Monica's Family Business in the News

My good friend/classmate/coworker M's family has a bike touring business, mentioned in this article in The Coloradoan.

Course Registration

It's 12:15am, and I just signed up for classes for the spring semester. It's a slightly odd system, but the online registration service opens at midnight of the first day of registration. Generally, there's no rush for most classes, but a few really popular classes fill up so quickly that you have to sign up as early as you can. The system is so busy at this hour that sometimes you have to try several times before you're allowed in to add your classes.

I signed up for Hirschmann's Development Management class, which always fills up right away. Otherwise I would have waited until later. And I almost did wait, though not on purpose. I forgot registration was TONIGHT, and had I not gotten an email from E, worried about a "System Busy" message, I would have sat here reading another hour or two and gone to bed...(So thanks, E!)

The other course is Training Program Design, which I've heard good reviews of. I'll officially register for my SRP (Substantial Research Paper- like a thesis) closer to the start of next semester. The thing that's going to kill me, though, is the schedule. DM will be Tuesdays 8-11pm, and Training Program Design will be Thursdays 8-11pm. I thought one course in that time slot was bad enough this semester! I may just have to shift into a generally later schedule, so that I feel more awake during class...

Halloween

There was a Halloween party at R's house, and the IDPSA used it as a fundraiser. M and I went together. A couple of hours before we had no costumes, but her roommates' mother was full of ideas. So by the time we were done, M was Static- dressed in black and covered in socks and dryer sheets and underwear and such. And I was a Chinese fortune cookie, wearing M's grandma's Chinese dress, with cookies with fortunes on the backs pinned to me... No, not fortune cookies, just chocolate chip cookies with fortunes.

We didn't stay very long, but it was fun, and I think we raised a bit of money!

John in Samoa

For those of you who didn't know, my brother John is in Western Samoa doing Peace Corps. He went just after I left for Haiti this summer, so if my calculations are correct, he'll be home September or October 2007.

I got to talk to him for 6 minutes tonight (Thanks for the phone card, Mom and Dad!), which made me miss him more than usual. But it sounds like he's doing pretty well, and I know it's going to be a great experience for him to have had. He has sent his camera home for Mom to develop, so hopefully I can post a few of his photos soon.

As for projects he's trying to work on, he is looking to find books for the school in his village. Right now the school library has only a handful of books: Deliverance, Shakespeare, and a few others. Not exactly material suited to kindergardeners. SO if you're interested in helping, there are two options:

1) Give children's books (in English).
2) Give money (to pay for books or for shipping).

Actually, I'll add another option:

3) Offer specific advice on how to accomplish this most cheaply/efficiently.

Let me know if you'd like to help with any of these!

Pumpkin Carving

L and I carved pumpkins today after school. There were two rules:

1) I was only allowed to cut exactly what she had drawn on the pumpkins.

2) No hole in the top.

No holes in the tops meant that we had to scrape the "guts" out through the eyes, nose, and mouth. The process was full of a lot of "Ewww!" and "DisGUSTing!" L aptly noted, "They look like they're throwing up!!!"



She also got a real kick out of the fact that she could stick the knife in the eye and have it come out of the mouth:



Yeah, maybe a little morbid. And a little (okay, maybe VERY) messy. But oh so much fun!

A Series of Firsts

This was a weekend full of firsts for me:

First time our humble apartment has had cable. (As it turns out, we could have had it since school started, but Jennifer and I failed to investigate fully...Thanks, James!)

First hockey game. The Washington Capitals were terrible and lost by an embarrassing margin. There was at least one fight, and at some point one of the referees was hit with a puck right in the face, leaving blood on the ice, and apparently this is the stuff fans go for (well, they're sure not going to see the Capitals for their great hockey skills...).

First Nascar race. [Okay, Jennifer, I have now admitted it publicly, so you don't have to!] Whether you're a racing fan or not, there's no denying that the people-watching possibilities there are fantastic. I have to wonder if there have been any anthropological studies done on Nascar society. It's the only place I've ever been where trucks comprise the vast majority of vehicles. During the race, people left all of their tents and chairs and grilling paraphernalia outside without fear of it being taken. Carrying the right beer (Budweiser or Miller, depending) could get you invited into the circle for dinner, while the wrong one could have you laughed out of the parking lot. And if you try to get away with anything imported... well, I wouldn't recommend it!


Fortunately, there was a pink car that I could follow for a bit until I learned about some of the other interesting competitions going on within the big race. At some point, I was surprised to realize that I was actually enjoying myself!

Grad Student Realities

It's 10:30a.m., and I'm just now waking up. But don't go muttering about the easy lives of students just yet... I didn't get to bed until 8:30. Yes, that's 8:30a.m. I had a policy-relevant literature review to finish for Development Microeconomics. I kept thinking I was almost done, every day, then every hour, but the details just always end up taking longer than I plan. Education and migration was the topic- why it is that if you educate people who live in rural areas, they will usually migrate to the cities or outside the country. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of clear solutions. One of the authors actually suggested abandoning rural education! Surely this can't be the best solution. Governments can think about incentives for businesses that create jobs in rural areas, etc., but the "brain drain" continues...

I think I'm going to fit in another hour of sleep now...

One Day Left

Today, October 15th, is the first internet deadline for the professors in the program. True to the original intentions, the teachers were told that Pwof Ansanm would pay for one hour of educational internet use a month at VDH (a youth center with a cybercafe and internet classes) if they would send an email once a month to pwofansanm@gmail.com to say which sites they were using most. This was almost two months ago, but the internet at VDH was down for nearly one month, so the deadline for the first email was pushed back.

As of a week or two ago, we had only heard from a handful out of the 55 professors who finished the training (all of whom said they wanted to participate in the internet program). As of last night, there were 20 who had written, plus two members of KAG (the teachers organization)- Waldinde, who has been helping teach the others, and another who helped run the training. I'm not sure what the policy will be about KAG members.

This has been another demonstration in the workings about Haiti. Really, just two weeks ago, we were sure that we would have ten responses at the most. Plus, there was no way for us to communicate with all the teachers to remind them. What were we going to do? Send them an email? In any case, faithful Waldinde has been contacting as many as possible, reminding them, and even offering to meet them there to help them remember how to write an email. Things get done in Haiti, usually, but only at the last minute.

I asked him about the women because we've only heard from the KAG member and Marie Mite, who was in the training, but we've technically counted her as a trainer, since she helped train the teachers in internet and computer use. Waldinde said he visited all the women personally, but they chose not to go. I'm really hoping that they're just procrastinating and will go in the next 12 hours... I wonder why they're not interested?

I wish I knew how many of the teachers actually received the information about this opportunity. Most things go out by word of mouth, so we're limited to their seeing each other and remembering or to Waldinde's efforts. I have no doubt that we've missed some of the teachers in the more remote towns.

At the same time, when I really think about it, 20 out of 55 may not be so bad. It could easily have been much lower.

Snow in the Backyard?

Sometimes I have these BRILLIANT plans that turn out to be not so brilliant...

We looked out at the weed patch (a little square under the porch and near our door that doesn't get enough sun for much except a few odd weeds) today, and it looked as though there were little clumps of snow all over it. It's getting colder, but it's only October... So I look closely and realized that the weed patch is covered in white mold. Yes, mold. Yes, gross. And yes, my fault. When I moved in LAST fall, I bought some wheat germ, which I had sprinkled diligently on everything I could think of (It's high in Vitamin D, E, Thiamin (B1), Riboflavin (B2), Niacin (B3), B6, Selenium, Zinc, and Pantothenic Acid.) for maybe two weeks, at which point it became part of the Permanent Collection of the Refrigerator Door.

So last week, after a year on display in the Permanent Collection, I replaced the wheat germ with strawberry jam and sprinkled the flakes out in the weed patch to break down so I could recycle the jar, just like I do with old spices. But, sadly, I didn't plan for days and days of rain, and even if I had, I thought these nutty brown specks would simply mix in with the dirt. But no. Apparently "nutrient rich" means "makes spore happy." And so the mold. Eww.

A Little Thank-You to Russell

I would like to take a moment to thank my former LVC roommate Russell for catching the typo in my last entry (No, don't look there now. I've corrected it.). If you don't know me personally, maybe you'll wonder why I've wasted time worrying about it. And if you do know me personally, you're probably rolling your eyes or shaking your head or sighing...

I'll take a second moment to encourage you to look at Russell's blog at http://www.bither-terry.org/russell/. I tried to put it in my collection of links, I really did, but it attacked my formatting, turning all my "Previous Posts" into a continuation of the "Links" section. Alas, I'm resorting to a second-best option of promoting it here.

Confessions of a Shoplifter

I look into my purple bag today and find two pairs of tights and a Target receipt. Strange. Why aren't the tights in the other bag, with the cotton balls, and razors, and chocolate I bought? I wonder if...No, can't be... Hmmm... And so I check the receipt. No tights. No tights at all. I cringe, and realize that as I was rushing around the store, I had stashed the tights in the bag without paying attention- the same way I do with my keys and everything else I never remember misplacing... I cringe again.

Then a sense of relief. If the alarms had gone off....

And I cringe yet again. I'll have to go pay for them. How embarrassing. Um, hi. I accidently walked off with these? No, I don't know how they got into my bag. Yes, I'd like to pay for them now. No, no, I'm not out of my mind...and no, I suppose this isn't something you see every day...

Sigh. It has definitely been one of THOSE days...

And If There Weren't Already Enough Challenges

Jacson's leaving Jeremie to study in PaP.

Jacson was the real force behind the intiation of this project. He contacted Joy, and thus Pwof Ansanm was born. I haven't heard yet what this will mean for the project. If other leaders will step forward, the show may go on. But if no one fills those big shoes... ?????

Update

About the visitor... There have been a few concerns that I thought I'd address.

1) Yes, we called the police. A little embarrassing, but we wanted it to be on record.

2) Yes, M, the landlord, has agreed to put up motion-sensing lights. We are thrilled. It will be nice to have the lights come on when we come home, too.

3) The comment left on the previous entry was in fact Jennifer, my roommate, not the peeping Tom himself, elaborating on his activities.

And, in the end, some good has come out of this incident. To leave a comment, you have to sign in. Jennifer now has her own blog.

Will There Be a Training Next Year?

I talked to Joy last night. She is tentatively planning to go back to Jeremie in early November, to prepare next summer's training. But not a lot seems to be happening on the Jeremie end. She has asked that KAG (the teachers' organization) and the other professors get together and take care a lot of the basic planning steps. This seems to be too much to ask, and she is considering threatening to call off the whole program. We're not really sure what the problem is, but here are some possibilities:

Haitians don't generally plan so far in advance (or even in advance at all, sometimes), so meetings NOW seem ridiculous.

Leadership there isn't delegating responsibilities, so either people don't feel involved, they have no idea what is going on and what needs to be going on, and they are generally underutilized.

Creative problem solving within administrative issues is not especially part of the Haitian infrastructure right now.

Something else?

There was so much enthusiasm when we left that we were optimistic about the professors joining KAG and becoming more involved in the planning process. Email communication is proving difficult, so we're not sure what to do or whom to contact specifically to pushing things along from here. Joy doesn't want to have them scrambling to organize a meeting AFTER she gets there, with good reason.

One hates to hand-hold, but we're thinking it might be necessary to create a checklist, with little check boxes and the works, of every task and subtask and how to perform each subtask, if it comes down to it. Yikes! Perhaps part of the mission of this program will end up being the building of organizational planning infrastructure, which could have some great externalities for Jeremie.

We're also trying to find more people on the international end, with expertise, materials, manpower, and donations, to help carry these trainings along. So if you know anyone...

Who'll Take Free Internet?

When we left Jeremie, we announced to all the teachers that if they would sign onto the internet once a month and email us with a list of the websites they were accessing, they would get one hour of access free at VDH, one of the cybercafes. They all, without exception, put their names on a list to say they wanted to participate.

This has not gone as expected. First, the internet was down at VDH for a few weeks, precluding them from accessing the internet there. A few wrote from other locations to let us know, and now the service is back up. Joy extended the response deadline to October 15, to compensate for the delay.

As of today, only a handful have written, perhaps 10 of 55. We're not sure if the others aren't interested, can't make it to town to use the service, can't remember how to sign on, don't realize that VDH is up and running again, or what. Anyone who doesn't write by October 15 will be removed from the list. Joy sent out a final email to remind them of this and to encourage them to remind each other.

Finally, even those who have written haven't exactly followed instructions. They are supposed to use the access to find educational information and then tell us which sites. Not one has done this. Typical content is restricted to greetings, thank yous, requests for material, and the announcements that VDH internet was down. We're not sure what to make of this. Perhaps they didn't really understand how to do a search on google. It's also possible that they don't really read the emails we send for content, but simply take them as greetings. This could explain the lack of reply to our questions.

What to do?

Ugh

I had a peeping Tom outside my bedroom window tonight. Yuck. We reported it to the police, and we're going to ask the landlord for a pair of motion-sensing lights. Ick, ick, ick.

Aids and the Ecology of Poverty

One of my big time commitments here comes from my role as co-president of the International Development Program Student Association (IDPSA) at AU. The beginning of the year is the busiest, as we set the propose and defend the budget to receive university funds and plan out the activities for the year. I really enjoy it though; the IDPSA is known for being really active, productive, and having a good time!

One of our primary activities is the Friday Forum. Eight or nine Fridays of the semester, we bring in a speaker or panel of speakers on a topic we find to be interesting. Most weeks we follow the academic material with happy hour at various locations around town.

Our first Forum was September 23rd, and it was fantastic! Dr. Eileen Stillwaggon, professor at Gettysburg College and author of the newly released Aids and the Ecology of Poverty , gave a presentation on the biological factors that have helped spread the HIV/AIDS crisis in so many poor countries.

While everyone knows that HIV is spread by sexual contact, Stillwaggon challenges the idea that the disease is so much more common in Sub-Saharan Africa (possibly as high as 40% in some countries while less than 1% in the US) because the people there are having what she calls "exotic sex." Evidence suggests that in otherwise-healthy adults, the chance of contracting HIV from a person who has it with one contact is somewhere around 1/500 for women, and maybe half that for men (Please note: No one is suggesting you test this at home.) And if you do the math...? "No one can have that much sex!" she says. (I wish you could see this smiley, unassuming woman who must be older than my mother!) So what's the difference?

This is where she introduces the ecology of poverty. What are all the other conditions that are more than commonplace in Sub-Saharan Africa? Malnutrition, malaria, schistosomiasis, and all sorts of other parasites and worms, to give a short list. None is a problem in developed countries because each is quite cheap to prevent or cure.

And what do these have to do with it? Malnutrition causes a deficiency in any number of micronutrients, which supress immune activity (it's harder for the body to fight off infection) and reduces integrity of the skin and other membranes (extra rips and tears that allow the virus to enter the system are more likely). Malaria, schistosomiasis, and other parasites cause an overactive immune system, which leave it less able to defend against new infections, and they increase susceptibility to other STDs, which also increase the chance of contracting HIV. Parasites also cause malnutrition. All of this DRASTICALLY, DRASTICALLY increases your susceptibility to HIV. And so you get an epidemic.

So yes, people should be encouraged to stay in mutually monogamous relationships when sexually active, and condoms should be available, but these aren't helpful when one partner already has the infection, or when a couple wants to have a baby, or when one partner has no say in the condom-use or fidelity of the relationship. And it seems the policies with this single focus aren't working. Until more of the symptoms of poverty are dealt with, the epidemic will continue to spread, causing further devastation.

Stillwaggon ends on a positive note, however. The good news is that we can see these connections now, and the solutions are out there. Mosquito nets or insecticide can reduce malaria; the treatment for parasites can be just a few cents, as are supplements of the lacking nutrients. All that's needed is funding and political will.

And crusaders like Eileen Stillwaggon.

The surveys

I am still wading my way through surveys! All the once designed with multiple choice answers and just a few places to specify other information went very quickly. But one of the last questionnaires was completely open-ended, with questions like "What would help you share the information you've learned with other teachers?" and "Other than food or transportation money, what about the program would you change?" Monica, a true saint, has been helping me enter them and translate them into English, but we tend to finish only three or four an hour, when they're legible. After they've all been entered (for a record of original data), I'll try to code them to group similar responses. We're definitely seeing a lot of themes. They were glad to have done group work, lesson and unit plans, and internet, among others. There weren't very many negative comments; some felt limited in their ability to employ some of the techniques or pass them on without some additional resources.

But, the end is in sight, and I'll be able to finish the evaluation soon!

Greek Festival

M, S, J, and I went to the Greek Festival at the Greek Orthodox cathedral at the corner of Wisconsin and Mass. After wandering through the crafts and jewelry for sale, we decided to sample the food. S and I settled on spanakopita (spinach, cheese, and egg in filo dough), M had dalmades (spelling?), and then we went back for a collection of sweets. All very good, very rich. Thankfully, it's just once a year, but it was a lovely break from paper-writing!