the work and experiences here is often downright depressing. it's difficult to process.

Why I took out the adjective "miserable" in the headline of the previous New York Times story.

If you check the original New York Times article headline, you'll see that it originally said "Africa Adds to Ranks of Miserable Child Workers". But I took out "miserable" because I suspect that it was an adjective added on by the author; I don't think it accurately describes the emotional state of the child workers in general.

As I mentioned before, children who voluntarily work out of necessity (i.e. not explicitly being forced to by someone else) who can bring in money to feed themselves and their loved ones (not necessarily family since I think it's unclear who their blood family is in these compounds) are much better off than children who go hungry.

What's worse: grinding rocks and getting hurt (which leads to an x% probability of dying) or being more hungry than before (which I argue leads to  > x % probability of dying)?

I mean, there's no easy way to prove that, but that's my intuition.

Wolf in sheep's clothing...

And following up on my previous post, being here brings home the reality that cultish/hypocritical/dangerous "Christians" and "churches" can and do exist--

While I was walking around the Chaisa compound yesterday, the CHW (community health worker) pointed out a compound/church community that practiced polygamy and also did not believe in seeking medical help. They wear white clothing/headdresses. And when cholera struck the compound (due to the overwhelming amount of dirty sewage) last year, they were heard wailing loudly to the Lord for help. It was only when it was too late did they decide to go to the health clinic.

And another interesting thing-- one entry to fill in on the surveys is "what church they attended." It's pretty safe to say that most, if not all, Zambians are somehow affiliated to a church of some sort. Whether that church is actually healthy is another question.

__________

and another note, I'm really glad I'm staying here for a while. While I'm here, ostensibly to work, (and I'm definitely working for sure), the experience so far has been a time of emotional and spiritual rest and discipline.

Why it's not necessarily a good idea to do missionary work with a Christian organization....

... and maybe a reason for why I'm working with a secular organization.
... and why I think Christina missionaries could be more effective by explicitly becoming a member in a local church in "missionary" territory rather than having explicit ties to "home" churches in America. (don't get me wrong, personal/informal ties to Christians all over the world are definitely very fruitful.)... my host family comes to mind.

"Accordingly, any meaningful mission in Africa cannot begin with a consideration of programs, mobilization and numbers, but with the humble realization that the church has been and remains deeply connected to violence in Africa. Given this fact, how can we think about reconstruction, social renewal, or indeed resurrection in Africa? This is the question that must be at the heart of every church planning or humanitarian mission in Africa. For, when it comes to Christianity and Mission, Africa is not a tabula raza, a virgin missionary territory waiting to be discovered and onto which new, powerful, well thought out plans and programs can be written ab initio. The gospel is not new to the continent. Africa has already had a Christian past. Remembering this past, lamenting this painful past, owning it, and critically searching for a more hopeful future out of it, is what Christian reconstruction in Africa should be about."

-- by Emmanuel M Katongole, in an article in theotherjournal.com.
 

Difficult experiences

Couple overall thoughts:

1. I can't get today's images out of my head... description below
2. These people NEED contraceptives, there's very little understanding of family planning amongst the poorer Zambian population. (and when I say family planning, I'm partially talking about couples actually sitting down and thinking about how they're going to feed, take care, and educate all their children... and given their resources, figure out how many children they want, and how they should space their births given ... contraceptive/condom use follows after that initial planning...)

... I don't care what other conservative Christians think about contraceptive use or family planning or whatever, but I think it is absolutely horrible to have lots of children without thinking a whit about how you will be able to provide for them. Especially when many of them are born HIV positive or with other diseases/deformities.

... and on a similar note ,there's almost no savings culture. understandable.. usually mothers have so many mouths to feed whastever they get can't be saved.

3. I need to figure out how best to manage/organize the Zambian workers involved in this study. My host family recommended being very firm/strict at first, or else they would immediately take advantage of me. What's a Christian response though?

... on a related topic I feel disturbed by something that happened today.... after walking around all day three of the workers on the project came up to me and said "We're thirsty and hungry. Buy us lunch". With my host family's warnings fresh in my mind, I looked at them and said nothing. (And the nI thought about how I had bought myself a bottle of Coke while I was walking around in the fields all day). And I did nothing. I'm not sure if what I did was wrong/right. There are arguments for both sides. ( i.e. the workers are paid for transportation and lunch, but it's a miserably small amount from my perspective...) But they had probably seen me walking aorund with my bottle of coke that they couldn't afford.

4. regarding the New York Times article I referenced yesterday about child labor in Lusaka... it's sad, but not that sad. after going into the field today I'm really happy for the children who can manage to make money by selling things or helping out with non-dangerous work. At least they're not dying of hunger, like many others are. There's not much exploitation going on, as I see it... it's just a matter of survival.

_________________________________________
Today I went "into the field" for the first time i.e. I went with a Zambian community health worker into the housing compounds surrounding the public health clinic to continue more of the female tracking involved in the experiment. (The government had built cement-block compounds all over the city for the poor/poorest Zambians it seems...) She was a pleasant woman who had been previously trained as a midwife. As we walked around Chaisa, a particularly poor compound, I could barely concentrate on the task at hand (interviewing households for consent to participate in our study)... the combination of the oppressive stench of dirty sewage, the malnourished men and women, the ubiquitous flies, the free-roaming chickens, the meager bottles of soda and fly-covered fruits and vegetables for sale, the tattered clothes with random labeling... all were a bit overwhelming. But what disturbed me the most was seeing the children/babies... SO MANY of them in each housing compound. There were typically 5-8 babies/children running around the compounds, along with a couple women. I rarely saw men in the houses; I mostly saw them walking around aimlessly or working on building muddy cement blocks... 

Some children seemed to be eating dust,... some had deformed limbs .. probably from polio... I saw many 4-5 year old-looking children carrying their baby brother/sisters (or maybe not even?) around... it seems that there were so many children in each household that it was necessary for the older siblings to take care of the younger siblings.

Most of the mothers walked around sullenly, many with a newborn strapped around their body.

I totally stuck out, of course....

The bright-eyed curiosity of the babies and younger children made me even more depressed. I said hello to a lot of the young children and asked them how old they were. They replied shyly. Many of them ran away and hid, and shyly stuck their heads out to look at me. I remember a boy who I thought couldn't have been more than 6 or 7 years old say that he was 13. Most of them were kind of dirty.

The community health worker (CHW) walked slowly, saying hi to people who greeted her, and slowly and politely asked about recent babies. Whenever we found a woman who agreed to participate, we sat down on a simple stool or on the ground as the CHW asked gently and slowly about the birth history of the mother, and whether she was using any contraceptives. (there are many, it seems)

Some women were illiterate and signed the consent forms with a fingerprint.

But throughout it all, the people were very polite and generally friendly. The children waved bakc hello, or smiled shyly when I talked to them. Many children were running aorund and playing. The women were generally cooperative.

Some disorganized thoughts...

On the government: The Zambian government is extremely bureaucratic, which I've heard about and experienced somewhat. The country director at the social marketing NGO couldn't tell me how I could get a long-term visa here, other than making periodic trips in and out of Zambia to get a new visa. He also said that one of his permanent hires wasn't able to get a residency permit. It also seems to be ineffective in dealing with Zambia's unemployment problem (~50%). Instead of implementing policies that will help create jobs, it seems they're just trying to keep foreigners out. The country director said that one approach of Labor Department officials is to randomly walk into their offices and ask him gruffly "So what exactly are you doing here? Why are you hiring foreigners? Can't you hire a local Zambian?" On that vein, that reminds me... I may need to travel in and out of the country periodically to renew my tourist visa since I'm a "tourist" and I'm not a "foreigner working here taking jobs away from Zambians."

On churches and Christians: they're everywhere. this is a pretty Christian-ized nation. Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, United Church of Zambia... hm... why is it that the Westernized internet cafe is playing the contemporary evangelical music I picked up in my childhood and at college? (Gosh, I recognize all these songs...) Is this what Zambians think us Westerners are about? I guess so.

On universities: There's only one real university here, the University of Zambia, along with some technical colleges... not nearly enough to provide college education to the sizeable and growing youth population.  It was supposedly built by Israelis, but then some sort of war happened where they stopped building the university. Why isn't the government building more colleges??

On relations between Zambian men and women: In a word, they're heartbreaking to... According to one of the health community workers, it's pretty much known that not performing well enough in bed is grounds for divorce/unfaithfulness. (One important ritual of Zambian bridal showers is teaching the women how to "dance" i.e. showing the bride how to perform well in bed.... or else the bride will risk losing her man.) It's pretty safe to assume most men are sexually unfaithful to their partners. And poorer African women exist in a gray area between being commercial sex workers and lovers/"friends" of African men or white men. (A white man, to an African woman, represents wealth/survival/a ticket out of Zambia... ) According to another researcher, it's also safe to say that if you're a white man, any African women who comes up to talk to you outside of a professional context is pretty much up for sale. I'm planning to attend a "kitchen party" (the bridal shower) this weekend.

On the health clinic: I see many babies being weighed at the local public health clinic every day. They're extremely cute. Since it's a local health clinic, most of the women who come in are middle-income to low-income. The health clinic workers are usually cheery, friendly, and make a point to say good morning to me in English or else in an incomprehensible yet pleasant sounding local language. (I'll need to learn...)  However, I need to be reminded that a large majority (~60% according to Zambian Ministry of Health) of children are unwanted. That, and the article below drives home to me the importance of the research I'm doing.

My host family: a blessing beyond imagination. they iron and wash my laundry, and give me 3 meals a day. what more could a Western Asian person living in Africa hope to expect?

On people: I met an NGO worker who was a former investment banker. Woo hoo! Another one sees the light.

P.S. I'm sure my research and still-developing views on contraception and husband-wife bargaining will be a bit controversial, in the very least, to conservative Christians.. but that's another topic for later.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Africa Adds to Ranks of Child Workers

By MICHAEL WINES

LUSAKA, Zambia — The boulders here are hard enough that the scavengers who have taken over the abandoned quarry south of downtown prefer not to strike them directly with their hammers.

They heat the rocks first — with flaming tires, scrap plastic, even old rubber boots — so that the stones will fracture more easily.

At dusk, when three or four blazes spew choking black clouds across the huge pit, the quarry looks like a woodcut out of Dante.

A boy named Alone Banda works in this purgatory six days a week.

Nine years old, nearly lost in a hooded sweatshirt with a skateboarder on the chest, he takes football-size chunks of fractured rock and beats them into powder.

Lacking a hammer, he uses a thick steel bolt gripped in his right hand.

In a good week, he says, he can make enough powder to fill half a bag.

His grandmother, Mary Mulelema, sells each bag, to be used to make concrete, for 10,000 kwacha, less than $3. Often, she said, it is the difference between eating and going hungry.

"Sometimes when he's tired, I tell him to stop, but he helps me here most of the time," she said. "We work every day, to make that powder. Sometimes we work Sunday, if we don't go to church."

Across the globe, the number of children forced to work is in sharp decline.

But sub-Saharan Africa, in places like Lusaka and for children like Alone, is the exception. Here, more than one in four children below age 14 works, whether full time or for a few hours a week, nearly the same percentage as the worldwide average in 1960.

It is by far the greatest proportion of working children in the world.

By the United Nations' latest estimate, more than 49 million sub-Saharan children age 14 and younger worked in 2004, 1.3 million more than at the turn of the century just four years earlier.

Their tasks are not merely the housework and garden-tending common to most developing societies.

They are prostitutes, miners, construction workers, pesticide sprayers, haulers, street vendors, full-time servants, and they are not necessarily even paid for their labor.

Some are as young as 5 and 6 years old.

In Kenya, nearly a third of the coffee pickers were children, a 2001 World Bank Report found.

In Tanzania, 25,000 children worked in hazardous jobs on plantations and in mines.

Their numbers in Africa grow even as the ranks of child laborers are dropping by the millions in every other region of the world.

Child labor declines with prosperity, and so the region's economic plight — 44 percent of sub-Saharan residents live on less than $1 a day, far and away the greatest share on earth — is a big reason.

But so are social mores that regard hard work by children as the norm, and conflicts that scatter families and kill breadwinners.

So is the staggering H.I.V. rate, which has created millions of orphans who must work to survive, and has forced millions more to work to support dying parents. In Zambia alone, a 2002 study by independent researchers for the United Nations concluded that AIDS had boosted the number of child laborers by up to 30 percent.

So is the region's population explosion. Well over 4 in 10 people here are under age 15, compared with fewer than 2 in 10 in the developed world, according to the Population Reference Bureau, a nonprofit research organization.

With economic growth lagging births, manual labor is often the only way the newcomers can feed themselves.

Worldwide, the number of children who were already "economically active" by the age of 14 fell roughly 10 percent from 2000 to 2004, to about 191 million, according to the International Organization for Labor, a United Nations agency.

More impressive still, the number of young children laboring in the most dangerous jobs dropped by a third.

In Asia, the number of economically active children — meaning they worked beyond their chores, legally or not — dropped by five million in just four years.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, the decline was even more drastic, nearly 12 million. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africa was the only region where the number of working children did not fall.

"It's like trying to empty a bathtub with a teaspoon while the tap is running," said Birgitte Poulsen, the technical specialist for the International Labor Organization in Zambia. "If you want to tackle this, you have to recognize the magnitude of the problem, not just in terms of its size, but its complexity. It isn't just due to instability and conflict and war. It's poverty and H.I.V.-AIDS."

Echoes of Oliver Twist

If the stereotype of child labor is an Oliver Twist world of sweatshops with youngsters hunched over sewing machines or metal presses, Africa's reality is different.

A handful of Zambia's child workers are clearly exploited by adults — for prostitution in cities, and perhaps as miners in the emerald-rich north, near the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The International Labor Organization says there are increasing reports of Zambian children being trafficked for work in construction and farming and as servants.

Overwhelmingly, though, what drives children into work is not greed but privation. Young people here largely work to feed themselves or their parents, or both.

Alone — a family name, like many in this part of the world, drawn from the English language — and his grandmother rise at about 6:30 a.m.

After washing, they make the half-hour walk to the quarry where they work, under a plastic tarp mounted on scavenged tree branches.

Alone describes his day in the most basic English: "I break the rocks. I get up early in the morning, before the sun rises. For breakfast, I drink tea sometimes. This morning, I didn't eat. I'm hungry."

After two hours, he walks to Tatwasha Basic School, a state-run institution near his home, for about four hours of classes.

Tatwasha, a grid of cinder-block buildings set on a yellow dirt courtyard, has 3,000 students. About 300 work in the quarries.

Maureen Chinjenge, the school's stern headmistress, has a word for the quarry children: disoriented.

"Most of these children are orphans," she said, "and in most cases, their performance is not good. For the most part, they don't eat breakfast, and coming to classes they don't concentrate. Things like clothing, they don't have any, and the other children make fun of them."

Their attendance, she says, is spotty. Many are latecomers; some first-graders are as old as 11.

Alone, a second-grader at age 9, fits that template well. Asked his teacher's name, he fidgets for fully a minute, then answers ruefully, "I don't remember."

After school, he returns to the quarry where, sitting cross-legged on the ground, he attacks his pile of rocks for five more hours, until sunset.

A scab marked his left cheek, damage from a sliver of quartz-like rock that flew into his face after an especially hard strike.

Other stone-crushers complain of broken fingers, impaired vision or a "heavy chest," an early sign of silicosis, but Alone says he has suffered no serious injuries beyond some smashed fingers and cut eyes.

"It's a hard job; I hurt myself sometimes," he said, but "I measure my size. I don't break huge amounts. I do it according to my age."

Beyond the physical cruelty and lost youth, sub-Saharan Africa's child laborers are social and economic millstones on a region that can ill afford them.

They are poorly educated, badly fed, inadequately supervised by adults and far more likely to become illiterates whose children, like them, will toil in fields, tend roadside stands or crush rocks.

Already, a number of studies have documented increases in street children in sub-Saharan cities, many of them AIDS orphans forced into sidewalk vending, theft or selling sex to survive.

In Lusaka, a city of 1.2 million, "I don't think it would come to more than 50,000, but the number is definitely growing," said Yvonne Chilufya, a project manager for Jesus Cares Ministries, a Zambian organization that assists street children and other child laborers.

"We see a lot of child-headed households as a result of H.I.V.," she added. "In other cases, you find the parents are both alive, but doing nothing, chronically ill. So the children are taking care of the parents. The parents send the children out to find food."

The last time Zambia's government counted, in 1999, it found nearly 600,000 child laborers between ages 5 and 17, roughly 9 in 10 of them on farms, the rest in the cities, working as vendors, domestics or laborers.

Almost all were unpaid. On paper, at least, most were illegal: Zambian law forbids labor by children under 13, and allows those between 13 and 15 to engage only in light work.

Zambia also has signed the two international conventions that set minimum ages for work and outlaw the most harmful forms of child labor.

In recent years, its news media have begun to expose dangerous working conditions for children, and its government has started to move against the most outlandish forms of labor.

But as elsewhere in Africa, Zambia's stifling bureaucracy, its poverty, the AIDS epidemic and the sheer size of the task all work against success.

Ms. Poulsen, of the International Labor Organization, says the government's efforts to weed out child labor would be reasonably good "if you have inspectors, cars and fuel." Zambia has precious little of each.

"We've got lots and lots of good policies in this country," she said. "But there's no coordination. It's difficult to staff basic social services — schools, clinics — because people keep dying" of AIDS.

Choosing a Way to Die

Chola J. Chabala, the Zambian assistant labor commissioner and the official charged with reducing child labor, says the number of children who work is growing despite his government's efforts, especially in rural areas where oversight is weak.

"I do this job with a passion, but it is very depressing at the end of the day," he said. "I've heard children who work as prostitutes say they would rather die from AIDS, because it is slower than dying of hunger."

Crushing stone is ranked in international agreements as one of the worst forms of child labor, full of risks from flying rock fragments, misdirected hammers, repetitive motion injuries and years of inhaling dust.

Like prostitution, it is a job undertaken for survival, not profit.

Mrs. Chilufya, of Jesus Cares Ministries, says that in the last four years her group has taken close to 1,000 children from the quarries, placing them in the organization's own schools and giving small loans to parents and caretakers to open more sustainable businesses, like roadside groceries.

But Lusaka has three major quarries, and although hundreds of children have been rescued and sent to schools, hundreds more have taken their place.

The quarries are sprawling outcrops of limestone or quartz-like rock that are hand-mined by hundreds of itinerants armed with hammers, shovels and sledges.

In places, they have dug as much as 20 feet below the surface, leaving lattices of surface paths between pits of algae-clogged rainwater, washbasins for the workers' laundry.

The quarries have their own economy. Men split boulders into smaller chunks, then sell them by the barrow to women whose families reduce them to gravel and powder.

Homeless and unsupervised children, roaming the streets, hire themselves out at about 30 cents a day to help with the crushing.

The output goes on display beside highways — waist-high piles of gravel; old cement bags packed with crushed stone or powder. Construction crews buy the rocks and powder, then sell the cement bags back to the rock breakers.

It is a tiring, endlessly tedious task. Its practitioners work six and seven days a week, and they make almost nothing.

Fifty-year-old Ms. Mulelema and her grandson Alone live in Lusaka's Chawama neighborhood, a slum of one- and two-room block houses linked by dirt paths, in a single room, perhaps 8 by 12 feet.

A sheet draped over a rope separates a grimy foam sofa and two wooden chairs from a rudimentary kitchen.

There is no electricity.

Pencils of sunshine streaming through holes in the corrugated asbestos roof supply the only light.

Nor is there a toilet; the stench of human waste wafts upward from bushes outside.

Water is hauled in from a community tap.

Mrs. Mulelema sleeps on the sofa. Alone sleeps on the concrete floor. Stenciled in black on the wall is a diamond, one word at each angle, comprising a homily: "God Bless Us All."

Alone has been living with his grandmother since his mother died in 2001. His father is a mystery.

"I saw him once, but it was long ago," his grandmother said. "It's just Alone, and I am taking care of him."

Alone is a handsome boy, with large brown eyes and close-cropped hair, but clearly malnourished.

He is short enough — a bit under four feet — to be mistaken for a 6- or 7-year-old.

He has two pairs of pants, his skateboard sweatshirt and a pair of black leather shoes, which he reserves for school, the soles so worn that his toes hang out the front.

Hungry, but Paying the Rent

The two or three bags of rock powder that Alone can produce, at 10,000 kwacha per bag, are sold as a mixer for concrete, often to line swimming pools for Lusaka's wealthier residents.

They are the most lucrative products his grandmother offers, almost enough to pay the $11 a month she needs for rent and access to the community water tap.

Sales of the gravel she produces earn barely enough money to buy corn meal and small, dried fish, called kapenta, that the two eat for dinner.

For Mrs. Mulelema, Alone is literally the difference between profit and loss, and a hair's-breadth difference at that.

"We don't eat breakfast every day," she said. "At lunch we have sweet potatoes, and then we wait for supper.

"If I decide to have my breakfast, it means I won't have anything for supper."

Mrs. Mulelema once tried to open a food stand in the community market, but could not raise the cash.

Like virtually all the hundreds of Lusakans who crush stones, she says she does it because she has no choice.

"The business has no profit," said Mwila Zulu, a 40-year-old mother of three girls. She has been crushing stone at a quarry in Lusaka's industrial zone since the police shut down her unlicensed vegetable stand in the city's downtown in 2002.

Mrs. Zulu's husband died last year with symptoms that pointed to AIDS. Her daughters work at the quarry after school ends at noon, trying to fill the space he left. The youngest, Kunda and Mercy, break rocks with ball-peen hammers, the handles cut down to fit their hands.

By day's end, their deep brown arms and faces wear a film of white quartz-like dust.

They are 7 and 8 years old.

"She started working with me in recent years," Mrs. Zulu said of Kunda. "She couldn't do anything when she was young, but now she's grown, so she's helping me."

For 50,000 kwacha, or $15, a passing construction worker can buy a chest-high heap of gravel that took them three weeks to render.

But sales of that size are infrequent, sometimes once every two or three weeks, and money is short.

Mrs. Zulu said she did not waste time fretting over her daughters' fate.

"If I feel pity for them," she said, "what are they going to eat?"

Gavin du Venagecontributed reporting from Sedgefield, South Africa, for this article.

Adjusting...

I'm sitting in an internet cafe in a Western strip mall (ahhh....) with Christian music playing in the background... relieving my internet withdrawal. (I was SO disappointed to discover that the wireless networks are actually not yet set up to transfer internet data... basically NO BlackBerry here... sooo disappointed... but supposedly Celtel, a wireless provider, is going to introduce this in the next few weeks/months... )

It's been a bit overwhelming trying to adjust. Of course, it's not as bad as it could have been, because of 2 important factors: the first is that a college friend of mine is transitioning the research project to me before she goes back to the states, and so has been the one giving me all the inside information I'll need to get around and to do my work; the second is that I'm living with a very kind, warm, and welcoming Indian Christian host family in Lusaka.

What is Lusaka like? It's a spread out city-- no skyscrapers or even really tall buildings. well, I haven't seen any at least. The weather is very mild despite it being the middle of "winter" right now; relative warm days with cool nights. I really like how there's very little humidity since Zambia is landlocked and the rainy season hasn't started yet. I haven't been able to "explore"  because I've been with my friend and host family the entire time. One thing I notice immediately is that things are just SLOWER here... business days include 1-2 hour lunch breaks, people don't get things done very quickly, there's quite a bit of bureaucracy.. and just no general sense of urgency. Some stand-out things I noticed: people drive on the LEFT side of the road.... and most people drive reliable Japanese cars.

My living situation is stable, comfortable, and simple. My host family (the Kurians) are a wonderful Indian Christian couple whose children have grown up and moved away. We live in a simple, yet relatively spacious cement/cinderblock house with chickens and a garden in the backyard. There isn't a shower, but a bathtub with large pails... so bathing consists of filling up the pail with water and washing that way. (My parents joked that it was just like Taiwan...) We have good, filling Indian food at each meal (Ms. Kurian packs a lunch for us each day.) They hired two local Zambians to help with the cooking, cleaning, and maintenance of the household, which is a big help. And the Kurians are very faithful people... their bookshelves are filled with Christian books, they attend an Anglican church.. Mrs. Kurian teaches Sunday School and listens to Christian radio stations (and BBC woo hoo).. and they seem to be very dependent on God. The Kurians are also very easy to talk to, and veyr helpful-- my luggage was delayed 1 day (I was freaking out inside...) and Mr. Kurian helped me wade through the airport bureaucracy to get it back. I really appreciate how I feel like I'm going "home" each day.

And the work.... to carry out the experiments, we're mainly working with a social marketing NGO (part of a larger NGO called Population Services International) a  local public health clinic. It's tough trying to remember all the Zambians I've met. So a "typical" day (in the 2 days I've been "working" i.e. following around my friend like a lost puppy dog) has been to first go to the SFH research office to pick up a woman who coordinates the surveyors based at the health clinic... then go to the clinic... then check up on the progress of the surveyors... and then go about strategizing/thinking about how to carry out the pilot and main "experiment" in the future.

The challenges are already apparent-- some workers are quite unproductive, there's definitely a bureaucracy, and the design of the experiment might change depending on logistical/personnel issues.

Oh... need to go now because our taxi is here.

Will write more later.

cell phone

my Zambian cell phone number is:

260-99-773-813

if you don't mind the long distance chrages (15-25 cents a minute dependingo n the provider) feel free to call.
my blackberry isn't working yet.

On the plane...

Some thoughts:

- I think I'm the only Asian person on this plane.
- Did you know that there are muslim, jewish, protestant, and catholic chapels in terminal 4 of jfk airport?
- as a rough rule of thumb, prices in zambia are either 3 times normal or 1/3 the price, depending on if it's imported.

Sent via BlackBerry from Cingular Wireless

The night before...

... I'm excited, of course. But a bit nervous. I hope I don't get pickpocketed, robbed,... and that I don't lose anything. And that the host family will be nice and welcoming. And that I don't catch malaria.

And I hope I can deal with the 22-ish hour flights.

So, where is Zambia?













There it is...looks like two countries but the map is screwed up. I'll be staying in Lusaka.... see below.





















Tourist highlights of Zambia include: Victoria Falls (shares with Zimbabwe), Zambezi River, a chimpanzee sanctuary, and South Luangwa National Park, supposedly one of the greatest game preserves in the world (think hippos, giraffes, zebras, buffalo, lions, crocodiles... )

You can find a list of all the national parks here:
http://www.zambiatourism.com/travel/nationalparks/natparks.htm

I've urged a couple people to consider visiting Zambia for Christmas. ;)

I looked through some of the tour packages and they seem to be pretty expensive.
http://www.go2africa.com/zambia/tours/tour-safari.asp?holiday=Zambia-Family-Safari&ToursID=460

Details...

For those of you still wondering, here's a short FAQ...

When do I leave? Sunday, Aug. 20th, a 5:55 pm flight from JFK to Johannesburg and from Johannesburg to Lusaka, Zambia via South African Airways. I'll arrive at Lusaka Airport 8:10 pm Lusaka time on Monday Aug. 21st.

What am I doing? "Research" for a couple of economics professors in Lusaka, Zambia. Involves implementing experiments in contraceptive education and collecting data on fertility outcomes. If you want more details, email me.

Is it safe? Actually, yes. Lusaka, Zambia is supposedly pretty safe according to a friend living there now, despite a relatively corrupt, ineffectual government, a large amount of international debt, a large HIV/AIDS population (~20%), and 50% unemployment.

How long am I staying? At least 4-5 months.

What's the time difference? Lusaka is 6 hours ahead.

What's the best way to stay in contact? Even though I will be getting a local Zambian cell phone, email is definitely the best mode of communication; my BlackBerry works in Lusaka, according to Cingular. (yay international data plan....). Another cool perk is that a friend showed me how to get wireless internet access on my laptop via my Blackberry. So I should technically have wireless internet in Lusaka too... (thought it'll be really slow.) Please note that my cell phone will be suspended after this Monday.

Am I all packed? 95% as of now. Still need to get an extended life laptop battery... supposedly a must in developing countries.

What am I going to do after the Zambia job? Good question. Not quite sure, but I used the acronyms "MBA" and "PhD" in my discussions with my parents.

How are you feeling? Excited, of course. A little scared. Challenges will be... adjusting to a new time zone, a completely new cultural environment... trying not to catch malaria, trying not to get sick from the unclean water... fending off homesickness....

Ok that's all I can think of. Please comment so I know who's reading!

My African Shopping List....

Some of the stuff I've bought in the past week or so to "stay safe" in Africa (for my parents' peace of mind more than anything else):

- Cheap office clothes that you wouldn't mind getting ruined from rough handwashing ($100)
- 6 months' supply of doxycycline hyclate, the anti-malarial medication. ($30)
- Two types of antibiotics to treat traveler's diarrhea ($15)
- Insect repellent... one for clothes and one for skin ($18)
- Eyedrops in case I get an infection ($5)
- mosquito bed netting and mosquito head netting... don't want to get dengue fever, malaria, or any other mosquito-carried diseases ($55)
- Lots of immunizations: yellow fever, typhoid, polio, hepatitis A, tetanus, meningitis. (~$500... half of that was to the special "travel doctor" fee.. I'm going to see if my EmpireBlue health insurance will cover it... )
- Tilley Hat from Paragon Sporting Goods, supposedly the best hat out there. It's insured against loss [woo hoo!...] and is "indestructible"... they promise to replace the hat if it wears out. (many travel guides warn that the African sun will be brutal... especially when I'm taking doxycycline hyclate, the anti-malarial medication prescribed to me)
- an "inside" fannie pack that you wear under your pants... reinforced with wire to prevent pickpockets from cutting it off. though, the way I see it, if there' s someone trying to cut off a fannie pack from under your pants, you're probably got a lot more to worry about than someone getting at your passport... ($16)
- Patagonia rain jacket for the "monsoon" (or rather, really rainy) season ($100)
- San Disk USB Flash Drive, 1 GB ($40)
- A 100 GB external hard drive ($140)

testing...