Yeah, hon.

My $0.02

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:09:00 +0000

I worked a poll in Roxbury for the state senate race in my district from 2-8 last night. One of my favorite parts of yesterday:

I said my usual refrain ("thank you. have a nice day!") to one woman as she was leaving. She was a youngish woman wearing full burka (there's a big Muslim, mostly East African community in this area), and she turned around and said, in a pretty thick accent, "I hope we make history today!" I smiled and said, "Me too."

It was such a small moment and gesture, but it symbolizes the success of Obama's campaign to me: while success was measured by the win, the process of the campaign showed Americans that despite our significant differences to the eye we, as a people, may actually have more in common than we think we do. For me and that woman yesterday, I think it was hope for something better.

Movie Thursday

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:04:00 +0000

I feel really excited for the renewal of a semi-regular event from last year: movie Thursdays. The theater on the Common has student discounts on Thursdays, which we sometimes discount further by sneaking into another movie (which partly explains how I saw Step Up 2 three times in the theater). It's the perfect break from the week and beginning to the weekend.

This week we're going to see High School Musical 3 (there's sound at that link). There's sort of not a lot to say beyond how totally ridiculous it is that we're going to see it. I saw HSM2 shortly after getting back from Malawi last summer, which was a hilarious re-entry to American hype and pop culture; I later saw HSM at a party of a cohort-mate from my masters. Somehow I extend that a step further (too far?) to think that my school experiences are really closely linked to the HSM series.

Or maybe I'm just dying for a thoughtless movie. What could be better than a movie musical about squeeky clean high school seniors for that?

The musical part of the movie is fundamental to the whole movie (it's called a "musical" afterall), but here seems so outlandish in the spontaneity and topic of their songs. There's always one required sports-related song, preferably mid-game/practice. It's musicals at their best and worst--trying too hard or maybe just that wholesome? The New Yorker puts it best, saying HSM3 is, "launching into song the way that normal folk go to the bathroom—regularly, politely, and because, if they didn’t, well, darn it, they might just burst."

Count me in.

back in many senses

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:47:00 +0000

It goes without saying I'm posting again. The site was down for a while, and long before that I became negligent about posting. A few things worth mentioning:

First, I won't bother with another self-reflective "what-is-this-blog" discussion. Instead, this is to say that I'm hoping to post more frequently. The reasons for starting this blog in the first place--to keep in touch with people--never went away. The posts may be even more random in topic (everything from what I'm doing this weekend to what I'm thinking about professionally), but hopefully no longer in frequency.

Second, a few "housekeeping" issues:

I'm back on Blogger. I really didn't need my own domain name and hosting service. Maybe it'll come back at some point, but probably not in the near future. So check this site and not the previous url.

On that front, don't check my site at all--read it elsewhere. I fixed the feed function (see on the sidebar below) for anyone who likes reading things in an RSS reader. As a Google Reader user (more appropriately, enthusiast; most appropriately, junkie), I can't recommend feeds enough.

I'm also on twitter. A lot, it seems. It's an easy way to throw out a quick update, so it's likely that I'll be there even more frequently than here. I added a sidebar to the right that updates with my tweets for one stop shopping of those coming here directly.

what's the inverse?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:31:00 +0000

I'm really interested in how income affects health, which usually manifests itself in my bleeding-heart sort of way as trying to look at how reductions in poverty improve health. I can't help but wonder how this financial crisis mess (which, for the record, I barely understand) will impact health, for better or worse.

As my advisor might interject at this point, it's important to think about the mechanisms. Here's one: Mess --> stress from not dating (mediated by "coping mechanisms" like drinking and smoking). In other words, like this story.

Okay, so the theoretical model isn't actually that simple; I just wanted to link to that story. Also, I can't believe I just tried to draw a DAG on my blog. Any shred of coolness might be permanently lost. I really been thinking a lot lately about how to measure the effect of this whole mess with decent quantitative data, and I can't seem to think of much beyond these sort of anecdotes. Something else to think about in all that spare time.

slow and steady

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:55:00 +0000

The school year is officially underway. I have three of 4 (the one-hour seminar on Friday doesn't count as a 5th in my book) classes underway as of a week ago. I've already had one assignment due, another on Wednesday, and a third on Friday. Two of them aren't at my school, so I'm the lowest priority to get into the class. I'll know on Friday if I'm in them or not.

I'm trying to be much more methodical and organized this year, particularly after what felt like a crash and burn spring and then a recuperation summer. So far so good. Having a dedicated working space in the apartment really helps (pictures forthcoming). I also think that I'm in classes that have a really specific purpose insofar as what I want to do. That I'm interested in them beyond knowing I need to know the material is a bonus. But more than anything, I think I'm less tolerant of my own procrastination than I was even three months ago. There's something about being in a country where you can't sit behind email all day and work passively that is a nice kick in the butt to be more active in my own life.

Remember: this is only week 1. There are something like 13 more downhill yet to come. And just because things on the whole are better at the moment, not everything is great on that front. The shoebox with new running shoes sitting in the corner unopened since their purchase is a prime example. On that at least, I think I'm going to start going to a running club I used to go to during the week to build in some routine and accountability to get me going.

One of my most favorite recent routines--since April or so--is going to Haymarket on Saturday mornings for produce. It was great then (and now) because it's cheap, but now more than ever, it reminds me of Malawi. The produce section of the grocery store just isn't the same. You don't get the seasonal variation (I'm still not sure what the hell you do with figs, so I've been avoiding them), or the urgency to cook it before it goes bad. There's also a wonderful cross section of people there, which you don't often find in this city--tourists, young people, older people, families, people of color, non-Americans, etc. Plus it just feels like a really natural way to eat--you get what's there and have to find ways to use it all. I found big avacados there this week, which is what made me particularly reminiscent.

back in the usa (don't know how lucky you are?)

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:46:00 +0000

I'm back home, marveling that it was just over a week ago that I left Malawi. Crazy. I've kept the bulk of my culture shock and re-acclimation to myself--or at least not posted here--but suffice it to say that everything is just a lot bigger here. Cars, portions, people, buildings, rooms. Even the flies are bigger.

I'm back into the swing of things (sort of). This is a pretty light week in terms of responsibilities and scheduled things I have to do, so I'm able to do the really important stuff, like catch up on reality TV (I'm worried that everything is going to become "-licious" in my vocabulary just because him and his saying are so ridiculous). I'm also cleaning and organizing, trying to set up some decent working space in the apartment that's not in my bedroom so I can maybe have fewer nights of falling asleep in bed with my computer on my lap.

I've been on organization overdrive, reading a number of relevant blogs and books (happy to share if you're interested). At the moment, I'm sort of drooling over EverNote, but I have to upgrade to Leopard first, which I'll probably do later this fall.

Part of the organization is actually tending to things I've been putting off for whatever reason. Sometimes it's just nice to have the sense of completion that it's done, and other times, I get an iPod back. There's a longer version of the story, but suffice it to say that my iPod has been with BestBuy for months now for servicing, they lost it and are now sending a gift card for the purchase price. The prices haven't gone down (I bought it about this time last year), but the new iPhones dropped in price and the iPod Touch hasn't (an 8GB iPhone is $100 cheaper than an 8GB iPod). Technology is weird sometimes.

I'm also catching up on all sorts of things online, including NPR Podcasts. The most recent All Songs Considered podcast is pretty awesome. They feature this bands Ra Ra Riot that I've read about but had yet to hear. They have a few classically trained string players (violin and cello, I think) in the band, and the podcast sort of take the cello theme to heart. Toward the end of the podcast there's this really beautiful song by the Portland Cello Project that I have been listening to over and over again. Interesting concept and great execution, as far as I can tell.

back in black

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:19:00 +0000

So I'm clearly back online. Not with any particular speed, but I'm
back nonetheless. The place where there's internet here is The Hippo
View Lodge, which, as the name might suggest, overlooks the Shire
River that is full of hippos. It's very pretty here (at the Lodge),
although the rest of the town looks remarkably similar to everywhere
else I've been and seen here. It's more sand than dirt or clay,
pretty flat terrain here, but otherwise, it's just another town in
Malawi.

The northern site was a whirlwind I'd rather not re-do. It was
really beautiful there, but we worked really hard (probably too hard)
and I think are still reeling from it a little. We covered in 10
days what took us three weeks in the first site (we were scheduled
only to take 7 days, but 5 funerals and a Manure Introduction Day
sort of wiped out what we were able to do on a lot of the days in the
field). The days in the field were from 6 to 6, followed by a break
to shower off all the dirt, have dinner, and then spend 4-5 hours
updating the records with what we covered that day and preparing for
the following day. Bed before 2:00 am was unusual. We alternated
days (the other person working on the project and I), so the
following day was usually spent programming the data entry databases,
buying respondent gifts (they got a bag of sugar and two bars of soap
for an interview), or going into the nearest town on public transport
to get supplies (there wasn't a working photocopier or a place to buy
a ream of paper where we were, so we had to go an hour away to run
errands at least on two occasions). On the brighter side, it was a
definite sink or swim moment, and I think we really surprised
ourselves at how well it went. I learned a lot, and if that's all I
get out of being here this summer, the trip has been well worth it.

Now I'm down in the south and I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a
bit, more ready to come home than yearning to stay. I'm just going
to make the most of it and do as much as I can to make this site feel
like its own new experience.

For today's classic Malawi story: immigration. My visa expires
tomorrow, and since I didn't have a day off in the north to deal with
it, I had to go today. There's an office about 40 minutes from here,
so it should have been no problem. Right. There was an offer of a
ride up to Lilongwe, but after the 14 hour day driving down here on
Wednesday, I couldn't bear the thought of 3 hours each way in the car
(likely more coming home, b/c I'd be on public transport). So I
claimed our driver for the day and we went. I showed up to a really
cramped office with four people reading the newspaper. I explained
what I needed, handed my passport over and waited. The guy, after
about 5 minutes, looks up and starts explaining that there are new
fee structures for visas (it's now $70 to enter, up from $0, and $35
to renew for 60 days, which was also free before). I understood and
knew about it already; the cash was in my pocket. Then he started to
explain that they hadn't been trained or authorized on writing the
receipts for the cash, and thus, no one at that office could help me
except their boss who might (note: conditionals are always worth
taking as certainties of the opposite) be there this afternoon.
Could I come back? Well, no, not really. Especially when I knew the
guy probably wouldn't be there and I had other things to do. I thank
them and get back in the car, explain it to the driver and that I
think I'm just going to stop bothering, be here without a visa and
get stamped out at the airport with no problem (people do it all the
time). Before I could say so, he suggests we go to Blantyre, which
is another hour down the road (still shorter than going to Lilongwe.
It didn't really take much time once there, save the typical
bureaucratic waiting and confusion. It captured the little
unexpected things that make life difficult (and really fun, on the
good days) here--I got to see Blantyre and ultimately got it taken
care of no problem. But still...classic.

back in black

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:18:00 +0000

check me elsewhere

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 12:52:00 +0000

I'm up north where there is no internet anywhere. Well, there is some at this orphanage/hotel, but we're busy enough that I doubt I'm going to get there to be online again before we leave here next week. In the meantime, I can update my Twitter account by text, so I'll post short updates there. The address is:

http://www.twitter.com/smittysmith

We've been working a lot and probably will be until we leave; maybe a day off for a national park before heading down south. Hopefully I'll get back to normal online status then.

day late, MK 140 short

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:32:00 +0000

I've been neglecting posting (clearly), probably for one of two reasons: 1. I've been really busy getting this big database done--it's why I was brought here in the first place--which I finished off on Sunday, and 2. I feel like there hasn't really been much going on (there are only so many funny/interesting stories that come from sitting in my room programming, testing, and fixing a data entry application all day). A third possible reason (maybe a confounder?) is that there's just a lot less that's new this year. My work is much more independent and computer-based than it was last year; I work in my room a lot of the time, which I think I need to stop doing.

We're going to be moving tomorrow up to the site in the north, and we'll be doing fieldwork there for two weeks before going down to the site in the south (somewhere between here and here) where we'll meet up with the rest of the main survey team (our project has to go after theirs, so we're going north just as they're leaving). Today, I'm heading into Lilongwe to run a few errands for the project and stock up on stuff we'll need up there. I'll be glad to get a change of scenery and go to places I haven't been before--I'm hoping that will make this feel like it's own experience, rather than just a variation on the theme of last year.

I don't know about internet access over the next few weeks until we're back in the south; it's supposedly not great up there, but I'll be in touch as much as I can.

i think this sums it up

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:24:00 +0000

Relevant advice more generally, but specific to this summer, see number 9.

Deadline Friday, more coming after (or before if I can).

gassy

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:32:00 +0000

Sorry for the lighting and editing of these videos--this one's taken during the day--hopefully, it's not going to inspire Blair Witch Project flashbacks like the others might have--but I'm still trying to get to know iMovie, which is the software I'm using.

touched for the very first time

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 17:17:00 +0000

I'm one step closer to a Madonna connection in Malawi: today I met her son's grandfather. He asked me how close I lived to her (I tend to tell people I live "near New York" when they ask where in America I'm from--no one knows what or where Boston is). He then asked me when we were going to come build him a new house.

$$$

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Reading on the internets

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Now that I have dedicated, reliable internet--and not many other distractions but said interwebs-- I'm able to be following the blogs I have coming in my rss feed more closely. During the school year, I tend to glance, skim at best, the 15 or so sites I have fed there every day. After two days, there would be 600-something items to read; I knew I couldn't get to them, so I just mark them all as read and move back to whatever real work I'm doing. Now that I can actually read them, a few are worthy of passing on:

1. A discussion of web versus regular writing.

The discussion is interesting in and of itself, especially now that I'm blogging again. Although, as more of a consumer than producer of any writing, I'm more piqued to thinking about the practicalities and logistics of reading more and more electronic material, be they websites or .pdf files, than about the writing itself. I'm constantly overwhelmed by the volumes of reading for classes, and in an effort to reduce my own mass of paper clutter (helping the environment is a worthy, but entirely secondary motivation here), I've forced myself to read more and more on the computer. Yet in the 45 minute-1 hour commute (one way) to Cambridge, which was a daily event in the spring, I was stuck either printing some of the articles out after all, or being the nerd/weirdo who pulls out his laptop on the T. (I should say, that's less strange on the Red Line than on the Orange Line). It's made me think of something like Amazon's Kindle as a potential, if expensive, solution to this dillema. But even then, I'm not entirely comfortable reading on the screen: the software isn't advanced enough for my tastes to be able to mark up pages, comment in the margins, and highlight sections; I suppose my generation is a bridge between those who still like holding the book or something tangible and those who are entirely electronic in their reading process.

2. The newest Stuff White People Like, which is on personal anecdotes of poverty.

Most of the time, I have a good laugh at what comes out of this site. They often hit the nail on the head and usually call me, and presumably other readers, out on things that we do so involuntarily in a way that's both funny and a little uncomfortable at times. This edition, from their recent competition for new entries, made me wonder if it weren't possible to take it one step further from just college-age experiences of poverty to experiences of seeing poverty close up and claiming some ownership over it. Like part of what I'm doing now. I catch myself back home from time to time talking with a bit too much omniscience about the experience, or even just the expression, of poverty in the places I've worked. I'm not trying to devalue my experiences here, but to remind myself that spending a summer or a month somewhere leaves me with context that, while useful in many conversations and for personal grounding, that is mostly anecdotal. I'm reasonably confident in my own self-reflection that I wouldn't go so far as to say "I know what it's like to live as a poor person in Malawi," because under no circumstances have any of my experiences gotten me close to living outside a well kept inn. But just as I revel in how many stamps there are in my passport, I think I buy into something that is particularly emerging among educated Americans, especially at a place like where I'm in school, to have done work abroad. Many of the people with whom I share classrooms can toss around stories like, "When I was in [country], the situation there was [description from one incident they witnessed]" as though they have expert knowledge of the situation. It's like what some of the comments in the link mention about sympathy v. empathy. I feel like there's something, whether it's insecurity or arrogance, that makes people feel comfortable appearing as though they know what poverty is like.

This gets to the point that I've come to before: in almost all of my work, I'm an outsider. And more to the point, in a lot of ways, I, by virtue of my nationality, education, university, skin color, and relative wealth, have a lot of power right from the start. And yet, with all this talk about community-based participatory research (which I'm beginning to think is indeed just rhetoric) in the U.S., I realize how terribly difficult it is to do that well. I'm not a member of "the community" (whatever that means). Even in the instances when I have been working within segments of what are, on paper, "my community", I didn't really feel apart of "the community" and felt able to represent that "community's" voice to a very small extent. More to the point here, I've had a rather privileged life such that I don't know what it's like to be poor, nor to live in a rural area; I certainly don't know what it's like to be a Malawian. And while I'm going in the fall to be studying for a degree that will likely make me an "expert" in a certain field, I struggle with exactly how much I may know empirically and how little I know experientially. I also think that part of why I'm drawn to doctoral studies is that it may remove me from having to deal with that paradox: I can analyze the data and contextualize the results with the experience that I do have, but I may not have to go much further. I'm not quite sure how good or bad of a thing that is. I think realizing it is important--it checks the ego that comes with the altruism--but I'm not sure whether that's quite enough, nor exactly what else to do about it.

When it comes to turning that altruism into action, I think things get even fuzzier. This country has so much foreign aid coming in--the big debate in Parliament right now is about the budget, and the party in power's criticism of the opposition holding up the process was that doing so was "preventing development from happening"--and I really doubt how much of the aid is really addressing the problems that people face. There is also the question of whether the money actually gets close enough to the intended recipient once funneled through expansive bureaucracies and big US salaries (a job I might have some day). But in terms of the content and mechanisms of the "interventions" that are happening, I really wonder how much of them are driven by "the community." Rather, I think so many of these ideas are dreamt up in New York, London and Washington and are either totally irrelevant or useless to the people who get the intervention. A brilliant thing about the cash transfers was that it cut all that out; the program gave money to the people. There are clearly sustainability concerns there--what happens when the money runs out?--but it strikes me that the average person wouldn't say that a lot of the larger projects running in these areas (a flop of a farming project funded in part by the US comes to mind) are really all that useful. Or that there are some many strange and idiosyncratic ties to the money that it makes it more difficult to manage than it can help (a certain funder in India that would only fund STD testing and not HIV testing and had weird reporting requirements that made the total number of people served look larger than it actually was). Moreover, there's this interesting disconnect from people in the West who take jobs at NGOs because they want to do good work, help people, or a variety of other good reasons; here, people want jobs at NGOs because they're by far the highest paying jobs around. Which isn't to say that people here don't also want the jobs of the same reasons as the people in the West, just that with money there's power (the people who get those jobs are educated Malawians, frankly often over-qualified to be doing some of them), and another level removed from "the community".

I guess where I'm going is how can one work with particularly disenfranchised, or hard-to-reach populations in a helpful and not-condescending way? The people in Washington (or me in Boston) have plenty of data to make a good story of what's necessary (and enough of it, frankly, to cook into telling any story they want). But how much does that really get at the right solutions?

I think that's part of why I'm interested in evaluation. It's naturally reactive and can analyze how and why something didn't work so that you can improve on it. Everyone's a critic, right? But because I'm averse to thinking that I have the answers, evaluation is, in some ways, an easy place to be.

Possibly the thing I like most about being here is having the space and time to ramble on about all this stuff. The irony of being in school where we're taught to think critically is that I rarely feel like I have the time to do so about anything bigger than the task at hand. At some point, there needs to be a way to let it all come together into a sum greater than all the annoying classes that comprise the parts. I found that here last year, and selfishly, that's a big reason of why I wanted to come back. Although maybe the security guard at the airport was right--he said, "ah, so all you do is take, but what do you have to give?" after telling him that I was here to do research. In his case, I think he was asking for money, but the question is relevant otherwise. I'm still working on a good reply.

random thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:53:00 +0000

The power is out (5:50pm is a usual time for it), but K and I are watching Drop Dead Gorgeous on an extra laptop.

A few things from today:
1. some of the responses to the survey made me wonder about having so much faith in god that it'll protect you from getting HIV. enviable, disturbing, just ill-informed?
2. the whole situation with zimbabwe's election is sad. that one else in the world cares enough to get rid of mugabe (I mean like an assassination or something). Like, if they were a country of any use to the west, there's no way this shit would go on.
3. i'm reading a calculus book for fun. also disturbing.

another video coming soon.

Weekend Update

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 18:51:00 +0000

To finish off the list of things we saw on this week's drive:
1. pigs running in the road
2. mother and daughter dressed as twins walking back from church
3. a rather poorly nourished dog doing some business (i'm trying to be clear without being graphic)
4. the mchinji football team, in coordinated uniforms, doing coordinated exercises before their game
5. the proliferation of Celtel (the big cell phone company)'s mailbox style stands, including one on the hospital grounds
6. getting stopped at the checkpoint
7. *not* seeing the monkey on the leash
8. nuns

others on the drive should feel free to add other things in the comments.

deadbeat

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:57:00 +0000

So the 70 year old PI on the project just called me a deadbeat for not going to the party the VCT (the HIV counselors) are having. In jest, but still. I feel like that should be a reflection on my character or some other sort of warning that I should take to heart. Is it bad that I'm comfortable being out partied by 70 year old academics?

put tongue to cheek

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:50:00 +0000

this is ripe with sarcasm and spot on in so many ways. it's sort of in the vein of "stuff white people like", where i laugh in agreement and want to cringe for doing other parts all at the same time.

http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa?view=articleAllPages

I'm still standing

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 22:16:00 +0000

It's been a while since the last post. I've been in the field three days this week, which consists of leaving here at 6:30 and getting back around 5:30. The power was also out for the better part of 24 hours (there was about 6 of them in the middle of Thursday where it was in fact on), which sufficiently screwed a lot of things up. In the meantime (today), I got myself a real, active internet connection so I'll likely be blogging more often. So I'll be catching up on emails and blogging shortly.

I spy with my little eye

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 18:06:00 +0000

So after last night's party, we were all hoping that there would be
some left over Cokes to have, but they (oh so shockingly)
disappeared. After the fourth or so person mentioned wanting a Coke,
Kim (with a car) suggested going into boma to get some. We all (Kim,
me, Crystal, other Kim, Josh, and their baby) piled into Kim's truck
and go. Once we have our Cokes, we decide to go for a Sunday Drive.
And so we head toward Zambia.

In fairness, the boma is about 10 km from the border, so going toward
Zambia just means going further down the road. But still. Along the
way, we passed the following:
1. a 4' snake that we ran over and totally flattened its head,
2. a monkey that was tied to a tree, with a man playing with/taunting
it (who then offered to bring the monkey up the hill to the road),
3. the border itself, and
4. a bunch of cows, including one nursing.

There was also a lot of grass burning, which happens along the side
of the road in order to clear the brush.

Sunday Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 12:56:00 +0000

I've been having a lovely Sunday morning--I slept in to 10, then made
some oatmeal and coffee (the french press was the best idea I've had
in a long time and the Starbucks coffee is coveted by all of the
azungus who've been in Malawi for a while), and have been sitting on
the "veranda" outside my room for the past two hours. It's sunny,
slightly breezy, and just a nice Sunday morning.

(I'm not mentioning the swarms of flies that won't go away--
seriously, I have about 5 on me right now--or that the stray dog we
call Stinker just got sick on the grass just up-wind from where we're
sitting).

Last night was a big party to celebrate the last night of fieldwork
in Mchinji. There lots of preparations (like 32 crates of beer and
sodas, 4kg of meat), including extensive time spent making the
playlist. But, commonly, when the time came for the party I wasn't
so into it. I went and had a few Cokes, chatted with one of the
azungus who's having a hard time being a little aimless here too, and
then went with Kim (who was here last summer and has been working in
Malawi all year) out to the railroad tracks behind the inn to
stargaze and chat. The music got better (at least for the
Malawians), but I was in for the night when I came back from the
tracks. I came late enough into this phase of fieldwork that I
didn't know any of the local staff, so it was just as well.

I ran into one guy who worked on my project last summer--he's a
supervisor for this project, too. He's a really nice guy; we emailed
back and forth a little over the last year, I sent him a bunch of
material for qualitative research and project management (similar to
logic models, for those SHDHs) via the Principal Investigator. It
was nice to see him, even briefly (they all left for the site in the
north this morning). He mentioned that C's been in country this
week, but I guess we didn't connect up. Oh well.

I'm feeling increasingly better about the work here. I feel like I
have a scope of work, which really helps. It consists essentially of
two things:
1. building the program into which all of the data will be entered--
they export it to India, which I find sort of ironic--and
2. working on a village level survey, including coordinating the
piece that involves getting GPS data and looking at the presence and
quality of the major community structures like roads, churches, etc.)
I think the work will be sort of interesting, and could potentially
be quite useful down the line. It'll also get me into the field,
which is good.

I like one of the main people I'll be working with, and I like that
I'm going to be in Mchinji for another few weeks. I also like that I
have some ownership over something--I grabbed onto one of the last
few things that was in development that I could help start, because
otherwise I knew I was going to get the short end of the work stick.
The main survey team will go to the new sites first and then we
follow once they're done. I'll probably get to see all of the sites,
which is good.

There's already a trip coming together to the lake in a few weeks.
And Emily's coming down from Rwanda in August, which will also be
awesome. I don't think I'm going to get out of Malawi this year, but
I hope to see a little more than I did last year.

It's nearly lunchtime. I'm off to eat.

Sunday Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 10:59:00 +0000

It's nearly lunchtime. I'm off to eat.

Status Update

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:55:00 +0000

I'm finally online (seriously, I can't even go a week without getting
antsy). I'm shamming a connection from someone here, but it sounds
like I might actually be able to get set up with my own connection
through one of the ISPs here. I'm going to go into town tomorrow to
check it out.

I'm less waxing poetic about being here, and after one day of feeling
sort of aimless (which included reading the grant and napping), I'm
actually glad to have identified specific work to do. It's the
workaholic, control-freak in me, I know, but I just feel better with
some structure.

For anyone trying to reach me, for the meantime text is the best way,
probably to my U.S. phone. It may cost you more than a normal text,
so do it sparingly.

Arriving

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 16:00:00 +0000

I'm here. I might even say that I'm back.

I got to Malawi (with luggage, which seems to be the exception to the rule of others here) yesterday without a hitch. I left Boston Sunday night, got to London early Monday morning; after a 4 hour layover, flew to Nairobi, arriving late Monday night and spent the night there. I flew out from Nairobi (with a touchdown in Zambia) to Malawi Tuesday morning and landed around noon. I tried hard to plan my sleep strategically over the flights so that my body adjusted at least to London time, but I was much less successful than I'd hoped. I went to bed last night around 9:30, and after a particularly restless hour between 3 and 4 a.m., got up again around 10:00 a.m. I'm hopefully back on track—I'm going to find someone's water kettle to borrow for coffee when I'm done with this, which should help.

A couple of thoughts from the trip*:

The world is really small, especially that of development work and workers: 1. I was sitting next to someone on the London-Nairobi flight who did her masters at KSG (er, HKS), who was a former classmate of someone who works in the same division of one of the UN agencies as a good friend of mine (another alum of the same program a few years earlier). She was going to Kenya to do cash transfers work. 2. The person I was staying with in Nairobi apparently did a story on this woman who runs a small medical shop in Kibera (the Nairobi slum) whom I had also interviewed for the project I did through the business school this spring. The nature of the interviews was different (hers was to highlight the program, funded in part by her organization, in light of the post-election violence earlier this year; mine was more to understand the medical system and how we might be able to build on the model of her clinic), but still quite odd that we'd spoken to the same person.

These places feel familiar: Driving to the house I was lucky enough to stay in Nairobi, I realized that I could totally follow the route we were going (and knew that it was sort of cross town from the airport). I could also do the same in Lilongwe yesterday; we had to run a bunch of errands in town, and I remembered all the places we were going and how to get between them. I also remembered my way around the Shoprite (the big supermarket), which is just as handy as getting around town. There's something really comforting about feeling like I know where I am, even though I also know that navigating the newness is what's fun and what makes it all stick in my head in the first place. We'll likely be leaving Mchinji for either the north or the south soon, so the newness will come soon enough.

I figured out that over the 15 months from June 2007 to August 2008, I will have spent roughly 6 of the months out of the country, 5 of them in Malawi or Kenya. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this familiarity.

The more things feel like they're the same, the more they've changed:

At the same time, it feels really different being back here. Last year I was here for the experience and this year I'm here to work. Obviously, I'll enjoy myself here and get into the field as much as possible, but I feel much more focused this year, which, while focus is potentially good or bad, at the moment it feels pretty good. I spent a lot of the restless hour last night thinking about stuff--taking stock of last year and making sense of what's next—and it felt good to be here to do it. In some ways, I feel like Malawi is my place to think; it's where I decided for sure to apply to doctoral programs and now I'm back to imagine what I want out of that experience. I'm also here to get a sense of what this project is all about, and whether (and how) I might want to work with this data in the future.

I guess in the end, it's day one and I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store. I'm also looking forward to figuring out how the hot water in these showers work again—cold showers are one thing I didn't miss.

*I should mention as a general disclaimer my usual hesitation about what this blog is all about. I ramble about professional stuff, update (rather explicitly) about my day-to-day goings on, and generally post things so that my mother doesn't worry that I'm dead. So I don't know how this will play out this time through, but here goes nothing.