My sister sent me this link to a BBC story on how the street called Coffin Row in Lilongwe has shifted in last few years as AIDS deaths decline. A lot of carpenters are now selling furniture. My advisor commented on this when he visited, because he was shocked at the shift. I have a feeling the furniture business might not be as profitable as coffins, since when you need a coffin you need a coffin but furniture can wait, but it's nice to see visible signs of death from AIDS abating somewhat. The one thing that didn't strike me as true in the clip was the last bit about people not referring to AIDS by its name; maybe it's just because we were doing research and using the word Edzi, or maybe it's just because I don't speak Chichewa and couldn't understand other references to it, but I heard people say HIV and Edzi a lot.
I really wanted to get photos of the chairs and couches because they are all these poofy things covered in garish jewel-toned velvety fabric. I'm sure there's something to be said there for what poor people perceive as wealthy-looking.
Showing posts with label Lilongwe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lilongwe. Show all posts
Monday, August 06, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Camp Malawi
Apart from finding an awesome trip, I felt mostly annoyed this past week. The DHL didn’t arrive until Friday, meaning no mid-week callage with Joe. But it was nice once it did arrive. Wednesday was an insanely long day. We got out of the door a bit late, and then everything just took forever. The community-based org was really far away, and then we made a huge giant circle to two villages that were far apart. In fact, we noted that the second village was actually much closer to the nearer CBOs in that area… which meant we had to go all the way back far out to drop the CBO guy off at the end of the day. Super lame. Also we were doing the diaries + discussion arm for both groups, which is the longest condition. So we didn’t get back until almost 5, meaning I couldn’t check my email or do anything productive in the afternoon.
One hilarious thing that happened though was that on the way to the second village, we passed by all these kids who shouted in greeting, “How much?” The girls just cracked up and went on to repeat the phrase all week. Apparently, this was how the kids thought people said hello in English.
Wednesday may have also been the day I woke up and there was no water. I thought at first the toilet was busted, because the sink was working, but that was just temporary until the lines were emptied. Lame. I guess it adds variety from the usual routine of no power.
A major theme of the week was how to deal with the fact that the driver, who is a nice guy I have no interest in getting into trouble, was roughly doubling the mileage through some sort of driving shenanigans between when he left us one afternoon and picked me up the next morning. I suspect that perhaps he was running a little taxi service on afternoons when we returned early. Anyway, the girls said I should call the company. I had the office manager bug them, since she negotiated the contract with them. I suspect that this is common practice and that the company does not really discourage it, but will not charge for the extra if someone notices. On Friday, I just told the driver that the office wanted me to track miles each day and not by week. Of course, there’s still an issue with me paying for fuel and that being insanely expensive. But to a certain extent, I don’t care to fuss too much because it’s not even my money. Still, I don’t like the dishonesty. I was glad the girls agreed with me, so I didn’t feel like some sort of stingy foreign bitch.
It hasn’t rained in weeks, and the air has gotten a bit ooky. Between the dust, smoke from trash and maize husk fires, and car pollution, things have been a bit hazy.
One thing I noticed weeks ago but I think neglected to mention is that the sun is mostly north during the day and the stars look all wrong. Whoa, southern hemisphere.
I obtained a rod of sugarcane and a bag of groundnuts this past week, which I have been enjoying. I finished the sugarcane today. It was pretty thick, so the skin was hard to get off… I generally peeled it off with a knife because I didn’t want to break my poor teeth. Once you get the outside off, the rest is pretty easy. And tasty. It tastes a bit like watermelon, which is a testament to how much sugar is in watermelon. G, the office driver, told me that when he was in Blantyre with K earlier in the week, he saw a place that makes sugarcane juice so you can just drink it. It kind of takes the fun out of it (fun being doing something to stave off the mindnumbing boredom of living here), but I can see how it provides more immediate gratification. I still have lots of groundnuts. They’re nice and rooty and covered in soil. Not quite what you get at a baseball game.
I also ordered dinner Friday night, as I was really hungry. I got chambo, which is a type of tilapia from the lake, not to be confused with chamba, which also comes from the lake area, but which is pot. It was quite tasty and came with rice, vegetables, and a cole slaw that was actually really tasty.
Saturday was fucking annoying. I thought there might be fun happening, but K didn’t have her phone with her and never called me. Instead I went to the police station. Some cop came by on Friday while I was at work to say I should go over there because they had some guys. I thought perhaps they had recovered some of my stuff. But, no, they just had a bunch of guys they’d arrested for robbery in City Centre and wanted to see if any of them had robbed me. At first they tried to tell me that no one was around who was dealing with the case, so I should come back early Monday morning. I explained that I had no transport that early and I had taken a taxi over extra special for them. They found a CID officer, and so he got like 8 guys and lined them up in this weird outside hallway that reeked of urine. They sat up against the wall and I just stood in front of them and looked at them. There were two that maybe could be the guy, one of whom didn’t seem to want to look at me like the others. But he also appeared to be the youngest and was probably scared shitless about the whole thing. There was no way I was going to be able to positively identify any of them. Without any kind of evidence linking someone to me, I’m not just going to identify someone, because there’s just no way for me to remember accurately enough. The guy who robbed me was really just about as generic a young man as you can get. The CID officer said if they caught anyone else, they’d let me know, but I wanted to tell him not to bother… it’s a waste of time for me to try to identify someone without other evidence. So I left feel grumpy and depressed about the whole thing.
I got on a minibus and went to town. I had run into my jewelry-selling friends during the week, and they’d given me a couple of bracelets as “gifts” with the mutual acknowledgement that I’d probably be buying a few more items before I leave. I was hoping not to run into them because of my sour mood. I got off the bus further down than they usually hang out and planned to check out a street I hadn’t yet investigated. But I hadn’t gotten 50 feet before they came up to me. Ugh. I hoped if I humored them for a while they would eventually take the hint and leave (I kept mentioning things I intended to do that day), but they would not just go away. Eventually I just decided to chat with them and not fuss about it, but then eventually they broke out their wares. They wanted me to take some of it back to the US, and then once I sold it I could wire them the money. I had already suggested that there might be stores or websites that would open a larger market to them, but they didn’t seem to hear me. They also didn’t seem to hear me when I noted that they hemp bracelets and stuff they wanted me to take were not going to be easy for me to move, unlike the nicer beaded stuff they had. Finally, I was like, guys, I’m not a salesperson and I have my own crap to deal with this summer, I don’t have time to try to sell things you give me to take back. After a while they relented and then tried to sell me some things. I let this go on for a while as I felt like I probably did want a few more items, but the whole process of buying things here fucking annoys me. First the seller goes on about what a good price you’re getting because you’re friends and a nice person. Then a price gets quoted that isn’t that amazing at all. And then what? I’m supposed to bargain, apparently. But I was hot, tired, thirsty, uninterested, and there were ants crawling on me, not to mention I wasn’t really carrying a lot of money, so finally I was like, I’m leaving. The whole thing was just so annoying. I’m just so tired of being a means to an end for people I interact with here. It’s almost worse when people pretend they just want to hang out with you when really all they want is for you to do things for them. I don’t mind helping if it’s not incredibly burdensome, but there’s no way I’m going bring back a bunch of stuff to the US that no one I know has wanted since they were 12 and spend a lot of time trying to sell it. If they were willing to send me along with good stuff, I could easily help them; I don’t blame them for wanting to hang onto the better stuff, but come on. It was all just annoying.
So Sunday I just felt really annoyed. I hadn’t managed to do anything productive or fun in town, like get postcards or groceries or just sit in a nice restaurant and be fucking left alone. But I decided to venture back for groceries. I didn’t run into them, I got food and wine, and while I was waiting for the minibus, I ran into the office driver, G! G is really awesome. He’s the first person I met here when he got me from the airport, and he’s just always great. He manages to help me out without making me feel inept or awkward, which few here have been able to accomplish. He suggested we grab a minibus going the other way so I could get my bus at the main depot and be assured a seat; apparently full ones also sometimes bypass the shopping area. He had been at working cleaning out the car because he’s driving someone to Salima tomorrow morning ass early. It put me in a good mood to see someone I liked, and there was a cute little girl on the minibus who grinned at me the whole way home, and I actually managed to get the minibus to stop at my road, so it was a great trip and made me feel loads better.
I’ve been watching a lot of BBC Food. I think I find it way more fascinating since I have no kitchen. It makes me want to cook exciting things this summer. My diet here has just been lousy, and I want to totally detox once I get back. It’s funny, though, because there are shows devoted to desserts and fatty meat plates and these things, but then there’s this one show called “You Are What You Eat” on fatties who need to diet. I watched one with this mother and daughter who were both giant and drank a tank of alcohol a week and ate all kinds of hangover fried crap. The fascist nutritionist woman took samples of their “poos” and had this whole hilarious conversation with them about how she’d looked at their poos and they smelled awful and were the worst poos she’d ever come into contact with. So funny. Brits are great.
Monday after being in the field I went to the tour company place to pay for my trip. But, right now it appears I’m the only person signed up for it and there needs to be 4 people to go, so they guy suggested I wait. I will be super bummed if this doesn’t happen. I can go to Zambia for four days for the same price around the same dates and then maybe add a trip to the lake. But I really prefer to see more of Malawi while I’m here. But there’s still lots of time, so maybe people will sign up. I hope so. It’s like the one thing I really wanted to do that would make this trip fun.
I got a bunch of sound files from my friends at school, which was nice. The plan was to send something shortly after I got mugged, but it was right at the end of the school year so it took a few weeks. :) But it was nice to hear people’s voices. Only 3 more weeks until I return!
It looks like I’m going to go camping this weekend at the lake, which is good. Gives me something to do and then I’ll definitely get to see the lake if my trip doesn’t work out. I still have to look at some other options.
One hilarious thing that happened though was that on the way to the second village, we passed by all these kids who shouted in greeting, “How much?” The girls just cracked up and went on to repeat the phrase all week. Apparently, this was how the kids thought people said hello in English.
Wednesday may have also been the day I woke up and there was no water. I thought at first the toilet was busted, because the sink was working, but that was just temporary until the lines were emptied. Lame. I guess it adds variety from the usual routine of no power.
A major theme of the week was how to deal with the fact that the driver, who is a nice guy I have no interest in getting into trouble, was roughly doubling the mileage through some sort of driving shenanigans between when he left us one afternoon and picked me up the next morning. I suspect that perhaps he was running a little taxi service on afternoons when we returned early. Anyway, the girls said I should call the company. I had the office manager bug them, since she negotiated the contract with them. I suspect that this is common practice and that the company does not really discourage it, but will not charge for the extra if someone notices. On Friday, I just told the driver that the office wanted me to track miles each day and not by week. Of course, there’s still an issue with me paying for fuel and that being insanely expensive. But to a certain extent, I don’t care to fuss too much because it’s not even my money. Still, I don’t like the dishonesty. I was glad the girls agreed with me, so I didn’t feel like some sort of stingy foreign bitch.
It hasn’t rained in weeks, and the air has gotten a bit ooky. Between the dust, smoke from trash and maize husk fires, and car pollution, things have been a bit hazy.
One thing I noticed weeks ago but I think neglected to mention is that the sun is mostly north during the day and the stars look all wrong. Whoa, southern hemisphere.
I obtained a rod of sugarcane and a bag of groundnuts this past week, which I have been enjoying. I finished the sugarcane today. It was pretty thick, so the skin was hard to get off… I generally peeled it off with a knife because I didn’t want to break my poor teeth. Once you get the outside off, the rest is pretty easy. And tasty. It tastes a bit like watermelon, which is a testament to how much sugar is in watermelon. G, the office driver, told me that when he was in Blantyre with K earlier in the week, he saw a place that makes sugarcane juice so you can just drink it. It kind of takes the fun out of it (fun being doing something to stave off the mindnumbing boredom of living here), but I can see how it provides more immediate gratification. I still have lots of groundnuts. They’re nice and rooty and covered in soil. Not quite what you get at a baseball game.
I also ordered dinner Friday night, as I was really hungry. I got chambo, which is a type of tilapia from the lake, not to be confused with chamba, which also comes from the lake area, but which is pot. It was quite tasty and came with rice, vegetables, and a cole slaw that was actually really tasty.
Saturday was fucking annoying. I thought there might be fun happening, but K didn’t have her phone with her and never called me. Instead I went to the police station. Some cop came by on Friday while I was at work to say I should go over there because they had some guys. I thought perhaps they had recovered some of my stuff. But, no, they just had a bunch of guys they’d arrested for robbery in City Centre and wanted to see if any of them had robbed me. At first they tried to tell me that no one was around who was dealing with the case, so I should come back early Monday morning. I explained that I had no transport that early and I had taken a taxi over extra special for them. They found a CID officer, and so he got like 8 guys and lined them up in this weird outside hallway that reeked of urine. They sat up against the wall and I just stood in front of them and looked at them. There were two that maybe could be the guy, one of whom didn’t seem to want to look at me like the others. But he also appeared to be the youngest and was probably scared shitless about the whole thing. There was no way I was going to be able to positively identify any of them. Without any kind of evidence linking someone to me, I’m not just going to identify someone, because there’s just no way for me to remember accurately enough. The guy who robbed me was really just about as generic a young man as you can get. The CID officer said if they caught anyone else, they’d let me know, but I wanted to tell him not to bother… it’s a waste of time for me to try to identify someone without other evidence. So I left feel grumpy and depressed about the whole thing.
I got on a minibus and went to town. I had run into my jewelry-selling friends during the week, and they’d given me a couple of bracelets as “gifts” with the mutual acknowledgement that I’d probably be buying a few more items before I leave. I was hoping not to run into them because of my sour mood. I got off the bus further down than they usually hang out and planned to check out a street I hadn’t yet investigated. But I hadn’t gotten 50 feet before they came up to me. Ugh. I hoped if I humored them for a while they would eventually take the hint and leave (I kept mentioning things I intended to do that day), but they would not just go away. Eventually I just decided to chat with them and not fuss about it, but then eventually they broke out their wares. They wanted me to take some of it back to the US, and then once I sold it I could wire them the money. I had already suggested that there might be stores or websites that would open a larger market to them, but they didn’t seem to hear me. They also didn’t seem to hear me when I noted that they hemp bracelets and stuff they wanted me to take were not going to be easy for me to move, unlike the nicer beaded stuff they had. Finally, I was like, guys, I’m not a salesperson and I have my own crap to deal with this summer, I don’t have time to try to sell things you give me to take back. After a while they relented and then tried to sell me some things. I let this go on for a while as I felt like I probably did want a few more items, but the whole process of buying things here fucking annoys me. First the seller goes on about what a good price you’re getting because you’re friends and a nice person. Then a price gets quoted that isn’t that amazing at all. And then what? I’m supposed to bargain, apparently. But I was hot, tired, thirsty, uninterested, and there were ants crawling on me, not to mention I wasn’t really carrying a lot of money, so finally I was like, I’m leaving. The whole thing was just so annoying. I’m just so tired of being a means to an end for people I interact with here. It’s almost worse when people pretend they just want to hang out with you when really all they want is for you to do things for them. I don’t mind helping if it’s not incredibly burdensome, but there’s no way I’m going bring back a bunch of stuff to the US that no one I know has wanted since they were 12 and spend a lot of time trying to sell it. If they were willing to send me along with good stuff, I could easily help them; I don’t blame them for wanting to hang onto the better stuff, but come on. It was all just annoying.
So Sunday I just felt really annoyed. I hadn’t managed to do anything productive or fun in town, like get postcards or groceries or just sit in a nice restaurant and be fucking left alone. But I decided to venture back for groceries. I didn’t run into them, I got food and wine, and while I was waiting for the minibus, I ran into the office driver, G! G is really awesome. He’s the first person I met here when he got me from the airport, and he’s just always great. He manages to help me out without making me feel inept or awkward, which few here have been able to accomplish. He suggested we grab a minibus going the other way so I could get my bus at the main depot and be assured a seat; apparently full ones also sometimes bypass the shopping area. He had been at working cleaning out the car because he’s driving someone to Salima tomorrow morning ass early. It put me in a good mood to see someone I liked, and there was a cute little girl on the minibus who grinned at me the whole way home, and I actually managed to get the minibus to stop at my road, so it was a great trip and made me feel loads better.
I’ve been watching a lot of BBC Food. I think I find it way more fascinating since I have no kitchen. It makes me want to cook exciting things this summer. My diet here has just been lousy, and I want to totally detox once I get back. It’s funny, though, because there are shows devoted to desserts and fatty meat plates and these things, but then there’s this one show called “You Are What You Eat” on fatties who need to diet. I watched one with this mother and daughter who were both giant and drank a tank of alcohol a week and ate all kinds of hangover fried crap. The fascist nutritionist woman took samples of their “poos” and had this whole hilarious conversation with them about how she’d looked at their poos and they smelled awful and were the worst poos she’d ever come into contact with. So funny. Brits are great.
Monday after being in the field I went to the tour company place to pay for my trip. But, right now it appears I’m the only person signed up for it and there needs to be 4 people to go, so they guy suggested I wait. I will be super bummed if this doesn’t happen. I can go to Zambia for four days for the same price around the same dates and then maybe add a trip to the lake. But I really prefer to see more of Malawi while I’m here. But there’s still lots of time, so maybe people will sign up. I hope so. It’s like the one thing I really wanted to do that would make this trip fun.
I got a bunch of sound files from my friends at school, which was nice. The plan was to send something shortly after I got mugged, but it was right at the end of the school year so it took a few weeks. :) But it was nice to hear people’s voices. Only 3 more weeks until I return!
It looks like I’m going to go camping this weekend at the lake, which is good. Gives me something to do and then I’ll definitely get to see the lake if my trip doesn’t work out. I still have to look at some other options.
Monday, May 14, 2007
One month to go!
Friday I went home and then got a cab to Foodworth’s, since all I had in my room to eat was one packet of oatmeal, some white raisins, and a chocolate bar. I completely mis-estimated how much money to bring home with me (most of it is locked in a drawer at work), so when I checked out at the store I was like 1900 MK short (almost $14!). I should have figured that since I had no food I would need a lot of money if I wanted to buy everything I desired, but I just didn’t think about it enough. I removed a few items, but the manager didn’t want me to leave with no wine, so he chipped in his own money and told me to pay him back whenever I was next in. It was kind of embarrassing, but I got my wine.
Which I drank while watching Sex in the City, which K had lent me. I didn’t think I would like it, but I actually found it entertaining, even though SJP’s character is super irritating. From what I can tell, Mr. Big is probably an asshole, but she’s such a freak all the time that he comes off as reasonable for not dealing with her crap in this very calm way. But really he’d probably ignore her no matter what. But she has to stop acting like a freak so we can all know for sure.
I also watched this show on BBC Prime called 3 Non-Blondes in which these three black women go around England doing crazy things and secretly recording the reactions of nearby people. It’s really funny. K recommended it last weekend, and I’m glad she did.
Saturday I volunteered to go to this workshop for the household survey, since I’d been to all the rest of the training and R wasn’t here for this one. The good thing is that we went to the office first so I could get more money. The bad thing was that it was totally boring and I had little to contribute. We did find some kinks still in the survey, however.
Sunday, I went to the Capital Hotel in the morning to try to send my mother an email for Mother’s Days, but it was too early for stuff to be open. I went back later and used the internet, got a haircut, and read my magazine while having a couple MGTs (Malawi Gin and tonics), all for under $14. That may be the only thing I miss about this place – how friggin’ cheap things are. The haircut isn’t bad, but I wish the back were shorter.
Today I just felt really depressed and homesick. The village was pretty lively, but once again people ask me for things, and I just feel overwhelmed and irritated. One young man noted that he wasn’t in school because he didn’t have money for the fees. He’s not going to get much support from people in the village given how many primary school-aged kids I saw wandering around today. The girls were shaking their heads at it – primary school is free, so there’s no excuse for that. He was enthusiastic about my Harvard Magazine, so I gave it to him. Gives him something to read in English for practice. I’m destined not to read them anyway, given my last one was stolen. He also noted that he wanted to get an HIV test, but there was no transport to the hospital to get one. This afternoon, I think the women thought I was the lady who normally brings fertilizer. Sadly, none of them had enough schooling to speak English, so none of them could talk to me. The whole place just makes me want to go home and not have to deal with endless problems.
Also, no one lets me do anything here, which makes me feel weak and useless. I hate this place sometimes. I want to go back to where I can do things for myself. I can also tell that people are always laughing at me and making jokes about me… I’m not entertainment, I’m a person, so fuck off. I don’t laugh at people here. I don’t gawk at them. I treat them like people. Is that too much to ask?
Which I drank while watching Sex in the City, which K had lent me. I didn’t think I would like it, but I actually found it entertaining, even though SJP’s character is super irritating. From what I can tell, Mr. Big is probably an asshole, but she’s such a freak all the time that he comes off as reasonable for not dealing with her crap in this very calm way. But really he’d probably ignore her no matter what. But she has to stop acting like a freak so we can all know for sure.
I also watched this show on BBC Prime called 3 Non-Blondes in which these three black women go around England doing crazy things and secretly recording the reactions of nearby people. It’s really funny. K recommended it last weekend, and I’m glad she did.
Saturday I volunteered to go to this workshop for the household survey, since I’d been to all the rest of the training and R wasn’t here for this one. The good thing is that we went to the office first so I could get more money. The bad thing was that it was totally boring and I had little to contribute. We did find some kinks still in the survey, however.
Sunday, I went to the Capital Hotel in the morning to try to send my mother an email for Mother’s Days, but it was too early for stuff to be open. I went back later and used the internet, got a haircut, and read my magazine while having a couple MGTs (Malawi Gin and tonics), all for under $14. That may be the only thing I miss about this place – how friggin’ cheap things are. The haircut isn’t bad, but I wish the back were shorter.
Today I just felt really depressed and homesick. The village was pretty lively, but once again people ask me for things, and I just feel overwhelmed and irritated. One young man noted that he wasn’t in school because he didn’t have money for the fees. He’s not going to get much support from people in the village given how many primary school-aged kids I saw wandering around today. The girls were shaking their heads at it – primary school is free, so there’s no excuse for that. He was enthusiastic about my Harvard Magazine, so I gave it to him. Gives him something to read in English for practice. I’m destined not to read them anyway, given my last one was stolen. He also noted that he wanted to get an HIV test, but there was no transport to the hospital to get one. This afternoon, I think the women thought I was the lady who normally brings fertilizer. Sadly, none of them had enough schooling to speak English, so none of them could talk to me. The whole place just makes me want to go home and not have to deal with endless problems.
Also, no one lets me do anything here, which makes me feel weak and useless. I hate this place sometimes. I want to go back to where I can do things for myself. I can also tell that people are always laughing at me and making jokes about me… I’m not entertainment, I’m a person, so fuck off. I don’t laugh at people here. I don’t gawk at them. I treat them like people. Is that too much to ask?
Friday, May 11, 2007
Donors wanted
Tuesday the most exciting thing that happened was that I figured out I could connect to the printer in my office using a USB cable, thereby bypassing the network, since I can’t seem to connect that way. It seems to confuse the printer a little bit and takes a while to switch back to accepting jobs from people on the network, but people seem to be able to deal with it so far.
Wednesday was the first official day of data collection. We got out the door in good time, but then things slowed us down. People’s didn’t have a bottle opener (“But you sell bottles!” I told one of the employees), so we had to stop at Likuni market and wander around until we found one. Then the CBO head was late because he’d gone to town to pay for an examination fee and was taking the minibus back. It’s too bad we didn’t know that, since we, like, came from town and could have picked him up there. But S and I talked to a woman from the CBO about how undereducated girls are, because as soon as a family is short on school fees they pull the girls out of school. Lame. It’s yet another big issue that makes me wonder why I’m exerting energies on a radio program; then again, this is an issue that can be partly addressed through a communication campaign, so I guess I shouldn’t rag on my project too much.
The CBO head arrived and then we drove for about a million years down a dirt road all the way to Kamuzu Dam and beyond. I have to say, though, both villages were up above this green valley and the view was gorgeous. I feel like I just relaxed in paradise all day. In the morning, we had men listening to the radio diaries. That was fine, and then it was time for interviews and I went to the truck to get drinks. When I returned, all the men who were not being interviewed were sitting around reading these HIV booklets we’d brought for folks. I thought, oh, how nice they have something to read while they wait, but then I thought, oh crap, HIV booklets! Hello, they haven’t been interviewed yet. I don’t think it matters terribly, but I was peeved about it for a while. I got myself unpeeved before mentioning it to S, and she totally got it right away and said that we should hand them out after. Yeah, no kidding.
The other thing that peeved me in the morning was that I’d only put 2 boxes of cookies in the carton instead of 4, so each group had to share one measly box of cookies. Like I don’t already feel enough like an asshole for not having real study incentives.
The afternoon village was women, listening to the program and then having a discussion. It seemed to go well, and the women interacted even though one was more talkative. She was particularly funny, making me sad that I can’t understand any of the jokes here because I only know like 15 words of Chichewa. All in all, the day seemed to go very well. We dropped off the CBO head and went downtown so I could hit the money bureau again. As if getting a ton of money in 500 kwacha stacks isn’t bad enough, they only had 200s. I really could roll around in the stuff. I ran into my pals George and Brian as I headed back to the car and told them about getting mugged. They keep saying I should go up to the lake and they’ll be my guides some weekend, but I just can’t convince myself that’s a good idea, even though a lot of perfectly nice folks do that kind of freelance guiding for tourists.
Back at the office I furiously checked email and printed surveys in my half hour before going home. If we ever get back too late to do that I’m either going to have to stay late and get a taxi home or come in really early the next day. I thought about trying to come in Saturday to work, but I think I volunteered myself to go to the one-day training for the household survey interviewers before they take off for the districts on Sunday, which is work that turns out not to help me at all. I feel like I should go, though, since I was at the rest of the training, and R isn’t around for this one. At some point I desperately need to go grocery shopping because I have no food at all.
Wednesday I had three new food experiences. One I actually didn’t quite experience yet, but I figured out a curiosity I’d had. I’ve seen people on the road doing something that looked like eating big sticks, which I thought seemed odd. Turns out that they are actually peeling the outside off with their teeth, because the inside is this fibrous material that gets waterlogged, and so people suck the water out of it. I figured that this was an easy way to get water on the go, like the water bottle of Malawi. Turns out? It's sugarcane! So now I really have to try some. Everyone thought my excitement about this was really funny, since people grow the stuff for personal use pretty much everywhere. The second thing was ground nuts. A guy came over with what looked like a big pile of weeds with peanuts dangling on the ends as roots. The nuts themselves were more rooty than nutty, and I think they’d be better roasted. The third thing was cooked pumpkin. The secretary took one of the pumpkins home and brought me some that she’d cooked. It was darn good. I just ate it, I didn’t put anything on it. It was a pleasing thing to scarf down as I was scurrying around at the end of the day.
Thursday we were mega fast and were back at the office by 2:30. It was awesome. I had time to print surveys for Friday and check my email a bit and then I told Joe to call me when he came online at 4. I hadn’t talked to him on the phone since I got mugged, so it was great to talk to him in better spirits. He’s sending me another phone he got from a friend, so I will be hooked up again next Tuesday or so.
I left work and there was no lift, so I took the minibus with the secretary. It took forever to get one that wasn’t jammed full, and it was getting dark when I arrived home, to my displeasure. I really had no food, but I had one package of ramen, and a migraine was brewing. I grabbed the water kettle to fill it, and the power went out. Fuck. I ate a candy bar, but it didn’t help, so I just laid around in bed until the lights returned and I could eat. I felt much better.
I’ve been feeling a little irked while being out with the research crew. I don’t expect them to speak English the entire time I’m around since I’m the only one who doesn’t speak Chichewa, but I wish they’d let me in on the conversation a little bit here and there. You know, like every hour or so give me a sentence or two summary of what’s going on. Sometimes based on the little I do understand I suspect that I’m being mocked, but maybe I’m just paranoid. Talking to Joe Thursday he said that he expected that around halfway through my trip as I am, I’d be really into being here, and maybe when I get back I’d miss it here. I don’t really think that’s going to be the case. I’m not really in love with this place. It’s okay for a visit, but I don’t think I’ll be eager to come back.
Today the CBO guy, M, that was our guide brought with him a list of things that the group would like to have to do more in the community, for my reference if I can help find donors. It reads as follows:
PROBLEMS MASUNA FACED AS A CHARITY ORGANIZATION
1) Lack of Child Based Community Care (CBCC): as a result, children/orphan learn(?) on the ground (I guess that means no school? I’m not sure. Anyway, every group that does orphan care lacks enough money to really do it well).
2) Lack of entertainment materials such as football, netball, basketball that can make our youth busy instead of indulging into bad behaviour.
3) We have resources in our community or catchment area such as land/dambo that we can cultivate and doing wintercropping but we are failed due to lack of agricultural inputs ie seeds, fertilizer, treadle pumps.
4) Lack of real income generating activity that can make our charity organization to be sustainable. (I was telling the guy that while some of these needs are easy to fill, I have no idea how you take a society where no one has money to buy things from anyone else and make the economy work… it seems like a lot of money has to be infused and jobs created all at once, and you need a stronger government or private sector for that).
5) We have a big catchment area; as a results, we failed to visit some areas due to inadequate transport, ie bicycles or motorcycles.
6) Difficult to transport our clients (people with HIV, from what I can tell) to the nearest hospitals due to lack of ambulance bicycles.
In addition to this list, M introduced me to an older man in the village whose legs are all screwed up from polio. He would like a bicycle; they have these ones here that work by hand crank for people in his situation. He currently repairs shoes but only gets like 2 MK per pair for that, which is way less than a penny. He wants to open a food shop. I think getting him the bicycle is easy enough, but I don’t know that it will help him make any more money. There are plenty of able-bodied people that can’t find work around. If people are only paying him 2 kwacha to repair their shoes, there is a bigger issue here than him not being able to get around as much as he’d like.
So, being here has made me see that there are lots of little things that people would like to make life easier. But there are major systemic problems that require smart solutions that can help whole communities get on their feet. It’s good to know about these things, even if currently I can only think of ways to address the small stuff. Maybe by putting these issues out there also, someone with more resources or ideas will come upon them.
Wednesday was the first official day of data collection. We got out the door in good time, but then things slowed us down. People’s didn’t have a bottle opener (“But you sell bottles!” I told one of the employees), so we had to stop at Likuni market and wander around until we found one. Then the CBO head was late because he’d gone to town to pay for an examination fee and was taking the minibus back. It’s too bad we didn’t know that, since we, like, came from town and could have picked him up there. But S and I talked to a woman from the CBO about how undereducated girls are, because as soon as a family is short on school fees they pull the girls out of school. Lame. It’s yet another big issue that makes me wonder why I’m exerting energies on a radio program; then again, this is an issue that can be partly addressed through a communication campaign, so I guess I shouldn’t rag on my project too much.
The CBO head arrived and then we drove for about a million years down a dirt road all the way to Kamuzu Dam and beyond. I have to say, though, both villages were up above this green valley and the view was gorgeous. I feel like I just relaxed in paradise all day. In the morning, we had men listening to the radio diaries. That was fine, and then it was time for interviews and I went to the truck to get drinks. When I returned, all the men who were not being interviewed were sitting around reading these HIV booklets we’d brought for folks. I thought, oh, how nice they have something to read while they wait, but then I thought, oh crap, HIV booklets! Hello, they haven’t been interviewed yet. I don’t think it matters terribly, but I was peeved about it for a while. I got myself unpeeved before mentioning it to S, and she totally got it right away and said that we should hand them out after. Yeah, no kidding.
The other thing that peeved me in the morning was that I’d only put 2 boxes of cookies in the carton instead of 4, so each group had to share one measly box of cookies. Like I don’t already feel enough like an asshole for not having real study incentives.
The afternoon village was women, listening to the program and then having a discussion. It seemed to go well, and the women interacted even though one was more talkative. She was particularly funny, making me sad that I can’t understand any of the jokes here because I only know like 15 words of Chichewa. All in all, the day seemed to go very well. We dropped off the CBO head and went downtown so I could hit the money bureau again. As if getting a ton of money in 500 kwacha stacks isn’t bad enough, they only had 200s. I really could roll around in the stuff. I ran into my pals George and Brian as I headed back to the car and told them about getting mugged. They keep saying I should go up to the lake and they’ll be my guides some weekend, but I just can’t convince myself that’s a good idea, even though a lot of perfectly nice folks do that kind of freelance guiding for tourists.
Back at the office I furiously checked email and printed surveys in my half hour before going home. If we ever get back too late to do that I’m either going to have to stay late and get a taxi home or come in really early the next day. I thought about trying to come in Saturday to work, but I think I volunteered myself to go to the one-day training for the household survey interviewers before they take off for the districts on Sunday, which is work that turns out not to help me at all. I feel like I should go, though, since I was at the rest of the training, and R isn’t around for this one. At some point I desperately need to go grocery shopping because I have no food at all.
Wednesday I had three new food experiences. One I actually didn’t quite experience yet, but I figured out a curiosity I’d had. I’ve seen people on the road doing something that looked like eating big sticks, which I thought seemed odd. Turns out that they are actually peeling the outside off with their teeth, because the inside is this fibrous material that gets waterlogged, and so people suck the water out of it. I figured that this was an easy way to get water on the go, like the water bottle of Malawi. Turns out? It's sugarcane! So now I really have to try some. Everyone thought my excitement about this was really funny, since people grow the stuff for personal use pretty much everywhere. The second thing was ground nuts. A guy came over with what looked like a big pile of weeds with peanuts dangling on the ends as roots. The nuts themselves were more rooty than nutty, and I think they’d be better roasted. The third thing was cooked pumpkin. The secretary took one of the pumpkins home and brought me some that she’d cooked. It was darn good. I just ate it, I didn’t put anything on it. It was a pleasing thing to scarf down as I was scurrying around at the end of the day.
Thursday we were mega fast and were back at the office by 2:30. It was awesome. I had time to print surveys for Friday and check my email a bit and then I told Joe to call me when he came online at 4. I hadn’t talked to him on the phone since I got mugged, so it was great to talk to him in better spirits. He’s sending me another phone he got from a friend, so I will be hooked up again next Tuesday or so.
I left work and there was no lift, so I took the minibus with the secretary. It took forever to get one that wasn’t jammed full, and it was getting dark when I arrived home, to my displeasure. I really had no food, but I had one package of ramen, and a migraine was brewing. I grabbed the water kettle to fill it, and the power went out. Fuck. I ate a candy bar, but it didn’t help, so I just laid around in bed until the lights returned and I could eat. I felt much better.
I’ve been feeling a little irked while being out with the research crew. I don’t expect them to speak English the entire time I’m around since I’m the only one who doesn’t speak Chichewa, but I wish they’d let me in on the conversation a little bit here and there. You know, like every hour or so give me a sentence or two summary of what’s going on. Sometimes based on the little I do understand I suspect that I’m being mocked, but maybe I’m just paranoid. Talking to Joe Thursday he said that he expected that around halfway through my trip as I am, I’d be really into being here, and maybe when I get back I’d miss it here. I don’t really think that’s going to be the case. I’m not really in love with this place. It’s okay for a visit, but I don’t think I’ll be eager to come back.
Today the CBO guy, M, that was our guide brought with him a list of things that the group would like to have to do more in the community, for my reference if I can help find donors. It reads as follows:
PROBLEMS MASUNA FACED AS A CHARITY ORGANIZATION
1) Lack of Child Based Community Care (CBCC): as a result, children/orphan learn(?) on the ground (I guess that means no school? I’m not sure. Anyway, every group that does orphan care lacks enough money to really do it well).
2) Lack of entertainment materials such as football, netball, basketball that can make our youth busy instead of indulging into bad behaviour.
3) We have resources in our community or catchment area such as land/dambo that we can cultivate and doing wintercropping but we are failed due to lack of agricultural inputs ie seeds, fertilizer, treadle pumps.
4) Lack of real income generating activity that can make our charity organization to be sustainable. (I was telling the guy that while some of these needs are easy to fill, I have no idea how you take a society where no one has money to buy things from anyone else and make the economy work… it seems like a lot of money has to be infused and jobs created all at once, and you need a stronger government or private sector for that).
5) We have a big catchment area; as a results, we failed to visit some areas due to inadequate transport, ie bicycles or motorcycles.
6) Difficult to transport our clients (people with HIV, from what I can tell) to the nearest hospitals due to lack of ambulance bicycles.
In addition to this list, M introduced me to an older man in the village whose legs are all screwed up from polio. He would like a bicycle; they have these ones here that work by hand crank for people in his situation. He currently repairs shoes but only gets like 2 MK per pair for that, which is way less than a penny. He wants to open a food shop. I think getting him the bicycle is easy enough, but I don’t know that it will help him make any more money. There are plenty of able-bodied people that can’t find work around. If people are only paying him 2 kwacha to repair their shoes, there is a bigger issue here than him not being able to get around as much as he’d like.
So, being here has made me see that there are lots of little things that people would like to make life easier. But there are major systemic problems that require smart solutions that can help whole communities get on their feet. It’s good to know about these things, even if currently I can only think of ways to address the small stuff. Maybe by putting these issues out there also, someone with more resources or ideas will come upon them.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Adventures
So I didn’t have internet all day Thursday… it really sucked. We were switching ISPs, and I couldn’t get my computer to connect until the very end of the day. Boo. Anyway, I went to bed really early on Wednesday night and slept forever. It was great. So I felt pretty good Thursday. I went to the main branch of the useless police station, where the woman told me to come back at three because the report wasn’t ready or she couldn’t get to it or some bullshit. I had noticed Wednesday at the mini-station that no one really seemed to be doing anything but hanging around. I asked the woman at the main station if the police would bother to look in the area where my bag was probably ditched to see if they could find it, and she was all, no. I guess they don’t do things like patrol the area to keep people from being mugged and/or actually investigate crimes. Then again, I’d probably be better off with a random citizen finding it, because I don’t really trust the police here to actually give me back my stuff if they found it. The constable at the mini-station was just sketchy… he seemed like a would-be criminal who decided being a police officer would give him enough power over others.
At the embassy I gave them my passport photos so they could get my limited passport together for today. I have two photos left which I kind of want to give to Joe, although the smart thing to do would be to hang on to them for when I get a real passport back in the states. My hair looks funny because the guy said I had to have my ears showing, but they’re otherwise rather cute.
We went shopping for office supplies and cookies, which was exciting. Other than that it was mad boring without the internet.
Friday my two new RAs came in, and we all met to talk about the study. Then the three RAs went through the questions with S in charge while I went off to deal with more passport madness. First stop, police station, where this woman basically filled out a really short form and then charged me a few bucks for it. Stupid. Then I went to the embassy, where they made me wait forever. I think all the people in the consular’s office were having a meeting. But eventually I got my freebie limited passport along with a letter telling me what I need to get a real one and some photocopies for me to carry around instead of the passport. Which is what I should have been doing in the first place. On the other hand, if I had to lose something, the passport wasn’t the worst thing by far – it was fairly easy to replace, at least temporarily, and the old one had an ugly photo.
After that we went to Immigration for a visa. But since there are no computer systems in this country, they sent me to the airport where I got the initial visa, because that is where the record is if you fly in. The driver, G, and I were talking about how there’s no way they could possibly know if you’ve overstayed your visa until you’re leaving, at which point why would they care because the whole point of a visa is to limit your stay. At any rate, they re-stamped my passport with the original date, as if we were going back in time to the day I arrived (I even had to fill out the card they give you on the plane), which means I have to go back to Immigration next week when the visa is up to get it extended.
Going to the airport was a little too tempting. :) It made me think about how happy I’ll be when the study is done and I’m headed home.
If my schedule goes to plan, I should be done with my study by June 1 or so, giving me at least a sold week to do some fun things around Malawi. Trouble is, I’m having a hard time wanting to do these things by myself, and after the whole mugging, I’m a little freaked out about doing anything anywhere, frankly. I don’t want to spend loads of money, but I also feel like I should minimize my risks as much as possible, which might mean things like car rental instead of buses to places. I could check out some of these tour operators – this might be the way to go, because they will have packages and maybe even companions. Part of me wants to say fuckit and just go home early, but it seems like a waste to come here and not take advantage of it a bit. I’m pondering a southern route down to Blantyre and then up through Liwonde National Park to Cape Maclear. That way I get other city, national park, lake.
Saturday I went with K to a village called Mabulabo near Mzimba for a 10th anniversary celebration of their HIV/AIDS group there. It took about two hours to get there, thanks to low traffic. The landscape didn’t change a ton, but there were some interesting rocky hills and trees. Once there, K asked someone at the office where we were supposed to go. This person turned out to be the Traditional Authority, who K didn’t recognize because he was new – the old one had died. The TA is like the big super important chief for the whole area, so it was kind of funny that she just was like, hey, we’re lost, help. We were met by a posse of Japanese people! Apparently Japan also has some development and HIV/AIDS projects in the area, so that was cool to meet those guys.
It appeared that although festivities were supposed to start at 9, they were waiting for us to even start getting things prepared. We didn’t arrive until nearly 10. Things didn’t actually get started until like noon, which is just crazy amounts of delay. We had to sit in a classroom the whole time trying to make conversation. Finally the events began. The TA and K (designated the guest of honor, despite the fact that she was hoping just to hang out and have fun) were surrounded by the impi, the traditional zulu warriors. They wore all kinds of crazy hats and animal skins and beads and jingly ankle bells and carried spears and shields. There were also women accompanying in blue dresses and beads. They all sang and the men stomped so the bells all rang. We proceeded to the field and sat under a tent.
It was kind of like Commencement: sitting under a tent, some musical entertainment and other fun intermixed with boring but ceremonial speeches. I noticed that the inside of the tent was decorated with bright blue toilet paper. I guess when you make bright blue toilet paper, you might as well use it for decoration. Ironic, though, that in the bathroom there were only actual pieces of paper instead of teepee. The day was only really fun when the entertaining stuff was happening, because I couldn’t understand any of the speeches. Although the plays were also lost on me, which was sad because it seemed as if they were pretty hilarious. But there was dancing and an acrobat show, so that was cool.
K had to be the one in her speech to note that condoms are useful and part of any good HIV prevention plan, because the frigging district AIDS coordinator basically neglected them in his desire to focus on abstinence only with maybe a dash of be faithful. She said there’s still this whole attitude that there are no real ways to prevent HIV, so you might as well do whatever you want once sex is involved. So annoying.
The drive back took about three hours thanks to a lot of big slow trucks on the road. The M1 is only two lanes, so you have to do a lot of that passing on the other side’s lane. It reminded me of driving around northern NM. With every small town on the road being like driving through Cuba, full of things you don’t really want to stop to visit.
Upon our return I went to K’s house for a Cinco de Mayo barbecue. The power was out when we got there, and B was running around, poor guy. Someone brought tequila, so there were margaritas, which was exciting. The food was good, as always, and there were many fun people there.
I had terrible dreams Saturday night. One involved the characters of Dexter; Doakes totally beat the crap out of Mazuka because he thought he was hitting on some girl he liked, but it was so horribly violent that I was screaming at the television. Yech. I also dreamed that Citizen’s bank charged me $300 for an address change I didn’t notify them about, and they were planning to charge me $300 a week the entire time I would be here. But fortunately in real life they’ve been totally awesome and a woman from there even called me at the office to help me get a new debit card issued and cancel the stolen checks since I couldn’t call them. They definitely win in my book. The rest of my dreams were normal and fine.
News on the TV about things diappearing that makes me feel better about my lost possessions: 1) Kid being abducted in Portugal – losing a camera pales in comparison to having your kid disappear. 2) KA flight disappearing in Cameroon. 3) Town in Kansas getting totally f’d by a tornado. I was wondering why this one was all over the national news on the radio yesterday, but now that I see the TV coverage, I can see why. It’s crazy. The trees don’t even have bark anymore! The whole town is rubble!
Sunday I watched movies because I didn’t have any money and couldn’t go anywhere. I started to watch Romeo + Juliet, but then the power went out halfway through. I watched Gandhi. I planned to watch Logan’s Run, but the power went out again, so I watched Little Miss Sunshine on my laptop instead.
Today we did our pilot test of the study... thank goodness. I'm moving from a pre/post design to a post-test only design, because our grand plans for everyone to fill out little forms full of numbers as we read questions for the post-test totally doesn't work here. Everyone is just confused, and then they confer with all their neighbors about what to do, meaning that none of their responses are private. For the pre-test we were doing one-on-one interviews, but the post-test is the actual important part, so we need to do one-on-one interviews for that and just forget a pretest. Anyway, we did that in the afternoon and it seemed to go well.
At the embassy I gave them my passport photos so they could get my limited passport together for today. I have two photos left which I kind of want to give to Joe, although the smart thing to do would be to hang on to them for when I get a real passport back in the states. My hair looks funny because the guy said I had to have my ears showing, but they’re otherwise rather cute.
We went shopping for office supplies and cookies, which was exciting. Other than that it was mad boring without the internet.
Friday my two new RAs came in, and we all met to talk about the study. Then the three RAs went through the questions with S in charge while I went off to deal with more passport madness. First stop, police station, where this woman basically filled out a really short form and then charged me a few bucks for it. Stupid. Then I went to the embassy, where they made me wait forever. I think all the people in the consular’s office were having a meeting. But eventually I got my freebie limited passport along with a letter telling me what I need to get a real one and some photocopies for me to carry around instead of the passport. Which is what I should have been doing in the first place. On the other hand, if I had to lose something, the passport wasn’t the worst thing by far – it was fairly easy to replace, at least temporarily, and the old one had an ugly photo.
After that we went to Immigration for a visa. But since there are no computer systems in this country, they sent me to the airport where I got the initial visa, because that is where the record is if you fly in. The driver, G, and I were talking about how there’s no way they could possibly know if you’ve overstayed your visa until you’re leaving, at which point why would they care because the whole point of a visa is to limit your stay. At any rate, they re-stamped my passport with the original date, as if we were going back in time to the day I arrived (I even had to fill out the card they give you on the plane), which means I have to go back to Immigration next week when the visa is up to get it extended.
Going to the airport was a little too tempting. :) It made me think about how happy I’ll be when the study is done and I’m headed home.
If my schedule goes to plan, I should be done with my study by June 1 or so, giving me at least a sold week to do some fun things around Malawi. Trouble is, I’m having a hard time wanting to do these things by myself, and after the whole mugging, I’m a little freaked out about doing anything anywhere, frankly. I don’t want to spend loads of money, but I also feel like I should minimize my risks as much as possible, which might mean things like car rental instead of buses to places. I could check out some of these tour operators – this might be the way to go, because they will have packages and maybe even companions. Part of me wants to say fuckit and just go home early, but it seems like a waste to come here and not take advantage of it a bit. I’m pondering a southern route down to Blantyre and then up through Liwonde National Park to Cape Maclear. That way I get other city, national park, lake.
Saturday I went with K to a village called Mabulabo near Mzimba for a 10th anniversary celebration of their HIV/AIDS group there. It took about two hours to get there, thanks to low traffic. The landscape didn’t change a ton, but there were some interesting rocky hills and trees. Once there, K asked someone at the office where we were supposed to go. This person turned out to be the Traditional Authority, who K didn’t recognize because he was new – the old one had died. The TA is like the big super important chief for the whole area, so it was kind of funny that she just was like, hey, we’re lost, help. We were met by a posse of Japanese people! Apparently Japan also has some development and HIV/AIDS projects in the area, so that was cool to meet those guys.
It appeared that although festivities were supposed to start at 9, they were waiting for us to even start getting things prepared. We didn’t arrive until nearly 10. Things didn’t actually get started until like noon, which is just crazy amounts of delay. We had to sit in a classroom the whole time trying to make conversation. Finally the events began. The TA and K (designated the guest of honor, despite the fact that she was hoping just to hang out and have fun) were surrounded by the impi, the traditional zulu warriors. They wore all kinds of crazy hats and animal skins and beads and jingly ankle bells and carried spears and shields. There were also women accompanying in blue dresses and beads. They all sang and the men stomped so the bells all rang. We proceeded to the field and sat under a tent.
It was kind of like Commencement: sitting under a tent, some musical entertainment and other fun intermixed with boring but ceremonial speeches. I noticed that the inside of the tent was decorated with bright blue toilet paper. I guess when you make bright blue toilet paper, you might as well use it for decoration. Ironic, though, that in the bathroom there were only actual pieces of paper instead of teepee. The day was only really fun when the entertaining stuff was happening, because I couldn’t understand any of the speeches. Although the plays were also lost on me, which was sad because it seemed as if they were pretty hilarious. But there was dancing and an acrobat show, so that was cool.
K had to be the one in her speech to note that condoms are useful and part of any good HIV prevention plan, because the frigging district AIDS coordinator basically neglected them in his desire to focus on abstinence only with maybe a dash of be faithful. She said there’s still this whole attitude that there are no real ways to prevent HIV, so you might as well do whatever you want once sex is involved. So annoying.
The drive back took about three hours thanks to a lot of big slow trucks on the road. The M1 is only two lanes, so you have to do a lot of that passing on the other side’s lane. It reminded me of driving around northern NM. With every small town on the road being like driving through Cuba, full of things you don’t really want to stop to visit.
Upon our return I went to K’s house for a Cinco de Mayo barbecue. The power was out when we got there, and B was running around, poor guy. Someone brought tequila, so there were margaritas, which was exciting. The food was good, as always, and there were many fun people there.
I had terrible dreams Saturday night. One involved the characters of Dexter; Doakes totally beat the crap out of Mazuka because he thought he was hitting on some girl he liked, but it was so horribly violent that I was screaming at the television. Yech. I also dreamed that Citizen’s bank charged me $300 for an address change I didn’t notify them about, and they were planning to charge me $300 a week the entire time I would be here. But fortunately in real life they’ve been totally awesome and a woman from there even called me at the office to help me get a new debit card issued and cancel the stolen checks since I couldn’t call them. They definitely win in my book. The rest of my dreams were normal and fine.
News on the TV about things diappearing that makes me feel better about my lost possessions: 1) Kid being abducted in Portugal – losing a camera pales in comparison to having your kid disappear. 2) KA flight disappearing in Cameroon. 3) Town in Kansas getting totally f’d by a tornado. I was wondering why this one was all over the national news on the radio yesterday, but now that I see the TV coverage, I can see why. It’s crazy. The trees don’t even have bark anymore! The whole town is rubble!
Sunday I watched movies because I didn’t have any money and couldn’t go anywhere. I started to watch Romeo + Juliet, but then the power went out halfway through. I watched Gandhi. I planned to watch Logan’s Run, but the power went out again, so I watched Little Miss Sunshine on my laptop instead.
Today we did our pilot test of the study... thank goodness. I'm moving from a pre/post design to a post-test only design, because our grand plans for everyone to fill out little forms full of numbers as we read questions for the post-test totally doesn't work here. Everyone is just confused, and then they confer with all their neighbors about what to do, meaning that none of their responses are private. For the pre-test we were doing one-on-one interviews, but the post-test is the actual important part, so we need to do one-on-one interviews for that and just forget a pretest. Anyway, we did that in the afternoon and it seemed to go well.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Adventures in bureaucracy
I went to the embassy and filled out some forms. But before I can get a passport, I need photos. Also, the police report of the theft so they can verify it was stolen. Also, I'm supposed to pay: at first it looked like almost $100, but they waived some fee to make it $67, but then when I mentioned that I'm low on cash given the robbery, they said they could do a freebie limited passport and I could get a real one when I return to the states. I'll probably just do the freebie, unless I decide to dip into my currently limited (but sufficient) funds.
So, we went to the police station to get a copy of the report. But what they have isn't considered the official report, just the statement that has to be filed with the main office so an official stamped report can be issued. We drove the constable over to the main branch, and there they told us that tomorrow they'd have it ready. So then we went to get the passport photo, which I took and will return to get when I go back to old town to pick up supplies for at least the meeting tomorrow. I had been planning to buy all the supplies, but now I don't know. I'm so tired, I could just fall asleep.
So, we went to the police station to get a copy of the report. But what they have isn't considered the official report, just the statement that has to be filed with the main office so an official stamped report can be issued. We drove the constable over to the main branch, and there they told us that tomorrow they'd have it ready. So then we went to get the passport photo, which I took and will return to get when I go back to old town to pick up supplies for at least the meeting tomorrow. I had been planning to buy all the supplies, but now I don't know. I'm so tired, I could just fall asleep.
Mugged
So, yesterday for the holiday the plan was to get a haircut, maybe grab some wine at Foodworth’s, maybe have some lunch at Cloud’s, and hit the forex to stock up on cash before heading home. I thought about bringing my laptop along for the trip, since Cloud’s allegedly has a wifi hotspot, but I decided it was too heavy.
Thank goodness.
Right behind the friggin buildings with the hair salon and Foodworth’s, some guy jacked my purse. I was coming off a dirt road onto the street, and he was coming up the street. I was in front of him, and he just grabbed the bag from behind. I had a good grip on it and made a strong showing in tug of war, but he had a knife, so he wins. (As Am joked, if you were packing heat you’d be the winner!). He actually got me in the arm a tiny bit with the blade (the size of a big paper cut), and a have a belly bruise where he grazed me as a threat to get me to back off. Once he took off, I ran after him hollering; he made like he was coming back at me to get me to knock off, but people started coming out and he ran away. He actually dropped the knife at one point as he ran, and I thought maybe he was going to ditch the weapon, but he picked it up as he ran away. Or maybe he thought I’d grab it and come after him (not unlikely, I was pretty determined to do what I could to get my stuff back). A really impressive number of guys from the surrounding buildings took off after the guy in response to my shouts, but apparently he disappeared into the bushes. Damn bushes. The number of people responding certainly made me feel more assured that this was a really crazy broad daylight semi-busy area to mug someone. It’s just too bad no one caught him.
A man directed me to the police station, but I was intercepted by a café owner whose men were working on the wall and had been some of those giving chase. He got me some water and a cappuccino (just the thing for frazzled nerves!), and a woman from the embassy, EP, was there having lunch with her daughter. She called up the embassy and had a colleague come over with some paperwork for the passport (of which I have a photocopy, so new one will be easier to obtain), and then we went to the police station to file a report.
Filing the police report was actually sort of hilarious. The “station” was basically a tiny room with some chairs and a desk. The constable clearly took his role very seriously, and kept tapping his papers on the desk to line them up in a very official way. His papers consisted of blank paper on which he wrote my statement. When he saw the cut on my arm, he declared that I had to go to the hospital so that a medical report could be included. EP insisted that this was not going to happen and that someone at the embassy clinic would look at it Wednesday. So he had one of the other officers write up a sheet for the doctor, which reads, “The above named person has been unlawfully wounded by unknown criminals. Therefore I refer her to your good office for both treatment and examination. Thereafter furnish us with your findings.” Hilarious. I have to wonder what kind of kinky shit they’re allowing for in the “lawfully wounded” section.
After the police station, we headed to the embassy. EP’s daughter got a nosebleed, so we were in an extra hurry. Of course, once we got to the gate the incompetent security guards were in no such hurry to let us in, and wanted my paperwork. EP explained that I’d just been robbed and didn’t have a passport and that her daughter was bleeding and could he please just let us in. Then he said he’d have to ask his supervisor, but the supervisor was off under a tree somewhere and there was no reception officer in the little office, and EP totally flipped out on the guys until they let us in. Once we got in she was all, “Fucking morons!” It was so refreshing to hear someone yell and curse after three weeks in this passive aggressive country. Once inside we called K, who I figured would be at the office and she was, and she came to get me.
At the office I made various phone calls and checked my email and generally tried to take care of some basic details. On the whole, I lost: 1) My wallet with all my credit and ATM cards along with my drivers license and about $100 in kwachas and USD combined. Although the guy will have to dig for the USD, so if I happed to get the wallet back it might still be there. AND also my awesome photos from G that I’ve transferred to new wallets for ages. 2) My passport, which will be easily replaced. 3) My checkbook, which sucks for now because I can’t use the money bureau, but I can exchange US cash that K has locked away at her house plus the office can front me some funds for the research stuff. I also have some kwacha locked up at work from my money runs this week. Joe is going to retrieve the next book from my house and put it in the Friday DHL package from the Baltimore office, so I’ll be back in business soon enough. 4) The cell phone Kirsten was lending me, meaning no calls from Joe or anyone else at home until I find a replacement. 5) My camera, which at least didn’t have any photos on it, but it sucks a lot that it’s gone and I can’t upload any more photos while I’m here… I might be able to find some disposables to at least take some photos. 6) Last, but absolutely the worst, my glasses, since I was wearing my sunglasses and therefore had my glasses in my purse. Joe can send my backup pair from home, and there are apparently some Germans here who can make some more if I need. But, I haven’t even paid for those glasses yet! (Some crazy 6 month interest free card thing).
So, none of this is the end of the world, unlike if my laptop had been stolen. Although he probably wouldn’t have gotten away so fast because that bag is mega heavy. I also have been making sure to keep my hotel key in my pocket should something like this happen. Thank goodness also that I hadn’t decided to visit the money bureau first. And, of course, that nothing really bad happened to me. It just fucking sucks.
After the office, K took me to get some late lunch/early dinner at Mama Mia’s. I had penne with a really hot tomato sauce, which made me feel better. Then we went to her house and she checked the cut on my arm, peroxided and antiseptic creamed it (I got a black cat band-aid… yay kids’ band-aids!), and then gave me some bubble bath and movies to take home.
I felt a lot better after a few hours than right after it happened. If someone had offered me a plane ticket home and a ride to the airport right after it happened, I’d be on my way home right now. I was already feeling homesick, and this was just not what I needed. But, after a few hours I was feeling like I had a handle on replacing the stuff I really need to replace and managing without the rest. I’m leery of the travel to and from work with my laptop bag now, but those times of day are also much busier. Unfortunately, I think I was more vulnerable today because of the holiday making the streets a bit emptier than they normally would be; all the expats I talked to today were pretty surprised about where and when it happened. It’s also just completely unlucky that I’ve lived in a totally dangerous city for nearly three years with no incident (never mind Boston also), and I happen to get robbed here. Sadly, I think I know why expats don’t walk around the city, because white folks are really much more of target.
So, I probably won’t be doing much wandering on the weekends anymore, and will probably make use of a taxi or minibus if I’m feeling restless. I think I can learn to appreciate the simple pleasures of lounging around my room with magazines and books and movies.
Once I got home I wrote a few of these notes, which I think was helpful. I took a hot bath with some grapefruit scent in it. It made the bath kind of look like bright pee, but it smelled a lot better and was nice. Then I broke out iTunes and listened to lots of music that made me feel better in ways both cheerful and aggressive, such as that song from the Office Space soundtrack when they’re smashing the printer. I love that song. Anyway, I realized one thing I can do to occupy myself is to make playlists, since I have virtually none, and they’re necessary for road trip iPodding.
K’s husband said that it was important to compartmentalize the experience, not to deny it happened, but to not really let it into my life. He’s really right, in a way. It was just like a bad dream, and though it was scary and freaks me out, it’s not more affecting to my life than most other things. It’s mostly a hassle, but I’m no more or less safe because of it. It feels more personal due to the level of assault involved, but the robber had no interest in hurting me, just taking my stuff and threatening me enough to be successful at it.
It’s really a shame also that there are people like this who damage the reputation of places like this one, where the vast majority of people are dirt poor and yet strongly frown on this sort of behavior and do what they can to stop it when given the chance.
All right, off to wade through a few more emails and head off to the embassy.
Thank goodness.
Right behind the friggin buildings with the hair salon and Foodworth’s, some guy jacked my purse. I was coming off a dirt road onto the street, and he was coming up the street. I was in front of him, and he just grabbed the bag from behind. I had a good grip on it and made a strong showing in tug of war, but he had a knife, so he wins. (As Am joked, if you were packing heat you’d be the winner!). He actually got me in the arm a tiny bit with the blade (the size of a big paper cut), and a have a belly bruise where he grazed me as a threat to get me to back off. Once he took off, I ran after him hollering; he made like he was coming back at me to get me to knock off, but people started coming out and he ran away. He actually dropped the knife at one point as he ran, and I thought maybe he was going to ditch the weapon, but he picked it up as he ran away. Or maybe he thought I’d grab it and come after him (not unlikely, I was pretty determined to do what I could to get my stuff back). A really impressive number of guys from the surrounding buildings took off after the guy in response to my shouts, but apparently he disappeared into the bushes. Damn bushes. The number of people responding certainly made me feel more assured that this was a really crazy broad daylight semi-busy area to mug someone. It’s just too bad no one caught him.
A man directed me to the police station, but I was intercepted by a café owner whose men were working on the wall and had been some of those giving chase. He got me some water and a cappuccino (just the thing for frazzled nerves!), and a woman from the embassy, EP, was there having lunch with her daughter. She called up the embassy and had a colleague come over with some paperwork for the passport (of which I have a photocopy, so new one will be easier to obtain), and then we went to the police station to file a report.
Filing the police report was actually sort of hilarious. The “station” was basically a tiny room with some chairs and a desk. The constable clearly took his role very seriously, and kept tapping his papers on the desk to line them up in a very official way. His papers consisted of blank paper on which he wrote my statement. When he saw the cut on my arm, he declared that I had to go to the hospital so that a medical report could be included. EP insisted that this was not going to happen and that someone at the embassy clinic would look at it Wednesday. So he had one of the other officers write up a sheet for the doctor, which reads, “The above named person has been unlawfully wounded by unknown criminals. Therefore I refer her to your good office for both treatment and examination. Thereafter furnish us with your findings.” Hilarious. I have to wonder what kind of kinky shit they’re allowing for in the “lawfully wounded” section.
After the police station, we headed to the embassy. EP’s daughter got a nosebleed, so we were in an extra hurry. Of course, once we got to the gate the incompetent security guards were in no such hurry to let us in, and wanted my paperwork. EP explained that I’d just been robbed and didn’t have a passport and that her daughter was bleeding and could he please just let us in. Then he said he’d have to ask his supervisor, but the supervisor was off under a tree somewhere and there was no reception officer in the little office, and EP totally flipped out on the guys until they let us in. Once we got in she was all, “Fucking morons!” It was so refreshing to hear someone yell and curse after three weeks in this passive aggressive country. Once inside we called K, who I figured would be at the office and she was, and she came to get me.
At the office I made various phone calls and checked my email and generally tried to take care of some basic details. On the whole, I lost: 1) My wallet with all my credit and ATM cards along with my drivers license and about $100 in kwachas and USD combined. Although the guy will have to dig for the USD, so if I happed to get the wallet back it might still be there. AND also my awesome photos from G that I’ve transferred to new wallets for ages. 2) My passport, which will be easily replaced. 3) My checkbook, which sucks for now because I can’t use the money bureau, but I can exchange US cash that K has locked away at her house plus the office can front me some funds for the research stuff. I also have some kwacha locked up at work from my money runs this week. Joe is going to retrieve the next book from my house and put it in the Friday DHL package from the Baltimore office, so I’ll be back in business soon enough. 4) The cell phone Kirsten was lending me, meaning no calls from Joe or anyone else at home until I find a replacement. 5) My camera, which at least didn’t have any photos on it, but it sucks a lot that it’s gone and I can’t upload any more photos while I’m here… I might be able to find some disposables to at least take some photos. 6) Last, but absolutely the worst, my glasses, since I was wearing my sunglasses and therefore had my glasses in my purse. Joe can send my backup pair from home, and there are apparently some Germans here who can make some more if I need. But, I haven’t even paid for those glasses yet! (Some crazy 6 month interest free card thing).
So, none of this is the end of the world, unlike if my laptop had been stolen. Although he probably wouldn’t have gotten away so fast because that bag is mega heavy. I also have been making sure to keep my hotel key in my pocket should something like this happen. Thank goodness also that I hadn’t decided to visit the money bureau first. And, of course, that nothing really bad happened to me. It just fucking sucks.
After the office, K took me to get some late lunch/early dinner at Mama Mia’s. I had penne with a really hot tomato sauce, which made me feel better. Then we went to her house and she checked the cut on my arm, peroxided and antiseptic creamed it (I got a black cat band-aid… yay kids’ band-aids!), and then gave me some bubble bath and movies to take home.
I felt a lot better after a few hours than right after it happened. If someone had offered me a plane ticket home and a ride to the airport right after it happened, I’d be on my way home right now. I was already feeling homesick, and this was just not what I needed. But, after a few hours I was feeling like I had a handle on replacing the stuff I really need to replace and managing without the rest. I’m leery of the travel to and from work with my laptop bag now, but those times of day are also much busier. Unfortunately, I think I was more vulnerable today because of the holiday making the streets a bit emptier than they normally would be; all the expats I talked to today were pretty surprised about where and when it happened. It’s also just completely unlucky that I’ve lived in a totally dangerous city for nearly three years with no incident (never mind Boston also), and I happen to get robbed here. Sadly, I think I know why expats don’t walk around the city, because white folks are really much more of target.
So, I probably won’t be doing much wandering on the weekends anymore, and will probably make use of a taxi or minibus if I’m feeling restless. I think I can learn to appreciate the simple pleasures of lounging around my room with magazines and books and movies.
Once I got home I wrote a few of these notes, which I think was helpful. I took a hot bath with some grapefruit scent in it. It made the bath kind of look like bright pee, but it smelled a lot better and was nice. Then I broke out iTunes and listened to lots of music that made me feel better in ways both cheerful and aggressive, such as that song from the Office Space soundtrack when they’re smashing the printer. I love that song. Anyway, I realized one thing I can do to occupy myself is to make playlists, since I have virtually none, and they’re necessary for road trip iPodding.
K’s husband said that it was important to compartmentalize the experience, not to deny it happened, but to not really let it into my life. He’s really right, in a way. It was just like a bad dream, and though it was scary and freaks me out, it’s not more affecting to my life than most other things. It’s mostly a hassle, but I’m no more or less safe because of it. It feels more personal due to the level of assault involved, but the robber had no interest in hurting me, just taking my stuff and threatening me enough to be successful at it.
It’s really a shame also that there are people like this who damage the reputation of places like this one, where the vast majority of people are dirt poor and yet strongly frown on this sort of behavior and do what they can to stop it when given the chance.
All right, off to wade through a few more emails and head off to the embassy.
Monday, April 30, 2007
Cats for sale
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.
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.
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.
Monday, April 23, 2007
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
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
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.
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.
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