Labels: vlog
1. A discussion of web versus regular writing.
The discussion is interesting in and of itself, especially now that I'm blogging again. Although, as more of a consumer than producer of any writing, I'm more piqued to thinking about the practicalities and logistics of reading more and more electronic material, be they websites or .pdf files, than about the writing itself. I'm constantly overwhelmed by the volumes of reading for classes, and in an effort to reduce my own mass of paper clutter (helping the environment is a worthy, but entirely secondary motivation here), I've forced myself to read more and more on the computer. Yet in the 45 minute-1 hour commute (one way) to Cambridge, which was a daily event in the spring, I was stuck either printing some of the articles out after all, or being the nerd/weirdo who pulls out his laptop on the T. (I should say, that's less strange on the Red Line than on the Orange Line). It's made me think of something like Amazon's Kindle as a potential, if expensive, solution to this dillema. But even then, I'm not entirely comfortable reading on the screen: the software isn't advanced enough for my tastes to be able to mark up pages, comment in the margins, and highlight sections; I suppose my generation is a bridge between those who still like holding the book or something tangible and those who are entirely electronic in their reading process.
2. The newest Stuff White People Like, which is on personal anecdotes of poverty.
Most of the time, I have a good laugh at what comes out of this site. They often hit the nail on the head and usually call me, and presumably other readers, out on things that we do so involuntarily in a way that's both funny and a little uncomfortable at times. This edition, from their recent competition for new entries, made me wonder if it weren't possible to take it one step further from just college-age experiences of poverty to experiences of seeing poverty close up and claiming some ownership over it. Like part of what I'm doing now. I catch myself back home from time to time talking with a bit too much omniscience about the experience, or even just the expression, of poverty in the places I've worked. I'm not trying to devalue my experiences here, but to remind myself that spending a summer or a month somewhere leaves me with context that, while useful in many conversations and for personal grounding, that is mostly anecdotal. I'm reasonably confident in my own self-reflection that I wouldn't go so far as to say "I know what it's like to live as a poor person in Malawi," because under no circumstances have any of my experiences gotten me close to living outside a well kept inn. But just as I revel in how many stamps there are in my passport, I think I buy into something that is particularly emerging among educated Americans, especially at a place like where I'm in school, to have done work abroad. Many of the people with whom I share classrooms can toss around stories like, "When I was in [country], the situation there was [description from one incident they witnessed]" as though they have expert knowledge of the situation. It's like what some of the comments in the link mention about sympathy v. empathy. I feel like there's something, whether it's insecurity or arrogance, that makes people feel comfortable appearing as though they know what poverty is like.
This gets to the point that I've come to before: in almost all of my work, I'm an outsider. And more to the point, in a lot of ways, I, by virtue of my nationality, education, university, skin color, and relative wealth, have a lot of power right from the start. And yet, with all this talk about community-based participatory research (which I'm beginning to think is indeed just rhetoric) in the U.S., I realize how terribly difficult it is to do that well. I'm not a member of "the community" (whatever that means). Even in the instances when I have been working within segments of what are, on paper, "my community", I didn't really feel apart of "the community" and felt able to represent that "community's" voice to a very small extent. More to the point here, I've had a rather privileged life such that I don't know what it's like to be poor, nor to live in a rural area; I certainly don't know what it's like to be a Malawian. And while I'm going in the fall to be studying for a degree that will likely make me an "expert" in a certain field, I struggle with exactly how much I may know empirically and how little I know experientially. I also think that part of why I'm drawn to doctoral studies is that it may remove me from having to deal with that paradox: I can analyze the data and contextualize the results with the experience that I do have, but I may not have to go much further. I'm not quite sure how good or bad of a thing that is. I think realizing it is important--it checks the ego that comes with the altruism--but I'm not sure whether that's quite enough, nor exactly what else to do about it.
When it comes to turning that altruism into action, I think things get even fuzzier. This country has so much foreign aid coming in--the big debate in Parliament right now is about the budget, and the party in power's criticism of the opposition holding up the process was that doing so was "preventing development from happening"--and I really doubt how much of the aid is really addressing the problems that people face. There is also the question of whether the money actually gets close enough to the intended recipient once funneled through expansive bureaucracies and big US salaries (a job I might have some day). But in terms of the content and mechanisms of the "interventions" that are happening, I really wonder how much of them are driven by "the community." Rather, I think so many of these ideas are dreamt up in New York, London and Washington and are either totally irrelevant or useless to the people who get the intervention. A brilliant thing about the cash transfers was that it cut all that out; the program gave money to the people. There are clearly sustainability concerns there--what happens when the money runs out?--but it strikes me that the average person wouldn't say that a lot of the larger projects running in these areas (a flop of a farming project funded in part by the US comes to mind) are really all that useful. Or that there are some many strange and idiosyncratic ties to the money that it makes it more difficult to manage than it can help (a certain funder in India that would only fund STD testing and not HIV testing and had weird reporting requirements that made the total number of people served look larger than it actually was). Moreover, there's this interesting disconnect from people in the West who take jobs at NGOs because they want to do good work, help people, or a variety of other good reasons; here, people want jobs at NGOs because they're by far the highest paying jobs around. Which isn't to say that people here don't also want the jobs of the same reasons as the people in the West, just that with money there's power (the people who get those jobs are educated Malawians, frankly often over-qualified to be doing some of them), and another level removed from "the community".
I guess where I'm going is how can one work with particularly disenfranchised, or hard-to-reach populations in a helpful and not-condescending way? The people in Washington (or me in Boston) have plenty of data to make a good story of what's necessary (and enough of it, frankly, to cook into telling any story they want). But how much does that really get at the right solutions?
I think that's part of why I'm interested in evaluation. It's naturally reactive and can analyze how and why something didn't work so that you can improve on it. Everyone's a critic, right? But because I'm averse to thinking that I have the answers, evaluation is, in some ways, an easy place to be.
Possibly the thing I like most about being here is having the space and time to ramble on about all this stuff. The irony of being in school where we're taught to think critically is that I rarely feel like I have the time to do so about anything bigger than the task at hand. At some point, there needs to be a way to let it all come together into a sum greater than all the annoying classes that comprise the parts. I found that here last year, and selfishly, that's a big reason of why I wanted to come back. Although maybe the security guard at the airport was right--he said, "ah, so all you do is take, but what do you have to give?" after telling him that I was here to do research. In his case, I think he was asking for money, but the question is relevant otherwise. I'm still working on a good reply.
Labels: malawi, mchinji, professional ramblings
A few things from today:
1. some of the responses to the survey made me wonder about having so much faith in god that it'll protect you from getting HIV. enviable, disturbing, just ill-informed?
2. the whole situation with zimbabwe's election is sad. that one else in the world cares enough to get rid of mugabe (I mean like an assassination or something). Like, if they were a country of any use to the west, there's no way this shit would go on.
3. i'm reading a calculus book for fun. also disturbing.
another video coming soon.
To finish off the list of things we saw on this week's drive:
1. pigs running in the road
2. mother and daughter dressed as twins walking back from church
3. a rather poorly nourished dog doing some business (i'm trying to be clear without being graphic)
4. the mchinji football team, in coordinated uniforms, doing coordinated exercises before their game
5. the proliferation of Celtel (the big cell phone company)'s mailbox style stands, including one on the hospital grounds
6. getting stopped at the checkpoint
7. *not* seeing the monkey on the leash
8. nuns
others on the drive should feel free to add other things in the comments.
Labels: mchinji, sunday drive, vlog
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-About-Africa?view=articleAllPages
some left over Cokes to have, but they (oh so shockingly)
disappeared. After the fourth or so person mentioned wanting a Coke,
Kim (with a car) suggested going into boma to get some. We all (Kim,
me, Crystal, other Kim, Josh, and their baby) piled into Kim's truck
and go. Once we have our Cokes, we decide to go for a Sunday Drive.
And so we head toward Zambia.
In fairness, the boma is about 10 km from the border, so going toward
Zambia just means going further down the road. But still. Along the
way, we passed the following:
1. a 4' snake that we ran over and totally flattened its head,
2. a monkey that was tied to a tree, with a man playing with/taunting
it (who then offered to bring the monkey up the hill to the road),
3. the border itself, and
4. a bunch of cows, including one nursing.
There was also a lot of grass burning, which happens along the side
of the road in order to clear the brush.
some oatmeal and coffee (the french press was the best idea I've had
in a long time and the Starbucks coffee is coveted by all of the
azungus who've been in Malawi for a while), and have been sitting on
the "veranda" outside my room for the past two hours. It's sunny,
slightly breezy, and just a nice Sunday morning.
(I'm not mentioning the swarms of flies that won't go away--
seriously, I have about 5 on me right now--or that the stray dog we
call Stinker just got sick on the grass just up-wind from where we're
sitting).
Last night was a big party to celebrate the last night of fieldwork
in Mchinji. There lots of preparations (like 32 crates of beer and
sodas, 4kg of meat), including extensive time spent making the
playlist. But, commonly, when the time came for the party I wasn't
so into it. I went and had a few Cokes, chatted with one of the
azungus who's having a hard time being a little aimless here too, and
then went with Kim (who was here last summer and has been working in
Malawi all year) out to the railroad tracks behind the inn to
stargaze and chat. The music got better (at least for the
Malawians), but I was in for the night when I came back from the
tracks. I came late enough into this phase of fieldwork that I
didn't know any of the local staff, so it was just as well.
I ran into one guy who worked on my project last summer--he's a
supervisor for this project, too. He's a really nice guy; we emailed
back and forth a little over the last year, I sent him a bunch of
material for qualitative research and project management (similar to
logic models, for those SHDHs) via the Principal Investigator. It
was nice to see him, even briefly (they all left for the site in the
north this morning). He mentioned that C's been in country this
week, but I guess we didn't connect up. Oh well.
I'm feeling increasingly better about the work here. I feel like I
have a scope of work, which really helps. It consists essentially of
two things:
1. building the program into which all of the data will be entered--
they export it to India, which I find sort of ironic--and
2. working on a village level survey, including coordinating the
piece that involves getting GPS data and looking at the presence and
quality of the major community structures like roads, churches, etc.)
I think the work will be sort of interesting, and could potentially
be quite useful down the line. It'll also get me into the field,
which is good.
I like one of the main people I'll be working with, and I like that
I'm going to be in Mchinji for another few weeks. I also like that I
have some ownership over something--I grabbed onto one of the last
few things that was in development that I could help start, because
otherwise I knew I was going to get the short end of the work stick.
The main survey team will go to the new sites first and then we
follow once they're done. I'll probably get to see all of the sites,
which is good.
There's already a trip coming together to the lake in a few weeks.
And Emily's coming down from Rwanda in August, which will also be
awesome. I don't think I'm going to get out of Malawi this year, but
I hope to see a little more than I did last year.
It's nearly lunchtime. I'm off to eat.
some oatmeal and coffee (the french press was the best idea I've had
in a long time and the Starbucks coffee is coveted by all of the
azungus who've been in Malawi for a while), and have been sitting on
the "veranda" outside my room for the past two hours. It's sunny,
slightly breezy, and just a nice Sunday morning.
(I'm not mentioning the swarms of flies that won't go away--
seriously, I have about 5 on me right now--or that the stray dog we
call Stinker just got sick on the grass just up-wind from where we're
sitting).
Last night was a big party to celebrate the last night of fieldwork
in Mchinji. There lots of preparations (like 32 crates of beer and
sodas, 4kg of meat), including extensive time spent making the
playlist. But, commonly, when the time came for the party I wasn't
so into it. I went and had a few Cokes, chatted with one of the
azungus who's having a hard time being a little aimless here too, and
then went with Kim (who was here last summer and has been working in
Malawi all year) out to the railroad tracks behind the inn to
stargaze and chat. The music got better (at least for the
Malawians), but I was in for the night when I came back from the
tracks. I came late enough into this phase of fieldwork that I
didn't know any of the local staff, so it was just as well.
I ran into one guy who worked on my project last summer--he's a
supervisor for this project, too. He's a really nice guy; we emailed
back and forth a little over the last year, I sent him a bunch of
material for qualitative research and project management (similar to
logic models, for those SHDHs) via the Principal Investigator. It
was nice to see him, even briefly (they all left for the site in the
north this morning). He mentioned that C's been in country this
week, but I guess we didn't connect up. Oh well.
I'm feeling increasingly better about the work here. I feel like I
have a scope of work, which really helps. It consists essentially of
two things:
1. building the program into which all of the data will be entered--
they export it to India, which I find sort of ironic--and
2. working on a village level survey, including coordinating the
piece that involves getting GPS data and looking at the presence and
quality of the major community structures like roads, churches, etc.)
I think the work will be sort of interesting, and could potentially
be quite useful down the line. It'll also get me into the field,
which is good.
I like one of the main people I'll be working with, and I like that
I'm going to be in Mchinji for another few weeks. I also like that I
have some ownership over something--I grabbed onto one of the last
few things that was in development that I could help start, because
otherwise I knew I was going to get the short end of the work stick.
The main survey team will go to the new sites first and then we
follow once they're done. I'll probably get to see all of the sites,
which is good.
There's already a trip coming together to the lake in a few weeks.
And Emily's coming down from Rwanda in August, which will also be
awesome. I don't think I'm going to get out of Malawi this year, but
I hope to see a little more than I did last year.
It's nearly lunchtime. I'm off to eat.
antsy). I'm shamming a connection from someone here, but it sounds
like I might actually be able to get set up with my own connection
through one of the ISPs here. I'm going to go into town tomorrow to
check it out.
I'm less waxing poetic about being here, and after one day of feeling
sort of aimless (which included reading the grant and napping), I'm
actually glad to have identified specific work to do. It's the
workaholic, control-freak in me, I know, but I just feel better with
some structure.
For anyone trying to reach me, for the meantime text is the best way,
probably to my U.S. phone. It may cost you more than a normal text,
so do it sparingly.
