Zara Round the World

Bahir Dar: Amazing Monasteries and Not-So-Majestic Waterfalls

2010-04-04T20:29:00.000+02:00

After a few days in hectic, crowded Addis, we headed for the peace and serenity of Bahir Dar. Located on the shores of Lake Tana, the 3rd largest lake in Africa, Bahir Dar is the jumping off point to visit the dozens of monasteries in the area, as well as the Blue Nile Falls. Even though it is the third largest city in Ethiopia, BD still has a sleepy, tropical quality, but also a holy and mystical vibe, thanks to its high density of places of worship in the area. This all seems well and good until 4am, when you are awoken by the chanting of monks (which I, conditioned by my time in Cambodia, mistook for karaoke), or 5:30am, when you are re-awoken by the Muslim call to prayer.

Since we were already awake, we decided to get an early start on the day, knowing that we had a lot to cover in our one day in BD. After a quick breakfast, we met up with two girls we had met on the plane from Addis the night before, who were also only in town for the day. Together we negotiated to rent a motorboat for the morning ($25 each) so we could visit some of the local monasteries, which are located on 20 of the lake's 37 islands. These monasteries, which together constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, date back to the 14th century but are largely still active. Women can only visit a few of these monasteries however, so we set off for the two most accessible, female-friendly sites.

Although the shores of the lake were the setting of common activities like bathing, laundry, and children's water fights, the lake itself is home to a unique form of transportation: the papyrus boat. Developed by the Egyptians 6,000 years ago, these boats are made from bundles of papyrus reeds, fashioned into the shape of a canoe or kayak. These single-seat vessels take approximately two weeks to build and last for up to six months. Today they are used mainly for fishing and the transportation of goods to and from the islands, a journey that can take three or four hours on Lake Tana.

Using papyrus boats to transport charcoal to the island monasteries

Of course, being in a motorboat, it only took us 45 minutes to reach the first monastery. When those of us in the US think of "monastery" we tend to think of a giant stone fortress, cold, damp, and colorless. The Ethiopians have a different concept of "monastery"--extremely simple living quarters next to a small, one-story, circular building with a straw floor and vibrant murals, which serves as the church. All the ancient monasteries/churches in this region have a similar design inside: three entrances (for men, women, and clergy), and a square structure inside called the Holy of Holies. On three sides of the Holy of Holies there are doors (through which only priests and monks can pass), and on the fourth a set of three false windows. The outside the Holy of Holies and the ceiling are covered with colorful paintings depicting various biblical stories and the miracles of local saints. Inside the Holy of Holies is a replica of the Ark of the Covenant, which is said to contain the original stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written. Those who belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (40 million people) believe that the original Ark is kept in the Church of Saint Mary of Zion, located in Axum in northern Ethiopia.

After walking past the living quarters of the priests and nuns of the Entos Eyesu (left), we arrived at their small church (below left). Upon entering, I was struck by a few things. First, how colorful the murals the covering the Holy of Holies and the ceiling were. Second, how much blood was depicted in these graphic paintings. Third, how small it was, given that services are still performed twice a day. There are no seats and barely enough space for a couple dozen people to stand. Speaking of standing, at every church in Ethiopia there is a pile of polished sticks, each of which is about four feet tall. These are called leaning sticks, since they used by monks and priests when they stand for days in prayer. (Apparently too many elderly monks were falling down during long meditative sessions.) Our guide took some time to explain the biblical stories painted on the outside of the Holy of Holies and took particular pains to describe the story of St. George, the patron saint of Ethiopia. St. George was a Roman soldier/priest most famous for slaying a dragon and saving a princess; apparently fairy tales like to pull stories from the lives of saints. We also learned the story of Saint Jerome, who managed to tame all the wild beasts around Bethlehem. Even though he is often depicted riding a lion, our guide pointed out that "it is hardly possible for a man to ride a lion like a horse," I think out of fear that we farangi (foreigner) women would see a lion and try to jump on it. Our guide, Riyot, who had a knack for being unintentionally funny, also coined a new term, "wild toilet opportunity," which is an ideal time and setting to go pee in the bushes.

After leaving Entos Eyesu we rode for another 40 minutes to Zege Peninsula and the Ura Kidane Meret monastery, the oldest and most famous of those on Lake Tana (right). A twenty minute walk in from the dock, the building is make of bamboo-like sticks and giant wooden doors. Although most of the frescos date from the 13th and 14th century, there are some new additions, as evidenced by the fact that they contain machine guns. Adjacent to the church was a "museum"--a glorified stall-- with a collection of ancient crowns, illuminated manuscripts, and crosses tipped with ostrich eggs. The justification for using ostrich eggs has something to do with the fact that if the male parent leaves it, the female will protect it, which is supposed to correlate to the stories of Jesus and Mary, I believe. It seems that every aspect of the churches in Ethiopia, down to the number of stairs outside, has some numerical significance/relationship to the Bible. There are the holy trinity, the four gospels, the seven heavens, the twelve apostles, etc. However, it seems you can get too much into this numerology, since, by the end of the trip, whenever we would ask "what is the significance of X number of Y in this building's design?" and our guide would give us a skeptical look and say "nothing."

A monk teaches a young pupil

Following a quick lunch of traditional Ethiopia food back in Bahir Dar, we boarded a bus with our afternoon guide, Tom, and a dozen other travelers to go to the Blue Nile Falls. Although we were warned by the Lonely Planet that the falls are not as majestic as they once were, thanks to the installation of a new hydroelectric dam, we decided to go anyway. The 45 minute drive to the town near the head of the falls was glimpse into life in the countryside of Ethiopia. The land in this region of the country is vast, brown, and arid, with a few stick huts dotting the sides of rugged mountains. Although 85% of people in Ethiopia depend on agriculture to survive, it is not an easy place to farm. The land is rocky and dry, the heat punishing, and the rains unpredictable, but somehow people have managed to survive here for thousands of years, a testament to the resilience of its people.

Adding to their challenges, only 13% of people in Ethiopia have access to electricity, which makes the new hydroelectric dam (or "water plantation," according to the locals) a serious blessing. Short-sighted tourists may complain that the waterfall has been cut back to 5% of its original volume, but thousands of newly-connected families are experiencing a significant improvement in their quality of life. Of course, the country remains one of the poorest in the world (214th out of 228) and most people still lack access to clean water and proper sanitation.

Upon arriving at the falls after a short walk and boat ride, we walked around for a while, assisted over the rocks by young, but much more agile, children. Then, exhausted by the scorching heat, we headed into the town for a soda and some shade. After staring at me for a while, the proprietress of the little shack/cafe asked me, through the guide, if I was "half-caste," by which I think she was asking if was half Ethiopian, half something else. After explaining that no, my family is from India, she indicated that something in the shape of my face and/or head is typical of Ethiopians. As it turned out, this was to be the first of many such awkward and bewildering encounters during our trip.

When we returned to our guest house that evening I was extremely tired. Sitting in a comfortable A/C office for the past eight months (and before that, the cold of Ann Arbor) has made me less tolerant of the heat and direct sunlight, it seems. Suffering from heatstroke, I climbed into bed and left it to Camila to sort out our hotel arrangements for our next few stops, lest we should have a repeat of what happened in Addis...

The town near the Blue Nile Falls

Addis Ababa: Bum Rushed by Donkeys

2010-02-24T13:36:00.162+02:00

I can just see it now, my obituary in the Brown Alumni Magazine. "Zara Ahmed, aged 25, was crushed to death by a stampede of donkeys on the streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on February 12th. Why she didn't have the sense to get out of the way is unknown. In light of this tragedy, Brown is incorporating a session on 'Donkey Dodging' into the freshman orientation curriculum."

Okay, so I'm being melodramatic. But when you're walking down the street of a major city you don't expect to suddenly face a pack of donkeys running down a hill right towards you. And we did get out of the way--the donkeys just happened to also turn in that same direction.

So how did I end up in this situation, you ask? Well, I agreed to go on vacation....

This whole adventure started when my friend Camila (an American living in Kigali) asked me if I wanted to join her on a trip to Ethiopia. Having not taken a day (or even hour) off of work in more than four months, I said yes. So one Thursday afternoon we set off on an ambitious five city, ten day tour of Ethiopia.

Our extensive pre-trip planning told us that this wasn't a popular time of year to travel to Ethiopia and that there was really no need for hotel/hostel reservations. Nevertheless, we tried our damnedest to arrange all our accommodation in advance, but couldn't seem to get through to a place in Addis Ababa (our first stop) that would take reservations. We decided that we would ask to crash at a the house of a friend of mine from grad school, if nothing else worked out.

This was not a great plan, as it turned out. Arriving in Addis at 8:30pm Thursday night (and after having the immigration guy tell me he only wants to marry an Indian woman), and still without a hotel reservation, we found that our Rwandan phones, which we had counted on working in Ethiopia (the same network is used in both countries), didn't work, so we couldn't call my friend and beg for a bed for the night. Without any other options, we took a taxi to the main backpacker area of of town in search of an available room.

Addis, in comparison to Kigali, is a large, sprawling, dirty, polluted, but still charming city of about 4.5 million people, the equivalent to half the total population of Rwanda. What struck me most during the 20 minute drive was how many people were out walking around at 9pm. In Kigali, once the sun sets at 6:30pm, the city becomes a ghost town--"nightlife" is an oxymoron in Rwanda. In Addis, the streets were filled with people young and old, coming and going, and shops were still doing a bustling trade. The young couples were holding hands, families outwardly affectionate to each other, which was quite in contrast to the more reserved nature of Rwandans. And there were neon lights and traffic jams- two other things you don't find in Kigali. Although just a two hour flight away, it felt like we had come to another continent, if not a different world.

We were shaken out of our reverie when we arrived at our intended destination, a backpackers' establishment recommended in the Lonely Planet. Before we could even open the cab door (or the cab driver could open it for us, since the rickety thing couldn't open from the inside), the guard told us they were full for the night, but recommended we try a place across the street, also a LP recommendation. It too was full, but the manager recommended a place around the corner. The cab driver, who had come with me into the second place to inquire, got on his cell phone and (claimed to) call the third hotel, which he said was also full. (They speak Amharic in Ethiopia so there was no way of verifying his claims.) However, predictably, he said he knew of another hotel that was sure to have a room available--it was owned by a friend. At his mercy, we agreed to check out that hotel, which it turned out was another 15 minute drive away.

The shag on the dashboard of our cab, which went all the way across.

After a few wrong turns, we finally found the hotel down a long dark alley. Unfortunately, when the driver and I went inside, we found that the manager was in the middle of negotiating the letting of the room to an Asian businessman. The driver, now feeling guilty and embarrassed, started talking to the driver of the businessman's taxi. That guy, who actually spoke a little English, asked us if we would be willing to pay $30 for a room for the night. (All these other places were in the $10-$20 range for a double.) It was by then 10pm and we would have paid 10 times that for a room, so we of course said yes. Our cabbie then followed the other a short distance, turning off the main road, past a large, proper hotel, to another guesthouse. Blessedly, the fifth place turned out to be the charm, and after five minutes of panicked pounding on the gate, we discovered that they had a room was available for $30. It was basic but clean, and they promised us the shower had hot water. (I am a baby and hate cold showers.) Exhausted, all we wanted was a hot shower, a cold drink of water and a good night's sleep. Unfortunately, the shower turned out to be frigid, I couldn't get my water-sterilizing pen to fit inside my Nalgene without some contortions, and mosquitoes buzzed all night, keeping us awake.

This was not the optimal start to our trip, but we hoped, as Jim Lovell/Tom Hanks put it, that we'd "had our glitch for this mission."

The next morning we woke up happy to not be on the street, but in desperate need of a hot shower. Because it seemed that the odds of our shower getting fixed were extremely low and we still had another night in Addis, and it was Camila's birthday, we decided to splurge and move to the hotel we had passed on the corner, which looked like it actually had hot water. And so at 8am we paid our bill and hauled our stuff down the street to the Axum Hotel, which was probably the best decision we made during the entire trip. Not only did the room (which was smaller but mosquito-free) have hot water (although we did require assistance from the bellhop to figure out how to get it to work), but the reception staff was able to solve all of our other problems, namely not having a phone that worked. And by "solve" I mean the receptionist let us rent her SIM card for $7 a day, which was extremely helpful since only Ethiopians can purchase/legally rent a SIM card. Meanwhile, Abel, another concierge, kindly drew us a map of how to get into town and where to find the Ethiopian Airlines office so we could buy tickets for our travel within the country. He and the bellhop even put us on the correct minibus (i.e. a packed 14 seater van with a young guy hanging out the side shouting the next destination), after we ate breakfast at a small place around the corner.

During ride to the center of town, we got a better look at Addis. Even more bustling in the daytime, the city is a densely-packed, colorful mix of the modern and traditional, rural and urban. Most women, Christian and Muslim alike, keep their heads covered, but wear their white head-scarves over western dress. Mercedes sedans crowd the road alongside goats, sheep, and yes, donkeys.

Thirty minutes and $0.14 later, the bus "conductor" told us to get out, as we had arrived at Meskal Square, massive intersection in the heart of Addis. He pointed to the right and gestured that we should walk in that direction--apparently the hotel bellhop had explained our incompetence to him. And so we started walking, over the broken sidewalks (all sidewalks in Addis are broken) into a more commercial part of town. And that's when we got bum-rushed by the donkeys- in the middle of a main road, in the middle of the day, with cars whizzing by. There were about 10 of them, trotting down the hill. Unfortunately, lost in our wanderings we didn't see them until the last minute, but we did make an effort to get out of the way. But it seems that donkeys interpret "I'm getting out of your way" to mean "Please, come run directly in this direction." And so we went to Plan B: stand perfectly still and hope that, even as stupid as they are, the donkeys will try not to knock you over. Luckily, our donkeys were smart enough not to knock us over, so we continued on our way, now very much awake.

We spent the next two hours at the Ethiopian Airlines office in the swanky Sheraton Hotel, trying to work out our itinerary for the rest of our trip. It turns out that if you fly EA into the country, all your domestic tickets are 1/3 the regular price, meaning that each of our 20 minute flights came to about $30--including a snack! What value! (US carriers, take note.)

Another problem solved, we continued walking up the hill into town. Addis located is at over 7,000 feet elevation, so climbing a hill (or even walking on a flat street) can really wind you. Our next destination was one of the four (according to the Lonely Planet) tourist attractions in Addis: Holy Trinity Cathedral. In another display of Ethiopian hospitality, a nice young man noticed our confused wanderings and kindly guided us to the church (which you really do need a local to show you to). The grounds around the cathedral were silent and still, with hundreds of people standing outside in reverent prayer. Most of the people were women but all were clad in white, with their heads covered. We felt quite out of place in our street clothes, following our guide through the throng. However, instead of hostile looks, we received only smiles and a warm welcome from the groundskeepers, who invited us to walk around and apologized for the fact that a religious ceremony was going on and we would not be able to go inside the church.

Holy Trinity Cathedral, the second most important place of worship in Ethiopia.

And so we thanked our guide and walked around, admiring Ethiopia's second most important place of worship and trying not to disturb those in prayer. After a little while we decided to carry on and head towards King George IV Street and the national museum. Another 30 minutes of walking uphill in the heat and we were ready for lunch. This turned out to be good timing, since everything in Addis (and indeed, all of Ethiopia) closes from noon until 2pm. One giant pizza, $3, and half an hour of eavesdropping on a group of young Euro tourists later, we walked across to the street to the museum. The main draw of the museum is Lucy, the 3.2 million year old fossil of a bipedal hominid; until late last year she was our oldest known ancestor. Admission to the museum is only 5Birr ($0.37) but for that price you can see the throne of Haile Selassie, some artworks by famous Ethiopian artists, and a display of ancient fossils discovered in Ethiopia, as well as Lucy. Strangely enough, the crown jewel of the museum, Lucy, is kept in the basement, in the very last, cramped, room. Nevertheless there were two striking things about the display. First, Lucy is tiny, just over 3 1/2 feet tall. Second, the area in which Lucy was found is a huge, desolate, barren, scorching desert. How the paleontologists managed to find Lucy in this vast and harsh environment is beyond my comprehension. Even a non-scientist like me can appreciate the enormity of their achievement.

After the museum we caught a minibus back to the hotel, where we congratulated ourselves on successfully navigating our way home by taking a nap. Then it was on to dinner at a cafe across the street. One of the most unexpected things about Ethiopia is, for a country most associated with the word "famine," how cheap food is. Really, you have a try very hard to spend $5 on a meal, and even that seems silly since even the cheapest meal is delicious.

The next day, Saturday, we decided to try our hand at visiting another church, St. George Cathedral in the heart of the city but just our luck, it was another holiday and we could not go inside. Another plan foiled, we decided to do something I had never done before: drink coffee. Yes, believe it or not, I survived four years of Brown, three years of grad school, and two years of being a manager at a fair-trade coffee shop without drinking coffee. But since I'd eaten caterpillars in Cambodia, uncooked sheep liver in South Africa, and bushmeat in Cameroon, I figured that should try coffee in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, something possessed me to order an espresso. Only a significant amount of sugar could make it palatable, but I did get it down and vowed to try coffee again, without sugar, before we left the country.

The view of Piazza (the main square) from St. George Cathedral. That's St. George on horseback.

After our coffee stop we carried on through town, stopping to buy some handicrafts along the way. Then it was time for a lunch of injera (which is like a spongy roti/bread), and tamarind-y beef--delicious. We also had some avocado/mango/papaya shakes, which seem to be ubiquitous in Ethiopia. From there we went back to Meskal Square, having walked the length of the city (or the city as it appears in the Lonely Planet's map), and caught a bus back to our hotel. Our flight to our next destination wasn't until 8pm, so we killed some time in bookstores, cafes, and internet cafes until heading to the airport at 6pm. Ours was the only flight of the evening, the small domestic terminal was empty and we passed the time watching children play and enjoying our Kindles (which I now believe to be the savior of every traveler).

As we sat there, gearing up for our next set of misadventures in Bahir Dar, all I could think about was how thankful I was to be indoors...and away from all those donkeys....

Update: Work and Vacation

2010-01-24T16:59:00.000+02:00

Again, another long absence from blogging. My apologies. This time my excuse is that my mentor/boss has resigned and I am taking over her duties, on top of my own. (See, isn't that a legitimate excuse?) Although I'm excited to be getting more responsibility, I now spend a good portion of my time uttering the following prayer to the public health gods: "Oh global health deities, let me not screw this up." Clearly, my time is being used in very productive ways.

In anticipation of another absence and the resulting angry email from my parents, let me share some good news: I'm going to Ethiopia! After not taking an hour off in 3.5 months, I decided it was time for a little vacation. Because I have to take this vacation before my boss leaves and I become permanently tethered to my desk, I will be gone from Feb 11-22, so don't expect any posts from me then. However, I promise a flood of posts upon my return, complete with pictures, or at least links to my pictures. During those 11 days we will be going to the historic cities of Lalibela, Axum, Gondor, and Bahir Dar, as well as Addis Ababa. If you want to learn more about these places (and to make sure they're safe, which I promise you they are) you can check out Wikitravel.

In case I don't get to post before I go, let me just say that I wish you all could join me on this trip and that its not too late to do so-- just jump on the next plane to Addis Ababa! I'll meet you there!

Christmas in Kigali

2010-01-10T21:26:00.076+02:00

A belated happy holidays to you all! I hope you had a relaxing, enjoyable time with family and friends and are ready for new adventures in 2010!

So how did I spend my first holiday season in Kigali, you ask? Well it was a pretty quiet affair, particularly given that I had to work Christmas and New Year's eves-- federal work waits for no (wo)man.

However, I was able to leave early Christmas eve for a lunch at a co-worker's house, which was a very nice, loud, family affair. I went with some of the drivers from our office, who decided that we should go by minibus. Most people in Kigali get around town by minibus, which are basically old rickety minivans crammed with twice as many people as the vehicle was designed for. I've traveled extensively by this means during my other trips, but this was my first experience with the minibuses of Kigali and was memorable for two other reasons. One, I saw how a gearshift works. Squashed up front between the minibus driver and a friend from work, the gearshift (which was hot!) was right up against my leg. The plate/squishy leather that usually covers the base of a gearshift was missing, exposing the inner workings. I spent the one-hour ride fascinated as the driver maneuvered the gearshift, which was in desperate need of some WD-40.

The other reason the ride was memorable was that I saw my first person with eleven fingers: the bus "conductor". Apparently there are quite a few people in Kigali with eleven or twelve fingers, but the young man collecting the 180 RWF ($0.31) fare was the first I had met.

The lunch was a festive event, with attendees ranging from only a few months to 80+ years old and coming from a variety of countries. I made friends with the kids by using my patented "no-shared-language-required-to-find-this-funny" 3 fingered reverse handshake, originally taught to me by street children in Cambodia. (Its a difficult handshake to explain but you can ask any of my travel companions for a demonstration.)

Christmas day dinner was spent at another colleague's house, with another couple from work sharing the meal with us, making it 4 real adults, a 6 month old baby and me at the table. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to be a companion for the baby or for the two married couples, but I felt more comfortable with the baby, so spent most of my time with him. After dinner I played Wii for the first time. It turns out that in the "Redneck Jamboree" game I excel at sawing wood but am terrible at dynamite fishing. Something to work on in 2010.

The rest of the holiday weekend was spent at various brunches and potlucks. The nice thing about not having family to spend the holidays with is that other people take a lot of pity on you, invite you over, stuff you full of food, and then make you take a week's worth home with you. Now I wish it could be Christmas every week.

As for New Year's Eve, it turns out a friend of mine from Brown is currently working in Rwanda, out in the boonies. He and a bunch of his colleagues came to town for the weekend so we caught up over dinner and I went to a party at his NGO's house, which is just down the street from mine. It was a nice change to hang out with people my own age, instead of people old enough to be my parents.

My birthday was spent eating the food I had collected over the week, which, for those of you who know me well, recognize as the best birthday present I could have asked for.

Although its hard to get into the Christmas spirit when its 80 degrees and sunny out, Kigali does its best to help. At the supermarket there was a (very scary) animatronic (black) Santa waving out front and a (plastic) Christmas tree was put up in the lobby of my building. Another thing that doesn't seem to change from one continent to another, that Christmas tree is still up. Let's see if its still there in June-- that would really be a taste of home. :)

FAQ

2009-12-13T21:17:00.001+02:00

Before I get to the post, let me apologize for yet another extended absence. But, funny as it sounds, I have a good excuse: my parents' long-lasting marriage. See, it was their 30th wedding anniversary on Wednesday, so for the past couple weeks my brother and I have been frantically putting together a e-scrapbook for them with messages and pictures from family and friends. (Leave it to us to wait until the last minute to finish a project we started in August.) The book turned out to be a great (but time-consuming) success and now that its done I can resume blogging, so let's get to it.

Over the past two months, in my conversations with you via Skype, email, gchat and other online mediums, there are certain questions which just keep coming up. For the sake of efficiency (and consistency) I've decided to address them all here, in a "Frequently Asked Questions on Zara's Life in Rwanda" session.

On Rwanda

What's the weather like?

Kigali may have the world's most consistent, temperate climate. The city lies just over 1.5 degrees south of the equator, approximately 90 miles (150km). Under normal circumstances, this would mean that it would be hot as hell year-round, but thanks to Kigali's elevation of over 5,000 ft (1,560 m), the city stays cool, with an average temperature for the year of about 70 F (21 C), and hardly any variations between seasons. Apparently, since I got here, we have been in one of the two "rainy seasons" for the year; I haven't noticed. Having spent the past several summers in places with infamous monsoon seasons (Mumbai, Dhaka, Mt. Cameroon), a few short afternoon thunderstorms hardly registers with me. In sum, its sunny and balmy. (I should point out that the downside of living near the equator is that the sun rises at exactly 6am and sets at exactly 6pm and after that it is pitch black. There are no long, late summer evenings here; dawn and dusk each last approximately 7 minutes.)

What side of the street do people drive on?

According to the law, the right-hand side. And in reality, the right-hand side. I mention both because very rarely in the developing world are those two answers the same. However, there is no standardization regarding which side of the car the steering wheel should be, so all is not in perfect order on the streets of Rwanda. Adding to the confusion, here left and right turn indicators don't actually mean you are turning left or right. These signals have taken on new meanings in Rwanda, creating a complicated new semaphore-esque language of flashing lights. Pass me, don't pass me, I want to pass you, I'm passing you, I'm slowing down, you're going too slow, I'm stopping soon-- all of these sentiments are expressed through turn signals. Like with any language (or the code of horn beeps in west Africa), it takes a while to pick up and until you do driving can be a bit dicey if you expect your fellow drivers to use their indicators as the engineers designed.
There is not a lot of traffic in Kigali (except for the one roundabout that constitutes "town") but the (very mountainous) roads outside the city are quite dangerous. Not only do drivers have to contend with trucks barreling downhill at full speed, but they have to dodge the streams of pedestrians alongside the road, since the single-lane roads have no sidewalks or footpaths next to them. And in an incomprehensible folly of civil engineering, there are 4 foot deep drainage ditches where the shoulder should be. Driving on these vertiginous roads you look to one side and can vividly imagine plunging to your death 3,000 feet down, then look to the other side and just as vividly imagine a tire slipping into the ditch and the car plowing into the rocky side of the mountain. This is why I choose to take a nap on such drives.

How do you get around?

Well, I walk to work, which only takes 20 minutes. For work-related travel, embassy cars take us. For personal trips, I call a cab; I have two great drivers on speed dial. Of course, if I had that Vespa I wouldn't need them....

On work

What's it like working in an embassy?

Like working in a fortress guarded by marines. Actually, its not as bad at our embassy as I imagine it is elsewhere, but getting your car inside is a minor production. We tend to have a lot of meetings outside the embassy since its a hassle to get visitors access.

What do you do all day?

Go to a lot of meetings, both within the embassy and outside. We have meetings with our PEPFAR team, meetings with implementing partners, meetings with Government of Rwanda officials, meetings with other donors. We have giant meetings with a few hundred people and meetings with just one other person. We call meetings "conferences," "workshops," "joint reviews, "strategy sessions," "forums," and a dozen other things to trick ourselves into thinking we aren't in a meeting. Actually, I shouldn't sound so bitter; most of these meetings are very productive and informative. When not at meetings I'm usually at my desk responding to emails (from the parties listed above) or writing pieces for our official reports. There's isn't a lot of time for Spider Solitaire or the Onion, alas.

What's it like working for a science-y organization like CDC?

Like being the a mediocre basketball player on a state championship-winning football team. I consider myself a relatively bright person, but when we have discussions on the efficacy polymerase chain reaction based testing or debate the merits of using dried blood spots versus dried plasma spots, I find myself sitting slack-jawed and silent. Of course, when I brought up the concept of diminishing marginal cost in a budget meeting, it was the rest of the team with blank looks on their faces. But having much more seniority, they could just ignore me and move on. On the plus side, when you say you're with CDC, people automatically assume you are an MD, as evidenced from the conference name tag below. In those situations I feel like Doogie Howser, which is nice.

On me

Are you there alone?

Yes, I am old enough to fly by myself, after all.

Are you lonely?

I may be alone, but I am definitely not lonely. The funny thing about being a foreigner is that every other foreigner automatically considers themselves your friend. Here's an illustration of this phenomenon. A couple weeks after arriving in Rwanda my office had me call a meeting of several partners (i.e. the organizations we give money to carry out programs). There were about a dozen people there, all but one of whom were Rwandans in their 30s or 40s. The one who was not a Rwandan was a Canadian girl in her 20s. After the meeting she very kindly emailed me, volunteering help if I needed getting acclimated to the country (she's been here a couple years). We began an email exchange and she invited me to a Halloween dinner. I went to the dinner and meet a great group of young, expat women. I asked them how they came to know each other. The most common answer: "I saw her on the street and I asked her if she wanted to be my friend." And so it is.

Have you gotten fat?

No, I don't think so. Blessedly, unlike during my previous stints in Africa and Asia, I am not forced to eat three all-carbohydrate meals a day and have no outlet for exercise. Beef and chicken are readily available, even though they aren't cheap. (Sadly, bacon, my favorite food, is not so easily found.) I cook for myself and thanks to Dama (see below), I have all my vegetables cleaned and chopped for me, which makes "cooking" really more of an exercise in throwing food from Tupperware containers into the stir-fry pan and waiting 5 minutes.

What do you eat?

Well, as just discussed, I often make a stir-fry, but I also end up eating out a fair amount. Pretty much every restaurant here, no matter what they claim to serve (Chinese, Mexican, French) serves pizza and pasta, so I end up eating a lot of pizza, albeit creative, fusion pizza. As for lunch, I eat at the embassy cafeteria, which serves Rwandan food as well as sandwiches, wraps, salads and other standard fare.

Why are you wasting your 20s in the middle of nowhere?

If not my 20s, then when? Right now I have the freedom (and energy) to pick a random country and move there, to go off on a weekend jaunt to Zanzibar, or to climb Kilimanjaro, whatever I feel like. Kigali may not be the most happening city in the world from a social point of view, but in terms of my career, I can hardly thing of a better place to cut my professional teeth.

Isn't your life hard there?

Quite the opposite--your life (for those of you in the US) is hard! Really, I do zero housework and everything is delivered to me. My apartment gets cleaned twice a week as part of my rental agreement (they even do the dishes and change the sheets and towels), and I have an amazing woman named Scola who comes once a week and for $9 cleans, does the dishes, washes and irons my clothes, and does all my grocery shopping; she even dices all my vegetables for me and makes me a giant green salad and a fruit salad. Jealous yet? No? Well I also get an excellent in-home mani/pedi for $12. Now you have to be jealous. Sorry.

This is my balcony, where I blog from. Rough, isn't it?

A Shameless Request

2009-11-22T16:49:00.002+02:00

Hello dear readers!

Thank you for your continued support and patience with my ramblings! Some of you have recently suggested that this blog eventually become a book. I think that's a great idea but I need your help to do it. If you enjoy reading this blog (or at least, tolerate it because my mom makes you read it), please become a follower. (See right.) The more followers I have, the more likely this blog will get noticed by a travel website and eventually a publisher. I promise to use any money earned from my travel writing to pay off my student loans and set up a savings account, not to buy the mint-green Vespa I so desperately want. :)

Your faithful, misadventure-finding blogger,
Zara

Back to the Field

2009-11-14T11:40:00.001+02:00

Before I arrived, I had heard Rwanda referred to as "The Land of a Thousand Hills." Now that I've been here a month and spent some time in the countryside, I can definitively say that "thousand" is a serious underestimate and "hills" a misnomer that misrepresents the steepness of the rises. Because of this rugged landscape, there is hardly a straight, level road in the country (or at least, the western half). If you have a fear of heights, get carsick, or have recurring dreams about driving off the edge of a muddy cliff and falling a few thousand feet to your death, Rwanda is not for you.

However, I currently have none of those problems, so when my office suggested that I spend a week doing site visits to health centers in the northwest corner of the country, I very happily agreed to do so. After spending three weeks running around to "H1N1 Emergency Task Force" meetings and updating epi-curves, I was quite excited to get back to the field, meet real people, and get a true understanding of the challenges facing the Rwandan health system. I spent most of my time in Cameroon doing sites visits (over two dozen of them), often walking (through calf-deep mud) to remote clinics and spending a few days observing the work being done there. More than three years of graduate school, it was these visits that gave me an understanding of the difficulties of providing health care in extremely resource-poor settings and an appreciation of the dedication and perseverance of the providers who work under the most challenging of conditions. (For more on my experiences researching the Cameroonian health system, check out my posts from summer 2008. Spoiler: A baby gets named after me.)

The purpose of our four-day excursion was to conduct an assessment at small health centers around the country. There were a half-dozen three-person teams doing this exercise, each with representatives from the CDC, the Ministry of Health (MOH), and the NGO currently supporting/managing the health center. Some teams were based in Kigali, but most were out in rural areas in the western half of the country, along Lake Kivu. My team was based out of Gisenyi, a stunning, what-passes-for-touristy-in-Rwanda town right on the lake and a stone's throw from the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). (See map at right.) Gisenyi lies in the shadow of Nyiragongo, a still-active volcano which last erupted in 2002, killing 45 people in the DRC. It's also 60km from the jumping-off point for gorilla tracking, which is what makes it semi-touristy.

We began our excursion on Tuesday morning. Although Kigali itself is characterized by its many hills, windy streets, and greenery, the moment you leave town all that becomes much more dramatic. The mountains are taller, the roads full of hairpin turns, and the land incredibly lush. There were stunning panoramic views of hundreds of hills, with low-lying early morning fog nestled in deep valleys, and a brilliant pink sky, but what amazed me most was that seemingly every square inch of land was terraced and farmed. Given that some of these hills appear nearly vertical, this is quite the feat of engineering. But it also speaks to the scarcity of land here in Africa's most densely populated country, as well as the devotion of people to their land.

Along the four-hour drive there were the standard scenes characteristic of Africa: skinny elderly men in suits riding bicycles, women who look as old as time carrying huge loads of firewood on their heads, small children in faded, tattered cast-off American clothes swinging mini-machetes on the way to the field, babies strapped to their mothers' backs, peeking around for a glimpse at their siblings. In some ways these scenes are reassuring, a reminder of previous time spent in Africa, and from the comfort of an A/C, moving car, its easy to romanticize the life of Rwanda's rural population. But the moment you step from the car into the blazing, dusty heat of town or the bitter chill of a mountain-top village, or haul a bucket of water up a hill or cook in the dark over a smoky wood fire, you realize that life is extremely difficult for most people in the developing world, regardless of how "simple" it may seem.

But I digress.

Most of the main road between Kigali and Gisenyi is quite good, although given the large number of petroleum-carrying trucks that alternately bring traffic to a grinding halt (uphill) and fly past dangerously close at high speeds (downhill), perhaps it would be better if it wasn't just one lane. However, the non-paved, dirt/mud tracks out to the health centers are typically crater-laden. The resulting ride is so bumpy and jarring it makes you wonder if you can get shaken baby syndrome as an adult.

After visiting one health center halfway between Kigali and Gisenyi on Tuesday, we came back to Kigali for the night. The next day, even earlier, we set off once more. Four hours later we meet up in Ruhengeri (see map) with some team members who had decided to stay out in the field the previous night. Ruhengeri is the last major town before the Ugandan border and, like Gisenyi, is a hub for UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) food distribution. It was around 9am when our two cars meet up on the main road in Ruhengeri. Given that the people in the area are very used to the presence of wazungu (white people) in the form of UN workers, what garnered us considerable attention was that a bunch of wazungu poured out of two giant SUVs, ran in circles around them, and then piled back in within a couple minutes. Kind of strange behavior.

For the next few days we drove from one health center to another, with my team covering seven. I know that doesn't seem like a lot of four days of work, but when it takes 3 hours to drive there and two hours to conduct the assessment (with most of that time spent combing through hard copies of various work plans and performance indicators), it was a fairly productive week. And quite frankly, I'm not sure I could have taken much more, given that I saw my life flash before my eyes numerous times during the week, as our car perched perilously over the edge of cliffs and we stared down into the valley a few thousand feet below. One slip of the wheel on the mud road, one moment of distraction from our 19-year old driver John, one rickety plank in a makeshift bridge and I wouldn't be here right now. I spent most of these hours alternately calculating the time it would take for a car to plunge 4,000 vertical feet and trying to calm myself down, arguing that if my three other teammates (who had 8 young kids between them) weren't fearing for their lives, neither should I. Can't say I succeeded in either venture--neither physics nor self-hypnosis have been strong points of mine. However, to my great surprise, we reached our sites safely and I was on occasion able to appreciate the stunning vistas, daring to look down from the ridge line at the lush, undulating green blanket that is Rwanda.

Overall our visits went well. Given that most of it was conducted in Kinyarwanda, my job was mainly to check off certain boxes on the assessment when told to, and to smile and seem less like a scary USG official and more likely a helpful ally in the fight for quality health care. I think I was more successful at the first task. Even though most of the conversations with the health providers was lost on me (15 minute discussions in Kinyarwanda were translated into "He says yes" or "She says no" summaries), I was able to learn a tremendous amount about the logistical, financial, clinical, and management challenges facing the facilities. Its always amazing (and inspiring) to me how people who may have had very little education, whose pay is 6 months delayed, who are caring for hundreds of patients a day, who are still keeping their records on paper, are able to provide efficient and affordable health care to so many people. No, it may not be of the quality we expect in American hospitals, but if these providers were unwilling to fight through these conditions, there would be no health care at all in most of the developing world. Sometimes I wonder if they can award the Nobel Prize in Medicine to "All the Overworked, Underpaid, Working-with-Insufficient-Equipment-and-Training Health Care Providers in the Developing World." Schmaltzy I know, but no more ridiculous than Obama getting the Peace Prize after less than 9 months in office (and I voted for him!).

But I digress.

There's no need for me to get into the details here, but here's a quick summary of what I took away from these site visits. One, many of the problems providers face are created by donors (USG, Global Fund, etc) and their endless reporting requirements. Yes, we have an obligation to make sure tax dollars are going to good use, but when clinics have to maintain their accounts by hand, quarterly reports become a giant time-suck. Two, the "long-run" isn't something most providers think about. They don't have time to consider strategic plans or sustainability measures-- they are too busy contending with challenges in the short-term. There are babies to be born, malaria to be treated, HIV to be diagnosed; developing five year performance targets doesn't rate high on their to-do list, and rightly so. Three, people here desperately want to gain skills and become more efficient, since they know that one day soon (thanks to the requirements of PEPFAR II), they'll have to do everything on their own. One clinic asked us to write down all the things we thought they could do better. Most of our suggestions had to do with management and documentation, since those are areas where providers lack skills. Being a good clinician isn't enough anymore, in any part of the world; you must also know how to run a facility, but I don't know of a medical program anywhere that teaches that.

So that's the work side of things. I can't say I did too much fun, personal stuff on this little trip. By the time we got back in the evenings and my heart rate came down to normal, it was time for dinner and bed. But on my last night in Gisenyi one of my teammates, who was working for the NGO partner, invited us to his house for the evening. My wazungu colleagues and I went over to his house around 7pm, when pitch blackness has settled over Rwanda. (This is the problem with being on the equator- very clearly demarcated hours of sunlight: 6am to 6pm.) After standing outside near a light and getting attacked by moth-dragonfly hybrid creatures, we went inside, only to be surrounded by hundreds more. They didn't seem to be bothering the 15 local people there, but we started killing all of them insight with our bare feet-- probably not the most appropriate thing to do, but one of my colleagues had a phobia of bugs. Following greetings, drinks, and speeches, it was "time for the babies." I knew my teammate's wife had recently had their second baby. I didn't realize that "recently" meant one week ago. The poor infant (who had a surprising amount of hair) was plucked from his crib and passed around, followed by his 14-month old sister. Although being attacked by bugs, feeling disoriented from having been discourteously woken up, and being forced to pose for pictures with wazungu, the little girl was incredibly adorable and sweet, if just a little grumpy. Who could blame her.

(My teammate was embarrassed by the closeness in age of his children, since so much of the reproductive health messaging here, with he is a part of, focuses on birth spacing. Its a complicated campaign, but the logic, in short, is if children are spaced further apart, they are healthier and more likely to survive past age 5. When I told him that my brother and I are only 16 months apart, he seemed to feel much better about things.)

When we finally completed our last site visit on Friday and started heading home, I was sad to go. There is so much about public health that is impossible to learn sitting behind a desk (not that I've sat behind mine for more than 5 minutes since I got here). Being able to put a face to the name and a context to the services is invaluable. Readjusting expectations to coincide with local realities is a part of public health that I think often gets overlooked by policymakers. I know I now have a much better frame for understanding the Rwandan health system and a deeper appreciation for how far it has come from its devastation 15 years ago.

You can check out all pictures from my trip to Gisenyi at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2144120&id=1012910&l=5e4d1d2b9c. There are more landscapes, more health centers, more people, and even me pretending to change a flat tire.

Just Dive Right In...

2009-11-01T19:50:00.004+02:00

Many of you have pointed out (repeatedly) that I have been delinquent with this blog. For that I can only claim swine flu. No, not that I have it, but that it broke the day after I arrived in Rwanda and for the first few weeks I was working almost constantly on the outbreak investigation. It wasn't until my third week here that I finally got a day off (and on that day, I slept, not blogged). The U.S. government (henceforth known as USG) certainly doesn't make life easy for its low-level flunkies abroad.

Let's start at the beginning. I arrived here on a Thursday afternoon. Friday morning I went to the office, attended a few meetings, and had a relatively low-key day. That was to be the last for a while. Saturday morning I received a text from my supervisor asking if I wouldn't mind being "on call" for H1N1 for the weekend. Not knowing what that meant and wanting to seem eager, enthusiastic and helpful, I said of course. The next day I found myself at a "Special H1N1 Outbreak Control Task Force" meeting being charged with coordinating and maintaining surveillance of all suspected and confirmed cases. Now, I am not an epidemiologist or strategic information specialist. I've never worked on an outbreak investigation. Infectious disease isn't my forte. Other than the four CDC folks there, I had never met any of the 12 people in the room. Yet for some reason they decided to give me the task of maintaining the line-listing, which is the official record of who is a confirmed case of H1N1 and all their vital statistics. On that day there were already 7 cases, but maybe they thought that would be all for a while, and that maintaining the list would be not be particularly time-consuming or important.

They were wrong.

Within a few days the outbreak had exploded, with up to a dozen new cases everyday. Every morning, starting that Monday, I would attend the four-hour daily task force meeting and gather all the data on the new cases from the lab and people involved in contact tracing.* In a country where information doesn't so much as flow as it does come to a screeching halt at the slightest hurdle, filling in just one cell in an spreadsheet can take hours. Getting a patient's age or date of diagnosis would eat up half my day. But because this was such a time-consuming process, no one else wanted to do it, which turned me into "The Holder of All Information." I was, for a few weeks there, the only person in Rwanda with the complete list of all the confirmed and suspected of H1N1 cases in the country-- a very strange position to be in.

Information really turns out be power, so I (or rather, my spreadsheet) became much in demand. On that first Monday, my second day on the job, we met with the Minister of Health, who was given a copy of my various graphs, charts and lists tracking the outbreak. Although he was happy with these pieces, he was unhappy about everything else in our (really, the Ministry's) handling of the outbreak and took the meeting as an opportunity to introduce us to the new task force leader.

And so it went for a while-- endless meetings, spreadsheet mania, and an ever-changing person in command. Each day we would receive news of people been sacked, "resigning," being brought in as yet another "supervisor." Task force members dropped like flies, only to be instantly replaced by more obliging minions. Throughout it all our mini-team of five CDC-ers sat by, jaws agape and brains reeling from all the changes.

To say this experience was a crash course in Rwandan politics, CDC bureaucracy, and public health practice would be an understatement. But by the time I handed over my spreadsheets to the ministry's new surveillance manager in week 3, I could definitively say that I had learned more than I had expected to in my first 6 months of work. The learning curve was Everest-steep, but I could not have asked for a better introduction to the key players and major problems in the Rwandan public health system.

However, it was a great relief to be relieved of my duties as surveillance manager. And of course, I was even more relieved to have escaped the experience without having contracted swine flu myself.

*Contact tracing: the systematic identification and diagnosis of persons who may have come into contact with an infected person.

Trivia, Because I Like It

2009-10-25T13:31:00.005+02:00

Since we all know I love trivia, here's some facts on Rwanda to throw randomly into conversation*:

147th smallest country on Earth, 2nd smallest in Africa (only the Gambia is smaller).
Slightly smaller than Maryland, but with nearly double the population (10.4 million compared to 5.6 million).
Most densely populated country in Africa. (However, only the 32nd most densely populated in the world. Asian countries dominate that list.)
First country in the world to have a majority of women in Parliament, with 56%. (This is also the highest rate of any country currently.)
Kigali has been named one of the safest and cleanest cities in Africa.
Plastic bags have been banned outright in Rwanda, making it one of the few countries (and the only developing country besides Bangladesh) to do so.
On January 1, 2002 Rwanda adopted a new flag (see sidebar), coat of arms and national anthem. The colors of the flag represent peace and tranquility (blue), wealth (yellow), and prosperity, work, and productivity (green). The new coat of arms contains the new motto "Unity, Work, Patriotism."
Known as "the land of a thousand hills" because of its rolling terrain.
3/4 of the population lives below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day.
90% of the working population are farmers.
Approximately 56% of the population is Catholic, 37% Protestant, 5% Muslim, and the remainder are athesist/agnostic or hold animist beliefs.
About half the world's 700 remaining mountain gorillas live in Rwanda's Volcanoes National Park, also home to Dian Fossey's research.
The real GDP growth rate last year was 11.2%.
44% of the population is under the age of 16.
Has an annual population growth rate of 2.78%, making it the 17th fastest growing country in the world.
Life expectancy is 47.3 years.
Total fertility rate is 5.43 children per woman.
70% of the adult population can read and write.
Of the 44 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Rwanda was ranked 5th on the World Bank's 'Ease of Doing Business' index (so invest here!!).

With that, I wish you success in Trivial Pursuit, trivia nights, and Jeopardy! May there be a category on 'Minutiae of Tiny African Countries.'

*Speaking of random facts sprinkled into conversation, my new favorite, highly-recommended, non-fiction book is "The Know-It-All: One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World". Plenty of good examples of awkward, trivia-laden conversations.

Rwanda?! Seriously?!?!

2009-10-11T08:32:00.000+02:00

In American games of word association, "Nigeria" is to "online banking scams" as "Rwanda" is to "genocide". If you ask people to name countries in east Africa they would probably come up with "Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwandangenocide." Most think that "Hotel Rwanda" is a real place (it's not-- the hotel portrayed in the movie is actually called the Milles Collines). If you ask whether the genocide is ongoing and if the streets still run red with blood, people would likely say "of course." This is what happens when the only things people know about a country are derived from a movie that portrayed events 10 years after the fact.

In sum, there are a lot of misconceptions about Rwanda. To remedy that, here's a brief history of Rwanda (including the genocide) in 5 minutes or less.

In the popular local consciousness Rwandan history is divided into two periods: before and after, with the dividing even being, of course, the genocide. The before time started about 10,000 years ago, when the land was first settled by pygmy (Twa) hunter-gatherers. The origins and order of immigration of the Hutus and Tutsi are not universally agreed upon, but it is generally thought that the Hutus, who were mainly farmers of Bantu descent from the west, joined the Twa approximately 2,000 years ago. Later the Tutsis, cattle-herders of Nilotic or Cushitic origin, migrated to the region from the north.

Eventually the Hutus and Tutsis came to dominate the area, driving the Twa into the forests. Over time the Hutus and Tutsis came to share a language (Kinyarwanda), religion, legal system, and land. They intermarried and lived side by side, and the ethnic distinctions between the groups soon became blurred. Most ethnographers and historians now agree that 'Hutu' and 'Tutsi' do not constitute distinct ethnic groups.

However, the names stuck and became associated with different positions in society, with Tutsis (who constituted the minority of the population) being considered the elite, thanks to their cattle, which was a more valuable asset than any crop produced by the Hutu farmers. Already a fiercely hierarchal society, the stratification accelerated in the 1860s during a military campaign led by a Tutsi king to consolidate the area now known as Rwanda. In the new, even more feudal society, Tutsis were nobility and Hutus vassals, but these categories were by no means binding. Yet each group developed its own culture and sense of identity, largely based on diet and physical characteristics. Eventually European colonizers would come to embrace these categorizations as well.

At the 1885 "Berlin Conference to Divide Africa", Rwanda (and its equal small southern neighbor, Burundi) was designated a province of German East Africa. After WWI, the League of Nations turned the colony over to Belguim as "a spoil of war." The Belgians took a "divide and conquer" approach to the population, who despite their differences had an unusual level of national cohesion, sharing "one language, one faith, one law." (Really, how many countries can claim that?) The Belgians, upon setting foot in the country, started running around measuring cranial capacities, protuberance of noses, forehead width, anything they could use to prove that a substantial distinction existed in the stature, intelligence and moral character of Hutus and Tutsis. Naturally, the found what they wanted to find-- that Tutsis were the "nobler" group (read: having physical characteristics that more closely resembled their own). In 1933 they used this "information" to issue ethnic identity cards, labeling 85% of Rwandans as Hutus, 14% as Tutsis, and 1% as Twa. No longer were the lines between groups porous.

In the new apartheid system, Tutsis enjoyed educational, political, economic and social perks, while Hutus fell even further into poverty. In 1957, fed up with being marginalized in the ethnically bipolar state, a group of nine Hutu intellectuals published the "Hutu Manifesto," which spurred a violent uprising by Hutus, and subsequent retaliation by Tutsis. Desperate to be relieved of the burden of managing a colony in chaos, in 1960 the Belgians announced they were splitting Rwanda and Burundi into to countries and would administer democratic elections in each, as preparation for independence. On July 1, 1962, independence was finally granted and Gregoire Kayibanda, one of the authors of the Hutu Manifesto, was inaugurated as the first President of Rwanda.

Over the next 30 years Rwanda's progress was hindered not only by its own Hutu (French-supported) dictatorship, but by violent events in next door Burundi between Hutus and Tutsis. And to the north, in Uganda, young, disenfranchised Tutsi men were joining the Uganda military in droves in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986, Paul Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi who was formerly the head of military intelligence for the Ugandan army (and who had also received military training in the US), co-founded the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel guerrilla group. After years of intensive training, the RPF launched an invasion into Rwanda in 1990, which led to three years of civil war. The war ended in 1993 with the signing of the Arusha Accords and the establishment of a power-sharing government, and for a short while there was relative peace.

On the evening of April 6, 1994, that peace was shattered. The plane carrying the (Hutu) presidents of Rwanda and Burundi was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali. The assassins are unknown, although rumors abound. Some think it was members of the RPF seeking revenge, while others believe it was Hutu extremists who were either a) frustrated with the president for negotiating with the Tutsis or b) looking for an excuse to unleash extreme violence on Tutsis.

That April night members of the Rwandan presidential guard and the Interahamwe (a Hutu youth extremist paramilitary group) began killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the capital. The violence quickly spread, as the military, in preparation for such violence, had installed 30,000 militia representatives around the country, or one militia member for every ten families. Some had AK-47 and others grenades, but the majority had only machetes, and most of the killing was conducted in a low-tech, brutal manner. The radio was filled night and day with songs and speeches urging the young Hutu men of the country to violence, a call they heeded.

In addition to angry young men, priests, politicians, teachers, doctors and community elders were all responsible for killing, some murdering with their own hands and some more deceitfully, as in the cases of priests who promised Tutsis refuge in their churches, only to lead the militias to them for slaughtering.

In 100 days, from early April to mid July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were killed. Between 10% and 20% of those slaughtered were moderate Hutus. Official government documents put the figure at 1,174,000, which amounts to 10,000 murdered every day, 400 every hour, or 7 every minute. In just over 3 months nearly 20% of the country's population was wiped out, leaving only 300,000 Tutsis to survive the genocide. Over 400,000 children were made orphans and thousands of widows were raped by HIV+ men.

Throughout the genocide the international community stood by silently. Rwanda, by coincidence, was at the time a member of the UN Security Council, which hampered efforts to send in peacekeeping troops, although there was never a strong desire among the major international powers to do so. The US refused to send troops, and when the African Union offered to intervene as long as the US provided the armored personnel carriers, the US army charged them $6.5 million for transportation, which severely delayed deployment. The UN security force in Rwanda, UNAMIR, was cut down to just 260 men after 10 Belgian officers were killed in early April. Finally, in late June the UN sent a humanitarian mission to Goma, Zaire, on the western border of Rwanda to set up a refugee camp.

The genocide came to an end in July when the RPF, which had been engaged in intense fighting in Kigali and the north of the country for months, was able to overthrow the Hutu regime and seize power. This small force brought a halt to the violence will almost no help from the world's military powers.

In the aftermath of the genocide more than 2 million Rwandan Hutus, many of them perpetrators of violence fearing Tutsi retribution, fled the country, largely taking up shelter in the UN refugee camps of Zaire. Simultaneously, more than 1 million Tutsis in exile returned to the country and set about reestablishing their life in Rwanda.

Okay, so that was Rwanda in the "before" time. Now on to the "after" time, a much more cheery era.

In most countries, intense violence begets intense violence, but strong leadership prevented such a fate in Rwanda. (Violence continued in eastern Zaire, but that's a story for a different post.) A coalition government of "national unity" was established in 1994 by the RPF. Political organizing and "Hutu Power" political parties were banned, but so was any discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, or religion, a policy strictly enforced. Discussion of Hutu or Tutsi identity was discouraged. In 1998 President Clinton visited the country and formally apologized for the US's complacency during the genocide.

In 2000, Paul Kagame, former leader of the RPF and vice-president, ascended to the presidency. In 2003 he won the first fully democratic elections since the genocide. He remains in power today, and although is considered by many to be a (benevolent) dictator, he has instituted a huge number of reforms to improve the economic and social conditions in Rwanda. One year ago he decreed that the nation's school system (and the entire government administration) was shifting from French to English in a move to become a member of the East African Community. The policy also represents a break from Rwanda's colonial past and a desire to be a part of the global economy. Next month the country will be hooked into a high-speed, fibre-optic network so it can better compete in high-tech service industries.

Today Kigali, and Rwanda in general, shows few signs of its past trauma. Yet, no matter how hard it tries, it cannot escape its negative image in the West as a land of violence, chaos, and barbarianism. I can only hope that this mini-course in Rwandan history (and future posts on my life here) will give you a more complete picture of the complex, complicated country Rwanda is, and how it is so much more than what happened for 3 months in 1994.

If you want to learn more about Rwanda and/or the genocide, here is some recommended reading:

"We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families: Stories from Rwanda", Philip Gourevitch-- An outstanding, well-researched book on the genocide and how the country coped in the first few years that followed.

"A thousand hills: Rwanda's rebirth and the man who dreamed it", Stephen Kinzer-- Excellent book on Kagame, his ambitions for Rwanda, and the spirit of a country trying to get back on its feet.

"Shake hands with the devil: The failure of humanity in Rwanda", Romeo Dallaire and Samantha Power-- The man left to lead UNAMIR examines his experiences with help from Power, a prominent academic and member of the National Security Council

"Land of a thousand hills: My life in Rwanda", Rosamond Halsey Carr-- Story of an American woman who lived in Rwanda from the 1940 through the post-genocide period. Great long-term perspective on things.

Thank You

2009-08-01T05:47:00.000+02:00

As I get ready to leave Bangladesh and close the door on my graduate school experience, I thought it would be good to say thank you to all those people who have supported me in my adventures abroad over the past three years. This is only a small token of my appreciation for all these people have done for me. I can only hope to one day more significantly repay their kindness.

To my parents, who never say "No" when I tell them where I want to go next, no matter how remote or crazy; they just say "Be safe" and "Can we visit?" And for teaching me two very important lessons: a person can adapt to any situation or set of conditions, and if you eat anything and everything people will like you.

To my brothers, Zamir and Akiva, who always find a way to support/harass me in their own special way, regardless of where we all are.

To the readers of this blog, some of whom I have never had the pleasure of meeting, who continuously cheer me on and make me feel like a much better writer than I really am.

To my friends, old and new, who remind of how lucky I am to travel so much by warning me about the perils of life in a cubical, and who pretend to enjoy to endless slideshows.

To my mom's family in Bombay, and Saint Fatima in particular, for showing me both how to have fun in the madness of the developing world and what it means to serve the less fortunate.

To my fellow solo women travelers everywhere, and Haley and Drew specifically, for paving the way, offering helpful tips, and providing much valued emotional support.

To the University of Michigan, which, perhaps unwittingly, has given me an obscene amount of money in summer travel funding.

To my professors, who taught me enough to make me look smart in front of my supervisors.

To the travelers I've met along the way for making me jealous enough of your trips to inspire me to continue exploring the world. And for not stealing my stuff.

And finally, to the kind people of India, France, Brazil, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Cameroon, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, and Bangladesh for making my travels over the last three years so enjoyable and enriching. From the anonymous, concerned street food vendors who gave me directions, to my NGO colleagues who taught me about hard work and dedication in the face of challenging circumstances, to the unforgettable individuals who shaped my adventures through their kindness, humor, and generosity (Tree, Grandma tailor, Kim Lai and Grandpa Lai, Bonay, Sun, Sharlotte, Elvis, George, Azad, Robi, and Sudhir, to name a few), I am incredibly indebted. They may not remember me in a few years, but their spirit will remain with me forever.

You Know You've Been in Bangladesh Too Long When...

2009-07-30T07:22:00.001+02:00

...you can name all four places in Dhaka where you can get a cold beer (Heineken only).

...you feel self-concious when people DON'T stare at you.

...every time a car honks you instinctively take a step to the left.

...the staff at Movenpick know you...and your favorite ice cream flavor.

...you refuse to get your news from any source other than Aljazeera English. (Seriously though, it's the best 24-hour news outlet by far.)

...you no longer ask for small or large sizes, but rather "Bangladeshi" or "American" size.

...you know all the commercials on HBO, Star World, and Zee Cafe, as well as the order and frequency with which they appear.

...you make promises like Bangladeshis make promises, i.e. intending to keep about 1 out of every 10.

...you've started scoping out rickshaw drivers to sponsor in the Tour de France.

...you walk on the street, even when there is a perfectlygood sidewalk available.

...your sweat smells like garlic.

...you've stopped complimenting people on their food or dress, out of fear that they will give you the food off their plate and the clothes off their back.

My Favorite Topic....

2009-07-10T11:03:00.001+02:00

FOOD! And more specifically, STREET FOOD!

So I've been eating pretty well here. Our cook, Robi, used to work in the kitchen of the Centaur Hotel in Mumbai, a pretty swanky place. His time there really shows--I've never seen someone julienne and chiffonade vegetables so perfectly (sorry dad). His knowledge of soup recipes seems endless,

which is great for me. His specialties are Chinese and Thai food, although he is of course an excellent maker of Bangladeshi cuisine.

Bangladeshi food is pretty much what you would expect--a twist on Indian food. Rice is the staple starch, with bread being considered a lower-status food. Meat is a bigger part of the diet than in Hindu India (fortunately) but pork is still verboten (unfortunately for bacon-loving me). Fish and shrimp are also popular proteins because of the coastal location. Dahl (lentils) is served with every meal but seems to come in only one color/flavor: yellow, with extra garlic. Chai (tea) is served anywhere, anytime, and with anything.

Driving around Dhaka you see signs for "fast food" everywhere. Fast food here includes typical Bangladeshi snacks or quick meals, as well as fried chicken (bizarrely popular here), sandwiches and burgers--halal of course. In our foreigner-heavy neighborhood there are also a Pizza Hut, a gigantic A&W, and a KFC which touts its peri-peri, a sauce characteristic of west African cooking--a unique melding of cultures and palates. We've also got decent Korean, Japanese, Italian, Thai, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants around.

But all of this pales in comparison to the delicious treats to be found on the streets and back alleys of Dhaka. Fried treats of every kind abound: deep fried potatoes, deep fried vegetables, super greasy samosas-- all delicious when they are served piping hot on an oil-soaked tissue.

There are plays on classic Indian street foods, including one of my all-time favorite foods, pani puri. In the Indian version, the paper-thin, crunchy, hollow shell (the puri) is filled, street-side, with tiny diced potatoes/chickpeas/lentils, a sweet sauce, and then filled with a spicy water (the pani). Obviously, filling a paper-thin container with liquid is a recipe for disaster, so you have to stuff the whole thing in your mouth as fast as possible after receiving it from the grimy hand of the vendor. Delicious. Amazing. Unforgettable.

In the Bangladeshi version, most of the excitement of pani puri is gone. The ratio of solid food to liquid is reversed, so the potatoes/chickpeas/lentils comprise the majority of the stuffing and thus absorb all the pani. Not as thrilling to eat, but still quite tasty. And the grimy hand part is still the same, so the authenticity remains.

And this being the developing world, there is, of course, my ultimate favorite food item- grilled meat on a stick. Here it is usually goat (which tastes better than one might think) or beef. Smoky, spicy, and salty, these kabobs can be found anywhere and everywhere, which suits me just fine. A good day in my book is defined as "ten meat sticks, ten pani puris, and ten deep fried vegetable balls." That's quite the well rounded diet.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the downsides of street food: the potential for traveler's diarrhea, amoebic dysentery, giardiasis, gastric ulcers and the like. But as someone who has contracted not one but two gastric ulcers from delicious, delicious street food, I think that when you do the cost-benefit analysis, you'll decide that the joy that comes from eating such wonderful food greatly exceeds the the trouble of having to buy toilet paper in bulk.....

The Odd Woman In

2009-07-01T08:49:00.000+02:00

I've been stared at my whole life. I've been "the only ____ person" in the room my whole life. I've grown up in places (Maine) and traveled to places (SE Asia, rural west Africa) where there are almost no other brown people around. I've been mistaken for Ecuadorian, Mexican, Middle Eastern, Filipino, biracial, Chinese (yeah I don't get that one either), and an even, most memorably, an albino. I've spent a summer having "hey white man" yelled after me. But all of those were relatively easy, uncomplicated situations---whatever I was in the eyes of the locals, a correct guess or not, I was definitely not one of them. The distinction was clear, black and white, that I was obviously not from there. As such I was treated as any foreigner would be regardless of their race or ethnicity: with curiosity, but also with generosity, kindness and patience.

But Bangladesh is a whole other ballgame. Never before have I had to travel, as an independent adult, in a country where the people look like me. Looking like a local but feeling like a foreigner is a complex and challenging existence.

It started even before arrival. Last year when I was waiting in the Paris airport for my flight to Douala, Cameroon, I spotted a young white woman in the gate area. Being the only two non-Africans boarding, it was almost automatic that we would be drawn together, kindred spirits in our out-of-place-ness. So we struck up a conversation and it ended up that we were going to be with the same organization in Cameroon, and in fact be roommates. I've had similar experiences of befriending a fellow non-local at a transit point a dozen times, in Kenya, Vietnam, Brazil, etc. Its a good way to meet people, hear about their travel adventures, and find someone to split the cost of a cab into town with.

But this year was different. There were about twenty young white people in the gate area waiting for our flight from Amsterdam to Mumbai, most of them traveling alone, many of them women--usually the prime candidates to come up to me and strike up a conversation. But no one did. (And to be fair, nor did I go up to them.) No doubt I was indistinguishable from the other brown faces in line, just another Indian heading home. In contrast, my roommate David, who is white, arrived in Dhaka with a handful of names and contact numbers of interns and graduate students (all white) he had met on his flight from Dubai to Dhaka. This wasn't a big deal, but simply an interesting testament to whom we identify with.

In this same vein I find myself feeling a bit awkward when go to restaurants and bars which are implicitly expat-only. (Local people are usually unable to afford the ridiculously inflated prices at these establishments and know of a better place down the street anyway.) The stereotypical expat in the developing world is white, so my brown face is often the only non-white one in the bunch. This, as we've discussed, is nothing new. But what is different is a sense that I am breaking the "no locals" rule, or people view me (as a Bangladeshi) as having bought my way in to the club. In these moments the phrase "second-class citizen/expat" comes to mind. This may all be in my head, and people may see no distinction between my white friends and I. But I don't know, since I have no non-white, non-Bangladeshi friends to compare notes with.

But more complicated than my relationship with white expats is my relationship with Bangladeshis. Being brown here equates to being a local. (Although there are a fair number of Bangladeshis abroad, seeing me as one of them back on holiday is not the default assumption.) As such people speak to me in Bangla. Not speaking a word of Bangla, and only a mere handful of words of Hindi, I reply (in English) that I don't speak Bangla. This is usually met with one or more of the following reactions: confusion, disappointment, surprise, confusion, mild sadness, and confusion. Then the conversation goes like this:

Bangladeshi: Sister, you don't speak Bangla?

Me: No, I don't. Sorry.

Bangladeshi: Sister, you are not Bangladeshi?

Me: No, I am American.

Bangladeshi: But sister, you are brown like me!

Me: Yes, I know. My parents are from India.

Bangladeshi: Then you speak Hindi? It is same like Bangla!

Me: Um no, I don't speak Hindi either. Sorry.

Bangladeshi: Okay. Hmm, American. I know, Obama!

Me: Yes, Obama. Very good.

If it goes beyond that initial exchange, the conversation inevitably turns to how I ended up in the U.S. and what my parents had to do (which to Bangladeshis means "pay") to get there. The desire to emigrate, which exists in all developing countries, is particularly strong here, not because Bangladeshis don't love their country (in fact they have crazy national pride) but because the competition for resources is so unbelievably fierce--a product of the high population density. And although Bangladeshis are always kind and these discussions never contain overt jealousy or resentment, I sense such feelings must be inevitable. It is a fair question: what have I done to deserve a life of privilege in America when there are so many millions of Bangladeshis slaving away just to scrape together enough savings to even apply for a visa? I have no good answer to this question besides luck, but this is unsatisfactory to all. But what I can offer is an acknowledgment of my good fortune and a sincere promise to make the most of the opportunities I've been given.

Then there is the issue of local celebrity. In Cameroon we would joke that the attention we received walking down the street was as close as each of us would ever get to understanding being at the center of a paparazzi frenzy. Having to shake hands with every child ten times and saying hello to every person who came out of their house to look at you can become tiresome, but its extremely flattering. Here I've traded that fame for the ability to walk down the street anonymously. The only stares I get are because of my gender rather than my race. (I know this because when kids stare at you, as they have everywhere else I've been, its because you look different; when only men (and no kids) stare, its because you're a woman not conforming to gender norms, as is the case with me and my short hair and western clothes.) Although this is a relatively welcome change, there are times when I wish for the celebrity. For example, when we go shopping in the local markets my friends (who are all white) are mobbed by people asking "What is your country? Are you married?" and other invasive, curious questions. I am usually left alone but find myself thinking "Hey! What about me? I'm foreign too!". Vain and bizarre, I know but that's the truth. I think it reflects the fact that to be foreign is "cool" and local is not in the minds of Bangladeshis, and who doesn't want to be in the cool crowd?

Lastly on this front, there is the matter of social norms. Because I might be a local, or at least am definitely from the subcontinent, there are things I can't get away with. I can't feign being unable to eat with my hand in order to get to use a spoon to eat a dish that seems to be 80% liquid--I should know how to do so. I can't wear a tube top under my sari at a wedding rather than a tight, ill-fitting blouse because it's more comfortable, as some of my American friends are doing--I should know better. I shouldn't let my roommate overpay for souvenirs--I should know the price locals get. (Although how on earth am I supposed to know how much an antique bell from a fishing boat is supposed to cost? Seriously?)

Of course, there are several positive aspects of being able to at least partially blend in. First, beggars are much less likely to bother me than they are David, as long as I'm wearing salwar kameez (the local dress). If I'm wearing regular clothes, the odds are even. Second, I can try the "I am your sister, your people; you should give me a better price" thing when bargaining. And if I'm with David or other white friends, the "I am your sister and I brought you my American (translation=rich) friends. You should be good to your sister's friends" thing. This is not a highly effective method of course but it does provide some bargaining leverage and injects the situation with a bit of awkward humor. Lastly, I don't scare babies. In Cameroon babies would either love me and be curious about my unusual features, or burst into panicked tears at the sight of me. It says something about how long I've been scaring babies that when Robi, our cook, mentioned bringing his 2 year old son to visit one day I, panicked, automatically said "Are you sure? I don't want him to get scared of us. Is he okay with foreign people?" which garnered me a blank stare from Robi.

So there you have it. Complicated, messy, awkward, funny. Lots of looks of puzzlement, on both my end and the Bangladeshis'. I guess this situation proves an old proverb wrong. In the new version it would be "If it walks like a local, eats like a local, and looks like a local, you should probably assume its a Scottish-born Indian American short-term consultant."

Where the Ladies At?

2009-06-30T23:16:00.000+02:00

Definitely not on the streets of Dhaka, that's for sure.

One of the most striking and immediately noticeable things upon arrival in Bangladesh is the relatively absence of women in public life. There are almost no women walking the streets (except at rush hour), sitting at cafes or restaurants, working in retail, or participating in social gatherings. I have yet to see a woman driving a car, or taking a rickshaw alone. Only after three weeks of being in Dhaka did I see a South Asian-looking woman (other than myself) wearing western clothes, walking down the street alone.

The male-dominated public sphere of Bangladesh is quite a contrast to the other places I've worked. In west Africa, women are ubiquitous and very much the engine of society; one wonders there where the men are and what their purpose might be. In Cambodia all the markets are run by women, with very few men as buyers or seller. Even in India, right next door, women play a major role in all aspects of public life and are prominent in business, entertainment and politics. Yet Bangladesh remains a society where women are neither seen nor heard.

Despite this relative absence, women do play a huge role in the country's economy. More than 80% of the workers in the garment industry, the nation's largest export industry, are women. But an estimated 75% of employed women are unpaid agricultural laborers, as compared to 13% of employed men. Women's labor contribution accounts for an estimated 55% to 66% of total labor per unit output for agricultural work. A recent interesting study found that in one area of the country a pair of bullocks works 1064 hours, a man 1212 hours, and a woman 3485 hours a year per one hectare of farmland. Because women tend to work in the largely unregulated informal agricultural sector, they are afford no legal or economic protections. This arrangement leaves the open to mistreatment and abuse, and does not provide them any safety net in the form of social services such as pensions, disability insurance, and minimum wage.

Given their dependence on the low (or no) paying agricultural sector, its not surprising that Bangladeshi women face extremely high levels of poverty. Approximately 22% of the country's total population is comprised of poor and destitute women, and 95% of female-headed household fall below the poverty line. Although this situation is bad, it is not as it could be, thanks to the help of microfinance projects. The Nobel-prize winning Grameen Bank has given microloans totaling $8 billion to more than 7.87 million women since 1983. The bank has chosen to focus almost exclusively (97%) on women as borrowers since they are not only the most needy, but also the most likely to use the money responsibly, invest in sustainable projects, and repay the loan. In fact, the current repayment rate is near 98%, a level only dreamt of by major Western financial institutions. The bank has now expanded its projects, operating pension programs, health insurance plans, housing projects and many more ventures. In fact, I am able to post this entry because of Grameenphone, which provides our wireless network card, as well as our cell phone plan.

Yet for all the progress made by Grameen Bank and other empowerment projects (like the one we went to see in Manikganj) women in Bangladesh are still second-class citizens. While the country's constitution affords them equal rights in public life, on private matters such as marriage, divorce, child custody, and inheritance, they are at great disadvantage. For example, to divorce a man may simply claim adultery against his wife whereas she must prove adultery and other matrimonial offenses to be granted a divorce. After divorce women are not considered to be the legal guardians of their children, and as such may only keep their sons till the age of 7 and daughters till the end of puberty, if they are allowed to keep them at all. As for inheritance, a daughter may receive only half the share of her brother's, and wives only 1/8 of their husbands' estates. These rules result in limited economic mobility for women and a reinforcement of traditional patriarchal values that further degrade women's social status.

The social values of Islamic countries have come under even more public critique recently thanks to French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who last month called for a ban on the wearing of burqas in public. (To learn about the different types of head scarves, check out this infographic from BBC.) Although only about 10% (in my estimate) of women in Dhaka (and a slightly higher percentage in more rural areas) seem to wear the burqa, all dress very conservatively in public and most cover their heads when in the presence of men. The rules governing the interaction (or lack thereof) between men and women make participation in paid, formal sector labor or institutions of higher education extremely difficult, which in part explains their absence in public life. Of course, the fact that 78% of women are married by age 18 and formal sector employment/secondary education for married women is looked down upon probably has something to do with it as well.

But this issue of the burqa, independent of employment, intrigues me. What some have called "portable seclusion" and others (like Sarkozy) "walking prisons", the burqa has become the most visible icon in the "Islam/conservative versus secular/modern" debate. Yet from what I can decipher from various articles, there seems to be little religious justification for the burqa (as opposed to the hijab). In that case there must be some social or moral justification, right? Well that too is shaky. Modesty, respectability and symbolism of separate spheres seem to be the leading rationales, but they are inadequate explanations of why the burqa over the more practical hijab. But regardless, the overall argument here is that if a woman were to show any part of herself (or even create the outline of a the female figure), she would inflame the passions of nearby men, all of whom are supposedly lacking in any self-control.

So here's the part I don't get. The western line has been that the Taliban and conservative religious organizations, which are comprised of men, imposed the burqa on women as a form of psychological shaming and economic/social immobilization under the guise of modesty and protection. But for men to stress that women need protection from men is to degrade their own sex and heighten the power of the other. Put differently, why admit the savagery of the male sex and proclaim your powerlessness? And why imbue women with such mystic that if they dare show you their face or even a wrist you must, by definition, be filled with lust and rendered unable to think logically. If you don't react that way you've discredited the need for the burqa and if you do, then heck, women everywhere should flash some wrist and take over the world. Its an odd, delicate paradigm that is difficult for an outsider to understand but I think the key point is that the debate over the burqa and women's autonomy isn't black and white. Yes, it can inhibit participation in education and employment. Yes, it does offer women privacy and demonstrates their modesty. Yes, it was made mandatory under the Taliban. But yes, some women do choose to wear it of their own free will.

So what does all that have to do with Bangladesh? Like I said before, Bangladeshis aren't big into the burqa. But they still value the general overarching principle of purdah (i.e. the practice keeping women segregated from--or unseen by--men), at least as the ideal, even if they can't afford to in practice. (As we've seen, women are key to the economic survival of most Bangladeshi families.) Purdah operates under the same logic as the burqa--a demonstration of modesty and protection from men and their lustful ways. And it is largely this strongly-held belief that has prevented Bangladeshi women from entering male-dominated spaces; unfortunately this translates to being excluded from the public sphere in general. Purdah and patriarchy are the two pillars of Bangladeshi society, and in their manifestations, whether it be the burqa, early marriage or inequality in the law, have served to supress and oppress women.

Progress is being made thanks to the media and economic need, but there is still a long way to go. The revolution will be comprised of an extra year of school for young girls, the delay of marriage by a year or two, continued employment after marriage, the first paycheck in a lifetime, and yes, the flashing of a wrist or two.

(For anyone interested in learning more about the status of women in Bangladesh and the role of Islam there are three great reports I would recommend. One is the Asian Development Bank's country briefing paper, another is Healthbridge's report on women's contribution to Bangladesh's economy through unpaid labor, and the last is a more general study of women's position in Islamic countries by Bridge.)

Village People

2009-06-26T17:23:00.000+02:00

A couple weeks after arriving in Bangladesh, we got a call from Azad, the young, Bangladeshi consultant for UM who set up our work here. He knew we were getting Dhaka-fever (a combination of boredom, claustrophobia, and sensory overload) so he invited us to come out to Manikganj, a small village a few hours away, to see one of his other projects. Based on similar model to that of Heifer International, the program gives a milking cow to extremely poor women as a means of both generating income and empowering them in household decision-making. All of the recipient families lost their land 10-15 years ago because of river flooding and erosion. (Every year the monsoons bring vast floods which cause villages to be wiped out and the river to change their paths, drowning former farmland and displacing thousands of people.) These families have since struggled to earn a living and many have been forced to take their children out of school, as they can no longer afford essential supplies such as pencils and notebooks. This program, still in its pilot stage, selects motivated, responsible, entrepreneurial women and provides them with training on animal care and business management, as well as giving them the milking cow. They are encouraged to save half the milk for their children (and/or grandchildren) and sell the other half in the market. The women are also required to save 25% of all their earnings and attend monthly meetings on social empowerment issues, such as domestic violence prevention and the importance of educating female children.

On this occasion Azad was going to Manikganj to check on how the women were doing six months after receiving their cows. We set out from Dhaka with Azad and his niece at 11am for a"1 to 2 hour" car ride. The translation of "1 to 2

hours" turned out to be 3.5 hours, but it was a beautiful drive so we didn't mind. Beyond the chaotic "suburbs" of Dhaka the land is rich, lush, green. The scenery was a welcome change from the packed crowds and madness of Dhaka, the villages seemingly serene and quiet, and the brickfields offering the contrast of the deep red of the bricks and the verdant green of the rice paddies. Disrupting the tranquility was the honking of the trucks, cars, buses, rickshaws, and motorcycles as they came careening towards us, trying desperately to overtake another truck, car, bus, rickshaw or motorcycle. It was a road sorely in need of a median.

As we pulled off the main road and starting winding down the side streets barely wide enough for a single car, it became clear that we were in for a serious storm, the sky nearly black even though it was the middle of the day. In the quickly fading light the women standing along the side of the lane were bursts of color against the dark forest background, popping in their saris of saffron, turquoise, and violet; the men, clad in white lungis (sarongs) and button-downs glowed like skinny phantoms. As we went further into the villages, the low hanging trees became even lower and denser, forming an impenetrable canopy above us, blocking out the light, as well as the heavy rain which had begun to fall. In that moment a phrase came to mind usually reserved for another part of the developing world and I found myself thinking that we were entering "the heart of darkness," at least in a highly romanticized sense.

Finally, at 230pm we arrived in Manikganj and were quickly escorted in the downpour to a house formerly belonging to Azad's grandmother, a small three-room dwelling. The power was out so we toweled off in the dark and said hello to the family (distant relatives of Azad), including a 10-month old baby whom everyone swore never cried, a couple 9 year-olds as tall as I am, and assorted 20-something young women whose husbands had left for work in the city. We were

then presented a feast of a dozen dishes, most of which were made with seafood, including fish head curry, whole deep fried shrimp, and tiny sardine-like creatures in mixed vegetables. We ate by the light of gas lamps, adding to the haunting atmosphere created by the rain and our remote location. Of course, I ate everything--it was delicious.

After lunch we sat with the family until the light came back on, then started out on a walk to see

the seven women in this village who had received

cows, out of a total 15 participants at this stage. We attracted a crowd of shirtless children who followed us as we greeted the families. Each was exceptionally welcoming, and extremely proud of their cow and their resulting economic prosperity. All seven women had done very well for themselves, with all of them sending their kids to school again, some having saved enough to expand their farm to include chickens and others purchasing sewing machines with which to start a small tailoring business. One woman proudly told us how her new earnings has inspired her husband to stop drinking and working harder to match her income. All of them were extremely hard working and resourceful; one had found a farmer with fields in need of cutting so they had all starting working for him and taking the cut grass to feed their cows, a practice which had more than halved the costs of feeding their cows. Before we left one woman gave us a papaya she had just pulled from a tree in front of her house, the only one on the tree; another sent over a few litres of milk for Azad, even though he begged her to sell it in the market instead. The sense of pride and confidence among these women was palpable and the progress they had achieved in moving their families out of abject poverty was remarkable.

After a quick game of in the rain/mud soccer with the kids (all of whom were far better than us) we got back in the car for a harrowing ride home in the dark. It seems almost no one in Bangladesh has discovered headlights, or if they have, believe they are used solely for flashing frantically to tell oncoming traffic to get back on their side of the road. Despite the peril we reached home safely at 10pm, tired but inspired by the women of Bangladesh, and the village of Manikganj in particular.

In the A/C Box

2009-06-23T13:04:00.000+02:00

After spending the last few summers riding in the back of ancient pick-up trucks, being coated in sweat, and wading knee-deep through mud (or at least I hope it was mud), getting used to our relative life of luxury has been difficult, and at times, downright frustrating. Now, I'm not saying that you should feel sorry for me, what with our private car and driver, overly air-conditioned apartment, and personal chef--that would be obnoxious. But for those you like me who enjoy having total freedom of movement, don't mind being disgustingly filthy, and consider themselves adventurous (some may say stupid), you may sympathize with my frustration over being so overly protected and sheltered. No doubt Dhaka is a city where one (especially a woman) can't just going running around wherever and whenever desire directs, but neither is it a place that can be truly experienced from the confines of a cool, locked Toyota Corolla or a gated compound in the foreigner district.

Because I spend so much time locked in the A/C box (as I refer to our life of privilege) I've had to come up with unique ways to entertain myself. Sadly for you, that includes writing terrible, ironic poetry. Therefore I subject you to two haikus on the A/C box, one slightly positive, the other a bit more of a lamentation.

Two Haikus to the A/C Box:

cool, clean, and sterile

makes life into a movie

gliding through traffic

home to car to home

keeping us isolated

this is our Dhaka

Oh, please forgive me. Poetry is not my strength. I apologize.

(Ak! That was another haiku! See, I just can't help myself. Really, I'm sorry. I won't do this again.)

You Might Be a Bangladeshi If.....

2009-06-15T09:49:00.001+02:00

Having been here for a little over 3 weeks, I've taken note of a few peculiarities of Bangladeshis which I think are defining qualities. So beware, you might be a Bangladeshi if.....

...you can cross the street (without nearly peeing yourself out of fear).

...you don't appear to sweat, even when the heat index says its 115+ degrees outside.

...you wash your clothes in dirty river water yet they always come out impeccably clean and white.

...you would have the physique of a body builder if only you had access to a proper, protein-inclusive diet.

...you have an intense obsession with all things 'Chinese' (ex Fu-Wang's Pizza, Wu's Bowling Alley).

...you have superhuman peripheral vision. (Drivers only.)

...you love watching Slamball (i.e. basketball played on trampolines).

...you own at least three skin-lightning products.

...you eat your body weight in rice every four days.

...you get your electricity by splicing into the wire of a government office/shopping mall a couple miles away.

...you can make anything fit (and balance) in a rickshaw, and then manage to ride on top of it.

...you ask every foreigner the same three questions: "What is your country? What is your religion? Are you married?".

...you hold your motorcycle helmet in your lap on your way to and from work instead of wearing it.

...your car has an extra metal bumper on the front, since fender benders are an everyday occurrence.

...you won't pay attention to a presentation or lecture, until they get to the singing and dancing parts, of course.

...you appear to have no sense of smell, as you are not made nauseous by the stink of rotting garbage in the sun...or jackfruit.

...you know how to arrange yourself in an auto rickshaw so that instead of holding two people, it can hold seven.

...you understand the language of the car honks, considering a form of Morse Code.

...you know someone who has been eaten by a Royal Bengal Tiger in the Sundarbans, but recommend a trip there to every foreigner.

...you own at least one piece of clothing by "Clavin Kline" or "Dona Karen".

...you know which city bus to get on, even though there are no discernible bus stops or numbers/signs on any of the buses.

...you answer multiple choice questions with "Yes, no problem."

...you take pride in how corrupt your country is and tell every foreigner, "We were last on Transparency International's list five times in a row! A record!".

...you are less than 5 feet tall, even if you are a man.

...you drive a Japanese or Korean car (i.e. Toyota, Nissan, Mitsubishi) but in a make no one in North America has ever heard of, such as Probox, Noah, Voxy, Bluebird, Pajero, Sage, Saloon, Corona, Succeed, Hiace, Esteem, Premio, Surf, Hover, Torrance or Prado. Or else you drive a Toyota Corrolla.

...you dye your hair/beard/mustache neon orange because you think it looks so natural on you. (Men only)

...you have night vision.

...you appear to need almost no ingredients to make a delicious, three course meal.

...you need only four hours of sleep a night, and make fun of people (like me) who need eight.

...you are friends with wild dogs, most of whom turn out to be better trained than American house pets.

...the concept of a speeding ticket is entirely foreign to you, since you're never able to drive faster than 10 mph in Dhaka.

Good News!

2009-06-15T08:44:00.000+02:00

I now, finally, have an answer to that ever-popular graduation-season question, 'So, what are you doing next year?'. The answer is working for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as a Global Health Fellow. Starting this fall I will be based in Kigali, Rwanda, and will serve as a program manager on health system strengthening projects and PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS) interventions. The fellowship is for one year, with the possibility of staying on for another. I'm really really excited about this opportunity and am psyched to be heading back to sub-Saharan Africa. And you are all welcome to visit me!

This job is great news for me, but also for you, as a reader of this blog, because it means that instead of spending 8 hours a day stressing out about what I'm going to do with my life (and scouring the Internet for jobs), I'll be able to write more and spend more time getting myself into amusing (to you) misadventures. So I promise to post more entries (at least until I get wrapped up in Wimbledon) and let you know what's going on in crazy Dhaka.

Boat on the river Buriganga

2009-06-12T14:39:00.000+02:00

Bangladesh is a nation of rivers, with more than 230 small and large waterways snaking through the country. More than half the country's 150 million people depend on these rivers for drinking water, transportation, and food. Unfortunately, many of these rivers have become so polluted that they are more life-threatening than life-giving. The worst offender is by far the Buriganga river, which is at the heart of Dhaka's economy and culture.

A large portion of the city's income is derived

from river-related ventures, such as trade and shipbuilding. Bangladesh is set to become one of the world's leading shipbuilding nations, and already the banks of the river are full of ships in various stages of construction. People engage in

a multitude of other activities right along the river, such as doing laundry, bathing, and transporting people and goods. But the activity which has done the most damage to the ecology of the river happens a little further inland. Dhaka's leather tanneries have for years been dumping tons of industrial waste directly into the river, although there are nominal government bans on doing so. The 500 tanneries nearby dispose 4.75 million litres of extremely toxic chemicals and 95 metric tons of solid waste (including raw hides and animal flesh) into the river every year. In addition, because Dhaka's waste management system is overburdened and mismanaged, 80% of the city's untreated sewage is drained into the river each day. In sum, more than 2 million cubic tons of waste are poured into the river every day. This pollution has left the river a toxic wasteland, with levels of mercury, cadmium, and lead at 17 times higher than international standards, and without a single living aquatic animal.

It was against this charming backdrop that David (my roommate, a UM law student) and I decided to head down to Sadarghat boat terminal in the heart of Old Dhaka for a boat ride. Of course, we didn't know then about the levels of pollution, or the fact that it was going to be well over 110F degrees that day. All we knew was that a ride along the river was the top rated tourist activity in Dhaka according to Lonely Planet and that we were in for a memorable experience.

Sadarghat is one of the world's busiest river terminals, serving more than 30,000 people per

day. In Bangladesh this translates to even higher than usual levels of chaos and crowding. Even driving down to the terminal the south end of the city in Old Dhaka took most of the morning, as our car swerved and dodged pedestrians, bicycle rickshaws, auto rickshaws, buses, animals, and giant holes in the road which seemed not to be dug for any particular purpose. At the terminal (i.e. a dark, wooden, falling-down warehouse) our car was immediately mobbed by boatmen and curious onlookers. Although Dhaka is still a city where you can go to the major "tourist attractions" on a weekend and not see a single foreign-looking tourist, enough people appear to have taken Lonely Planet's advice and come in search, as we had, of a boat ride that the locals knew what we wanted. Our driver kindly helped us negotiate a fare with a "licensed tourist guide" and held on to his ID card as collateral to ensure our safe return.

Our guide, Jewel, was a gentleman in his early thirties who spoke surprisingly good English. His co-guide, whose name I never did catch, was a smiley young man whose parents were from India. As we chatted about America and Obama (a favorite topic of people here) we walked through the decrepit building, down the rickety wharf, and through a large, rusty passenger ferry, at the end of which we were told to crawl down into a tiny wooden canoe, the sea-worthiness of which seemed doubtful.

An umbrella quickly appeared over us to shield us from the already blazing 10am sun. Our

boat was rowed, Venetian style, by an older man with a severely weather-beaten face and sinewy if skeletal body. While the boatman paddled us along through what was obviously sludge rather than water, I tried to use my little knowledge of Indian popular culture to make conversation and form some sort of 'please-don't-kidnap-me-I'm-one-of-you' bond with our guides. My knowledge of Sachin Tendulkar and Amitabh Bachchan quickly expended, but luckily we came up on the shipyards at that moment and had a new topic of conversation. Until then we had been rowing alongside other little canoes or dodging the large ferries which seemed more than willing to plow us over, and had thus been to distracted to observe the huge hulls that lined the opposite bank.

The ships were packed right along the shore, but also far back on land. Some being build new were bright orange, yellow and green; the older boats being restored were dull and brown, their thick layer of rust being chipped off painstakingly by men with small pointy sticks. Other men were scrubbing, painting, welding, and doing all sorts of other ship-related things I don't know about. Jewel asked if we would like to take a tour of the shipyards. Although David was extremely hesitant to accept this offer (even though it came with the amusing promise "We will have no problem. And your problem is my problem, is my country's problem.") I have long since learned to do whatever the person in control of my transportation tells me to do, so we (or rather then boatman) maneuvered our canoe through a field of other canoes to the shore.

Our arrival was greeted with amusement and the standard stares. We responded with stares of awe of our own, amazed at the sheer gigantic size of the ships and the backbreaking work needed to build them. We walked among the ships, carefully trending over the lumber, metal rods, and electrical equipment strewn on the sand, and then further back into the maze of shanties which the shipbuilders call home. On one side of the yards were shacks filled with welders, pipe-makers, and engine assembly teams; on the other barbers, tea shops, and homes. There were many men and children running around, some working and some playing cricket, but only one woman, wearing a full, black burqa.

In a sign of the times, as we tried to unobtrusively take pictures, the locals whipped out their cell phone cameras and began snapping shots of us. It was apparently an exciting morning for all.

After 15 minutes walking around we climbed back in our boat and set up a little further upstream, enjoying the view, although not the river's smell. By then there were dozens of canoes crossing from one side of the river to the other, as well as some just floating along with children doing back flips off of them. The barges and massive shipping vessels continued to dominant traffic, forcing some fancy paddle-work by the boatmen to avoid being capsized.

Tired of going upstream the co-guide threw a rope onto a small barge passing in the opposite direction and tethered our canoe to it. We climbed on board the boat, which was carrying sand (apparently needed for construction) and enjoyed the shade. And even though the movie came out more than a decade ago, we were forced to take Titanic "king of the world" shots from the front of the boat. (I refuse to post that picture here.)

Eventually we left the kind barge captain alone and got back in our canoe. As we drifted back towards Sadarghat, I was fascinated by the scenes of life along the riverbanks--kids playing in the water, women washing clothes, men mending their canoes, people shopping in the colorful stores that dotted the sides. It was a similar experience to my journey two summers ago from Cambodia to Vietnam on a boat through the Mekong Delta, except that pristine, lush, green setting had been replaced by heaps of trash on the banks and oil-slicked water.

We passed Sadarghat terminal and went down a little ways to see some of the less crowded, but no less interesting areas. The guides tried to give the boatman a rest by tying our boat to a "party boat" (i.e. passenger ferry with karaoke but no women or alcohol--not much of a party if you ask me) but the boat cop (?) kicked us off. After taking a picture of David pretending to paddle the boat I ended up sitting backwards, with my back to the co-guide. Apparently I had a grey hair sticking out, so he quickly pulled it. I thought that would be the end of it, but somehow it became a game/grooming session, with him pulling out a dozen of my gray hairs (I'm getting old) and me pretending it was funny (and wondering how my life got to this point).

Finally, sweaty, exhausted from the sun and overwhelmed by the experience, we got back to the boat terminal at noon, our driver anxiously awaiting our safe return. Although there was hassling over the cost (we thought it was 300 Taka--$4.25--for the whole trip and they wanted 300 Taka per hour), it was definitely one of the most memorable experiences of my life, and a unique welcome to Bangladesh. It was not the relaxing, calm ride promised by Lonely Planet, but I'll take a ride with excitement, misadventure and a little inappropriate grooming over that any day.

First Impressions

2009-06-04T17:20:00.000+02:00

If I had to describe Dhaka in two words they would be 'colorful' and 'chaotic'. Colorful in women's dress, the flashy billboards, and the bright if decrepit buses. Chaotic in lack of rules governing the movement of vehicles and people in the street, the vendors of clothes, food, and trinkets who crowd the sidewalks, the creativity of people in finding a means of supporting themselves financially. The strong smells of sweat, spices, open sewage, and roasting meat, all set in the hazy smog that sits over the city, add to the atmosphere of life lived in the public sphere.

Although overwhelming and exhausting at times, the mayhem reflects a simple fact: Bangladesh is a vibrant and dynamic society. In another light, the ever-present turmoil is evidence that the country seems to be experiencing severe growing pains, with a massive population fighting for too few resources, fueled by a deep desire to improve its quality of life, yet lacking the leadership and expertise to effect true reform and growth.

Forgive Me?

2009-06-04T11:51:00.000+02:00

Dear readers,

Please forgive my absence over the past couple weeks. I know you (or at least my parents) are curious about what I've been up to but I have good excuses for not writing.

1. I've been busy finishing up things for my job back in Ann Arbor. See, I'm being responsible.

2. I've been prepping for (and having) job interviews. This is also known as freaking out about the future. (Note: the phone connections between East Africa and Bangladesh are terrible.)

3. The French Open is on. For those of you who know my tennis preferences well, this translates to watching every minute of Rafa Nadal's matches for the 1st week, then mourning his loss in the 4rd round for the 2nd week.

But that's all done now (with the exception of the French Open finals) so I promise to post frequently from here on out. I've already got lots of stories to tell you, some of which involve shipyards, villages, and factories, and others on the general madness that is Dhaka, so keep an eye out for more on my misadventures in Bangladesh.

Sincerely,

Your delinquent blogger

P.S. Go anyone but Federer!

The trip over

2009-05-27T17:38:00.000+02:00

Some travel math for you:

What is the answer to this problem?

38 hours+ 7 airport terminals + 4 flights + 3 continents + 2 days +1 cyclone = ?

The answer= tired, smelly Zara….in Bangladesh!

Yup, I made it, and in one piece to boot. This was one of my more unusual and memorable journeys, so it warrants it own blog post.

Things started out well enough. Esther kindly helped me finish packing up my apartment and drove me to the airport in Detroit at 4pm on Friday, May 22^nd. DTW was surprisingly empty so I waited for 2 hours, pretending to read but instead people watching. We boarded our flight to Amsterdam at 7pm, and that’s when the reality that I was actually going away for the summer finally struck me; until then it had merely been a hypothetical. The flight to Amsterdam (7 hours) was relatively uneventful, except the young guy sitting next to me, who was on his way to a vacation in the Greek islands (I was so jealous of him!) required the oxygen tank because he was extremely short of breath. Apparently that happens a lot, but I had never seen it. So take note, if you are every short of breath on plane, you can get hooked up with some free oxygen. Yay?

I spent most of that flight watching movies—Frost/Nixon, Gran Torino (both of which I would recommend). It seems to me like Northwest has sunk all of its money into its entertainment system, rather than its meal service, because the dinner and breakfast they served were truly inedible. And you all know me, I’ll eat anything, so the fact that I wouldn’t eat it is saying something. Luckily I always travel with enough food to feed a family of 6 for a week, so I was able to survive.

We got to Amsterdam right on time (got to love the Dutch) and conveniently, the flight to Bombay (aka Mumbai) was leaving from the next gate and already boarding. One of my pet peeves in life is when people stand too close to you in line and push you forward, as if that is going to speed things up. (As an aside, one of the great things about being short is that when people do get to close in line, your elbow is at the ideal level for an “accidental” jab to the groin or gut. I must confess to taking advantage of that opportunity several times, but it is highly effective.) Indians in particular seem prone to this closeness and shoving. Perhaps that comes from a lifetime of having to fight for every inch they can get in a country with limited space and even more limited resources. However, I wish someone would remind them that their seat is reserved and will be there for them regardless of when they get on the plane. I’ve also learned that one way to spot the most experienced travelers is that they wait until the last possible moment to get on the plane (without holding it up), as they recognize that sitting an extra 30 minutes on the plane is not to their benefit.

Anyway, the most enjoyable part of this leg of the trip was the conversation I had with the check-in/security guy, a very nice gentleman from Turkey. He asked me the origin of my name, to which I replied ‘Hebrew’, which is what my mom has always cited. This apparently was the wrong answer, the correct one being, of course, Turkish. He then spent 10 minutes (holding up the line) trying to convince me that I was named after a famous Turkish singer (Mom, have you been hiding this fact from me?) and that I should check out her music as she has “some very lovely songs”. I don’t have access to iTunes, but I’d love to hear what you think of my namesake’s music, if you can track it down.

Now for the more entertaining parts of my trip. After arriving in Bombay at 10pm we headed for the immigration desk, since I had to transfer from the international to domestic terminal. In a sign of the times, before reaching immigration you had to go through the “swine flu checkpoint”, which consisted of filling out a form on which you promised that you did not have swine flu and getting it stamped by some guy wearing a mask. Clearly, a very highly effective screening system. And although the airport has been modernized, the same smell of old spices and sweat pervades the entire place (I wonder if they manufacture Indian airport carpet with that smell sealed in— that would explain it), as does the general atmosphere of barely contained chaos.

After going through immigration and customs, and collecting my bags, I went to the transfer lounge (i.e. dimly lit, poorly ventilated room with a couple of plastic chairs) to catch the shuttle to the domestic terminal, where I was to catch my flight to Calcutta (aka Kolkata). Over my two hours there (from 11pm to 1am) the lounge became progressively more crowded, yet no buses came. As you can imagine, 150 tired, hot, sweaty people standing crowded into a little room and becoming more irritated every moment as they wait for a long-promised bus is a recipe for disaster, and naturally a fight broke out between a particularly angry gentleman and the airline agent. A very pregnant woman fainted in the middle of it. Minor pandemonium ensued, during which time I crouched in a corner trying to stay as far away from things as possible. Eventually people calmed down, the buses came and slowly we headed off for the other terminal. Given that the peak time for international arrivals is between 9pm and midnight, the lack of buses seems to be another example of India’s inability to anticipate, and deal with, predictable, routine events. (For a classic example, see the monsoon.)

Once in the domestic terminal I had to wait 4 hours until the security checkpoint opened so I changed my clothes and purified some water with my UV pen light, which caused minor panic among the janitors in the restroom who couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I then managed to take a couple hour nap tethered to my backpacks.

By 5:15am I was at the gate for my Kingfisher (as in the beer) Airlines flight to Calcutta. Even on short domestic flights in India you get ridiculous service. On the 2 hour trip we got fresh lime juice before takeoff, a very nice breakfast, the offer of tea/coffee 3 times, ice cream, and multiple newspapers. Bizarrely, the only two English language programs offered on the personal TV were Larry King (in which he talked with a panel about women’s self-esteem and empowerment—so strange) and the movie version of the Baby-Sitters Club. We arrived at 9am to Calcutta’s old, dingy airport, where I collected my bags (yet again) and set off in search of the international terminal. It appears that Calcutta does not place a premium on signage, so I had no idea where to go. The few people who did speak English simply pointed outside, to the busy road and said “two minutes”. Was I supposed to cross the road? Walk down it? Get a bus that was coming in two minutes? With the help of a very nice local guy I realized that I was supposed to walk along to road into oncoming traffic (there was no sidewalk) for the Indian version of two minutes, i.e. five/ten minutes, through a construction zone to get to the international terminal, which seemed more like a decrepit apartment complex or high school that an airport.

I was too early to check in so I sat around and read for a couple hours. Eventually I was able to check my bags and went to get my boarding pass. Although I’m very proud of my heavily stamped passport and love it dearly, it is beginning to be something of a liability. My visa was delayed because the Bangladeshi embassy wanted to know why I traveled so much, and to such random countries (really, who goes to Cameroon?); the check-in guy in Calcutta spent 5 minutes just scanning through it, counting my Cambodian visas (3). Finally I got through and sat in a corner reading and waiting for immigration to open. (There are apparently only a few flights out this terminal, so the immigration officers take many extended lunch/snack breaks.) Within a few minutes the check-in agent was back, but this time not to look at my stamps, but rather the background of the pages: the 50 state seals. This is a rough transcript of our conversation:

Him: What is this on the front?

Me: The official US seal.

Him: What is it for?

Me: Um, for putting on official things, like passports…and um, money.

Him: What about this? (Looking at the 1^st real page)

Me: That’s the state seal of Alaska.

Him: A-las-ka. Is that a state?

Me: Yes

Him: What is the seal for?

Me: I don’t know.

Repeat 49 more times.

During all of this he was writing down each state in a little pocket notebook, which was kind of cute. It must have been for his children; at least I hope it was. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he could look this up on the Internet, or in any geography book for that matter.

After some more waiting around once past immigration, I finally boarded my fourth and last flight (hooray!) at 1pm. Unfortunately for me, it was a little tiny plane with propellers, as the flight from Calcutta to Dhaka is barely 30 minutes and traffic between the two cities is light. That I was sitting in the first row, right next to the emergency exit door, was reassuring, especially after the pilot announced that there was “cyclone activity” in the area and that we could not expect a smooth flight. Ugh, my least favorite combination of things: propellers and cyclones. However, at this point I was too exhausted to really care and the flight was not as bad as I expected. Perhaps being in a tiny plane helped with the turbulence.

Regardless, even on this flight we were served lunch, which came in a rectangular cardboard box. Because of the box’s shape, and the fact that the propellers were so loud I couldn’t hear the flight attendant properly, I thought it was a carton of cigarettes, which struck me as weird to give out on the plane, so I politely declined with “I don’t smoke, thank you.” That garnered me a strange stare from the flight attendant, and I had to call her back once the person behind me opened his and I saw that I was actually just a sandwich. When it came time for her to clear our lunch she said “May I take your cigarette box?” Served me right—I am an idiot.

Thirty minutes later we were over Dhaka, an amazing landscape with a multitude of rivers and streams connecting and diverging, enormous high-rise apartment buildings next to humble slum dwellings, and gleaming mosques not far from farm plots. Even from on high one could feel the city’s frenetic energy, sense it teeming with life, ambition, and fervor. Of course, this was in contrast to the disorganization and mistaken priorities of the government, as reflected in the fact that we spent another 30 minutes circling the airport while the air force completed exercises on the city’s one runway.

By 3pm we were on the ground. After another cursory swine flu check and extended review of my passport, I was able to collect my bags and meet Azad, a UM researcher and the local contact in charge of organizing and facilitating our work here. Outside was the familiar pandemonium of an Indian airport: hundreds of cab drivers (and pickpockets) shouting, begging for you to take their taxi, trying to grab your trolley and steer it towards their car. It was hot, over 100 degrees, and so so sticky, and although I was sweating like hell, I dared not take my jacket off, as my bare arms would have been as much an outrage-causing faux pas as Michelle Obama wearing a cardigan to meet the Queen; this is after all a Muslim country.

Our car showed up and we were able to escape the chaos. I was initially struck by the lushness of the tress and vegetation along the road, the colorfulness of the bicycle rickshaws that swerved through the traffic, and the general Wild West-meets-Bollywood feel of the city.

Although I arrived at my new home in Dhaka just 38 hours after leaving my old one in Ann Arbor, it felt like a lifetime ago and a world away—such different lifestyles, cultures, and atmospheres. Let’s see if that sentiment lingers, or if it was just a product of jetlag…..

A little background...

2009-05-17T17:22:00.000+02:00

On Friday, May 22nd, I head to Bangladesh for the summer (or 10 weeks at least). Hearing that, you may have several questions, namely, Where the hell is Bangladesh? And why is she going there?

Ok, so where is Bangladesh. Well, according to this map, Bangladesh is that little light blue country (no, not Sri Lanka- the other one), almost completely encircled by India. Although small, it is the most densely populated country in the world, if you don't count the city-states of Monaco, Singapore, and Malta (and I don't). The population stands at over 150 million, making it the 7th most populated country. More than 40% of people live below the poverty line, including 30% who live on less than $1 a day. Despite this poverty, Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in decreasing its maternal mortality rate, infant mortality rate and number of children born per woman (from 7 in 1970 to 3 today), which makes it one of the rare countries which is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Currently 25% of the population lives in urban areas, although this proportion will likely increase to 50% by 2025. Dhaka, the capital, is already a megacity, with more than 12.5 million people and is projected to grow to 17 million by 2015 and become the world's 8th most populous city. Given that I grew up in a town of 15,000, it is hard for me to fathom a metropolis that enormous, but I'm sure staying in Dhaka this summer will show me the chaos that accompanies having so many people living in such a small area.

Bangladesh's unusual geographic arrangement with India also deserves some explaining. In 1947, at the end of colonial rule, India was partitioned into India and Pakistan along religious lines. But that Pakistan is not the Pakistan we know now; that was known as West Pakistan. East Pakistan was what is now Bangladesh. Although East and West Pakistan had religion (Islam) in common, they shared little else, including language or a border. Almost immediately there was resentment from East Pakistan, which was frustrated with having its fate decided by people in thousands of miles away in West Pakistan, where the state was administered. Under the banner of the Language Movement, the 1950s and 60s saw increasing calls for independence. In 1970 a massive, devastating cyclone and the poor handling of the aftermath by the central government further inflamed tensions. The final straw was the imprisonment of the head of the popular Bengali political party by the Pakistani president after being elected to Parliament and declaring Bangladeshi independence. This sparked an uprising by the East Pakistani people, and a reactionary military assault by the government. The Liberation War lasted for nine months, with the Bangladeshis supported by the Indian government and armed forces. Independence was finally achieved on December 16, 1971, but at the cost of as many as 3 million Bangladeshis killed, and another 10 million forced to flee the country.

Over the next 30 years the country saw numerous coups and counter-coups, famines and cyclones, a population explosion and the implementation of a successful family planning campaign, labor strikes and economic diversification. Although there have been a few hurdles to progress recently (i.e. implementation of an emergency caretaker government in 2007, student and Islamic fundamentalist uprisings), the nation has a booming economy and is considered one of the "Next Eleven" countries (i.e. those developing countries with the greatest investment potential). Another recent positive sign: the Bangladesh national cricket team beat both India and South Africa in the 2007 Cricket World Cup. Apparently that's a big deal.

Okay, so that was probably more than you ever wanted to know about Bangladesh. However if you are still interested, check out the government's official website, Wikipedia, Wikitravel, or the CIA World FactBook.

Alright, so hopefully that's answered your first question. Now on to the second: why am I going there? To be honest, I'm not entirely sure, but here's the general explanation. The University of Michigan has a Labor and Human Rights Standards Board which examines whether products bearing the UM name or logo are adhering to the laws and regulations which govern their production, i.e. that workers are working in safe conditions, getting paid a fair wage, etc. Bangladesh has become a major garment manufacturer in the past decade, exporting about $11 billion worth of products last year, which translates to 78% of the country's total exports.

To produce all these goods the industry employs more than 3 million people, 85% of whom are women. This gender disparity, along with the general lower status of women in Bangladeshi society and the widespread poverty, have led to poor wages, unhealthy work environments, and abuse by factory owners and managers. There are a number of NGOs and government agencies regulating the industry, but because of its size and a lack of resources, many bad practices go unnoticed.

To help reform this situation this summer I, along with a UM law student, will be looking at how to better design and implement policies and laws to protect female garment workers from violence in the workplace. Collaborating with both the UM Labor Standards Board and Karmojibi Nari, a local union of 500,000 women laborers, I will be doing research and policy analysis, developing monitoring and evaluation tools, and generally hanging out w/ Bangladeshi women. Basically, its similar to what I did in Cambodia, except with garment workers instead of sex workers.

Okay, so I think that pretty much answers those two initial questions. Let me know if you have others, although I'm sure that they will get answered as the summer goes on. Hopefully I will have electricity and regular Internet access this summer (for a change), so keep an eye out for regular updates. Til then, go share your new found knowledge of Bangladesh with your friends. Hint: bring a map.

Senegal, an Interlude

2009-03-10T13:08:00.000+02:00

So as some of you know, in February I traveled to Senegal for 10 days with a couple dozen other UM graduate students as part of the International Development program. My health team went to study the implementation of public health programs (such as the President's Malaria Initiative), as they relate to malaria prevention among pregnant women. When not working, we explored Dakar, took trips to bird sanctuaries, checked out the local music scene, and generally had an amazing, whirlwind time. Below are some links to pictures and a blogs, for a more a better taste of our trip. Enjoy!

You can check out our group blog here: http://iedp2009senegal.blogspot.com/
(Although a group blog, I--in my capacity as a member of the 'documentation committee'--wrote quite a few of the posts. You'll probably be able to pick out mine.)

Here are my pictures from the trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2116970&id=1012910&l=73ce2655fd

For a little more background on the program, here's the official site: http://www.umich.edu/~ipolicy/iedp.htm

Pictures from Africa: Summer 2008

2008-08-30T12:59:00.000+02:00

After I left Cameroon, I traveled to Kenya on my own, then met up with my parents and brother in South Africa for two weeks of family adventures. Here are pictures of my time in each of those countries.

Cameroon (Climbing Mt. Cameroon): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2096465&id=1012910&l=4aa839992c

Cameroon (Buea): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2096765&id=1012910&l=f99c01e2d4

Cameroon (Mamfe): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098884&id=1012910&l=ed286ac74c

Cameroon (Etoko & the health centers): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2098868&id=1012910&l=b82e0b97b0

Kenya: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100001&id=1012910&l=d7c988449a

South Africa (Safari & Joburg):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100185&id=1012910&l=62463a4f41

South Africa (Cape Town & around): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100196&id=1012910&l=50a46f6543

South Africa (The Garden Route): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2100206&id=1012910&l=016785c1e7

Enjoy!

Miscellaneous Observations: Part 2

2008-08-23T20:32:00.000+02:00

After 3 months in Cameroon, I've got some more observations to share with you all.

-To do any job, the ratio of workers working to workers watching is 1:5.

-For a male between the ages of 8 and 68 a machete is a necessary accessory.

-Almost no one smokes cigarettes and it is considered uncouth to do so.

-Beer is an appropriate beverage at any time and at any occassion.

-There is a hierachy in the materials used to make houses, which reflects wealth. Mud is at the bottom, then tin/corrugated metal, then wood (which becomes gray in urban areas and orange in rural areas), and concrete is at the top.

-Pidgin (the most common language in the SW Province) = Jive + English + French + Jibberish - Helping verbs + Saying 'dey' a lot + Jamaican accent.

-There are no wild dogs, just wild goats, chickens, large rainbow colored lizards, vicious cats, giant ants, cocks that crow at all hours, and bugs and birds that make video game-like sound effects.

-The only setting on a TV or stereo is 'Max Vol'.

-Cameroonian men have zero game when it comes to women because they get all their moves from watching bad U.S. dating shows.

-Barbershops have strange names like: Decent Uncle, Dr. Paolo, Anty Unique, and Snoop.

-More women have facial hair (especially neck beards) than men do.

-Every time you drive down an unpaved road (which is 85% of the time) you have a 50% chance of getting a concussion or spinal cord injury.

-The smaller and more run down the exterior of a house (i.e. the poorer the family) the cleaner the inside of the home and the people.

-Children are given unfortunate names such as Gift (a girl), Precious (a boy), Bright (a girl), Prudencial (girl). We even had Elvis and Stella ran the inn in Mamfe.

-Slang terms: dash=to give or a bribe, chop= to eat or food, snap= take a picture, spoiled=broken.

-Eating a lot of peanuts is considered bad because they will make you break out but all food is cooked with a least a pint of palm oil, which is fine.

-The only time there is relative quiet is when the power is out.

-The standard outfit for women is a big, poofy maternity-like dress because they spend so much of their lives pregnant it doesn't make sense to have two sets of clothes.

-If you need to pee you say "I want to piss myself".

-It is possible to ride on the hood of car, as well as on the trunk.

-Every man and child owns a Cameroon national soccer team jersey, ideally one with the name Eto'o on the back.

-It takes 25 ununiformed men and 50 beers to man a road checkpoint (i.e. a bamboo pole on a string).

The Arrival of Zara Egbe

2008-08-23T02:30:00.000+02:00

Warning: The following post is graphic and kind of depressing.

Right now, somewhere in Cameroon, there is a baby named after me who I saw delivered. It's really weird. But for the whole story lets go back to the beginning, to Etoko.

Etoko is a small village 20 miles from Mamfe, but 2 hours away because the road there is in such horrendous condition. (See below.) I went to Etoko (pop. 1,200) to evaluate and redesign its small, barely-functioning health center, which was currently being kept afloat by the NGOs I was consulting for. I was accompanied by Sharlotte, my wonderful, amazing, cheerful assistant, who is also an excellent (but currently unemployed) nurse. Etoko is a village of farmers, most of whom never went to school because the nearest one is four miles away. We spent four days living in the health center, which consists of four bare, concrete rooms, with the incompetent nurse, Rebecca. We hung out with local women, played with children, toured the lush countryside, fetched water from the nearby stream, and cooked some delicious porcupine. Overall it was an enjoyable but uneventful trip. Until the last day.

On the morning of June 17th, a Tuesday, Alice came into the health center. We had spent a few evenings chatting with Alice (or at least Sharlotte had done most of the chatting in the local dialect and I nodded politely) and she was quite funny and cheerful. always laughing about something. She was also 9 months pregnant and pretty uncomfortable given the extreme heat and humidity. Although rather articulate, Alice had stopped school after 6th grade because her parents wanted to marry her off, which they did, to a local farmer about 15 years her senior. Since then, she had spent most of her time helping with the farming and child-bearing. According to her health record, Alice is 20 years old, but she already has three children- a boy and two girls. This was her fifth pregnancy- one was a miscarriage.

When I woke up Tuesday morning at 7am Alice was already there, having come in as soon as her water broke. She was pacing, wincing, and chewing a stick which people use as a toothbrush. Her good friend, also named Alice, was with her. Alice2, age 22, was also pregnant, with her fifth child. While Alice2 swabbed the floor (being pregnant doesn't excuse women from physical labor in Cameroon), Sharlotte, Rebecca and I ran around the health center, preparing supplies for the delivery. This was only Rebecca's second birth and she was clearly nervous but luckily Sharlotte, all of 25 years old, is extremely competent and was helping her out.

At 7:30 Alice and Alice2 went outside to the outhouse to give Alice an enema, which Cameroonian women believe speeds up delivery. After they came back in I got trapped talking to a crazy old woman who wanted to take a picture with me while Alice was delivering in the next room. I go there just as the baby was coming out. It was incredibly messy because the enema clearly wasn't complete and the plastic mattress, scrap of sheet, and Alice herself were covered in shit, blood and various delivery-related fluids. The baby was out by 8am, a girl with a fair amount of hair and seemingly healthy, except for her eyes, which were red, puffy and swollen. It is recommended, especially in Cameroon where the prevalence of STIs is high, for babies to be given antibiotic or silver nitrate eye drops immediately after delivery to prevent blindness caused by chlamydia or gonorrhea infecting their eyes. But because this was a rural health center with such a lack of supplies that only two sets of gloves are allocated per delivery, there were no such medications.

In fact, the health center was so short on supplies that in order to clean off the amniotic fluid, Rebecca rubbed peanut oil all over the baby. She was then wrapped in a set of hand knitted clothes- shirt, pants, booties, sweater, hat, blanket. While all this was going on, no one asked Alice how she was doing, if she needed anything. She was simply left to soak in the mess on the bed. When she was given any help by Rebecca she was manhandled, and yelled for wincing when she was roughly given an injection of ergometrine (to stop post-partum bleeding). Alice asked no questions about the baby nor bothered to turn and look at her, check how she was doing.

Because there is no scale at the clinic, the baby was not weighed and measured, just given a once over to make sure she was alright. She barely cried, just giving a plaintive wail every now and again. Once she was wrapped up, I suggested that we give Alice a chance to see and hold her. Sharlotte tried to give Alice the baby but Alice just turned her head away, refusing to look at her. It was clear then that Alice was not happy about the baby being a girl. After all, Cameroon is still a place where girls are considered unecessary and expensive, since they must be married off and are less useful on the farm. Boys are highly valued and mothers are judged on the number of sons they produce. Alice now had 3 girls and just one boy, and she clearly upset about that. Women in Cameroon believe that the sex of their baby is determined by them, rather than their husband, and thus blame themselves if they have a girl.

Watching Alice refuse to hold, or even acknowledge her child, I had to conceed that this was definitely not the happy occassion that we, in the West, romanticize childbirth to be. This was a baby who was quite literally born into shit, was likely going to be blind, and had a mother who didnt want her. This was not a cause for celebration for Alice, but rather an extra burden for her to carry. Looking at the disappointment and resignation on Alice's face, I was both frustrated and heartbroken. I was frustrated with her for not loving her baby the way I expected her to and frustrated with the culture of girlchild hating that exists in so many developing countries. But my heart went out to Alice, who while three years younger than me, had more responsibilities and fewer opportunities than I could ever imagine. Her attitude towards her child was a product of history, culture, sexism, economics, and politics, and she was only responding as she was conditioned to. All she and millions of other women have to define themselves is their identity as a mother and they want to fulfill the ideal their society creates for them.

Eventually Alice got up and changed and went into the next room, which been decorated and prepped by other women to serve as a maternity room. It appeared that every woman in the village had come to the health center as soon as she heard Alice was giving birth and had brought some supplies for her. They were extremely efficient and everything was brought in and set up in a highly systematic way, which should not be surprising given how often they probably do it, as Cameroon as a birth rate of 4.5 children/woman. Everyone fawned over the baby while Alice sat, ignored, in a corner. No one congratulated her or asked her how she was doing- it was all about the baby. The mothers and their children all sang and danced around, clearly enjoying themselves. Alice's 35 year old, toothless, raggedly husband came in, smiling. He hugged Alice proudly, but got no response from her. Oddly enough, he wasn't dissapointed about having another daughter- he actually seemed extremely happy about it, but he may have been putting on a front for me.

While we cleaned and packed up, a friend of Alice's came in and told me that it had been decided that the baby would be named Zara Egbe, in honor of the 'white man' in town and the two nurses who delivered her, Sharlotte and Rebecca, both of whom have the Cameroonian name Egbe in addition to their Christian names. Alice herself clearly had had no say in the matter but didn't seem to care either way. She was in slightly better spirits as we departed and had agreed to hold the baby, which we considered great progress.

A few weeks later Rebecca came to Mamfe and I ran into her. I asked about Alice and baby Zara and found out that they had stayed in the maternity room for 5 days but left without paying a single franc. Why? Because the baby was a girl and not worth paying for.

Transportation: 4-Wheel Drive Anyone?

2008-08-22T22:01:00.000+02:00

Q: How many adults can fit in a Toyota Corolla?
A: At least nine.

Yep, nine. Also, 7 in the cab of a small pickup truck, 26 men in a 12 seater van, 63 in a 25 seater minibus, three people in the driver's seat of any car, as many children as it takes in a school bus until one of them falls out. This is possible in Cameroon, where if both your butt cheeks are on the seat, you've got too much room.

Shared taxis, which are the primary form of transportation in towns like Buea, are usually Corollas and are supposed to hold no more than 7 people. They drive around town, picking up and dropping off at random locations but at least they only cost 100CFA, or 25 cents. After taking a lot of shared taxi rides, I noticed that they all seem to have the same accessories: an American flag air freshener, a sticker on the side window of an Asian woman, fake Hawaiian flowers across the dashboard, Jesus-related paraphenalia, green or blue lights inside, a furry cover for the driver's seat and an HIV-testing promotional sticker. This must be the Cameroonian cabbie starter-kit. Most cars have only 1 handle to roll down windows which gets passed around. And you know which cabs to avoid because the windshield will be cracked on the passenger side, where someone got thrown forward in an accident. (Seatbelts exist only for drivers.) But what really differentiates the taxis are the names or sayings painted on the side of the car. Below is a selection of my favorites from Buea.

-Bush Doctor
-The Spanish Lover
-Osama Billion
-Talk 2 My Lawyer
-Playboy
-Vatican Express
-Nice guy again
-James Bond
-Cockman
-Asshole
-I am covered in the blood of Jesus
-No food for lazy men
-Don Pedro
-No Satan
-Jesus for Life
-Maitre Julio
-Simple Chief
-Barcelona
-Nellyville
-One Mama
-Rabbi
-Red Bull
-Nazi Group
-Daddyroo
-Patience Express
-Loverboy
-Mitterand (like the former French President)

When not riding in strangely named taxis, I rode on 'Chinese mosquitos', known to the rest of the world as motorcycles. I have yet to convince the Cameroonians that most motorcycles they get are in fact Japanese, not Chinese. They are called mosquitos because they are small, fast, and deadly. They wouldn't be death on wheels if people consistently drove on one side of the road, there weren't potholes the size of swimming pools on the 15% of roads in Cameroon which are paved (and the rest weren't mud pits), people wore helmets, and there were such things as stop signs and traffic lights. I never saw an odometer or speedometer that worked, doors would jam so often window egress was a common sight, and to be a driver was to be a mechanic. As George, the head of UAC in Mamfe, said 'In Cameroon all drivers drink gasoline.' George himself drank gas many times during the summer in order to unclog the engine of his ancient, odometer-stuck-at-999,999, white station wagon. Even the driving school's car was in bad shape. It had no side mirrors, broken tail lights and deflated tires, and looked like it had survived a war. I guess if you can manage to drive that thing without killing yourself (or the driving instructor) you can drive anything in Cameroon. However, I still prefer my Chinese mosquitos.

Touring the Health Centers: Part 2

2008-08-01T11:03:00.001+02:00

Malaria, malaria, malaria.

Thats what I heard from every doctor and nurse I met with in Cameroon. I visited 17 health care sites, ranging from large government hospitals to rural clinics staffed by a single nurse, but at each the most common ailment seen was malaria. Some providers estimate that nearly 60% of the patients they see suffer from malaria. (Other common problems were typhoid, respiratory infections, gastrointestinal issues, HIV and STDs, and accidents.) Malaria is a problem all over sub-Saharan Africa, but Cameroon is plagued by particularly virulent strains, which can turn into cerebral malaria and kill within 24 hours of the first symptoms. Despite the prevalence and severity of malaria in Cameroon, people quite blase about it. Whereas the thought of getting malaria strikes panic in the heart of an American, a Cameroonian thinks of it as an annual ritual, like Christmas. Most people have lost track of the number of times they've had malaria and view it as a minor nuisance. However, malaria is the number two killer of children in Cameroon, after neonatal causes, accounting for 23% of all deaths for children under 5. Only 13% of children sleep under treated mosquito nets. (http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/cameroon_statistics.html). Among adults, malaria is the number three killer, which partially explains why life expectancy in Cameroon is 50 years, for both men and women.

The reason that so many die from malaria is not that treatment is expensive. In fact, it could hardly be cheaper. To treat a simple case of childhood malaria costs 140CFA, or the equivalent of 33 cents. A simple adolescent case costs 230CFA and an adult case 600CFA. In comparison, a 600ml bottle of domestic beer costs 550CFA. The Global Fund, the WHO, and UNICEF pour an enormous amount of money into subsidizing malaria treatment and are constantly researching, re-evaluating and recombining the medicines to make them more effective, as strains of malaria become drug-resistant.

So if cost is not the reason for lack of treament, what is? The first, of course, is poverty. While the drugs themselves may not be expensive, getting to a clinic may be. Most Cameroonians live in rural areas, where health centers are not conveniently located. To reach one people often have to walk through muddy fields for hours, or pay 550CFA for a liter of watered down petrol to fuel their motorbike, if they are so lucky to have one. In addition, people must also pay the 200CFA (or more) consultation fee just to see a nurse and for any lab tests that must be done.

The government, under extreme international pressure, has developed programs to subsidize all health costs. Highly supported by GTZ, the German aid agency, the Southwest Special Fund for Health (SWSFH) is designed to keep costs down and encourage people to use health services but this program has mixed success. Why? Well this bring us to the second reason malaria kills: skepticism.

This skepticism includes skepticism of Western medicines, skepticism of the health system, skepticism of any government related project, and even skepticism of malaria itself. Cameroonians, on the whole, believe strongly in traditional medicines, and employ natural remedies and the services of a traditional doctor (a.k.a. a witchdoctor) as their first line of defense against illness. While herbal medicines may well work sometimes, the usually just serve to delay people seeking treatment in the Western health system, as they wait to see if their symptoms abate. Other people are reluctant to see a doctor or nurse, but believe in the power of Western medicines, and so they self-treat by buying drugs from street vendors. These drugs are usually expired, mislabeled, and sold at exhorbitant prices. Whereas a paracetamol (Tylenol) is sold under SWSFH prices at 2CFA, a street vendor often charges 100CFA a tablet, claiming it is a fancy, powerful, cure-all drug. While self-treatment can sometimes be harmless, most of the time it does a great deal of harm because, again, it serves to delay real treatment. And in the case of fast-acting cerebral malaria, such a delay can be deadly.

As for the health system and the government, Cameroonians have legitimate grounds for their lack of trust. Cameroon is rountinely rated one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In 2006 they came in 138th in the world, right behind Zimbabwe in Transparency International's annual report. As Postwatch, another anti-corruption organization wrote "Corruption in Cameroon is a living thing, a monstrous slimy hydra: vicious in outreach, cancerous in spread and disgusting in reach." I'm not sure the hyperbole is necessary, but it is fairly accurate. There are anti-corruption drives going on in the government, but when your president has been in power for 22 years and is the hand-picked successor of your first president, there isn't must motivation to clean things up. Earlier in the year the Minister of Public Health was brought down in one of these drives as evidence that the government is taking action. He allegedly pocketed about $12-$13 million dollars of international donations intended for HIV/AIDS treatment. Most likely this was a drop in the bucket of funds he embezzled during his tenure, but it still represents enough money to treat 36 million cases of childhood malaria (in a country of 17 million). For another example, look to the post office system. According to my friend Mr. Oben, a retired professor, years ago the post offices in Cameroon used to serve as credit unions, where people could save their money. Then, suddenly, all the money was gone- embezzled by various post office officials. And the people had no recourse to get their money back. So of course they are wary of doing anything that involves them, their families, their health or their money with the government, even if that means potentially endangering their health.

The widespread corruption in Cameroon has severely inhibited the development of the health care system, as well as people's willingness to use it. Government health centers have sprung up around the country but these centers are little more than concrete rooms and lack running water, electricity or sanitation, or even basic supplies such as needles, gauze, foreceps and kidney dishes. The roads to these health centers may be impassable, or may even not exist. Usually staffed by nurses, they receive little supervision, which allows for mistreatment of patients, and corruption by the staff. Because typically only 1 nurse (the Chief of Post) gets paid a meager wage, the rest are volunteers. However, they may receive a small stipend to cover their transportation costs out of whatever profit the health center makes that month. In order to make a profit, these centers often charge for unnecessary lab tests and services. Nurses sell drugs to patients out of their own purses, charging them exhorbitant prices and with-holding the drugs if the patient refuses to pay. While this behavior seems despicable, it is hard to criticize a nurse who, because of encouragement from her government, went to nursing school, only to find a dearth of paying jobs when she graduated and still has to feed her family. (By the way, that $13 million the Minister embezzled could have paid the salaries for 1 year for 14,000 nurses.)

Despite all this, during my tours of the health centers I met many dedicated, hard-working, caring and competent nurses. The story of one nurse in particular sticks with me. She was a well-trained nurse who had been placed two years ago in a new rural health center, by herself. The center had several rooms, was bright, airy and clean but lacked water or electricity. When she was placed there she was given just a desk, a chair, and a lamp. (The lamp strikes me as particularly useless, given the lack of electricity.) No beds, no supplies, no medications. (The large pharmacy room remains unstocked to this day.) For the first year she delivered babies on her desk, in the light of a bushlamp she purchased herself, with drugs and supplies she begged from other health centers, and having to run to the latrine 30 yards away to dispose of the waste, leaving the woman alone. Eventually she was given one rusty bed frame with a torn plastic mattress to use as her delivery bed. Now she goes door to door to check on the villagers since no one wants to come in to the clinic, and why would they? No one wants to deliver on a desk when they can deliver in the comfort of their bed at home, and no one wants to go to a nurse for a diagnosis when they have to go somewhere else to buy drugs. Frustratingly for this nurse, the clinic down the road, in the same health district, is overflowing with beds, supplies, and staff.

Here's another example of the misallocation of resources for you. A nurse at a small rural health center was seeing a lot of women who were experiencing complications during delivery and who needed to go to the district hospital for more advanced care. She applied for funds from an international aid agency to help alleviate the problem. They gave her a motorcycle, intending it to carry a full-term woman in labor and a nurse. And the nurse cant drive a motorcycle. Isn't development work hilarious?

On a less humorous and more frightening note, I must tell you about Dr. E, the single most insane person I met in Cameroon. Dr. E is in his late 30s and considered quite successful. He owns his own clinic, which has inpatient wards for men and women, a pharmacy, a lab, a delivery room, and a surgery theater, and employs ten nurses. But, like many incompetent and lazy doctors, he is scalpel-happy. He loves to do surgeries because they rake in money and he doesn't have to spend a great deal of time figuring out what's wrong with a patient. And Cameroonians believe in surgeries (if they believe in Western medicine) and are willing to pay for them so Dr. E markets himself as an efficient, inexpensive surgeon. He claims that while, yes, malaria is the most common illness he sees, appendicitis is the second most common. And herniated disks the third. Not a single other provider put either of those in their top ten most frequently seen illnesses. He charges 40,000CFA for each of those surgeries ($95), including post-op treatment and inpatient stay. Since the clinic opened in 2005, he has done 1,200 surgeries, sometimes as many as 10 a day, and seen 20,000 patients. (For those of you doing the math, that's surgery on 6% of his patients.) Dr. E is very proud of his surgeries, so proud in fact that he stores the organs/tumors/entrails of every surgical patient he's ever had. And he stores them in his surgery room (which has just one bed with a plastic mattress and a table of unsterilized equipment) in plastic buckets. They are crammed in together with just enough formaldehyde to keep them from reeking. And he will gladly, proudly pull them out to show you and explain the origin of each piece. So note, if you ever go to Mamfe, Cameroon do not under any circumstances, even if you actually have appendicitis, go to Dr. E. Your organs will end up in his buckets and you will contract a post-op infection, like most of his patients do.

But besides that complete psychopath, most of the providers I met were trying hard to provide the best care they could for their patients, while at the same time struggling to get by themselves. The system is highly inefficient and corrupt and the health problems Cameroon faces are enormous. But slowly progress is being made, and hopefully a new goverment will be able to improve the system, increasing access and quality of care for all its citizens.

For those of you who are interested (and apparently you are since you've read this far), I wrote rather long, detailed but interesting report on all of this. If you would like, I can email you a copy and you can subject yourselves to an even longer commentary on the Cameroonian health system as well as 17 health facilities. Just send me your email address and I will send it out when I finish it, which will be in the next week or so.

The Top 10 Reasons Not to Shower

2008-07-23T12:23:00.000+02:00

10. Sooner rather than later you will step ankle-deep into a pile of manure.

9. Your smell deters muggers, if not mosquitos.

8. You're cold for the rest of the day if you do, even if its 90 degrees outside.

7. You're lazy.

6. Instead of water, cockroaches or worms might fall from the showerhead.

5. Mud is therapeutic for the skin.

4. So you fit right in with the locals.

3. No matter how hard you try, your feet will never, ever even be close to clean.

2. Even if you don't smell your clothes do.

1. The water is not on anyway.

You Know You've Been in Cameroon Too Long When....

2008-07-21T12:53:00.002+02:00

You know you've been in Cameroon too long when....

*you take having the electricity, water, and Internet working at the same time as a sign of the apocalypse
*you find the idea of being able to walk down the street WITHOUT being stared at, whistled at, or harrassed very strange
*you've stopped using helping verbs when you speak
*you no longer notice the rooster crowing outside your room at all hours of the night (or the evangelist proselytizing)
*fufu and eru is your favorite food
*you no longer fear the prospect of malaria
*you think the flashlight accessory on your cell phone is a godsend
*you start saying "I want to piss myself" when you need to pee
*your water bottle serves at least five daily functions (drinking, showering, filling the toilet, storage, doorstop, etc)
*most of your daydreams revolve around eating a piece of meat bigger than your thumb
*your circadian rhythms have adopted 'African Time'
*you can justify your refusal to shower at least ten different ways
*you don't believe that bread comes in more than one type (white)
*you've killed a (named) mouse in your house with a broom and rubber cement
*you point and stare more than the locals when you see a white man
*you start inviting yourself to funerals for the free booze
*there is no longer such a thing as 'matching' or 'clashing'
*you've seen a dead body in the road and walked by it, unfazed
*you've forgotten that a liquid form of milk exists, as does a non-liquid form of peanut butter

You might be a Cameroonian if.....

2008-07-21T12:37:00.000+02:00

You might be a Cameroonian if.....

*you've ever uttered the phrase "please for container"

*you can carry a bucket of water on your head and carry one in each hand without spilling a drop

*you can give a play-by-play analysis of the 1990 World Cup quarterfinal match between Cameroon and Argentina from memory

*you have used prize-winning promotional beer bottle caps as a form of currency

*you own at least one piece of clothing with President Paul Biya's face on it (and at least three pieces with Eto'o's name on it)

*you work for or with three or more relatives

*you have lost count of the number of times you've had malaria

*the concept of 'silence' is entirely foreign to you

*your father has at least ten children by two different women

*you've never eaten pork and consider chicken a delicacy

*the country you consider most similar to your own is Canada because they are also French-English bilingual

*you suffer withdrawl symptoms if you go four days without eating snails

*you know at least eight ways to cook plantains

*you see no irony in trying to get visiting white men to come to church with you

*you believe that sometimes after people die their ghost goes to Europe, makes money and send its back home

*you have no sense of time or distance

*your definition of 'parenting' is saying "I will beat you" or "I will kill you" at least ten times a day to you kids

*your preferred method of resolving disagreements is screaming at someone in a public area

*you fall in love with people (particularly white women) after meeting them once

*you are running at least one palm oil or parrot egg exporting scam

*you flash. A lot.

*you prepare all of your food the same way: dry the ingredients, ground them to a powder, turn them into a paste, wrap the paste in banana leaves, steam them, and consume it as a bland, starchy ball

*you believe meeting a white man equals getting a visa

*you take justice into your own hands and punish thieves by pouring vats of acid on them, throwing them onto a pile of burning tires, or beating them to death in the street

*you love Spanish telenovelas dubbed in French, but speak neither language

*you consider breastfeeding an appropriate public, social activity

*you think the ability to type with more than two fingers is a sign of genius

*you're 5 years old and, disturbingly, can dance like a stripper

*your home contains no written material other than a Bible

*you believe in witchcraft, but not washing machines

*you listen to the same three songs over and over, everywhere

*you consider Maggi, salt and palm oil to be the three essential ingredients in any dish

(Sorry if these make no sense to you, but take my word for it, all of these hold true in Cameroon, as bizarre as they may be.)

Brown Girl, White Man, Black Country

2008-06-28T11:54:00.000+02:00

In Brazil people were convinced I was from Ecuador. In Cambodia people admired my big nose and told me that I'd be pretty if only I wasnt so dark-skinned. In India people considered me too American to be truly Indian and too Indian to be truly American. In the U.S. people (especially in Maine) have asked if I'm Mexican, Chinese, Arab, or African. In every country people are preplexed as to how/why a non-white person is carrying an American passport that says she was born in Scotland. But for all this racial confusion, no one has ever mistaken me for a "white man". Yet that's what I'm known as here. Of course, people dont literally think I'm a Caucasian male, but rather that I'm a foreigner. However, I can't walk down the street without a dozencalls of "white man, white man", mostly from kids under the age of eight. Even toddlers barely old enough to speak can squeak out 'wha-maa' and point at me.

Usually we (the other interns and I) can satisfy the kids by returning their calls with a 'hello' or 'good morning', which the kids, who are too dumbfounded by our ability or willingness to speak to them, can't reply to. Some bolder or more curious kids have insisted on rubbing my (above all the others') skin to see if the color rubs off. A few have even put mud on themselves and let it dry to try to match me.

But the biggest attraction has been my hair, especially among grown women. No adult woman here has just her own hair- everyone wears a wig or weave, or braids in fake hair. So the fact that I, a dark-skinned person have straight, relatively shiny, fast-growing, black hair is almost unbelievable, and definitely an eviable trait. More than a few women have offered to pay me to cut off my hair and give it to them to make a wig out of, especially after I described donating to Locks of Love. The rest of the women insist that I should braid it like they do, but I think I'll end up looking like a sorority girl just back from Spring Break in Cancun, and I dont really want that.

All of these behaviors and suggestions are regularly occuring and have become expected. But what I did not expect was the welcome I got in the village of Bakwele. I had gone to Bakwele, a small isolated village about 45 minutes drive away from Mamfe on a crappy dirt/mud road, to visit their health center as part of my research. With me were Sharlotte, a young nurse who is my assistant/translator, and Antoine, our driver. Because Bakwele is a rather unremarkable village, there is no reason for a 'white man' to pass through it, and we knew that I would be the only non-African many people had ever seen, or at least seen recently. Even driving the truck down the main path caused a sensation, as there are no cars and only a few motorbikes in Bakwele. This was all expected. But what the three of us were not ready for were the screams of 'AL-BE-NO! AL-BE-NO!' which erupted as I got out of the truck. Within a few moments what seemed like every kid in the village had gathered around me and taken up the chant, including a girl so young she couldnt walk without falling down every few steps, but who chanted with unparalleled enthusiasm.

Because there are a lot of misconceptions about albinos (who are relatively common here), the kids were quite scared of me. Most people believe that albinos are sub-human/ghosts/immortal/soul-less beigns who are cursed because of the sins of their parents. Several kids would run up to me to get a closer look, and then run away screaming in terror. None of the parents or grandparents sitting around made any move to quell the chaos and in fact seemed to agree with their kids' assessment of me.

Eventually we made our way into the health center, where we had a much more sensible welcome. All three of us were still startled and neither Sharlotte nor Antoine had a good explanation for that reception. (In other places we went a few kids might should 'white man' but most people kept going about the business and greeted me normally.) Even inside the health center we could hear the kids shoulding. During my survey of the clinic and interviews with the providers the kids would hang on the bars of the windows to stare at me (perhaps to determine if I was coming because of some problem derived from lacking a soul) and periodically shout 'Al-be-no' as a reminder to me of my classification.

Our walk back to the truck and departure created similar chaos to our arrival but the kids felt bolder now and would come up and touch me before running away shreiking. They ran after our car for almost a kilometer. Its hard to say if they were driving us out of town or were calling me back so they could examine me. Given that my skin is only slightly lighter than theirs, I wonder what they would have done if one of the real white interns (some of whom are imposingly large) had been with me; perhaps they would be a super-albino or even a phantom. I want to take a trip back to Bakwele just to conduct that experiment.

Outside that village no one has mistaken me for an albino but they have made other inaccurate guesses regarding my background. The chief doctor at the district hospital guessed Puerto Rican, which was unexpected since I doubt anyone else in Cameroon has ever heard of Puerto Rico, much less seen a Puerto Rican. Several people have thought that I was from the Middle East, saying that I look like 'those people America keeps fighting'. The most common guess is that I'm biracial. One guy even told me as part a marriage proposal (each foreign girl here gets at least 3 a day) that he "always wanted to marry a half black, half white", to which I replied I too shared that dream, and thus couldnt accept his offer. Yesterday a kid pointed me out to another one and said "Look, a 'black man' inside a 'white man'.

A couple days ago I had a difficult time convincing the Mayor's secretary that I was not in fact a Native American. Our conversation, which occured while I waited to take a trip to a village health center with the mayor, went as follows:

Him: So you are American?
Me: Yes.
Him: And you are an Indian?
Me: Yes
Him: So you are a red Indian.
Me: No, I'm a brown Indian, from India.
Him: (Silence)...Indians are custodians.
Me: (Shocked and perplexed face)
Him: ...of the land.
Me: Yes, I suppose that's true.
Him: Indians used to fight the cowboys.
Me: Yes, they did.
Him: As a red Indian, how do you feel about having Bush the cowboy as your President?
Me: Umm...(Considering the ways that question is ridiculous)

Luckily I was saved from answering by the mayor's arrival.

Eventually once people realize that my family is from India, they all have the same reaction: "You people make good movies and music." (I never thought there could be music and movies worse than those from Bollywood, but the comically bad products from 'Nollywood'- Nigeria- have proven me wrong.) Then they talk about how Indians are all beautiful and good singers. I have yet to disuade anyone of this notion, even after explaining that in a country of 1.3 billion people its not hard to find enough good-looking, talented people to fill up a movie set. Naturally this love of all things Indian leads the men to ask if I am married (and I always say that yes, I am, for two years to an American soldier- i.e. not someone to mess with) or if I have any available sisters, cousins or friends for them. (At this point I become an unfortunate, friendless orphan.)

So all you Indian women reading, know that there are lots of underemployed Cameroonian men who would love to marry you. And if you are a young biracial woman, there's someone here dying to have your baby. I'd take up these offers if only I wasn't an AL-BE-NO with no soul...:)

How to Win Friends & Influence People

2008-06-26T12:19:00.000+02:00

A Lost Lesson from Dale Carniege: Eating

They say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Well, the way to a country's heart is through your stomach.

Therefore real secret to making friends & influencing people is this: eat everything, eat a lot of it, and eat it spicy. After you've eaten, praise the cook, praise the country that invented the dish, and praise your fellow diners for introducing you to this delicious cuisine. If you follow these simple steps, you will be the most popular and well-liked person in any place you visit. Picky eaters are unwelcome everywhere.

*************************************************************************************

So I dont want to brag, but I've become famous here. Actually, that's not accurate; my stomach has become famous here. While the other 'white men' (see previous blog for an explanation of this term) prefer white bread with lumpy peanut butter, my stomach craves fufu and eru, snails, bushmeat, coki, egusi pudding, plantains in any form, gari and obono soup, etc, etc- all the classic Cameroonian dishes (see below for descriptions of these dishes). And of course, absurd amounts of pepe. Yet, while the other white men seem to have contracted every gastrointestinal illness known to mankind, my stomach chugs along quite happily, my stock of Pepto-Bismol untouched. This really the source of my stomach's popularity- its freakish fortitude. My stomach is so famous that I've been called "a true African" for possessing it. My entire "farewell and thank you" speech from UAC was about my appetite and love of African cuisine, which made me wonder if they think the only thing I did here was eat.

Naturally, the other white men are slightly jealous of my stomach, especially since they are constantly asked why they dont eat like me. (Their response is usually "I cant eat anything with oil/rice/starches/meat/anything green, anything yellow, anything not pre-packaged, anything cooked in Africa, etc.") I tell them that I can't take credit/responsibility for my eating habits- that honor belongs to my mother. She is the one who used to take us to eat weird things like goat kidney in back alleys in Bombay, feed us pani puri from street vendors whose hands were black with grime, and force us to consume anything set in front of us. So thanks mom, you've broken my stomach in well for this trip. You should do the same for these other white men. They're really missing out on some great, albeit carb-heavy, palm-oil loaded, food.

So what's the lesson in all this, you ask? An iron stomach is the traveler's greatest assest.

*************************************************************************************
Fufu and eru: Perhaps the most Cameroonian dish of all, it consists of a giant ball of bland cassava dough served with green leaves soaked in palm oil, often with snails or meat mixed in. Eaten with hands.

Snails: Very popular in the Southwest Province. In the Mamfe area they are the main source of protein. Tastes and feels like rubber. Sometimes eaten on a stick, othertimes with vegetables.

Bushmeat: Collective term for any unusual (and often illegally-hunted) game meat: antelope, monkey, porcupine, various large burrowing animals.

Coki: Either made from corn or beans which are ground (by hand) into a powder and then a paste, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Served in a big lump. One of my favorites.

Egusi pudding: Exactly like coki except made from ground melon seeds and often with meat inside.

Plantains: Like bananas, but stickier. Can be eaten unripe or ripe, fried, boiled, steamed, baked, etc. Either totally bland or extremely tasty.

Gari and Obono soup: Gari is basically a yellow version of fufu (big bland starch ball). Obono soup is flavored with the dried pits of bush mangoes. (Gari is sometimes served with okra or egusi soup.)

I am alive!

2008-06-24T12:12:00.000+02:00

Sorry for not writing for so long, but Internet access (along with electricity and running water) is a rare indulgence in Mamfe. There are only three computers with Internet access in town and service is incredibly slow on the few days there is power. However, know that I am still writing entries which will be posted when I'm back in Buea and will catch you up on my adventures. For now, here's a few highlights:

*I helped delivery a baby at a rural health center (no water, no lights, no paved roads) and now the baby is named Zara Egbe (Egbe after the two nurses who really did the delivery.)

*I took a two-hour, 3-person-on-a-bike motorcycle ride through a road (i.e. muddy roller coaster) that most Cameroonians won't dare travel on in the rainy season. Upon my arrival back in Mamfe the other volunteers commented that I was so muddy that my clothes and skin were the same color.

*I've become an expert on the quality of bushmeats, i.e. game that is killed in the area forests, such as porcupine, antelope, monkey and giant rat. My love of local food, willingness to eat anything, and my freakish tolerance for spiciness has won me a lot of fans.

*I've visited about 20 health centers and the crazinest clinician I've met was a doctor who was so scapel-happy that he did surgeries on 6% of his patients and averaged 10 a day. He claimed appendicitis was the 2nd most common illness he saw- no other provider put that in their top 10. Even worse, he kept all the organs and tumors he removed stuffed in buckets of formaldahyde under the bed in his little surgery room, and proudly showed them off to me.

*Two days ago I conducted amatuer dentistry on myself to removed my metal retainer on my lower teeth, which had come loose and was poking me. My mini- Swiss Army knife's knife and nail file have never been so handy.

*I caused sheer pandamonium in one village where, inexplicably, people became convinced that I was an albino. Children ran away from me or ran after me screaming "Al-be-no! Al-be-no!" all afternoon, even while I conducted interviews. The village elders seemed to agree with the children's assessment.

That's a bit for now, but I promise to write more soon. I'm leaving Mamfe in about 3 weeks, so I'll be coming back to the modern world then. So til that time, know that I'm alive and well (and getting fat on the copious amounts of white bread people make me eat) and enjoying Cameroon.

They Call Me Ms. Pepe

2008-05-22T10:41:00.000+02:00

So its time to talk/write about everyone's favorite topic: Food.

The first thing you should know about Cameroonian food is that it consists primarily of starches. And main dishes can be summed up as starches wrapped in/on top of/mixed with starches. As someone with a serious 'meat tooth', I'm having major protein withdrawl. My solution to this problem: soya. Not 'soya' as in tofu, but 'soya' as in Zara's ideal food item. Soya is meat seasoned with spicy pepe (the Pidgin word for pepper'), grilled over coals on the roadside and served on a stick. And it costs $0.25 each. What could be better?? Although a chronic addiction is developing, I'm trying to limit myself to 5 a day, to be eaten in the long afternoon period between lunch and dinner.

In terms of regular meals, we (the interns) eat three, carb-loaded times a day at the Orock's house. Breakfast, at 7:30am is usually some combination of eggs and lots of white bread. On occasion we have that famous Cameroonian specialty (seriously), the spagetti omlet. Lunch, the major meal of the day at 2pm is either lots french fries, rice or pasta served with a red sauce that tastes like Minestrone, some fruit and a minimal amount of grilled fish or chicken. Given that there are now seven of us, we must strategically situate ourselves at the table to give us the best access to the non-carb items. In fairness I should say that there is always enough food at the table and that they do go out of the way to give us Western food and more protein than the average Cameroonian gets. Dinner at the Orock's (and other Cameroonian households) is a light, starchy meal. We usually eat pancakes/crepes, muffins, or on special days, white bread with avocado, cucumber and tomatoes with mayonaise- strangely tasty.

As someone who's already had her fill of french fries and pancakes, I've been asking for some of the leftovers from the Orock family's meals, i.e. traditional West African food. These dishes include 'pap' (mushed up cornmeal), various types of 'fufu' (a boiled and mashed glob of yam, cassava, or manioc served in a banana leaf and which tastes similar to what one would expect from melted rubber), fried plantains (delicious), and grilled meats covered in pepe. My love of pepe, and high tolerance for spiciness (which is at freak levels, according to everyone here) has led to the nickname Ms. Pepe. My regular server of soya, Bobe, claims that I eat spicier food than any Cameroonian, although he watches me carefully everytime I eat his spicy soya to make sure that my head doesn't explode or my tongue fall off. Pepe is so good that I am seriously contemplating leaving all my possessions here and bringing home a giant backpack full of it, not for resale, just personal consumption.

Second to my love of spicy food is my love of street food. Some local specialities include 'poof poof', which is basically extremely greasy, fried dough and another example of the emphasis on carbs here. (Poof-poofs may also be the single cheapest item here, costing only 5F, which is a couple of pennies.) There is also grilled corn on the cob, although it is very much in need of butter, chili pepper and salt, which is how it is served in India to perfection. We also go for roasted bar fish (a local type of fish) on the weekends. Served with a pepe sauce and fried plantains, a whole fish about the size of a forearm costs only 700F, or $1.75. Amazing.

In terms of drinks, there is no better deal than Cameroonian beer. For .65L (about the quantity of two cans in the U.S.) it costs $1.25. There are numerous brands, with the most popular local ones being Mitzig and Export 33, both dark lagers. Guiness is also ubiquitous, and is the corporate sponsor for just about every event, including the Race for Hope up Mt. Cameroon. The beers are way to heavy and dark for me (I've obviously got the American preference for light, girly beers) so I stick with Fanta and Pomplemousse (grapefruit soda), which are $1 for .65L, still a good deal. All the drinks are served in old-school glass bottles so you can only have beer or soda in restaurants or roadside bars- I havent seen any drink in cans or plastic bottles.

Oh, I forgot to mention fruit. Mangos, green oranges (mosumbi in India), and pineapple are all in season and cheaper than dirt. Four mangos costs $0.25 total and a whole cut pineapple the same. I end up eating a lot of these, along with roasted nuts, between meals, because six hours is just too long for me to go without eating. Ironically, its now time for me to go get my regular 6pm soya fix. Today I think I'll have six, five for me and one in your honor. :)

Climbing Mt. Cameroon: Day 3

2008-05-18T16:43:00.000+02:00

We woke up impossibly sore. Our hobbling to the latrine was truly comical. However, after putting up with Peter's impatience the day before, I was determined that we were going to complete the last leg of the trip (another 12-13km mostly through rain forest) in half the time (9 hours) he predicted. (As you all well know, I am rather competitive and there was no way a man was going to tell me again that at our 'girl pace' we were slower than other groups.) Given this, at 7:30am we set out from our campsite, doing 10 minutes in the woods around the spring and going into the savana, just as yellow/brown and barren as the day before but blessedly not as windy. Once my legs became more limber than the concrete blocks they started the day as, I was practically jogging through, although the trail was still difficult. Over the rolling hills, the soil of the savana was like gravel and the path so narrow that my foot barely fit on it, so it was like walking a rocky tightrope and trying not to fall off a mountain at the same time. (I forgot to mention that a couple hours into day 1 a strap on my backpack broke so I had it slung across my body and the heaviness of the water severely affected my balance, which made me even more wobbly during this part.)

After 45 minutes of this (Peter predicted almost 2 hours) we hit the rainforest. Serious dense, jungle-y rainforest. It was almost primordial, with huge ferns and a canopy so dense that it was hard to see through the darkness. Just our luck, it had rained the night before, making the steep descent even harder, with us slipping all over the place thanks to the wet leaves which made up the path and the dense underbrush hiding loose branches for us to trip over. During our 2.5 hours in the forest we met our first non-trekker, a crazy local hunter on his way to the spring. Once he found out that we were Danish and American he started shouting 'You are rich! You are rich! Your father is a rich man!', which reflects the mentality of many people here.

Sweating bullets from the heat and humidy, we were so happy to come into the 'farmlands', a less dense green forest with scattered areas for growing yams, cassava and manioc, none of which is done in the style we think of for growing crops- neat rows of plants. Instead this was just free growing plants that a family, or group of families, would harvest when the need arose.

By this time we were salivating at the though of paved roads, showers, and being in our own beds. (And I was mentally preparing a list of complaints about Peter.) And so we were again jogging to the finish line, which was pretty admirable given not only our exhaustion and soreness but Sophie's sprained ankle. We three, along with the Cameroonian girl, we all jumping for joy (and then cringing as our knees hurt upon coming back down) when we finally got to paved roads, and even the porters seemed overjoyed to be home. Getting in the taxi to go back to the office was like riding in a car for the first time- the idea of moving while not walking was earth-shattering. Oh, and we did the supposed 9 hour trek in less than 5 hours, which even Peter had to conceed was a record, not just for girls but for all his climbers.

Back in the office we logged an official complaint about Peter and then tipped the porters and other guide. (The Danish girls had a hard time w/ the tipping- apparently its just not done in Scandinavia.) We then took a cab back down the hill to our place in Molyko (our neighborhood in Buea). Apparently everyone in town noticed our arrival, probably due to our truly disgusting (and smelly) appearance and loud groaning as we stood up again. Walking the 250 meters back to our house was probably the most painful walk of my life, especially when I realized how badly my left shoulder hurt from carrying 20lbs on it all day for three days. The water was still not running when we got home, but our roommates agreed that a shower was extremely necessary and that was probably the best bucket shower of my entire life.

As we hobbled like old/pregnant women over to the Orock's for lunch, the three of us took a moment to look up at the mountain. Most of the time you hardly notice its there, as its often covered by the clouds, but today the sun was shining and you could see the top ridge. It was only then that the sense of achievement we had expected to feel at the summit finally hit us, and we felt proud of what we had accomplished. Even now, a week later, I look at the mountain and am mystified as to just how we managed to get all the way up there. So even though it was one of the most physically demanding experiences of my life (and I dont think I've cursed more in three days before), climbing Mt. Cameroon was also one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things I've ever done.

However, you can be damn sure I'm not doing it again any time soon.

Climbing Mt. Cameroon: Day 2

2008-05-17T12:03:00.000+02:00

Woke up at 6am very sore but to good weather- not too cold or windy. Our guide, Useless Peter, as we had dubbed him, promised to tell us more about the ecology and history of the mountain, and therefore began our climb by telling us about how there was the dead body of a teenager on the next ridge and that a plane had crashed in the mountain last year. Charming.

After a short, extremely steep and rocky portion, the ground became slightly more level, and the climbing easier, but the weather became cold, windy, and misty. Two hours later we arrived at a huge cave, where we took shelter from the wind for a bit and chatted with Francis, the other guide, who told us about the god of the mountain and how his mood determines the weather at the summit. That day it seemed like the god was feeling blustery.

From there it was another hour to Hut 3 in the wind and cold, and the hike seemed never-ending. By this point we were all cursing ourselves for choosing to do this god-forsaken climb and were angry, frozen, wet popsicles. After resting, exhausted, in the hut for a while with the porters, who were also beat, we set out to brave the storm and climb the last 45 minutes to the summit. The path, although not very steep, was extremely difficult because the land was sandy/gravely and the wind was so bad that it was hard to stand up, let along walk in a straight line. In a determined haze I dragged myself, practically crawling, to the summit where it was so windy that it was difficult to breathe and we had to cling to the big rock there just to keep from blowing away. (If this had been a mountain in the U.S. there is no way the mountain would have been open to climbers. The guides said they had never seen it so bad and estimated the wind was blowing at about 80mph.) It was also so misty that we could barely see the hand in front of our faces, let alone any view of Cameroon. Because of the miserable conditions it was hard to enjoy the achievement of reaching the peak, and we just wanted to get the hell out of there.

After taking the obligatory pictures (which are too misty to really make out anything) we crawled back down over a different route. Useless Peter went ahead and didnt look back while the three of us struggled to navigate between the two huge craters on the other side. I was kneeling farther down the slope trying to direct Sophie so she didnt fall into one of them while Berit yelled at Peter to slow down, which he didnt do. For about 20 minutes more we struggled through these conditions as we slipped and fell down the very rocky, very windy steep slope. It was like trying to stand still during a rock slide. Eventually the weather got slightly better, the visibility improved and we moved into an area of fine black sand/gravel surrounded by brown tundra. Rather than try and walk down it, I realized that it was easier to 'ski' it and had a great time slalom-ing down the huge hill.

At the end of the hill we started to walk through the endless lava flows which seem to reach the furtherest point of the horizon. These particular flows were from the last erruption in 2002 and were just starting to bud with plant life; I'm sure after the rainy season the whole land looks lush with vegetation. We had to go quite slowly through this portion as Berit wasnt feeling well and the ground was really uneven and unsteady. (However, Useless Peter wasnt too thrilled about this and kept going ahead until I told him to stop and slow down.) After a couple hours we finally, finally made it through to the savana. The line between the savana and the flows is very distinct, as are all the transitions from one environment to the next. The contrast between each of them is extreme.

We thought we only had 40 minutes to go until we reached Mann's Spring, our camping point for the evening, but it turned out that it was 40 minutes until the 12 craters and then another 1 hour to the site. The savana was barren, stark and very windy and we were pretty tired, having already done 12km, including a lot of uphill. Unfortunately we needed a lot of energy to navigate between the craters (which we think were caused during the volcanic eruptions- it was hard to get an answer out of Peter) as they were very unstable, and the trail was just loose pebbles in along a narrow ridge. Beyond the craters we could see green rolling hills, which was quite the contrast to the black 40 foot deep craters we were trying not to fall into. After the craters we emerged into a huge, vast black desert made of very fine volcanic rock. It was truly beautiful and the scope of it was amazing- it just kept going and going. (For those of you have have been to White Sands in New Mexico, think that but with pitch black sand.) I ran and skied through this part, going quickly so I wouldnt notice how badly my legs hurt. Finally out of the desert and into the greenery (although the soil was still made of volcanic rock), I ran down the hill towards a mountain, and eventually to our campsite on the far side. Peter and the girls eventually arrived in one piece as well, although we were all, including the porters who met us there, exhausted and barely able to walk to the latrine around the corner.

After resting and chatting with the Cameroonian girl who also made it to the Spring, we made some more spagetti and then talked with the porters about the local history and culture of the SW Province. After eating the porters did a traditional blessing of the ground, and performed a native song and dance with palm fronds that they asked us to join them in. It was a great experience, although we were so sore that it was hard to dance at all. At long last, at 8:15pm and after 22km that day, we crawled into our tiny tent and went to bed.

Climbing Mt.Cameroon: Day 1

2008-05-15T10:34:00.000+02:00

I'm not really sure what possessed us to do it, but Valerie (the Canadian volunteer who arrived the same time as I did), Sophie and Berit (the two Danish girls who've been with UAC 1.5 months) decided that we wanted to climb Mt.Cameroon. Mt. Fako, as its known locally, is 13,500 ft high and known for its diverse terrain, largely due to the fact that the mountain is also a semi-active volcano. The mountain is also the site of the annual Mt. Cameroon Guiness Race for Hope, a 40km (i.e. marathon length) run up and down the mountain, which, unbelievably, the world's top runners can complete in 4 hours. (There is a woman from Cameroon who has won it seven times, largely because she can make it down in less than an hour.) We booked our trek through the Mt.Cameroon Ecotourism Office, the only licensed agency to lead climbs, and choose to do the 'classic' 3 day, 2 night route, along with a guide and 4 porters. (In what should of acted as a warning to us about the difficulty of the hike, the MCEO has a poilcy of one porter per person because a porter must be availble to carry a hiker down in the case of injury or sickness.) Only about 1,200 tourists choose to climb the mountain last year, and even though it isn't as technically-demanding as Mt.Kenya or Kilamanjaro, its very steep and rather arduous.

Because we choose to cook for ourselves, we bought LOTS of bread, pasta and sauce, non-refridgerated cheese, Spam, and fruit for the trip, along with 6 1.5 liter bottles of water each (the water constitutes the majority of the weight the porters have to carry). We got to the MCEO office early Saturday morning and met our guide Peter, a 35-year old local man who has competed in the Race for Hope (he came in 31st) and has been leading treks for about 10 years. Our four porters were fairly young men, and all, suprisingly, wearing green, taped-together Jellies, like the shoes little girls wore on the beach in the 1980s. Somehow they got all of our food, water, clothes, tent, four sleeping bags and sleeping mats, and their stuff into five old-fashioned army backpacks, and by 8:30am we were off to the base of the mountain, only a couple minutes drive away.

We started climbing through open farmland, and past a run-down but still functioning prison, and only made it 15 minutes before we had to stop because Valerie was feeling sick. Although she had been sick since arriving and taking Immodium without success, she had really wanted to climb the mountain. However, it was obvious that there was no way she was going to make it, even in the best of health. She decided to turn around and headed home and straight for the doctor. Then it was three (plus guides and porters).

After she left we continued on and the rolling hills of farmland morphed into dense forest. We had been warned about rains (its the start of the wet season) and cold (due to the altitude) and prepared for that, so we weren't ready for the extreme heat of the forest and by 30 mins in were soaked with sweat. Two hours later, we arrived at Hut 1, the first rest point, where we had lunch (strangely delicious Laughing Cow cheese and Spam sandwiches) and tried to swat off the swarms of bees which live in the hut. There we also met a Cameroonian girl (whose name I think was Maka) who was climbing with her mother, an extremely determined woman who wanted to make it to the top, despite having to walk with two canes.

At 11:30 we got back to the hike and took on the walk from Hut 1 to Hut 2, which is considered the most challenging part of the trail. We came out of the forest and into the vast, green, lush hills of the mountain, overlooking the city. I was ahead of the pack and had a few minutes to enjoy the sheer scope and beauty of the landscape- not another soul in sight, no signs of anything man-made, just unblemished nature. This setting could have been from anywhere: the hills of Scotland, the mountains in northeast Cambodia, the greenery of New England, and thus produced a feeling in all of us of wonderful displacement and isolation.

This beauty temporarily distracted us from the unbelievable steepness of the climb. Once we moved into the more barren savana, with its rocky soil and scattered plant life, the difficulty increased and we were breathing hard, trying to cope with the altitude and thinness of the air. Finally, across the huge savana I saw a hut, and jumped for joy. We arrived ecstatically, praising each other for finishing the most challening section in about half the time the guidebooks had quoted. Unfortunately our happiness was short-lived once Peter told us this was the Middle Hut, not Hut 2, our destination for the day. Grudingly we set out again.

The three of us began walking along but were quickly forced to climb on hands and knees as the steepness increased and the fertile soil turned into ground of loose rocks and pebbles, making it very unstable. We were above the clouds and wanted to enjoy the views of Buea, the beaches of Limbe, the huge sprawl of Douala, and the rest of the landscape, but we were so exhausted that we just wanted to get to the elusive Hut 3 and ignored the views behind us. The trail never seemed to end, for just as we would arrive at the top of a hill or crest, a whole other mountain would appear before us and we would curse and curse. One of the porters was by then climbing with us, encouraging us to keep going (probably because he didnt want to have to carry us to Hut 2), and telling us about landmarks, such as the Magic Tree, named because even as you walk towards it it doesnt seem to get any bigger. When we saw the flag indicating that Hut 2 was nearby, we did a short dance of joy and dragged ourselves the last 200meters. At over 2800m high, Hut 2 consists of a corrugated metal shack with three rooms with raised platforms inside for sleeping, a seperate wooden kitchen and two outhouses. It also has spectacular views of the coast and cities, and we watched the sunset change the sky below us brilliant colors.

By then it was only 4pm, but we were starving, so with our severely swollen hands (due to the altitude) we prepared a dinner of spagetti, tomato paste and Spam. As we ate we talked to the other hikers: a middle-aged Swedish business man, a German student doing a semester at the University of Buea, a French couple who were serious climbers, and the Cameroonian girl, who had been living in France for the past 9 years. At 5:30 it was getting dark and we crawled into our sleeping bags because not only because we were exhausted, but because it was extremely cold and we had nothing else to do. We spent a restless night listening to the wind howling and the mice crawling around our room, and when Francis, the guide of the Cameroonian girl who was sharing the room with us, came in he killed one with his bare hand, scaring us all awake.

Miscellaneous Observations

2008-05-13T12:06:00.000+02:00

So now that I've been here for a week, some patterns of Cameroonian behavior and culture have begun to emerge. These are listed below, and I'm sure more will be added in the months to come.

-If you are not Cameroonian, you are a 'white man'. (This is a particularly odd experience for me, as I am neither white nor a man, but that doesnt seem to matter to the people here.) And everywhere you go everyone, both young and old, feels the need to shout 'white man white man!!!'

-Once people see a 'white man' and get their attention, they say 'You're welcome', which comes off as rude, as if you forgot to thank them for something, like allowing them into their country. What they really mean however is 'You ARE welcome', a much nicer greeting.

-They are obessed with America. Europe is good, but America is great, which is why every cab has an American flag air freshener in it.

-The word 'please' is completely unheard of, which makes many people come off as rude in the eyes of foreigners, until you realize that they arent as demanding as they seem.

-There are relatively few wild dogs, especially as compared to India or SE Asia. Instead there are lots of wild goats and chickens.

-'Asha' is the Pidgin English answer to every statement. It means 'sorry', 'thanks', 'thats good', 'fine', 'tomorrow', etc, etc.

-'African Magic' is a Nigerian program which is on 24-7 and may be both the worst and most hilarious TV show ever. The stories are always relatively scandalous (someone takes advantage of drunk woman, someone beats their girlfriend, someone steals from the church, etc) but the acting is so horrible and the plots make no sense that they become farces. I'm going to try and tape some to bring home.

-The men here are fairly skinny, but they all seem to prefer women who are much bigger than them, so it looks like many wives could crush they husbands.

-There is never enough change. Giving someone 2000CFA for a purchase worth 500CFA is like giving someone $100 for a $5 purchase- it incurs the same glare and frustrated sigh.

-All transactions can be done while in a moving car. Taxi drivers love to slow down, make a kissing noise (how you get people's attention here) and then shout something at a vendor down the road, and by the time the cab rolls by, the newspaper/food/candy/cigarettes/change is ready for them and the car doesnt even have to stop.

-Ever wonder where the clothes you donate to the Red Cross or Salvation Army end up? Well its here, but strangely not the T-shirts or shorts, but the wool sweaters and parkas you gave away in the 1980s.

-There are a few Albinos in town (due to a genetic defect) and there are a lot of myths about them. Some people believe they dont die (because they've never been to the funeral of an Albino person), that they aren't whole souls, or they are only ghosts.

Touring the Health Centers

2008-05-13T11:38:00.000+02:00

So not all of my time here has been about beer, food and beaches. In fact, I've been able to meet a lot of people in the health sector and tour a good part of the province. UAC put me in contact with Mr.Oben, an Oxford-educated former professor and social worker who acts as an advisor to UAC now that he is retired. Oben is also on the board of the local health council and seems to know just about everyone in town. Together we have met with the Director of the Southwest Province Health Delegation, the coordinator of the Mutual Health Organization (a new government-sponsored health insurance program), the head of the Buea Health Office, the surgeon and eye doctor at the government Provincial Hospital, the doctor at a small private hospital, and nurses/'Chief-of-Posts' at two small health outposts in local villages. All of these people have been very welcoming, honest and helpful, talking to me about the challenges they face in trying to provide quality health care with limited resources. Sadly, most of the diseases they see are easily preventable or treatable: malaria, diarrhea, dermatitis, intestinal parasites, TB, typhoid. However, most people fail to recognize the problem (especially in children), or try to self-medicate by buying drugs from street vendors, so they only make it to the hospital or clinic when they are very sick and often beyond help.

Now a shameless plug: If you work in the health sector, or know someone who does (and that means a lot of you), please see if your health facility has any spare resources. What they need here isnt complicated medical equiptment, just things like:
-Gauze
-Foreceps
-Syringes
-Tylenol
-Basic antibiotics

The nurses here work extremely hard, and are often owed salaries from months ago. They don't ask for a lot, but they really appreciate everything they receive. A new Dutch volunteer just arrived and brought glasses with her, and I will deliver them in Mamfe when I head north next week and already the town is excited about them. So please, if you can, start stealing from your hospital or clinic for the good of the Cameroonian people. Actually, I'm kidding about the stealing, but consider if you or your health center could spare any resources. I will publish pictures of the clinics and their very, very basic facilities as soon as the Internet allows to give you all a sense of the challenges they face here. Its pretty daunting.

Djino and Limbe!

2008-05-13T11:11:00.000+02:00

Djino is a local soda brand, which promised to be 'Full of Fruit, Full of Flavor' (its really just pink sugar water). It also happens to be the sponsor of an annual kid's art competition. On Saturday, my first full day in Buea, the other interns and I went to the awards presentation for the competition because one of the kids who goes to the UAC school and hangs around our houses, Sam, had won a prize. The ceremony, in typical fashion, lasted four hours, comprised mostly of speeches by various local dignataries, poems about how wonderful Djino is read by students but clearly written by Djino marketing agents, and endless award-giving: to students, to the teachers, to the principals of participating schools. And of course, everyone got two Djino t-shirts and a 6 pack of 1.5 liter bottles of Djino. There was also a band which played the Djino theme-song about 70 or 80 times, a ditty which sounded like the theme to a 1970s police sitcom. Also performed were 'Hotel California', 'I Will Always Love You', and 'Killing Me Softly', although I cant see how any of them related to a children's art show. Although fairly mind- and butt- numbing (due to the child-size plastic chairs), the ceremony was entertaining and we did come away with pink Djino paper visors.

More enjoyably, on Sunday, Valerie, Berit, Sophie, Victor (a Nigerian former UAC-volunteer) and I went to Limbe, a beach about 30 mins away from Buea. What makes Limbe unique is that the sand is black because of the lava flows from Mt. Cameroon. To get there we took a cab down to Mile 17, the major transit area. We got in a van bound for Limbe, along with 11 others, although it was only a 9 seater. No public cab, bus or van will leave until jam-packed, which can be rather inconvenient. The ride was fairly painless, and we didnt get stopped at the two police checkpoints along the way, quite the achievement. In Limbe we caught another cab to a beach, which was full of white ex-pats taking a weekend getaway from Douala. Because the sand is so black, the water also appears black, and the tides can be quite strong (apparently 6 foreigners drowned at a different beach in Limbe a few months ago), giving the ocean a menacing appearance. But the water really warm, the sun and sand perfect and the Fanta refreshingly cold, so the afternoon was extremely relaxing.

The main reason for going to Limbe is to enjoy the fresh, grilled fish which can be bought at Down Beach, just down the road from us. Unfortunately, because it was Sunday, there was no fresh fish to be found right off the boat (usually you just pick one from the fisherman and carry it to a woman to grill it, and she brings it to your restaurant, where you should be found enjoying a $1.25 giant beer). So we went back to Buea, ate some fresh donuts to sustain us until a favorite local joint started serving its whole, grilled fish, about the lenght of a forearm. Served with grilled plantains and pepe (spicy pepper in Pidgin), it was delicious, and incredibly satisfying, especially with some Djino.

Welcome to Cameroon

2008-05-06T10:41:00.000+02:00

May 1-May 2
After some last-minute packing (is there any other kind in my life?), Tanya, Maggie and I dashed to the airport. Of course, Delta managed to lose my luggage IN the airport, which set me back 45 mins, and I barely made my flight to Paris. Charles de Gaulle airport is still horrible but the copious amounts of wine served by Air France makes it worth traveling through. From there I flew to Douala, the economic (but not political) capitol of Cameroon. Although we got in on time, it took 30 minutes to get through the numerous health and security checks and screenings, which really serve as opportunities for government workers to extort bribes from tourists. (Cameroon is rated one of the most corrupt countries in the world, and a little money to civil servants is required to get anything done.) I made it through without trouble, and while my bag arrived, my ride did not. Douala airport is a crowded, hot chaotic mess, which smells like sweat, dirt, spices and urine (i.e. the same as any Indian airport), and full of pushy taxi drivers who try to take you to a hotel where they will get a commission. Although it was pouring, I waited outside, hoping to see someone holding a sign with my name- no luck. After a minor freak-out/foot-stamping, I went back inside, made friends with the Air France luggage representative, convinced him to let me use his phone for free, and called a couple of my local contacts, finally get in touch with the man, Mr.Orock, who was supposed to pick me up. He told me that he was just entering Douala and would be there 'soon'. Turns out 'soon' was in African Time, so that meant 1.5 hours later, making him 2.5 hours late. Tired, sweaty, and frustrated, I finally met him and Tako, another United Action for Children (UAC) worker at 6:30pm, after suffering the harrassment of many obnoxious drivers and girls trying to sell things/soliciting for hours.

Mr. Orock, the Project Coordinator for UAC is a man in his 40s and seems to know just about everyone in Cameroon. Apart from his job with UAC, he is also the head of vocational education for the county, and 'second deputy mayor' for the city of Buea. Turns out these are valuable titles. After driving out of Douala, a sprawling, polluted city comprised of slums and French quarters, we encountered 3 police checkpoints. (In Cameroon, its is required that everyone carry an official form of ID with them at all times; these checkpoints are really another chance for the government to extort money from those people who forget their IDs. ) Although there were two "White Men" in the car, (myself and a Canadian volunteer named Valerie), we did not have to show our passports, thanks to some name/title dropping by Mr.Orock.

It took 1.5 hours to drive to our new home of Buea (pronounced 'Boy-ah'), located at the base of Mt.Cameroon, the highest point in West Africa. The scenery changed from urban overcrowding, to palm trees to dense forest in the matter of a few miles, an example of Cameroon's varied environment. Buea is the seat of the Southwest Province, but is just a small town which centers along one main road. Valerie and I, along with two Danish girls and a Scottish guy who were already there, would be living just off the main road, next to Mr.Orock's house. The complex, a set of three, one-story, white-washed buildings sits on a dirt road near the UAC school. Our rooms are pretty austere- concrete floor, just a bed and small desk for furniture, and our electricity and water are intermittent (and thus we dont have a flush toilet). On the plus side, in our large common room there is a pretty good library, thanks to other interns who left their books behind. This will be priceless, since we dont have TV, a radio, or regular access to a computer/the Internet.

After dropping off our stuff, we walked next door to the Orock's, which is where we eat all of our meals, and met his family. His wife Amelia is nice, although a bit scary, and he has one son and three daughters who live at home: Dan (16), Kelly (10), Evelyn (6) and Clara (2), who has quickly become my little sidekick. There are also a number of nieces, nephews and miscellaneous people around, and its amazing how many of them fit in the rather small house. Even though the Orocks are rick compared to their neighbors, their kitchen is so small that no more than 3 people can fit in it, its rather dirty, and there is usually no running water or electricity. However, great food still emerges from it.

After such a long, crazy day, I crashed at 9:45pm, exhausted but happy to be in Cameroon.

Pictures from Southeast Asia

2007-08-30T12:45:00.001+02:00

Since it takes too long to upload pictures to Blogspot, I've put them on Facebook instead. Here are the links to them, by country:

Cambodia (General): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063405&id=1012910&l=cde42a32c9

Cambodia (Siem Reap): http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063866&id=1012910&l=6feef2c10a

Vietnam: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2063870&id=1012910&l=dee9278c0b

Lao:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064622&id=1012910&l=7dd3424651
Thailand: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064619&id=1012910&l=a619329dea

Malaysia: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064611&id=1012910&l=072606e40b

Enjoy!

Lessons About Southeast Asia

2007-08-23T12:41:00.000+02:00

After a few months here, I've learned a few things about

For women pajama sets are always appropriate attire, no matter what the situation
There is no such thing as an "express bus"
Thailand is the land of 7-11s, and Cambodia is the land of rubber banded plastic bags
No matter how big or small, a bicycle is always your size
90% of people in the world are size 'M'
It is far better to be Canadian than American
Tanktops are never ever a good look for a middle aged man
Rice is the perfect side dish to anything, even rice
Mime is the universal language
There is no problem that cannot be solved by money
"Hey lady you need tuktuk" is the most lascivious statement ever
The holier the temple, the more foreigners dressed inappropriately
Korea is Spaaarkling (that's their national slogan)
Monks are more adventurous than the average person (i.e. riding in the back of a truck, covered in auto parts)
Processed meats come in every shape and color imaginable (but everyone will call it chicken), and should be put on everything, even vegetarian pizza
Every white guy secretly has an (east) asian fetish
Things sold in boutiques are really just things bought in local markets and cleaned
Anything and everything can be transported on a motorbike: refrigerator, chest of drawers, TV, girl w/ IV, 1000 baskets, 5 huge ceramic urns, 3 fat Americans
Toilet paper can clean anything
Plastic bags are the perfect containers for all items
No real asian actually finishes all their food-- to not leave something on your plate is to prove yourself uncouth!

Transportation

2007-08-20T12:39:00.000+02:00

People often ask how I get around in Southeast Asia. The answer: many many different way. Here's a summary of all the modes of transportation I've taken in 3.5 months over here.

-Plane (with and without propellers)

-Bicycle

-Back of bicycle

-Motorcycle

-Boat (motor)

-Canoe

-Kayak

-Sailboat

-Swan paddle boat

-Bus (long run and local)

-Car

-1989 white souped-up Camry

-Back of pickup truck

-Tuktuk (of varying shapes and sizes)

-Van/minibus

-Sidecar of motorcycle

-Cyclo

-By foot

-Ferry

-Catamaran

-Sangthaew

-Subway

Now all I need is "hovercraft" and "jetpack" and I think I'll have hit just about every mode of transportation there is.

Lao, Thailand: Part 1

2007-08-01T12:25:00.002+02:00

From Hanoi I crossed into Luang Prabang, Lao. Unfortunately Haley couldn't come with me, as planned, because a Lao Airline flight attendant was on a power trip regarding the validity of Haley's passport (it was valid, in case you were wondering). We said a said goodbye as she took a plane to Cambodia, but luckily I met a really great Chinese-German-British girl who I ended up rooming with and spending time with in Luang Prabang. LP is a sleepy little town, very laid-back and a nice change from the craziness of Vietnam. I spent the first full day in town, going to the museum, a whole lot of temples, and generally meandering around. The next morning we took a tuk-tuk out to a beautiful series of waterfalls, which were much bigger than the ones in Mondulkiri, Cambodia. We spent the afternoon swimming in the (freezing) turquoise pools that flowed from it. After one more day of hanging out with monks and strolling by the river, I flew down to Vietnaine, the capital of Lao. Although bigger than LP, Vientaine still had a laid-back air to it and I spent my days checking out wats (temples), going to the night markets, and enjoying the riverside area.

On Sunday I took a bus from there to Thailand and spent the day in Udon Thani, a concrete jungle of a city, before flying to Chiang Mai on a propellered plane painted to resemble a parrot. Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand but is less urban and has more character than Bangkok supposedly does. Chiang Mai is surrounded by moats and has more than 300 temples in it, which means that the entire town looks like a postcard waiting to happen. I spent my time in Chiang Mai going to more temples, markets, and stuffing my face with delicious food. After a few days there I took a bus down to Sukhothai, the former capital, where today I spent the day checking out the ancient city and hanging out with some local kids, after it turned out that the mini-bus/pick-up truck I was on was actually a school bus. Now its time for some more noodles (I eat noodles 3x a day now, which is a change from the Cambodian diet of rice 3x a day) and meandering about town.

Traveling like this has been an exhausting, amazing, complicated, fun experience and I'm excited for the next two weeks, which will see me tackling southern Thailand and Malaysia. I've met some great people, both locals and foreigners, and seen some wierd and beautiful things (a monk in the back of a pickup truck surrounded by spare car parts; the sunrise over a wat in LP) and done some strange stuff (ride on the back of a bicycle in the middle of the night in a town in the Mekong Delta). These are the experiences I will no doubt remember forever.

Vietnam, Part 3

2007-07-30T14:49:00.000+02:00

Next up was Halong Bay, another UNESCO heritage site and one of the world's most beautiful bays. There are thousands of towering limestone kasts and isles in the bay. It is said that when the Chinese were trying to invade Vietnam, the gods send a family of dragons down to defend the land. These dragons began spitting out jewels, which have become the islets and limestone towers of the bay.

We got up early on the first day of our excursion, and took a van 3.5 hours to Halong City, right on the water. This is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Vietnam, so the docks were crowded with boats. We got on our boat, which was pretty nice; downstairs were the cabins, the middle had the dining area and the top was open and had lounge chairs. At around 2pm we left the shore and enjoy a surprisingly good lunch. By 3pm we reached the main cave, which was huge and lit with tacky blue, green and orange lighting. We spent around 40 minutes walking around inside. Then it was back to the boat for more cruising through the isles, which are stunning, particularly when the sun is out. We took a short trip on a small metal canoe through some small, low passes into pool areas between isles. We passed the time between stops reading and enjoying the view as we sailed to the kayaking area. At 5pm we got to our destination and wriggled down into our kayaks. Haley and I were not the most efficient kayaking team and got left behind while the others go through various caves. We just enjoyed the sunset and headed back to the boat. Some of the other people decided to jump off the boat and go swimming, and although the water is very warm, its also strangly green and we decide to pass on the swim. After dinner and some interesting conversations with other passengers, we called it a night.

The next day I woke up at 5am to catch the sunrise, which was beautiful and dramatic. We spent the morning cruising between the islets. By 11:30am we were back at the dock, by 1pm back on the bus, and by 4pm back in Hanoi.

Given the success of that trip, and our general dislike of sterile Hanoi, we decided to take a trip to the Perfume Pagoda in northern corner of the country the next day. The Pagoda is actually a series of temples carved into the side of limestone mountains. At 8am we sent off in van with the group and after 90 minutes of driving through the countryside, we reached a village on the river. We got into small metal, barely seaworthy canoes, rowed by skinny young women. A large Australian women nearly capsized us, so the rest of the one hour trip was pretty tense. Upon reaching the shore we decided to forgo the cable car and instead hiked the hour up to the top, actually beating the cable car. The cave pagoda is huge and the connecting tunnels seem endless. After some exploration we hiked down and got back into our rickety canoes, with the sky darkening. We spent most of the return trip in gusting winds trying to out-run the storm of lightining and thunder, and reached the shore just as the sky opens up.

Upon our return to Hanoi, we packed up and prepared to say goodbye to Vietnam, at least for now.

Vietnam, Part 2

2007-07-23T12:23:00.039+02:00

On our last day in Saigon we ate breakfast on the street outside the guesthouse agan. This time it was stir-fried noodles with shrimp and pork-- very good. After eating we took motos to the War Remnants Museum. The museum was surprisingly neutral and even paid tribute to western photojournalists who died in the war. There are lots of pictures of people who have suffered birth defects because of Agent Orange, and even a few deformed fetuses on display, along side abandoned US military equiptment and tanks. After spending a while there we took a moto to Notre Dame Cathedral, because the Reunification Palace is closed for lunch. Unfortunately the cathedral was closed as well and we ended up just taking some pictures and watching a bridal catalogue photo shoot. We walked to Reunification Palace for some more photos and to have lunch at a huge Vietnamese outdoor restaurant. We had an hour to kill and a nearby travel agent advised us to walk to the Opera House and local government buildings. We took pictures with a giant statue of 'Uncle Ho' teaching a little girl to fire a rocket launcher. Done sightseeing, we took motos back to the guesthouse, said goodbye to our new local friends and headed off to the airport, enjoying our last views of Saigon.

After our time in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City, we took a plane to Hoi An, a UNESCO world heritage site and quaint town on a river in the middle of the Vietnam coast. Hoi An is known for its well-preserved historical old town (which is most of the this town of 100,000 people), its tailoring shops and its beach. We spent two nights in Hoi An and checked out the tailoring shops (Haley had a coat and some dresses made in less than 12 hours!), biked the 5km to the beautiful, white-sand beach (the water was bath-water warm) and relaxed by the river. On the second day we went on a self-guided walking tour of the old town, stopping at a Chinese meeting house, a temple, the museum of Hoi An history, the Japanese covered bridge, a traditional wooden house, and the Handicraft Center. We also met another UMichigan grad on the beach, which was random, as well as also four very interesting, nice, well-traveled and funny Brits.

Friday afternoon, on our way out of town, we stopped at the Marble Mountains (which are exactly what they sound like) to see the pagodas at the top, then carried on to the airport. We got into Hanoi pretty late but shared a cab with two Canadian boys to the Old Quarter, which is where all the foreigners stay. The next day we went to the Museum of Ethnology, which is about the cutlure and history of various Vietnamese ethnic groups, but we also learned a lot about Vietnamese history in general. We spent the afternoon roaming the city, spent time by the large lake in the middle of town, and saw the cathedral in town, which was built by the French in the late 1800s. Hanoi isn't my favorite city in Vietnam, but luckily we aren't spending too much time here. Tomorrow morning we are heading for an overnight trip to Halong Bay, which is supposed to be beautiful. Tuesday we will probably go in the more rural areas north of Hanoi to see the rice fields and steppes. Wednesday afternoon we will fly to Luang Prabang, another World Heritage site, in Lao.

Life is good here, although traveling so much does get exhausting. Most of the people we've met are very nice but I still think that the Cambodians are nicer than the Vietnamese. I'm feeling great and really enjoying the Vietnamese food; its much spicier and tastier than Cambodia's speciality of plain white rice. Ok, well time to go grab some dinner- probably noodle soup yet again. Its amazing how many delicious permutations they have developed on such a simple dish.

Vietnam, Part 1

2007-07-21T12:20:00.006+02:00

Haley and I left Phnom Penh early Sunday morning (we got only a few hours of sleep since we were up till 2am packing) and took a van, and then a boat to the Cambodia-Vietnam border. Then we switched to another boat and cruised the Mekong Delta for a few hours. The Mekong may be one of my new favorite places. As you go down the river, everyone, young and old, waves and smiles at you. We had a great tour guide, a woman named San, and she took us to the best seafood place in town once we reached Chau Doc, the border town where we spent the night. After a dinner of shrimp, crab, and squid roasted on a mini-barbecue on our table, I rode home on the back of her bicycle. When we arrived back to the hotel at midnight, we found the doors locked and the streets deserted. After 15 minutes outside banging on the door, ringing the bell, and phoning the guard, we finally get inside and crash, exhausted.

On Monday morning we took another boat (really more of a dingy) to see a fish farm and a Cham (ethnic Vietnamese Muslims) village. The fish farm was creepy but the village was beautiful. We stopped to see a girl weaving a scarf in the traditional style and to play "kick the sandal" with a group of little boys. We had a bit of scare when Haley fell down the stairs (it was raining pretty badly) but amazingly she was fine. (Knock on wood, we think the Curse of the Black Panther is over.) After that we took a minibus to Can Tho, another Mekong town, for lunch, then transfered to yet another bus for the ride to Saigon, which took about 4 hours and involved a ferry ride and yet another change of bus, as well as a stop at an alligator farm. We also stopped to see how incense is made and to check out a pagoda.

We arrived in Saigon in the late afternoon. Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City) is a sprawling, chaotic place. Once there we booked some stuff at the travel agent, found a guest house, went to dinner and walked around a little bit. Saigon is HUGE and moves at a much faster pace than PP, which is more like a charming big small town.

Tuesday we went to the Cu Chi tunnels, which was a system of 200km of underground tunnels used by the Viet Cong in the war. Our tour guide was a Vietnamese man (who looked strangely like Johnny Cash) who had served as a translator for the US Navy during the war, then was sent to a re-education camp for three years after Saigon fell. We climbed through some of the tunnels which even I found claustrophobically small. For 26 years (1949-1975) about 16,000 people lived in these tunnels- its remarkable. Outside the tunnel complex we stopped to try some liquor with contains cobra, scorpion and gecko parts (and tastes like really cheap vodka).

Anyway, we got back from that around 4pm, grabbed some lunch and then headed to the market, which was filled with just about every clothing, electronic, or food item you could imagine. We had dinner from a street vendor (noodle soup, the Vietnamese staple, which we also had for breakfast). Street food never disappoints me, I love it. Now its time to relax and repack our bags because tomorrow afternoon we are flying to Da Nang, where we will then catch a short bus to Hoi An, supposedly one of the most charming cities in Vietnam.

Cambodia, In Sum

2007-07-13T12:16:00.000+02:00

I have not been a religious blogger, and long tales of our exploits will have to wait until I get home. For now, I'll just give you a quick list of some of the (mis)adventureswe've had, the trips we've taken, and some of the incredible people we've met.

*Siem Reap: Three days in the blazing heat for a vist to Angkor Wat; discovered the best breakfast soup/noodles in the world at a street stall; battled hordes of Japanese tourists for the best viewing locations. Saw unforgettable, awe-inspiring temples, a tribute not so much to the gods as the determination, creativity, and devotion of a people.

*Kampot/Bokor Mountain: Spent the night at a remote ranger station at the top of one of the southern mountains; hung out with our driver, named Tree, who survived the Khmer Rouge by living alone in the jungle for a year at the age of 19, after his entire family was killed by the KR; had an adult black panther jump in front our car, which cursed us with bad luck for a week.

*Mondulkiri: Took a hellish journey on 'the road the devil himself built' to the most remote and beautiful province in Cambodia; saw some hidden waterfalls and tried not to fall over the edge; I suffered from food poising on during the brutal 12 hour journey there.

*The Tailor Known As Grandma: Had clothes custom made for us by a tiny, very wrinkly, adorable 78 year old woman who doesn't speak a word of English and wears the same sarong everyday, but has a great sense of fashion and can make absolutely anything in two days.

*Grandpa the Landlord: Hung out with our landlord (really the husband of our landlady), a charming old man who has lived all around the world directing oil and gas projects; he speaks about a dozen languages fluently, but choses to spend his days wearing a porkpie hat and guarding the door.

*Went to, and participated in, a traditional Khmer wedding, which includes a procession where people carry cases of beer and whole legs of lamb, and getting dressed up in non-matching guady outfits and putting on excessive amounts of clown make-up.

*Hung out with lots of sex workers, children of sex workers, garment workers, farmers, and HIV/AIDS patients both in the office and at their homes/places of work; the sex workers are obsessed with my nose; (actually thats true of most Cambodians who are surprised that someone with the same skin color as them looks so different).

*Visited the Killing Fields and Toul Sleng, a former KR secret prison, and talked to people about life under the KR. Heard stories that would make your blood curdle, but also tales of enduring love, friendship, bravery, perseverance, and the will to survive.

*Checked out every market in town (and there are a lot) and know all the nicest, and most willing to bargain, sellers; also know, and have ridden with most of the moto-drivers in Phnom Penh, including a man with only one eye, a guy with a strong nervous twitch, and an amputee.

*And of course, I learned A LOT from the people in my office about the nature of international development, Cambodia, specific social issues, and what it means to devote yourself to projects you truly believe in.

The Curse of the Black Panther

2007-07-03T12:11:00.000+02:00

If a black cat crosses your path, its considered bad luck. If a REALLY big black cat crosses your path, its REALLY bad luck. Here is proof.

Sunday, June 24, 2007, Bokor Mountain, Cambodia:

An adult black panther crosses our path by leaping across the dirt road 50 feet in front of our white1989 Toyota Camry, driven by Try (“Tree”). It disappears back into the tall grass. The curse begins.

Monday, June 25, 2007, Bokor Mountain:

A private plane carrying 22 people crashes into the side of Bokor a few miles from where we saw the panther. All aboard are killed.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007, Phnom Penh:

Haley receives an email saying that a friend of hers from Peace Corp Bangladesh was mauled and killed by a bear while trekking in Romania.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007, Phnom Penh:

Somewhere along the way I contract food poisoning, which will not manifest till the next day.

Thursday, June 28, 2007, On the road:

5:45am: I throw up my dinner of spaghetti, vegetables, and tofu, along with some H. Pylori and antibiotics. I chalk it up to waking up so early.

6:59am: Right before getting onto the bus for Mondulkiri I walk to the edge of the parking lot and throw up my breakfast of croissant and juice. I feel better and decide to get on the bus. Luckily, we are the first two seats on the bus, making it easier for me to jump out if I need to puke again.

8:15am: The bus gets a flat tire after only 1 hour of travel. I get out and brush my teeth on the side of the road, then talk to two female Dutch backpackers and two male Canadian backpackers. We get onto the bus 20 minutes later.

12:30pm: Arrive in Snoul, to change into the “Jeep” that will take us to Mondulkiri. Roadside ‘restaurant’ is pretty dirty and neither of us is hungry, so we wait around for the Jeep.

1pm: A pick-up truck with canvas and metal rod roof and walls around the truck bed arrives. We, along with the two Dutch girls and a tall British backpacking girl get into the back. There are a few seats open in the cab. Haley and I eat a croissant while we wait to leave.

1:05pm: We are on a dirt road known in the Southeast Asia Lonely Planet guide as “the road the devil himself built”. It is extremely bumpy and we all getting bashed against the metal bars of the roof and walls, as well as the fake wood slabs that make up the benches. Our driver is absolutely insane, flying down the road and seemingly trying to hit all the major potholes, which are small ponds. The initial fun of the previous five minutes has worn off and the croissant is making me nauseous.

1:15pm: We decide that some of us should make use of the seats in the cab. The Dutch girls take the first shift.

2:00pm: The three of us are violently flying around the truck bed like rag dolls. Haley is afraid I will fall out the back the way I’m bouncing around. We are gripping the bars of the roof and trying to anticipate extremely bumpy parts in order to avoid serious head injuries. All of us look slightly green, as well as brown from being covered in dust from the road.

2:10pm: I can’t contain the nausea and vomit out the back of the truck while its still moving. They stop the car and all come out to see me vomit. A nice Cambodian woman offers me balm. I totally lose it and start crying out of exhaustion and embarrassment over puking in front of so many other people. I take the seat of a Cambodian guy in the cab, where it is less bumpy. Even he can’t deal with sitting back there and instead sits on the roof. Poor Haley is stuck back there.

3:00pm: We stop so Haley and the Brit can sit in the cab. The Brit is obnoxious.

3:45pm: We get to a village at the top of a hill and hope that it is Sen Monorom, our destination. It is not. We change into an SUV, a Land Rover. There are seven of us. Haley and I squish into the front seat after the Brit claims it can’t be done. The three backpackers and the Cambodian lady get in the backseat. The gearshift is poking my back and burning my leg simultaneously.

5:00pm: After more than an hour of listening to inane conversation among the backpackers, we arrive at the Arun Reah II Guesthouse and jump out without saying goodbye to the other girls. They want to go to the Long Vibol guesthouse.

5:30pm: After checking in with Vichard, the charming 26 year old manager/owner and putting our stuff away, we go eat dinner. I have some lime juice and a few bites of noodle soup before I have to run outside and throw up again.

6:30pm: Having finally showered and gotten the dust off, we go to bed exhausted. I have a few sips of water, then crash. I am beat.

9:00pm: I wake up to puke up the few sips of water I drank and go to the bathroom. Serious diarrhea has set in. We decide that we should not go on the waterfall day trek tomorrow, then fall back asleep.

Friday, June 29, 2007, Sen Monorom:

Blissfully, a day of sleep and not throwing up, although the diarrhea continues. We go into “town” where we take some pictures of adorable local kids, have some dried watermelon seeds, and meet the Cambodian woman on our Jeep yesterday. I order what feels like my 15^th bowl of vegetable noodle soup and 1000^th glass of lime juice. We have another early night.

Saturday, June 30, 2007, Sen Monorom:

9am-10:30am: The Immodium is starting to work, finally. We leave for our waterfall tour around 9am on motorbikes with rather young drivers. The first 20km of the 37km trip to Bou Sraa falls (the largest waterfall in Cambodia) are fine, well-paved and our drivers are sufficiently cautious. Then the road becomes hillier, bumpier and muddier, although not terrible. We nearly both wipe-out several times and Haley is forced to get off and walk when her motorbike gets stuck in the 6in deep mud. We reach the waterfall, walk around, try not to fall over the edge to the lower tier. We get back through the mud without incident and head to the next fall.

10:30am-11:30am: I notice that my motorbike’s gas gauge is reading zero. I mention this to my driver, who repeatedly ignores my suggestion that we get some gas. We drive to the next waterfall, eat lunch and leave. The sky is getting dark.

12:00pm: On our way to the last fall the sky is getting darker and it is raining on a few of the surrounding hills. I ask if we should continue, given the remoteness and the fact that the road is dirt and liable to become rather muddy. We decide to continue. We get rained on pretty heavily for a while, but it passes. Our drivers are becoming more daring. Mine reaches 70km going downhill.

12:15pm-12:45pm: Haley and I walk around the last waterfall by ourselves; the drivers decided to stay by the road. We return to find one of them, the one who spoke a little English, gone.

12:55pm: The other driver, along with a third guy in uniform, show up- with gasoline. The drivers sheepishly fill up their tanks. I say I told you so.

1pm-1:30pm: We head back to town. My driver is now going 80km and purposefully trying to get me killed by randomly, suddenly braking. Luckily we make it back to the Arun Reah intact.

1:45-5pm: We nap, read, and relax while it pours outside. I have a crazy dream about trying to become seaweed.

5:15pm-6:00pm: More noodle soup and lime juice. Neither Haley nor I feel great, and discuss how nice chicken soup would be right now. We talk to some of the girls who work in the guesthouse about their lives, how they ended up in Sen Monorom.

6:15-8:00pm: Hot showers and bed.

9:00pm: My dad calls only to find me dead asleep.

Sunday, July 1, 2007, On the road:

7:00am: Waiting for our ride to Snoul to show up, when the Brit and the Dutch girls arrive. We hope we are going in different cars.

7:15am-7:30am: We are not. We cram into a big jeep with the girls, two young British guys, an overly touchy French couple who look like each other, and two Cambodian guys- eleven of us in the back. Our driver is a wiry, middle-aged guy who seems a little crazy. We finally depart after piling seven giant backpacks, various luggage and miscellaneous goods onto the roof.

7:30am-10am: Two and a half hours of terror, obnoxious conversation, being smushed, and mud. The top heavy jeep slides everywhere in the mud; luckily our driver is a pro and miraculously manages to prevent us from tipping over. We strategize about what to do if the van tips- which windows to crawl out of, etc. I get sick of hearing the Brit talking shit and go off on a rant about the complexity the public health issues surrounding HIV. I stop when we nearly tip because I don’t want my last words to be “Planned Parenthood.” We are unconsciously gripping each other in terror. Our driver randomly starts shouting- he is either telling jokes or yelling about having to transport our foreign asses down the mountain. We pass a few cars and trucks stuck in the mud. We stop a few times to check on them.

10:15am: We arrive at the village where we changed cars on the way up. This time we don’t change, but pile back into the van and brace ourselves for the bumpy, violent, devil-built road.

10:15am-12:00pm: We road is terrible, muddy and bumpy, but its much less painful being in this car than in the bed of the pickup truck. Still, we are all developing headaches from having our brains knocked around our skulls so much.

12:00pm: Right before going through a gigantic puddle/small pond, we get a flat tire. We make it out of the puddle but are still stuck in 8in deep mud. The other foreigners go sit in the shade and smoke; Haley and I stay to see how the hell they will be able to jack up the car in all the mud. The wiry, crazy driver finds some slate and stacks them around the tire, and does manage to change the tire, albeit slowly. We get back in and hope we don’t pop another one.

12:15pm-1:00pm: The last fifteen minutes of the ride we are all anxious to see if our buses to various cities are still in Snoul or have left without us. When we arrive in Snoul, Haley and I jump out of the car and don’t bother to say goodbye to the backpackers. Our bus isn’t there, but a middle aged woman in pajamas assures us it will be here soon.

1:00pm-1:15pm: Our bus to Phnom Penh arrives. We get on and discover that the bus is totally full, more than full in fact- people are sitting on tiny plastic chairs in the narrow aisle. Our ‘reserved’ seats are occupied. We try to convince them that we should have seats, but they just shrug. Haley is really furious, but I’m too tired to care and don’t see what they can do about it: overselling bus tickets is standard practice. They put a few more child-size plastic chairs in the aisle for us and we squeeze down into them. The one English-speaking person, a very nice older man, assures us that we will get seats in an hour or so. Five or six men are forced to stand near the door. Because the aisle is lower, in my chair, my shoulders are at the elbows of the men on either side of me, and my face is unfortunately in the armpit zone. About 90% of the passengers are middle-aged, sweaty men, so the bus smell pretty bad. Diagonally behind me is a little boy, maybe five years old, whose eyes are light blue and white: he is blind, and adorable. He and his father are on their way to the nearest eye clinic, which is three hours from their village, and not much more than a guy with eyedrops.

1:15pm-3:30pm: We finally leave Snoul, and I fall asleep instantly, resting my head against the biceps of sweaty strangers. I wake up whenever the bus makes stops, which is does frequently to drop off people right to their doors. In Cambodia there is no such thing as an express bus. Eventually enough men get off that we can get seats. The man behind me in the aisle, who only has one good eye, tells me to take the two open seats.

3:30pm-6:30pm: We drive some more, making stops to drop people off and for the men to pee in the street. Because of my power nap in the aisle, I don’t feel tired anymore and spend the trip looking out the window at the vastly different landscapes and communities that make up Cambodia. A little boy behind me is watching a horrible Cambodian version of James Bond on the bus TV and playing with my hair.

6:30pm-7:15pm: We arrive in Phnom Penh. Although exhausted, we decide not to go home right away, but instead pick up groceries. Sorya is crazy on Sundays, but we need food. Miraculously, the chicken soup I was craving is in Sorya, for the first time. It’s the best thing to happen to us all day, apart from surviving the van and bus rides.

7:30pm: We finally arrive home. Felix (aka the Gerber Baby) welcomes us back.

7:45-8:45pm: We eat our soups and relive the day, dissecting the many stupid things the Brit said. We decide that our bad luck this weekend was caused by the black panther that crossed our path. The Curse of the Black Panther is born.

So-oos dai!

2007-05-11T11:59:00.000+02:00

That means 'hello' in Khmai, a language that I am absolutely butchering but trying desperately to pick up. It probably doesn't help that many of the people teaching it to me are sex workers who speak no English and only want to teach me obscene words or how to curse people out. Nevertheless, I am starting to catch on to the language, and life more generally here in Phnom Penh.

I arrived on Saturday and stayed at a beautiful guesthouse, right across from Tuol Sleng, a high school that was converted into a secret prison and torture center during the Pol Pot regime. (It is now a museum, with the cells and torture equiptment still in place, pictures of all 17,000 people killed there, and their skulls; the place haunts you long after you leave.) I spent the weekend sweating (its in the low 90s and incredibly humid here) and roaming the city, desperately in search of an ATM or a place to cash Traveller's checks. At one point I only had $3 in my posession (they don't take credit cards here), which was quite distressing, but in the end it gave me an excuse to walk around for 3 hours and see the city. On Monday, while waiting for Haley to arrive (the other Ford School student on the Law School Cambodia program), I went to the chaotic "Russian Market" and purchased a helmet, possibly the most essential piece of clothing here. There are no taxis or public transportation, so the most common way people get around is on the back of a moto-dup, aka a motorcycle taxi. This may be the world's least safe way to travel, given that the motorcycles are usually about 20 years old, the driver only pretends to have a license, understand your directions or know which side of the road to drive on, there appear to be no traffic rules or speed limits, the streets are crowded by animals and vendors, and having your bag stolen by another bike seems pretty commonplace. Regardless, its still a lot of fun and I enjoy it immensely.

Once Haley arrived we started looking for an apartment, found one w/in 20 hours of beginning our search, (Haley, and the sketchy friend of one of the cooks at the guesthouse, are geniuses at real estate) and moved in Wednesday morning. We have the top two floors of a building on the riverfront, an area that is full of great restaurants and markets. Our lovely apartment has 2 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, A/C, furniture, cable (including HBO!), and 3 private terraces, so we plan on hosting at least a few dinners for the other UofM students coming to Cambodia as well.

While Haley was out apartment-hunting on Tuesday, I started my internship at WAC, the Womyn's Agenda for Change. WAC is a local NGO (largely supported by Oxfam) that works for the empowerment of sex workers, garment workers, rural farmers and those people living with HIV/AIDS. They are a pretty well known NGO here (probably because our office is a giant houseboat), and a pretty radical one as well. They very anti-Bush, hate the WTO/IMF/WB, and refuse funding from USAID because of the conditions they put on how their money can be used. (Actually, refusing USAID money is not uncommon here, since so many NGOs are working on behalf of sex workers, and USAID specifies that money can only go to organziations which outrightly oppose the establishment of legal rights for sex workers. There are dozens of other conditions, most of which are anti-feminist and determined by conservative ideology.)

Among a myriad of other things, WAC does a lot of oversight of government/donor funding, publishes papers on the conditions faced by garment workers, sex workers, and the economic conditions faced by rural farmers, and runs seven drop-in centers where women can organize their unions, get information, and receive sexual assault counseling. Most of the staff are young, single women, many of whom are former garment workers themselves. Because WAC donated a wing of the boat (its huge!) to it's partner, the Women's Network for Unity, Cambodia's largest sex worker union, we also get to hang out with the sex workers who make up WNU's executive committee. They are a really friendly, interesting group of people, of varying ages and backgrounds; a large portion of WNU's members are transgender, and I've gotten to hear a lot about their unique experiences in Cambodian culture and the sex trade. WNU is another surprisingly effective organization; through their lobbying all their 10,000 members receive free medical care at any public or private hospital, and in 2004 they managed to stop the trial of a anti-HIV prophalixis (not yet approved for human use) on its members, because of ethical concerns, which sparked a worldwide debate and movement among those people usually used as test subjects. (The US company was going to pay the sex workers to stop using condoms and refused to provide them with health insurance or treatments if they did contract HIV.)

So, given all this, what am I doing for them you ask? Well, for the first few days I just read some of the dozens of reports that WAC has put out on a wide range of topics, which has really opened my eyes to the realities of third-world development. (There is a huge number of obstacles facing Cambodia and it is remarkable just how ineffective all the foreign aid has been in helping the country get over any of them.) Right now they have me working on a report about government expenditure and foreign aid on HIV/AIDS programs, and why most of the money allocated never reaches the people it is intended for. Its fascinating stuff and I'm really enjoying it, although I miss working with actual clients as I did at the high school clinic; my Khmai is just not up to communicating the nuances of sexual health. Right now I can barely direct my motodup driver back home!

Monday is a holiday (its the king's birthday) so Haley and I plan on spending the long weekend seeing the town and buying necessities for our new home. (We've already had one misadventure our first night trying to buy sheets and towels; we ended up getting stuck in the pouring rain in the evening with barely any cash left and no idea how to get home, until we found an English-speaker.) The food here is delicious, although my co-workers keep taking me to the new malls here to eat American food, like pizza. I have never seen a cuisine where absolutely everything comes covered in sausage and/or with sausage on the side. Thank god I love processed meats.

Speaking of processed meats, its time for lunch, so I'll stop rambling. Once I do some things which actually warrant your time, I'll post again, but until then, know that I am thinking of you all and wishing that you could be here to enjoy this fantastic, sometimes overwhelming, but always exciting, experience!

Zara? Blog?

2007-05-01T09:55:00.000+02:00

So I never thought the day would come when I, Zara Ahmed, would write a blog. But since mass email leaves the possibility of people hitting 'reply all' and annoying each other, I've decided to join the 21st century and write a travel blog. Dont fear- this blog will discontinue upon my arrival back in the US, since no one wants to hear about what I make for dinner or how gray Ann Arbor is. But while I am overseas this will likely be your best source of info about my time in Southeast Asia, and beyond. So prepare yourself for stories about weird food, smelly public transport, unusual characters and total randomnesss. Of course, emails (and comments) are still VERY welcome, because I want to hear about your lives and adventures as well! (Yes, working the same job and living in the same place for years can still be interesting, at least to me.) So enjoy and know that I am thinking of each of you, and wishing you could be here to travel with me!
Lots of love,
Zara