Andrew's Going Away Party

Andrew’s another intern here and without doubt one of my closest friends this summer. He’s headed to Yale’s business school next year and has been working for a small microfinance organization called Foundation for Women in Liberia. They organized a going away dinner for him last night and invited a few of Andrew’s friends. I was expecting a small dinner at a colleague’s house. Little did I know what I was in for. I thought I loved Andrew but they must really love him, because they sent him off last night with some serious fanfare.

I arrived before Andrew, and was immediately taken by the group of drummers and dancers in traditional costumes. Then I realized I had a program for the evening’s festivities sitting in my hand. I was led to two rooms full of probably ten tables set up for the event, with pictures of Andrew at work over the summer posted on the walls.

Suddenly everyone rushed to the gate for Andrew’s arrival, which was met with beating drums, dancing women, and rice throwing children. The evening started out with a serious treat: about a 45-minute performance of traditional dances from all over the country.

We then had a big Liberian feast: cassava leaf, jolof rice, chicken, ribs, and my favorite, baked plantains. Following dinner was about an hour of speeches in Andrew’s honor, from the women who benefit from the Foundation’s loans to the CEO to the board member who had hosted Andrew at her house this summer.

Then came the presentation of the gifts. Or more aptly the showering of gifts. Shirts, carvings, necklaces, wall hangings, photographs, paintings, traditional clothing… It was overwhelming.

I was amazed. Andrew came for two months, and this is the love and generosity these Liberian women displayed for him.

Independence Day in Gbranga

Every year Liberia chooses a different county to hold its official Independence Day celebrations. This year’s it was in Bong County, at the capitol Gbranga (pronounced “Banga”). I wasn’t sure we’d make it, since it seemed like it would involve quite a bit of planning and I couldn’t imagine it would be easy to find lodging.

But then a few days before, Ousman arrived in the office and informed us that we’d in fact be going, just for the day on Monday. Then he handed us invitations from the President, and a laminated badge with our names on it. We weren’t just going; we were official.

We left at 6:30am for the three plus hour drive. We had a good car (read: good shocks) so despite the less than perfect road we arrived in just two hours, emergency lights blazing the entire way (this is what government vehicles do). We were early, but there was already a lot of activity. There were groups of people everywhere, some in dresses they had specially made for the day, complete with Independence Day fabric that had President Sirleaf’s face on them. There were groups of dancers and drummers in traditional dress playing and performing to pass the time.

Through considerable chaos despite strictly defined protocols, we made our way into the hall where the official program would take place. The white plastic seats were arranged so close together that you had to move them to get in and strategically time your standing and sitting with the people in front and behind you. It was about 10:30am. I looked at the official program and realized it was a full four hours long. I hadn’t eaten yet. This would be a long four hours.

The combination of the poor quality of the audio equipment, general difficulty of understanding Liberian English, and constant murmurs from the crowd meant I was unable to follow almost the entire program. There were plenty of things I wish I could have understood, first and foremost, the National Orator’s speech. He was a tribal chief with nine wives and 45 children with some pretty outrageous things to say. I only caught his thanks to the President for making things so much better for him, specifically the fact that he now had a vehicle. He went on to claim that the tribal chiefs should handle land reform and collectively elect the President. I watched President Sirleaf laugh at the suggestion.

Then around 2:30, President Sirleaf took the stage. She was radiant in a bright red dress and headdress with a blue sash. Suddenly there was silence, the audio seemed to instantly improve, and I, along with the rest of the room, sat rapt as she delivered her speech. I heard every word loud and clear.

What made her speech important was that it was the first time she had publically addressed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s controversial report. After enumerating the many accomplishments of the first three years of her administration, she began to speak to it. Without saying much because she couldn’t, she made one message clear: she trusts the Liberian people will judge the report’s conclusions fairly, and reminded everyone listening (which was pretty much the entire country) that Liberians made their judgment about her when they elected her president in 2005.

That one brought the crowd to its feet. What amazed me though was watching the electricity rip through the room when she took the stage; listening to the women next to me murmur, “mmm hmmm,” “that’s right,” “amen sister,” throughout Sirleaf’s speech; feeling the connection this President has with the leaders of her country. It was inspiring.

Whatever hope I walked out of the auditorium with was instantly tempered by the small crowd I passed by on the side of the road. They held placards pleading with the President to improve health, education, and women’s rights.

And that’s Liberia for you. Just when you start to get excited about the progress that’s being made, the reality of this country’s challenges slap you in the face.

Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

While I was here this summer, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its report. The signs below explain what the TRC is about, and serve as a nice reminder how f*ed up this country is.





The report is highly controversial, and the talk of the town. I'm going to be really lazy and just link to my friend Myles' excellent article on this one (he's a journalist working here in Monrovia).

Lessons in Aid Inefficiency: Tech in Liberia

Part of what drew me to Liberia was my interest in understanding best practices in international aid.   It's no secret that aid is often inefficient at best and ultimately counterproductive at worst.  Unlike others, I do not believe that this unfortunate fact is a justification to throw the baby out with the bath water.  I believe that there is a role for assistance, and if my path takes me in that direction, I want to know how to do it well.  I knew some of the mistakes that these organizations make are not obvious, and I wanted to be sure that I'd have the view from the other side to guide my career in development.

The project I've been focusing around philanthropic support for leapfrogging Internet technology has provided a fascinating window into these dynamics.  Step one for me was to find out what everyone else was doing in this arena. What did I find?  UNDP is funding standalone Internet infrastructure (VSATs) for all country offices of a single ministry.  The University of Indiana is looking into building a fiber-based Local Area Network for the University of Liberia. The government owned operator wants to build a fiber ring in Monrovia.  UNDP set up its own connection to Cote d'Ivoire's undersea cable connection.  USAID is investigating a project for backbone and last mile infrastructure - and to their great credit is working closely with the government across the sector and pushing for coordination.  Multiple other entities have applied for permission to build landing stations.  The potential for inefficiency, not just on the part of the aid community, is glaring.  I wasn't about to add another philanthropist led initiative to that list.

These discussions quickly led me to the conclusion that what's needed first and foremost is an industrial policy to coordinate all of this activity.  What concerns me about many of these efforts is that many relate to shared infrastructure, natural monopolies, and I saw an opportunity to guide these investments in a way so as to be ideal for the sector.  I believe the Government of Liberia has an exciting opportunity to shape the creation of Liberia's Internet infrastructure in a way that is not just efficient but also best for competition and ultimately Liberian's development.  The time is now.  Three submarine cables are coming along the coast of West Africa that can be connected to, myriad entities are looking to make investments, donors are looking for opportunities, it’s on philanthropist’s radar.  All of these pieces moving forward without government coordination risks investment inefficiencies and reactive regulation.  

It wasn't the sexy answer, but I feel strongly that it's the right one: to hold on infrastructure support until the government answers these complex questions.  I've instead pushed to redirected philanthropic interest in technology towards mobile applications for public service delivery and building the capacity within Liberia to build, support, and maintain the technology.  Ultimately I firmly believe that solutions should come from within, and I’d like to see our foundations partners focus on building the capacity to do so.

I presented these recommendations to the ICT Focus Group, a team composed of representatives from ministers responsible for telecommunications and ICT policy in Liberia, the regulators, and the national operator.  They were well received, but what was most telling was the reaction to my sentiments about the infrastructure component.  The frustration with donors was significant, and though they were preaching to the choir, they wanted to make one message clear and they wanted it relayed: make sure than donors understand that when they set up small piecemeal projects it's not efficient and often isn't sustainable.  (I recognize there's a much longer discussion to be had here about donor objectives, etc. and I have a feeling this is particularly pertinent to infrastructure).

On my end, I was happy to get the policy need on the table and hear support for it among these key constituents.  It's unfortunately not my mandate to help answer those questions, but I'm going to keep banging on the table about the opportunity and need for it.  I worry that if the government doesn’t prioritize and address these issues, and the investments will be made sub-optimally.  Let's face it, Liberia has a long way to go and a lot of other pressing and urgent needs.  I worry I'm being idealistic.

Which brings me to my next question.  What is the best way to react if the first-best solution, plugging into a coordinated approach driven by the government isn't realistic?  What's the second-best approach?

You Don Make Me Fall In Love

If I had a dollar for every time I've heard this song this summer.... 

Fatty and Flaco update

I know you've been waiting with bated breath for this one.

First off, here's a pic of these little pups whose cuteness trumped the inconvenience they've caused.

I'm happy to report that Fatty has returned home (since last weekend) and Flaco is on the mend. He no longer has the luxury of his own room, Javi hit the end of his tolerance last night and asked Jess to keep the dog outside. But he's eating, he's gained a ton of weight, and he seems to be slowly overcoming his long list of ailments, including the worms, puppy pimples, and a swollen leg likely from getting trampled by a mother who was too young. He's rapidly becoming an annoying puppy, running around and biting us. But his means he's getting healthy.

He'll probably go home in the next few days. I just might miss him.

A Long Overdue Liberian History Lesson

That flag looks familiar, doesn't it? I'm long overdue to post on the links between Liberia and the United States.  Liberia is the only country in West Africa that was never colonized by European powers.  Instead was the American Colonization Society who, in 1817 established a new colony on the area once known as the Pepper Coast to send newly freed slaves back to the motherland.  It was a highly controversial move, to say the least.  It had been generations since the would-be settlers ancestors were shipped across the Atlantic.  America was their home, not Africa.  Nevertheless, former American slaves arrived in 1822 and were forced to declare independence in 1846 as the American Colonization Society headed towards bankruptcy.

They soon became known as Americo-Liberians and made up about 3% of the population, the rest a mix of indigenous tribes.  They established a government modeled after the United states, with a founding constitution that was written to meet the needs of their settler population.  As a consequence significant portions of society were systematically excluded and marginalized from institutions of political governance and access to key economic assets.  This marginalization was later perpetuated by urban-based policies of successive administrations, with political power concentrated in Monrovia and primarily at the level of the Presidency.

The stark inequalities that resulted from these policies created resentment towards the Americo-Liberians, which contributed to Samuel Doe’s bloody military coup in 1980.  Initially Doe’s ascent to power was met with support, but it soon became apparent that the policies of inequality would only magnify under Doe’s regime.  A decade of mismanagement and dictatorship ensured.  An economic downturn in the late 80s precipitated the breakout of civil war in 1989, marking the beginning of Liberia's 14-year descent into chaos, violence, and destruction.  You know where the story leads from there.

I write this from the bar of a hotel built by Bob Johnson, founder of BET.  He feels strongly that African Americans should feel allegiance towards Liberia, and went to far as to make my jaw drop with a comment that "Liberia is to African Americans what Israel is to Jewish Americans."

It's a complex and twisted history, and one that I'm reminded of every time I mistakenly think I'm seeing the flag of my own country around town.

Helena

I was the last member of the intern house to arrive to Liberia.  By then, the arrangements for our laundry, cooking, and cleaning had already been made.   Sepah, who lives a couple doors down, would do our laundry for $10 per person per month.  Helena, who lives clear across town, would do our cooking three nights a week for $15 per person per month (not including the food itself) and another $35 per person per month for cleaning the house twice a week.

I opted out of the food (have I not yet posted on my inability to stomach Liberian food?) but wasn’t thrilled about the high relative to price of the cleaning.  $15 to cook but $35 to clean?  $35 x 7 = $245 per month to clean twice a week.  It felt like way too much. Momar’s mom in Senegal pays $60-$80 per month for a girl to live there and cook and clean every day.  It seemed like we must have been overpaying Helena by a factor of at least three.

Generally speaking I just let these things slide, because at the end of the day another $10 to me is nothing compared to what it is to the receiver.  But Helena wasn’t even doing a good job cleaning (you can’t walk across the house without needing to clean your feet before getting into bed).  It was never clear that she even came.

Meanwhile, Sepah arrived dutifully at our door every day, and spent hours washing our clothes by hand in the windows of sunshine or at least dryness between the downpours.  She was without doubt working significantly harder than Helena for significantly less.  Helena’s hourly wage must have been 8x Sepah’s.  It didn’t feel right.

Meanwhile, Helena asked for July’s pay in advance because she was moving into a new house and they needed the entire year’s rent at once (this is actually standard practice here… crazy!).  So one month working for us paid her rent for a year.

Two weeks ago we decided to let Helena go.  The going rate in Liberia is $60 a month, not $250.  We were getting ripped off, which might have been fine if we were happy with her work.  We decided we'd rather pay Sepah $60 to clean the house, who lived right next door and was always thre anyway. We called and called Helena for days to tell her but she never answered her phone.  Finally last week she arrived in the morning before we left and we broke the news.

In tears, Helena asked our guards to reason with us.  Personally I wasn’t very sympathetic.  When I told Achie how much we’d been paying her, he was shocked.  Helena got a sweet deal.  She got paid for two months of work the equivalent of 8 months of pay, and made enough to cover rent for two years. When I explained our reasoning, he agreed our decision was more than fair.

Helena returned to the house again this morning in tears.  Maybe she’d been counting on the extra money and already spent it.  Ultimately we decided to rehire her for $60 per month.

It’s a fine line.  While I’m comfortable paying a small “rich white person” tax, it’s not ok to rip me off egregiously.  I hear so many calls lately from the African development community to treat Africans with the respect and dignity they deserve.  Treat them as partners and not charity cases. 

They are right.  And following that logic, we were right to take a stand against Helena charging us 4x what she should have and not doing her job well.  Doing anything less would have been charity.

My Depressing Visit with the University of Liberia

I frankly think capacity building needs to rise higher on the agenda of the development community as a whole.  The old proverb says it all “Give a man a fish he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish he’ll eat forever.”  All too often we’re so busy feeding people we don’t teach them how to feed themselves once we’re gone.

So it should come as no surprise that a key component of my recommendations for supporting technology in Liberia is capacity building.  Not as sexy as blanketing the country with wireless broadband, but critical for creating an ecosystem around technology for the applications needed in Liberia to arise from within.

I visited the University of Liberia yesterday and met with Professor Robert Damalo, Director of Computer Information Systems to learn more about the existing programs and discuss what foundations could do.  That visit more of less ruined my day.

I’ve visited a few computer science programs in emerging markets, which are obviously not the same as developing countries, especially one like Liberia.   But somehow I expected to find more than nothing there.  There was nothing there.

I take that back.  There are about 30 computers that the student body of 20,000 uses.  They aren’t connected to the Internet, they’re almost exclusively used for Microsoft Office applications for homework assignments.  But really, if you had to share one computer with 667 others, would you ever bother trying to use it?

There is also a VSAT, a video conferencing unit, and a handful of thin client computers.  It’s all collecting dust.  An ICT department was opened in 2007 with the support of Socketworks and the goal of introducing IT and providing Internet access to the university (hence the VSAT).  The intention was so have the IFC pick up the bill for the Internet connection (a hefty $5000 per month thanks to satellite’s egregious rates).  The IFC came in, saw the Internet Cafes in town filled with students and interpreted it not as evidence of the demand for Internet, but rather the ability to pay for it.  No free Internet was needed at the school, they concluded, and refused to pay.  Not surprisingly the university can’t foot that bill.  Now Socketworks is trying to unload the assets to the University for $200,000. 

To my surprise and glee, one of the very forward looking and tech savvy ministers had long ago set up Google Apps accounts for the school.  He showed me the usage stats last week when we met: about 20 accounts, most of them never used.  No wonder, there’s no account creation process and no Internet access.  Now I get it.

They’d tried to get the faculty to start using the local network to get class information and materials online.  The problem is, the faculty has no idea how to use even the most basic technology to facilitate their teaching.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  I wasn’t there to understand if the University as a whole had access to technology and the Internet.  I wanted to understand the computer-related programs and courses available.  I wanted to understand how far Liberia is from graduating students capable of building technology for their country.

About as far as it possibly could be is the answer, sadly.  There’s one intro to computer programming class, and it’s available only to math majors.  Business students learn some IT via Microsoft Office programs.  That’s it.  That’s all there is.

Professor Damalo has largely given up on establishing proper technology degree programs.  Instead he’s been pushing for a simple 3-month certificate program.  Since 2004.

I asked Professor Damalo what he thought foundations could do to help.  Train people to fix computers, he said.  Train our staff to use computers.  Train IT teachers.  He hadn’t even mentioned a computer science program, so I pressed him on it.

“Let’s just start with a certificate program,” he said.

He then got a call and I followed him to another office.  He’d been called in to fix a computer that had a virus.  This is what Professor Damalo does with most his time.

Did I mention that as I walked through campus past inexplicable piles of chairs and desks, classes were held under a pavilion outside because there weren’t enough functioning classrooms?

It’s clear that Liberia is not investing enough in higher education.  I think it’s a mistake.  I’ve met enough smart, ambitious, and enthusiastic young people to know that the ability to take advantage of it is there.   Who, if not them, will lift Liberia?  It’s such a cliché thing to say but here you really mean it when you say to a smart educated young person: “You are the future of this country.”

I returned to my desk thinking I should keep three words permanently above my computer screen: “don’t give up.”

A City in (Partial) Ruins

I've neglected to post about the quotidian things, but as the end of my time in Monrovia appears on the horizon, I realize I've been remiss.

Monrovia is a city partially in ruins, and not the ruins you're thinking of. There aren't piles of rubble from once bombed out buildings (the fighting in the war here was with guns, not bombs anyway). I remember one day driving around looking for bullet holes in the walls, but I was never sure if the ones I thought I identified were real or imagined. No matter.

It's not rubble, but rather that Monrovia is filled with long abandoned buildings - you rarely pass by a block without seeing one. And they are ruins in the ancient sense of ruins, some buildings fully overcome by vegetation, others just beginning to sprout green from the rooftops. Some of them are grandiose shells of government buildings to be that were abandoned before they were completed. Others nothing more than four cement brick walls.

They are everywhere. I'll get out with my camera before I leave and capture some of them.

Pure Comedy

On the way to lunch today we picked up Ben Spatz, a Scott Fellow with the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Shortly after he got into the car, the phone rang. The half of the ensuing conversation we heard had me on the floor laughing:

“This is Ben Spatz.

UNDP Geneva, how are you?

Yes of course I remember your name from the emails. How can I help you?

The telephone numbers I sent you are the correct ones. Yes, they are mobile phones. All of the phone numbers I gave you are mobile phones, including this one. Liberia has no landline telephones.

Yes, I gave you the mobile phone numbers of the Ministers and Country officials. That is the only way you can reach them. Sometimes people’s phones are off, when they are in meetings, or if they are in the countries reception is very spotty.

No you cannot send them emails. There is no Internet service in rural Liberia.

No, you cannot send them mail. There is no postal service in rural Liberia either.

Yes, you can send something to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Would you like the address?

Sure, it’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, Monrovia Liberia.

Great, thanks. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.”

Am I There Yet?

I think Liberia’s starting to depress me. I’ve embarked on a serious effort over my remaining four weeks to do the things that make me happy: yoga, sleep, read, eat healthy. Slipping on all of those fronts has definitely contributed to my general gloom. But I think what’s really precipitating it are the incessant grey skies. It rains every day here. This girl needs some sunshine.

At the same time though I’m settling in here more and more every week, particularly on the social side. Outside of my fellow interns and housemates, there are a handful of people who live here who I naturally gravitate towards:

• Robtel is a native Liberian who grew up in the US and Europe and came back two years ago as a Scott Fellow. She’s into yoga and so we practice together at her house after work on Mondays and Wednesdays. Her aunt makes amazing clothes and she’s going to make some dresses form with African fabric. Get ready for bright colors!

• Andrew: Andrew’s another intern, but based on our text volumes alone, it’s hard to argue he’s not one of my closest friends here. I know him through a classmate from Harvard; they worked together in India. He’s super into surfing (and actually brought three boards with him!) and he’s responsible for connecting me to the surfing crew here.

• Ellie and Nate: I love these two. They recently moved here from New York and are setting up an NGO here. They spend every weekend up in Robertsport surfing. Ellie also teaches yoga, so we instantly bonded. I can’t wait to head back to Robertsport this weekend with them!

• Heidi and Nicholai: Nicholai’s the guy behind the surfing documentary Sliding Liberia that I’m overdue to post about. He’s getting a PhD from Stanford in political science, and he’s here working on his dissertation on how rebel groups form. His girlfriend Heidi is working here for the Clinton Foundation and we get along great. She used to live two blocks away from Max and me in San Francisco! Hopefully she’ll come with us to Burning Man next year.

I’ll definitely miss the times with them, but being here does make me realize how happy San Francisco, makes me. It just fits.

The Scott Fellows Program

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while. There is a very exciting program here called the Scott Fellowship that funds recent graduates to work as advisors and assistances to the ministers in the Liberian government. It serves to both enable the ministers to scale and build capacity below them (though the critique of the program is it doesn’t do enough of the latter, which is critical for the long term impact of the program).

It’s a remarkable opportunity to work at a high level in government in a country where you really feel like you can make a difference, whose history calls you to want to make a difference. But you’re all well familiar with that story by now. Suffice to say purely from a development career standpoint, I can’t think of many more compelling opportunities for a recent graduate of a development master’s program. And yes it’s true, when I think about what I would want do after graduation independent of all of the other facets of my life that would persuade me otherwise, the Scott Fellowship would definitely be on the short list.

Liberian English

The fact that Liberians speak English doesn't mean I can understand them all the time.

My parents are always complaining that I don't enunciate and that I run my words together. They'd have a *really* hard time here in Liberia, because here you *really* don't enunciate and you *really* run your words together. You basically drop the last syllable of every word.

A couple examples:

• houdawe-en?: how was the weekend?
• howdade?: how's the day?
• wataco - cold water
• boyae - boiled egg

Try as we might to get the accent right when learning a foreign language, there's seemingly something very wrong about trying to speak your language with a different accent. I listen to the long time expats do it and... it just sounds absurd. Not to mention I feel like a moron and almost denigrating trying to speak the Liberian way. But sometimes I'm trying to communicate and they're not understanding me and I just say f* it, here goes, and more often than not, it works!

So far I'm only really comfortable with howdade and howdawe-en? We'll see how much I pick up in my remaining four weeks here.

It's Intern Season And You Know What That Means

Party at the intern house, of course.

We live in a party house. After living with Max in San Francisco the bar has forever been impossibly raised for a party house, but this one's not bad by Liberian standards. We have a large roof deck, a patio, and an overhang (thanks to the roof deck) to shield us from the rain -- all of which enabled us to keep the party mostly outside.

But we are interns, and we don't know that many people so we just invited everyone we know and many more we don't. Our house is also pretty far out of town (about a 30 mins drive) so that made it harder to motivate to come out.

We spent Saturday running around spending too much money on alcohol and food. We managed to score a sound system for $40 for the night -- unfortunately people didn't like the playlist I put together for the night, even though it was about 75% hip hop and pop. I should have known.

Nothing too exciting to report, I had a blast. It didn't feel like we ever had critical mass because there is so much space to fill, but probably 60 people showed up, and finished all the alcohol we bought.

Unfortunately my friend Andrew and his silent instigating partner Nicholai decided that I shouldn't be drinking a huge bottle of water (clearly they don't know me that well!!) and started mixing me drinks. Really strong drinks. So by the time the bottle of Absinthe was passed around, I didn't have the sense to say no thank you.

Fortunately, I stopped cursing Andrew at some point on Sunday after dragging myself to the hotel to spend $25 on fruit and salad, desperate for fresh food.

From here on out I've resolved to try harder to be healthy, which is no small goal considering it's hard enough to eat at all. Wish me luck!

Fatty and Flaco (Warning: this posting is a bit disgusting)

My discomfort in this country reached new heights last week. Last Sunday night my roommate Jess walked in with a sad look on her face. She had two little puppies, in plastic bags, under each arm. They couldn’t have been more than a couple weeks old.

She had brought them home from Minister Wande, her boss’ house. They were in bad shape, to say the least. To start, their mother had stopped feeding them milk. They were beyond listless, imminent death clearly gripped them. They were also filthy, and covered with fleas. She planned to keep them overnight, to bathe and feed them before returning them to the minister’s house.

We washed them and tried to get some of the fleas off them, and named them Fatty and Flaco – Fatty being the robust one, Flaco being the really sick and skinny one. It was clear that they would need to stay longer than a night to become healthy enough to survive. Jess and I share a room, so the first night the puppies slept with us. Well you know what comes next. I woke up to dog pee and poop all over the bedroom. Fatty had diarrhea.

The second night I told Jess I just couldn’t handle living in a room full of dog excrement. The problem was that after just a day of food, Fatty became very energetic and constantly wanted to play with his brother. Well poor Flaco was in no mood to be bitten, so he would bark. We had to separate them, both to get some sleep and to allow Flaco to rest. Fatty and his diarrhea would have to sleep in another room. I was far from thrilled, but it was an improvement.

The next night we discovered what was the problem with Flaco. He had worms. Needless to say my concern over living in a room where the dog shat grew considerably at this news. We thought the likelihood of finding the right drugs for him to be about zero. Since he was so young, we were worried even doggie deworming drugs would be fatal. We asked aardvark, got a hold of Vets without Borders, got some medicine for Flaco, and hoped he would survive the night.

He did, but the worms didn’t. I woke up to a new level of disgusting. Puddles of worm filled dog poo, all over the room (thankfully on Jess’ side of the room). The stench was overpowering, and I’d slept in it. No more dogs in the room, this was the end of my tolerance. Four days later Flaco is still weak, we’re not sure he will make it. Fatty’s gone home; he was driving us crazy with his puppy energy levels.

I can fully understand Jess’ initial reaction to do something to help them, especially since she could. But then you have to ask yourself; well you have to ask yourself a lot of things. First and foremost, how much good is a day or a week or even a month of care going to do? They are just going to return to the same environment that brought them to this state. But how many children and people in this country die easily preventable deaths because of a lack of access to medical care and medicine? Aren’t people more important than puppies?

Why do we often have more sympathy for cute furry things instead of our own species?

Just when you thought it couldn't get worse... it does

Our house continues to degrade. It started weeks ago when the crap electrical wiring caused the light in the bathroom to go out (did I mention it was pouring rain at that time?). So now we have our ‘day’ bathroom and our ‘night’ bathroom. I’d left the day bathroom to the boys so it wasn’t a big deal to me.

Well now the shower’s broken in our ‘night’ bathroom. The tube that reaches from the faucet leaks so there’s no water pressure. I was so desperate the other night after coming home reeking of smoke that I got into the tub and cleaned myself under the faucet.

So I’ve been using the ‘day’ shower. The drain is clogged, which enables us to see clearly how brown the water is that we shower in ever day. Excellent.

There are also many leaks, but we’ve given up on getting those fixed. Our generator seems a little skittish.

Oh and I also live in a room that’s often filled with dog piss and shit. That’s the real kicker of the week.

Mr. McChompersons

With the exception of the mosquitoes, I’ve also neglected to write about other creatures sharing our house. There are many.

First and unfortunately foremost, there’s Mr. McChompersons. Jess named him. He’s a mouse, but there are more likely many of them. At first I thought I didn’t mind him so much. And then he came for me.

It started when I left a bag of pita bread out one night. I woke up to a human sized bite taken out of about four pitas. He’d eaten through the plastic to get to them. I was not happy, but still largely indifferent to his existence.

That’s when it got personal. I found a hole in my eye mask one day. The little shit made a hole in my eye mask to get to the flax seeds inside. I put the eye mask on my nightstand so he couldn’t get to it. And then he did. I came home to a ring of half eaten flax seeds around the hole. I don’t even want to know he got up there. He’d declared war. What a dumb mouse, I was one of his few allies in the house.

And now that I’m noticing it, there’s mouse shit everywhere. It’s disgusting. We need to kill him or them.

Especially now that we’ve got Fatty and Flaco with us.

Meet the Housemates

I realize that I haven’t yet posted on my housemates. I feel really fortunate, we are a great bunch and we all get along really well. Because we are seven strangers in one house, we are working on a Real World Monrovia intro. We’d be too boring for a reality show, there’s next to no drama in the house. But we’re going to do a photo shoot and put it together, it’ll be hilarious (to us at least). Here are our initial ideas for each shot that will give you a glimpse of the people I live with.

Jacob: Sitting with his earbuds in his ears, reading a book, not looking at the camera.

Javi: Standing with his camera and a press pass around his neck. Ideally arguing with a Liberian.

Jessica: standing in the house somewhere with a clipboard, making notes of what needs to be fixed.

Maggie: walking through a door with a headlamp on her forehead and a knife in her hand.

Me: in a yoga pose, of course.

Shanda: she moved out. We didn’t come up with an idea for her yet.

Thorrod: standing there all done up in his nice clothes looking at the camera with a cool guy pose.

Work Work Work!

Apologies for the radio silence lately, I’ve been working, a LOT. Three nights last week I came home, went to the hotel, and worked until 10 or 11pm. Time’s flying and there’s a lot of work to do, but it’s coming along quite well.

The website I’m getting up and running hit a rather welcomed snag: the non-profit who offered to build it for us for free is really strained and they couldn’t promise us they’d get it done by September when we need it. I was pretty concerned about the final product considering they were doing it for free and were very busy, so I was relieved to pursue paid options for development. So I’ve been scrambling for two weeks to find someone, figure out the criteria for making a decision, and find a way to get about $10k of work done for $3500. Fortunately we finally moved forward with someone yesterday that I’m really excited about.

I’ve also reached my preliminary conclusions on the leapfrogging technology question and I’m pretty pleased with how that work has come along. I really drew on my knowledge of the technology space from Google, but applied the concepts I learned at Harvard to put the pieces together. Based on the maturity of the market, the current infrastructure, and the activities of others in the space, I concluded that there is a real and pressing need not for aid to build infrastructure, but for policy to coordinate investments and determine what roles the private sector, government, and outside support (i.e. foundations we work with) should play. Once a policy is in place, our foundation partners could support the areas designated for public funding. But without an overall plan, anything we could pursue would almost certainly be inefficient at best and harmful to the market in the long run at worst.

This policy is well out of the scope of the project I’ve been assigned, but it could potentially become my thesis next year. That would require both me deciding it’s what I want to do my thesis on and support in the government for not just the policy but also for me to work on it. I’m navigating some pretty political waters with this one, so the road might end here.

I’m very grateful to have worked on this technology piece. The other projects I’m working at are important and often interesting, but I could have done them well years ago. It doesn’t take years of tech experience and $40k in Harvard’s pocket to get a website up and running, but I do feel uniquely qualified to assess the technology question and I’m very happy to have had the opportunity to apply myself to it.