I hate writing

The cold I thought I was getting over a week ago came to fruition that evening and has been with me since. I stayed home from work to try to get better and felt okay this past weekend in Chicago, but since then I've felt the same cloudy tired blahness every day. My teeth hurt from the sinus pressure, I break out into coughing fits that give me headaches. The other night I went through half a box of tissues, although things seem to have dried up since. In the middle of a long cold like this I begin to wonder if I'll ever be back to normal, if maybe this cold will stick with me forever and I'll be forced to drag through all the rest of my days sniffling and coughing and holding my head.

Maybe I need to be hitting the whiskey -- I seem to recall that working when I was younger, and in my prime.

Anyway, in the midst of this illness I had grantwriting group, where I was simultaneously slammed and complimented almost to an embarrassing level. Slam: Your sentences are hard to read because they have too many words and clauses and subclauses (this is what happens when I have to cram 10 arguments into a single page). Compliment: This problem may stem from your extreme thoughtfulness as manifested in the fact that you are the best reviewer here and your comments are always wildly helpful. I was a little stung by the writing comment, as I've always considered myself a good writer, but I have always tended toward sentences that require a diagrammer's mind (like mine) to fully grasp in one read. But I was pleased with the reviewing comment because if there's one thing I think I'm actually good at in this world it is editing and, more broadly, figuring out how a piece of writing could be more compelling. I get to do some of that in teaching and advising and working with other colleagues, and those are the times I feel most useful as a human being.

Going down the spectrum of feeling useful is when I have to do any of my own writing. This week's task was to fix those Specific Aims we tore up last week and add a whole Research Design section. Fortunately the National Institutes of Health are soon moving to a shorter application length, meaning I only have to crank out 6-8 pages instead of 14. But the first thing I did yesterday when I finally got going was to completely re-write the Specific Aims page, by which I mean I wrote up Specific Aims for an entirely different study. I think it's a more interesting study (writing up the research design for the prior study sounded so boring I just couldn't do it), but it didn't move me forward terribly well. I need to write up some semblance of a Research Design to turn in tomorrow at group. I'm procrastinating, and my teeth hurt.

Because even further down the spectrum of feeling useful? Planning actual research. I know I managed once upon a time to pull it off, but often I have no confidence that I can do it again. It involves talking to people, building connections, relying on others, filling out paperwork. Everything that makes my stomach churn with anxiety.

Scrivener is awesome

I don't think I've ever promoted this particular product before on this blog, but I wrote my dissertation in Scrivener and it was awesome. I never would have gotten going without it.

Of course, I opened it today to solve writers' block on the 30-page summary version of my dissertation for a contest, and the dissertation itself opened, as it was the last project I worked on using it. Meaning I probably haven't been doing enough writing.

Manuscripts

Making tables is fun.  Writing the text of the results section is boring.

Just read my tables.

Friend of the Project

I just read something on the national communication obits that I think is a really great thought. Dawn Braithwaite writes that she once asked the late Dr. Ernest Bormann how a scholar handles harsh criticism, and he replied "that he appreciated criticism when it came from a "friend of the project." He went on to explain that a "friend of the project" is motivated to make the work the best it could be, rather than self-aggrandize." This is a a simple but important point, because too often people think that criticism has to be "harsh" to be criticism, which tends to bleed over into showing how smart you are compared to this poor person you're criticizing. But truely constructive criticism doesn't feel like criticism at all; it feels like scholarly dialogue. The critic for that moment becomes a partner in your project, wanting it to succeed just as much as you do. I had this experience during all of my oral exams, where people weren't trying to play gotcha because they were invested in making my project better and what I publish out of it more useful to the world. I think this notion is a good thing for all of us to keep in mind -- particularly when doing those anonymous reviews that can so easily slide into snark.

Validation

I like it when what I think is true about the world is corroborated by a much more systematic view of the literature. I always have this fear I'm missing some major article, and it appears I'm not when it comes to HIV-related stigma.

I took a break from data analysis (which I'm redoing in a different way) because I just hit total frustration with the way some of this data works out... there's a question on the survey about whether the respondent used a condom the last time they had sex followed very shortly by a question asking how often the person uses condoms. You would not believe the number of people who say they used a condom last time but then say they never use condoms and, worse, the number who say they didn't use a condom last time followed by saying they always use condoms. OMG, are you not listening to your own answers! Never mind the big hunk of missing data I can't account for at all, other than people didn't want to answer the question.

So instead I'm reading, because that is way less frustrating and I have a huge pile.

Vacation has been good so far. We've mostly been bumming around, eating and shopping. We've re-devoted ourselves to making our way through the Sopranos (I already watched it all, but Joey has not). We're not doing anything fancy for New Year's Eve, just going to a tasty local Italian joint and then partying at home.

The New Year will bring attempts at: 1) real weight loss; 2) getting these manuscripts out the door because they are actually going to fill some gaps in the literature; 3) writing up a real research plan for my next study instead of having some vague notions of what might be nice.

Seriously

Data analysis has to be done carefully.  Otherwise it has to be redone.  And redone.

Endless tables

Making tables is a fun break from actual writing. Until you get to the 5th iteration of the same tables.

Other than that, things are going great. Announcements soon, once things are finalized.

Best CFA book

If you're looking to do confirmatory factor analysis, especially with Mplus, run, do not walk, to Confirmatory Factor Analysis for Applied Research by Timothy A. Brown. Luxuriously lacking matrix algebra and other notation unnecessary to the average social scientist, it takes you through the basics of EFA and CFA, everything you need to check to see if your model is working it, and special topics like fixing your messed up model, multitrait-multimethod, missing data, non-normal or categorical data, etc.

It's the best, basically.

Work starts tomorrow

Since I returned, I haven't been doing much work. Mostly I've been catching up on TV and hanging out with Joe. I did manage to visit my advisor at his new house to fill him in on the details of the actual study. He's going to try to put a panel together for ICA on how to do research in crazy settings, and I definitely have plenty to say on that!

I went in practically every day last week trying to get my expenses entered into HopkinsOne. It's the dumbest system on the planet. My travel request had been granted with my travel advnace on one trip number. Then, on a separate trip number, my flight had been reimbursed. This apparently allowed my flight to reimbursed in a timely fashion instead of when I returned from the trip. But it also had the effect of screwing things up with the travel advance, because we couldn't enter any receipts since it was like, you already got reimbursed for those dates. Basically, it allowed our office to enter in something that then totally screwed it up. It's all well and good for them to say, don't enter things that way, but it's preferable for the system to just not let you enter things that way if it's the wrong thing to do. Anyway, the higher ups had to tweak it so that we could enter receipts. We entered all the big ones, with minor hassles along the way trying to make the system not suck, and then shoved the rest into the giant per diem category. It all worked out.

So, tomorrow I start work on my dissertation and other projects. This includes a paper my advisor and I are writing using the old midterm data due July 30. And it also includes osme new potential papers for a Comm Theory call for papers on interpersonal communication and campaigns. Devepending on how much overlap there is between these manuscripts and my dissertation, I may switch to a 3-manuscript format, but I'm only inclined to do that if the pros really outweigh the cons because I can hammer out a traditional format very quickly.

Tomorrow I think I'll start putting some things into the methods section. Things like, "After the chief welcomed us to the village, someone gave a prayer."

I stil have no job, but I signed up for a bunch of federal loans in case the CDC thing doesn't happen!

On the other side

I feel like I need a complete life detox after being here. The schedule I’ve been keeping certainly gives me more energy, but I don’t think I can keep it up at home. It’s easy to get up at 6:30 when you go to bed at 9:30 or 10 out of total boredom. It’s not so easy when there are fun things to do and people to see at night. But I’ll be very glad to get back to a place where I can actually exercise – between getting mugged and this town being full of annoying people trying to sell me crap, I haven’t been walking as much as I thought I would when I arrived. And my diet has just been awful. Breakfast is always chips, an egg of some kind (often fried), sausage, and bread. Occasionally fruit. And it’s hard to eat healthy foods without a refrigerator and an oven/stove and without consistent means of getting to the supermarket. I’ve been watching Chef at Home and thinking of all the fruits and vegetables and other healthy foods I desperately want to eat.

So, I’m determined to actually go to the Farmer’s Market this summer and to eat well and exercise. And I want to do lots of things outside this summer and get out of the house and not be cooped up with the television. I also want to get to the office and be productive, because I want to get this dissertation hammered out along with whatever I do for work and the eventual jobhunting and conference abstracts and suchlike.

I’ve been fussing a bit about work for the summer and money. I’m waiting to hear from a few people about small amounts of work, which would be fine. I really want to visit Boston and ABQ, but I need to make sure I have the cash for these things (and that any accompanying passengers do too). I will hear about the CDC grant in late summer, probably. I’m extremely ambivalent about the grant. I’ll be thrilled to have a stipend and to be able to say I got it on my resume. But I don’t really want to come back here in the fall; I might be able to deal with spring, but even that makes me feel a little queasy. I try to put on a good face for people who ask when I’m coming back. I wouldn’t mind a two-week trip, but another two-month trip sounds just awful. I’ve also lost some enthusiasm for the idea of doing in-depth interviews about the radio program. I’m not sure we’ll really get the depth of information we’re interested in. And if we don’t have good results from the experimental design there’s really less justification anyway for expending more energy in this direction.

My travels here have solidified my feelings that I’m not really interested in a straight-up communication position. Comm is okay and all, but I really want to stick with public health and be able to see comm. as one tool out of many to improve health. I’ve seen so many huge systemic problems at work here that I can’t possibly pretend developing some radio programs is going to satisfy me entirely.

End of study

We finished data collection the following Tuesday. It was weird to be done with it, after more than three weeks of going to the villages as a daily routine. It’s funny how easy it is to adjust to a new routine and have it feel normal. Joe asked me if I would feel weird when I get back, and I think it might be odd for a few days. I have established several routines here, and I have absolutely none there right now, with summer upon us. But I’ll work one out quickly, and I’ll be adjusted to home just as quickly.

The last day I had the car hire, I ran a bunch of errands. I switched to the South Luangwa NP trip, since I was still the only one signed up for the Malawi southern experience. It was a good move, much better than trying to set something up myself, and it was an awesome trip, and I will write about. I mailed postcards, hit the money bureau, and then went to Central Hospital to try to do something about a yellow fever certificate. The tour company said that sometimes at the border they require some kind of stamped note saying you don’t have yellow fever. Neither Zambia nor Malawi requires vaccination, since it’s not endemic this far south, but the guy at the tour company said any doctor could write me such a note. So I went over to Central Hospital, which looked like mostly what you’d expect: a decent but not pristine place with a ton of people waiting around all over the place. I was directed to OPD I, whatever that is, where a nurse got me a nice photocopy of the yellow card for recording immunizations. She nicely filled out both the yellow fever and cholera pages as if I’d been vaccinated for them two weeks before, stamping the whole lot with the official stamp and charging me MK600 for the trouble. Fraudulent yellow fever certificates! Brilliant! It had the vaccine lot number on there and everything! Turns out no one asked for it at the border (I guess really it’s supposed to be Malawi immigration wanting it when you’re coming from Zambia), so I didn’t have to defraud any immigration officials. :/

The last two days of May were spent entering data at N’s house. She has a computer, so I brought the work laptop over there so we could do two entries at once. I finished the entire first data entry on Wednesday, impressing everyone with my mad fast data entry skills. And it was more accurate then the second data entry too; most of my errors were actually caused by errors on the form, either skip patterns that weren’t skipped or items that were accidentally skipped. Basically, I rule at setting up awesome Access entry forms and then rocking through the data entry (just throwing that out there in case anyone wants to pay for these skills with money or beer). While at N’s both days we had a nice lunch, with nsima and beef the first day, and nsima and usipa the second day. I don’t think I’d make it a point to eat usipa much if I lived here; it’s basically the smallest fish in the lake, and it is generally dried and salted. Sardiney, I guess. I prefer a big fish like chambo.

We finished Thursday, so I let the crew loose. They were a fun group, and they did a good job with the study.

That Friday I was insanely productive. I compared the datasets and fixed all the data entry errors. Then I made a survey with frequencies. And a bunch of other crap too. It was good. I had the strangest feeling leaving work that day. I was almost – sad? It’s just strange to have my seemingly never-ending trip wind down.

The next day I went with G and her husband to a wedding. The church part wasn’t super different than most weddings I’ve seen; I guess in the villages there are most traditional elements, but this was mostly just a typical Christian kind of wedding with choirs and some nuances that I think any wedding would have. I guess the preacher was funny, but it was all in Chichewa, so I only got the jokes secondhand. It was really long. Lunch at G’s house was very tasty: nsima, beef, greens in a nice sauce, salad, other stuff I’ve forgotten. It was quite a spread. The reception was incredibly less interesting than I expected. Basically there was a processional of the bridal party through this tent to a stage all set up with nice chairs and couches. Then there was music, and people would go up to dance and drop and throw money around. I thought this would be a short thing at the beginning before moving on to more interesting things, but this money collection business seemed to be the entire purpose of the reception. Everyone who was not at the moment dancing and tossing small bills about just sat in row after row of chairs watching, looking totally bored (so it wasn’t just me!). Eventually sodas were passed around, but I really needed a good MGT. There may have been some things at the end after I left, but I was there for several hours without any change in festivities.

Sunday I packed up my stuff for my trip and for storage. Everything fit, giving me a good feeling about the final packing. I went over to the Capital Hotel to check my email and discovered that I got my insurance claim back and they gave me pretty much what I asked for, which is quite nice given the big fat deductible. I should at least be able to replace my camera and glasses, and maybe a few other small things. I might try to get my passport done with leftover grant money if I can.

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 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?

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.

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.

Singing and dancing

This morning my RA and I went to see a couple of the community-based organizations to get some guidance on the project. The first one was a ways out, south on the M1 and then down the turnoff to Bunda for a ways. We got there and were met by a bunch of youth singing. A man took my bag, despite my insistence that I would really prefer to hang onto it, but he wanted to carry it for me into the meeting room. The meeting room had a desk with a chair behind it that was for me to sit in. The table was covered in health brochures, old and newish. At first it seemed that we'd be meeting with about 5 people, already more than expected, but then like 15 more adults filed in and sat on the benches along the wall, and about a million young people and children came in to sit on the floor. Instead of the audience of one or two I had expected going in, I now had a packed room. Or rather, my RA had a packed room because she had to do most of the explaining anyway. She totally could rebargain her pay after today, because she was my savior in that place.

The CBO leader gave this whole speech, translated by S to me, about the CBO and all the things it was trying to do, and all the things that were lacking like soccer balls and other things to occupy young people so they don't have sex, proper training for people at all levels of the organization, medical supplies, help to write good grants, etc. So they were glad to see me! I felt like, yeah, get ready to be disappointed because I just want to do a tiny study about radio. In all fairness, it's good to know about these things, even if I am not prepared to do anything now, because maybe in the future I will be in a place to say, hey, I know a bunch of people who could use some soccer balls or help writing a grant and get them the hookup.

S described the study and figured out the info we needed. She totally ruled today. After the meeting, we went outside and there was singing and dancing and a play. I recorded some of the singing and dancing with my camera. I'll try to post it, if I can, maybe on youtube. It was all cool, but definitely not what I had expected. The second meeting was much more what I planned for: a brief meeting with one person in an office. Either way, it seems that the groups will help us get folks to be in the study and help us find good places to do it, so rah.

We have three or four meetings tomorrow… I was exhausted after the two we had today, so I hope these are all lowkey.

I hate phones

I hate making phone calls to people I don't know sooooo much. I have a hard enough time communicating in any oral way, and the phone just makes it a million times worse. I'm trying to call people from all these groups that BRIDGE has worked with before so that I can meet with them later this week and see if they can help me with my study. After 2 calls I'm drained and I need to talk to like 7 more. Gah! I was originally going to pawn this off on a woman here who has worked with all these people before, but she's at a workshop today and tomorrow. Damn workshops.

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.

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!

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.