**** - The Fate of Africa by Martin Meredith. Trying to write a comprehensive text on the history of post-colonial Africa is definitely an ambitious task. In just under 700 pages, he works to provide a bit of historical context and then study the past 50 years and how they have shaped modern Africa. For a continent of several dozen countries and 880 million people, this task is simply too ambitious. For example, I didn't really learn anything about Niger, Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau and Benin, while the treatment of countries like Djibouti, Mauritania, Namibia, Burundi and several others was fairly bare. However, the main reason that this was so disappointing was that the story was so well told for some of the other countries on the continent.
Meredith does a great job providing anecdotes and compelling details that really add texture to the picture. He does a good job of reminding us that many of the cruelest dictators had broad support at one point or another, while remaining unsympathetic to their authoritarian practices and the powers that treated them as pawns in their diplomatic aims (not just Cold War battles, but also African leaders vying to strengthen their own diplomatic clout). Although the narration becomes a bit disjointed at times, jumping between countries and chronologies, but many of the episodes had such regional importance that he can be forgiven for some of the difficulties. Also, the book has a comprehensive bibliography at the back, although an annotated version of the bibliography would probably be much more useful.
The historical perspective also provides some useful insights into other modern debates. Many aid skeptics do not offer enough historical context into their analyses of why aid programs fail and how those programs could be improved. Also understanding why modern structures are in place and how they were developed is a very useful tool for people working to improve those structures and deliver better governance. Most importantly, the book is a catalog of failures of diplomacy that offer useful lessons to people in that line of work.
The book was not without flaws. There are only a few maps at the start of the book, while he regularly refers to places that are not market and paints a difficult geographic picture. The editors seemed a bit lazy at times, letting slip some minor errors, but also offering questionable judgment on chapter titles (a chapter which is 2/3 about the horrors and injustices of South Africa's apartheid regime and only at the end talks about the end of apartheid should really not be titled "A Time of Triumph"). Still, the book is definitely worth reading and the writing makes it easy to absorb the information in there.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Zambia - First Impressions
While I was waiting for my bus to leave Nakonde (the town on the Zambian side of the border), I decided to walk around a bit. The first buildings past customs were the offices of various customs clearing agencies (I suppose the complexity of the export process could be considered a good way of creating jobs for experts to facilitate). After that, I saw several cafes and general stores, many of which seemed to be catering to the sort of people who could afford passports, rather than the majority of the people who lived in Nakonde. However, after walking down a backstreet, I found the town market. They were selling lots of dried small fish and caterpillars as well as green leafy vegetables, onions and other veggies. I was surprised that there was almost no fruit in the market (though I saw plenty of tomatoes, which are technically a fruit) and tried to recall if I had seen any other market during my travels in Africa that wasn't selling bananas. My favorite part was a company called Power Tools. They were running a bus company, a hotel, a cafe and probably a few other businesses. However, I did not see any power tools connected with them.
I couldn't see much on the road from Nakonde to Lusaka, since the road was dark and there were very few lights along the road. I was impressed with the thick forest cover, but the sparce population made the area seem rather desolate. As the sun came up, we were passing through a few towns outside Lusaka, which seemed nice, but I really only saw the main road, so it's hard to form a real impression. In Lusaka, I admired the smooth transition from large farms on the outskirts to skyscrapers in the downtown area. I noticed that there were very few brands that I recognized from Kenya and Tanzania as we passed the billboards and signs plastered with ads.
When we arrived at the bus station, I hopped out and made my way past the over-eager taxi drivers to walk around a bit. The city seemed really nice, although I could tell I was in an affluent neighborhood and was very curious what some of the poorer areas looked like. I noticed that there were a lot of cartons on the ground for a beverage called Shake-Shake, which I later learned was a dairy product with alcohol. I couldn't actually make up my mind about the architecture in Lusaka, but I guess I don't have anything to complain about.
After setting off from Lusaka toward Chipata (the capital of Zambia's Eastern province) I had a much clearer view of the road (a different road). The villages were pretty well spaced, and even though power lines ran over the villages, most people did not appear to have connections. There were a lot of schools, which seemed to be the only buildings that had an electrical connection. At one point, we stopped at a roadside market to grab some food. I was really surprised by how expensive everything was, and wound up eating a couple of hard-boiled eggs. We arrived in Chipata and I saw a nice bustling medium sized town. A few major stores, and a nice big market, but nothing too distinctive about it. It was really nice to arrive in the middle of mango season, where big, ripe, juicy mangoes are sold for two cents or less.
All the Zambians I met were very friendly (though a few tried to overcharge me). They spoke very good English and were happy to talk and asked lots of questions. I couldn't quantify this, but the people just seemed really happy with their lives, probably more so than in most of the places that I've been in Kenya or Tanzania. My friend Jackie said that Zambia was one of her favorite places from her travels, and I can definitely see why.
I couldn't see much on the road from Nakonde to Lusaka, since the road was dark and there were very few lights along the road. I was impressed with the thick forest cover, but the sparce population made the area seem rather desolate. As the sun came up, we were passing through a few towns outside Lusaka, which seemed nice, but I really only saw the main road, so it's hard to form a real impression. In Lusaka, I admired the smooth transition from large farms on the outskirts to skyscrapers in the downtown area. I noticed that there were very few brands that I recognized from Kenya and Tanzania as we passed the billboards and signs plastered with ads.
When we arrived at the bus station, I hopped out and made my way past the over-eager taxi drivers to walk around a bit. The city seemed really nice, although I could tell I was in an affluent neighborhood and was very curious what some of the poorer areas looked like. I noticed that there were a lot of cartons on the ground for a beverage called Shake-Shake, which I later learned was a dairy product with alcohol. I couldn't actually make up my mind about the architecture in Lusaka, but I guess I don't have anything to complain about.
After setting off from Lusaka toward Chipata (the capital of Zambia's Eastern province) I had a much clearer view of the road (a different road). The villages were pretty well spaced, and even though power lines ran over the villages, most people did not appear to have connections. There were a lot of schools, which seemed to be the only buildings that had an electrical connection. At one point, we stopped at a roadside market to grab some food. I was really surprised by how expensive everything was, and wound up eating a couple of hard-boiled eggs. We arrived in Chipata and I saw a nice bustling medium sized town. A few major stores, and a nice big market, but nothing too distinctive about it. It was really nice to arrive in the middle of mango season, where big, ripe, juicy mangoes are sold for two cents or less.
All the Zambians I met were very friendly (though a few tried to overcharge me). They spoke very good English and were happy to talk and asked lots of questions. I couldn't quantify this, but the people just seemed really happy with their lives, probably more so than in most of the places that I've been in Kenya or Tanzania. My friend Jackie said that Zambia was one of her favorite places from her travels, and I can definitely see why.
Saturday, December 18, 2010
Traveling to Zambia
On Friday (the 10th) at 5:30 AM, Jodie dropped me off at the bus stop for my trip to Zambia. In typical fashion, we had to swing by the office on the way to grab a few things before heading to the bus stop. The bus left at 5:50 to begin the interminable journey. I was up until 2 packing and tying up loose ends for work, so I slept a healthy amount on the ride. I also brought a 700 page book and made a healthy dent in that. I grabbed some snacks at some of the stops along the way (it's nice traveling during fruit season so that there's an alternative to the over-priced heavily fried foods on offer) and was surprised to see glass bottles of Mountain Dew (Pepsi is a common sight, but this was the first time I've seen Mountain Dew in glass--it seemed unnaturally classy for Mountain Dew). The bus arrived in Mbeya at 11:45 PM (the first time I've had the trip take less than 18 hours). I found an all night grill and grabbed a bite before walking around town (down some dark abandoned roads) to find a hotel.
I slept wonderfully and struggled to pull myself out of bed for an early start. I decided that since I was slow, it made sense to wait for the shops to open at 9 AM so that I could exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwacha before the border (where the hawkers offer egregiously unfair prices). Then I hopped on a small bus headed to the border (the Tanzanian border town is Tunduma). After 2 hours, we hit a huge traffic build up about 2 km from the border, so I just decided to get out and walk to the border (I wasn't carrying a sheller in my luggage this time around, so it was much easier to move around). It was a pretty uneventful border crossing, though I have to say that the Zambian entry form was one of my favorites. The top asked for Date d'Entree which it translated as Date of Exit. Also, in filling out the year, it prompted you with 19__. But it was a refreshingly easy crossing.
Across in Zambia, I was in a town called Nakonde. I bought a bus ticket and walked around a bit. I bought a sim card and walked around a bit to survey. The market was nice, though I was surprised to see almost no fruit on offer (so there were plenty of tomatoes, but that's only technically a fruit--I'm not sure I can recall any markets I've visited where I didn't see any bananas). I decided to wait on the bus. I attempted to learn a little Nyanja (one of the main languages of Zambia), tried to nap, read more of my book and paced quite a bit. After 5 hours, the bus finally set off (it was 4:30 PM at this point because of the time change when I entered Zambia).
As I quickly discovered, the seats on this bus were about two inches narrower than the width of my shoulders. And to compound matters, there were people standing in the aisles, which meant that as they leaned into the rows, we were all squished even more (though next to their plight, I certainly can't complain). It became dark pretty quickly, so I couldn't read anymore. There were lights for each seat, but they cut the power to them, so I played around with my phone and tried to catch a nap. Unfortunately, my neighbor kept sleeping in the most unneighborly fashion. At times he would put his hands behind his head so that his elbow was resting on my back if I was leaning forward or his elbow was jostling against my temple if I hazarded to lean back. I could feel my stomach revolting against my travel diet and the travel stress, but there wasn't really anything I could do at that point.
We pulled into Lusaka at 7:40 AM and after running to the toilets at the bus stop, I grabbed a taxi and had breakfast with some friends before setting off at 11 AM for Chipata, which was my final destination. This time we were riding in the back of a Peace Corps vehicle with a lot of gear, so it was less comfortable than the two Tanzanian buses, though definitely a huge improvement over my bus into Lusaka. We rolled into the guest house just after 7:30 PM on Sunday and I was thrilled that I had finally arrived.
So, to summarize the 63 hours qualitatively:
5 vehicles and just under 44 hours on the road
49,000 shillings and 145,000 kwacha in bus fare (about $62)
2 stamps and 1 visa in my passport
350 pages and 17 Economist articles read
Way too many calories and way too few vitamins in my meals
About 10 hours of sleep (not much of it was good sleep)
1 realization that my body can't take much more of this kind of travel
Anyway, there's a lot going on here and I'm slightly too busy to write about it, so by the end of the year, I'm probably going to put up a ton of posts (hopefully with lots of pictures).
I slept wonderfully and struggled to pull myself out of bed for an early start. I decided that since I was slow, it made sense to wait for the shops to open at 9 AM so that I could exchange my Tanzanian shillings for Zambian kwacha before the border (where the hawkers offer egregiously unfair prices). Then I hopped on a small bus headed to the border (the Tanzanian border town is Tunduma). After 2 hours, we hit a huge traffic build up about 2 km from the border, so I just decided to get out and walk to the border (I wasn't carrying a sheller in my luggage this time around, so it was much easier to move around). It was a pretty uneventful border crossing, though I have to say that the Zambian entry form was one of my favorites. The top asked for Date d'Entree which it translated as Date of Exit. Also, in filling out the year, it prompted you with 19__. But it was a refreshingly easy crossing.
Across in Zambia, I was in a town called Nakonde. I bought a bus ticket and walked around a bit. I bought a sim card and walked around a bit to survey. The market was nice, though I was surprised to see almost no fruit on offer (so there were plenty of tomatoes, but that's only technically a fruit--I'm not sure I can recall any markets I've visited where I didn't see any bananas). I decided to wait on the bus. I attempted to learn a little Nyanja (one of the main languages of Zambia), tried to nap, read more of my book and paced quite a bit. After 5 hours, the bus finally set off (it was 4:30 PM at this point because of the time change when I entered Zambia).
As I quickly discovered, the seats on this bus were about two inches narrower than the width of my shoulders. And to compound matters, there were people standing in the aisles, which meant that as they leaned into the rows, we were all squished even more (though next to their plight, I certainly can't complain). It became dark pretty quickly, so I couldn't read anymore. There were lights for each seat, but they cut the power to them, so I played around with my phone and tried to catch a nap. Unfortunately, my neighbor kept sleeping in the most unneighborly fashion. At times he would put his hands behind his head so that his elbow was resting on my back if I was leaning forward or his elbow was jostling against my temple if I hazarded to lean back. I could feel my stomach revolting against my travel diet and the travel stress, but there wasn't really anything I could do at that point.
We pulled into Lusaka at 7:40 AM and after running to the toilets at the bus stop, I grabbed a taxi and had breakfast with some friends before setting off at 11 AM for Chipata, which was my final destination. This time we were riding in the back of a Peace Corps vehicle with a lot of gear, so it was less comfortable than the two Tanzanian buses, though definitely a huge improvement over my bus into Lusaka. We rolled into the guest house just after 7:30 PM on Sunday and I was thrilled that I had finally arrived.
So, to summarize the 63 hours qualitatively:
5 vehicles and just under 44 hours on the road
49,000 shillings and 145,000 kwacha in bus fare (about $62)
2 stamps and 1 visa in my passport
350 pages and 17 Economist articles read
Way too many calories and way too few vitamins in my meals
About 10 hours of sleep (not much of it was good sleep)
1 realization that my body can't take much more of this kind of travel
Anyway, there's a lot going on here and I'm slightly too busy to write about it, so by the end of the year, I'm probably going to put up a ton of posts (hopefully with lots of pictures).
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Cool new initiative
I'm working on a new project in Arusha to spur rural innovation. Although Arusha has seen significant growth and prosperity over the last decade or so, the surrounding villages have not really benefited from this growth. The idea is to have the villagers identify the problems that they would like to solve and work with them on developing technology solutions. The villagers would work in teams and the workshop staff would provide mentorship as people worked. The teams would learn about the design process through case studies and their projects would serve as an interactive case study.
The program is called the AISE Initiative for Accelerating Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship (AISE is pronounced "I say!" which is an exclamation of wonder in Kiswahili). Sadly we don't have a website yet, but we're working on that. My friend Bernard and I are laying the groundwork and conducting the research and we are planning to get our pilot program off the ground in January. We've been working with Jodie here in Tanzania, but we're also receiving support from Amy Smith, Kofi Taha and Becca Smith (no relation) at MIT in hashing out the idea and accessing resources. In fact, Bernard and I are about to spend two weeks in Zambia with Amy and Kofi doing some background work and then Becca will be in Tanzania in January to help with our pilot.
This methodology is called Creative Capacity Building (CCB). The staff at the AISE Initiative are not employed to impose solutions onto a community, but rather are facilitators who enhance the expertise of others, and, thereby, view meaningful community participation as necessary to social and economic progress. This has been developed by Amy and Kofi in their work with refugee camps in Uganda and has shown remarkable results.
We've just put up a fundraising page [LINK REMOVED OCTOBER 2011], so if you know anyone looking for worthy causes* this holiday season, I'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word. Also, another cause close to my heart is IDDS, which is another initiative that I am part of. You can support IDDS here.
* We are working with my friend Joe Agoada's NGO, the Two Wheeled Foundation for this campaign. The funding tiers are for both AISE Initiative projects and GCS projects.
This is a super low-cost solar water heater that Bernard developed after his experiences in a CCB program.
The program is called the AISE Initiative for Accelerating Innovations and Social Entrepreneurship (AISE is pronounced "I say!" which is an exclamation of wonder in Kiswahili). Sadly we don't have a website yet, but we're working on that. My friend Bernard and I are laying the groundwork and conducting the research and we are planning to get our pilot program off the ground in January. We've been working with Jodie here in Tanzania, but we're also receiving support from Amy Smith, Kofi Taha and Becca Smith (no relation) at MIT in hashing out the idea and accessing resources. In fact, Bernard and I are about to spend two weeks in Zambia with Amy and Kofi doing some background work and then Becca will be in Tanzania in January to help with our pilot.
This methodology is called Creative Capacity Building (CCB). The staff at the AISE Initiative are not employed to impose solutions onto a community, but rather are facilitators who enhance the expertise of others, and, thereby, view meaningful community participation as necessary to social and economic progress. This has been developed by Amy and Kofi in their work with refugee camps in Uganda and has shown remarkable results.
We've just put up a fundraising page [LINK REMOVED OCTOBER 2011], so if you know anyone looking for worthy causes* this holiday season, I'd really appreciate it if you could spread the word. Also, another cause close to my heart is IDDS, which is another initiative that I am part of. You can support IDDS here.
* We are working with my friend Joe Agoada's NGO, the Two Wheeled Foundation for this campaign. The funding tiers are for both AISE Initiative projects and GCS projects.
This is a super low-cost solar water heater that Bernard developed after his experiences in a CCB program.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Village Interviews
Yesterday I did field work. It was amazing, since almost all of my work over the past two months has been in the office. Bernard (check out my new Recurring Characters page) was leading the expedition and I was on the back of the motorcycle. We were conducting some village interviews for a project that we're cooking up involving designing a mobile workshop that we could bring to villages (more details and a link coming very soon hopefully).
The first village (called Mkonoo) went really well and everyone was really engaged in the discussion. We had twenty people come to meet with us, from different ages and professions. Unfortunately, every single attendee was male, so we missed out on the perspective for a demographic that makes up half of the community. We talked about some of the issues and challenges they face, and people seemed pretty energetic about our project, though one gentleman in the front left after ten minutes when he realized that the white man hadn't come with money or other handouts (I wish I was joking about this). However, the rest of the session went very well and I met a nice gentleman afterward who started talking about building a rainwater harvesting system and a bio-digester.
After that, Bernard and I headed further afield to the village of Terrat. Unfortunately, most people in the village were at the market (apparently Friday is the wrong day to conduct interviews in Terrat). As we waited, we surveyed the area a bit. One villager pointed out the house of a Dutch man on a hill. Suddenly the rest of the survey made sense. There was an unmaintained pipe from the gutters on school's roof (at this point, only about 50% of the pipe remained, while the rest had been completely corroded). When we followed it down to the underground tank, Bernard and I saw that it had an impressive capacity and was lined with expensive plastic and was filled with garbage. Though there were certainly merits to the project, it was clearly not what the village wanted, so they had no interest in maintaining it or putting it towards its original use. I guess in this case, it's not really the thought that counts.
So yeah, this is my spiel that every jaded volunteer puts up on their blog about the uselessness of people who drop out of the sky and decide that they know what is best for a community that has been carrying on by itself for decades or centuries. Come on out here and you'll encounter plenty of these folks. To be fair, this project wasn't actually counterproductive, unlike some of the other programs I've seen where outsiders decide that they know better than the people on the ground. It's condescending and wasteful.
The first village (called Mkonoo) went really well and everyone was really engaged in the discussion. We had twenty people come to meet with us, from different ages and professions. Unfortunately, every single attendee was male, so we missed out on the perspective for a demographic that makes up half of the community. We talked about some of the issues and challenges they face, and people seemed pretty energetic about our project, though one gentleman in the front left after ten minutes when he realized that the white man hadn't come with money or other handouts (I wish I was joking about this). However, the rest of the session went very well and I met a nice gentleman afterward who started talking about building a rainwater harvesting system and a bio-digester.
After that, Bernard and I headed further afield to the village of Terrat. Unfortunately, most people in the village were at the market (apparently Friday is the wrong day to conduct interviews in Terrat). As we waited, we surveyed the area a bit. One villager pointed out the house of a Dutch man on a hill. Suddenly the rest of the survey made sense. There was an unmaintained pipe from the gutters on school's roof (at this point, only about 50% of the pipe remained, while the rest had been completely corroded). When we followed it down to the underground tank, Bernard and I saw that it had an impressive capacity and was lined with expensive plastic and was filled with garbage. Though there were certainly merits to the project, it was clearly not what the village wanted, so they had no interest in maintaining it or putting it towards its original use. I guess in this case, it's not really the thought that counts.
So yeah, this is my spiel that every jaded volunteer puts up on their blog about the uselessness of people who drop out of the sky and decide that they know what is best for a community that has been carrying on by itself for decades or centuries. Come on out here and you'll encounter plenty of these folks. To be fair, this project wasn't actually counterproductive, unlike some of the other programs I've seen where outsiders decide that they know better than the people on the ground. It's condescending and wasteful.
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