll see what the hotel is like and get a sense of whether there is some advantage to this guy’s house (wireless internet would be a pretty big draw). I just don’t want to offend either this woman or her friend, esp if the friend goes to any trouble to get his guest wing ready for me. Either way, it’ll cost about the same, I think.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Getting closer
OMG, only two more days in Baltimore, and then I go. I finished all the stuff for my grant earlier this week, which is good. Yesterday we did some shopping and I got a bunch of travel stuff, including DEET and power adapters. I actually went to Radio Shack and bought some stuff and then promptly found the same stuff but better and cheaper at Samsonite, so I went back to RS and returned everything. Tomorrow I have to go to Target to get some basic toiletries and things.
Today I met with my advisor for a million hours, severely cutting into my farewell party at Brewers'. But we got the survey finalized, so that's good. I still have a million things to figure out about the experimental design and how it will work.
So. Saturday I will head to the airport butt early, cry a lot, go to Atlanta, chillax with my homies, sleep, get on an airplane Sunday, and try to sleep such as to reduce jet lag. Once in Jo'berg, I will head to my hotel, sleep more, get up in the morning and head to Lilongwe on Tuesday. It's a long voyage.
Today I met with my advisor for a million hours, severely cutting into my farewell party at Brewers'. But we got the survey finalized, so that's good. I still have a million things to figure out about the experimental design and how it will work.
So. Saturday I will head to the airport butt early, cry a lot, go to Atlanta, chillax with my homies, sleep, get on an airplane Sunday, and try to sleep such as to reduce jet lag. Once in Jo'berg, I will head to my hotel, sleep more, get up in the morning and head to Lilongwe on Tuesday. It's a long voyage.
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