In US of Aiiii

I moved to San Francisco at the start of last month which seems a logical point to close this blog out.

I enjoyed blogging while I was in Uganda, even if it was only because it got me into the habit of writing. To keep this going, I decided to start another one: sidinusofaiii.blogspot.com.

See you there.

Few great article from the browser

The Browser is an excellent source of interesting article on the net.

Today there were three pearlers:

1. Sin and virtue through the lens of evolutionary biology

2. Love, relationships and expectations

3. On not keeping religion and politics separate.

Each one I thoroughly enjoyed and I hope you do too.

Stealing

Joyce stole $1800 from our house ($1500 of which belonged to Frankie).

Frankie used to live next door and Joyce had been cleaning his house for around 6 month before he moved in with me. She had actually been cleaning that house for much longer than that. She used to clean for Katrina who lived in the house before Frankie and Shira moved in.

A distraught and desperate sounding Joyce called Frankie couple of weeks back asking for some work. Frankie, and to some extent me, felt some sense of guilt for ending her source of income when he moved in with me and we decided to ask her to come clean the house on Fridays in addition to the regular cleaner who comes on Monday.

Last Friday, she came in at 9AM and left by 10AM with $1800 cash.

Costs of stealing:
1. Reputation (R) - loss of employment with other houses
2. Jail term (J) - incarceration, loss of income, inability to care for family
3. Guilt (G) - She is not a criminal. I assume she feels very guilty about stealing from us.

Benefit of stealing:
1. Money (M)
2. ?? (Q)

So, Joyce will steal if: R + G + J < M + Q

Did Joyce make up her mind that she'd steal from us when she called Frankie? How big was the 'M' that she was hoping for. We know that it was definitely smaller than $1800:

m < M < $1800

We should not have kept that much money around.

Secondly, if she had decided to do the same thing at a few different houses, it can be argued that the R and G (and maybe J) do not increase linearly with each house even though M does:

R + G + sum(Jn) = sum(Mn) + Q.

Therefore, if she was willing to steal from multiple houses even a smaller M would have sufficed. Though having one large M meant that the other Ms do not need to be big. Our $1800 lying around might have triggered a stealing spree.

Did she implicitly make these calculations? Even if she did not quantify them correctly, she would have estimated R and J. Did she forget about G?

What about Q? Were there any extenuating circumstances that made the decision easier? Was someone sick? Was she being harassed? Being always in search of a story, I feel there must be one here that is now most probably lost.

Irrationality

Interesting article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/frontal-cortex/2012/06/daniel-kahneman-bias-studies.html

Excerpt:

The problem with this introspective approach is that the driving forces behind biases—the root causes of our irrationality—are largely unconscious, which means they remain invisible to self-analysis and impermeable to intelligence. In fact, introspection can actually compound the error, blinding us to those primal processes responsible for many of our everyday failings. We spin eloquent stories, but these stories miss the point. The more we attempt to know ourselves, the less we actually understand.

Mulago walkabout

I walked into an open room with high ceilings and the smell of cardboard. A long bench had a switched off computer missing a keyboard and a mouse. A bunch of twenty-somethings huddled about the bench threw me a cursory glance and went back to their conversation.

I interrupted a short lady with wide hips and a purposeful gait and asked her for Nancy.

"Oh madam Nancy! You follow me".

Nancy was scribbling some notes on a notepad which she handed over to the lady next to her and gave me a welcoming smile. She was to take me to all the clinics at Mulago so I could meet the pharmacists and clinicians and invite them personally to a CME being held the next week.

Nancy walked fast and avoided the stairs. We waited at the lifts and crammed in there with laundry hampers, hospital beds and supply crates to go up one floor. I have trouble summarising Nancy. She was not cold but neither was she generous with her words. She let me do the talking and added her "goodbyes" and "thankyous" at the end.

We jumped drains and squeezed through spaces between buildings. We waded through the PMTCT clinic packed with mothers and infants. The kids seemed to belong to every mother and to none. They flowed in the space between the seated mothers, from one bench to the other, around corners and into rooms. No one seemed to be tracking their movements or maybe they all did.

The TB centre was a breezy building with streak of greys flowing down it's beige walls and a tin roof that crackled as it expanded in the rising heat. It had benches outside with around twenty people in surgical masks. The lady at the desk wore one and so did all the doctors in the room. Three doctors sat on a long table with foot high piles of files and seemed to be interviewing three different patients. In all the clinics, we were asked to barge through closed door to the examination rooms and each time I'd expect a topless lady to scream at me for invading her privacy. Most patients just looked at me with glassy eyes while the physician shifted his attention to me.

We ended back at the main pharmacy and had a customary chat with Nancy's boss. He gave me the once over looking above his glasses instead of through while chewing on his rice and beans. He was skeptical but I'm not entirely sure about what exactly.

I'm going to miss this place

Sorry about the extended absence. Much of significance has happened in the last few months though I haven't come up with words to do justice to them. The only words that I have come up with make it sound quotidian and stale when it is neither. So let us park that for the time being.

I am moving to San Francisco.

I once made a list of things I'd miss about Ghana and have found myself going back and reading over it many times. Though I was unaware of this when I wrote it, each line in the post serves as an index to an array of memories that no amount of looking at photographs or reading any other blogpost can reference.

I would like to try that again and hope that the awareness of its value does not diminish it in any way.

5AM rooster calls
Goat corner
Shulaz, house of freshness
Colour of the wild
The corner shop run by the gujarati family
The massive pothole on the other side of the speedbump
Driving over the footpath at Kampala parents
1000 cups
balcony at CPHL
Milly's espresso
Darts with Steve
Pool with Frankie
Cooking with Mara
KCC
Sneaking into squash
DJ FRANK
Fruit lady
Roast pork
Poker nights
Diablo III with Frankie
Dogs at 1:30AM
Puerto Rico
500
Settlers
Poker Wednesdays
Sunday brunch at La Fointaine
BBQ lounge
Mayfair
Abandoned house
Ggaba Point Fish
Mubiru
Noorin's sneeze sheet
Muzungu house parties
"very ok please"
"thankyou please"
"are you sure?"

The short history of neoliberalism

The section on "Neoliberalism on the International Scene" is especially interesting:
http://www.newleftproject.org/index.php/site/article_comments/a_short_history_of_neoliberalism_and_how_we_can_fix_it

On child brides in Gujarat

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/04/indian_girls_become_child_brides_instead_of_prostitutes_.html

What it means to be poor

Here is a paper by Duflo and Banerjee of the "Poor Economics" and J-PAL fame: http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/bhagwan.chowdhry/Banerjee-Duflo.pdf

Being rich in poor africa

While dropping Celine and Taryn, who were visiting from Rwanda, off at the bus stop, I was approached by a scruffy looking man with red eyes and slurred speech. He asked me for a 1000 shillings (40 cents). He had a very nice argument for why I should give him the money: "It means nothing to you".

If you look around my car, you will find around 10,000 shillings in loose change and notes lying around. The disregard with which they are strewn around the car is proof that I am not missing them. I have essentially written it off as lost funds. And yet, I will not give the guy a 1000 shillings. Why?

"It will make them dependent on it" - I am all for foreign aid. Do we believe that as a nation, Uganda is capable of resisting dependence but at as individuals Ugandans cannot? That seems absurd and a little hypocritical. Or maybe the parallel I have drawn here is not correct. The assumption is that we don't want a city full of beggars. If 100 dollars are given, there will be 100 dollars worth of begging since there aren't any opportunities that provide a higher return. The more money that is given, the higher the number of beggars. Coming back to the assumption that I quickly glazed over, do we want a city full of starving coat hanger vendors working the traffic lights or comparatively well fed beggars working the bus stations? One is a contributing factor to GDP while the other isn't.

"They will use the money to contribute to social evils" - I am responsible for how my money is spent. This is why I don't donate to Al Qaeda. I am assuming that money will go to "evil" but I it is not always true.

The real reason I didn't fork out the 40 cents is that he smelt terrible but was not threatening enough for me to buy my safety and I felt no personal connection to him. Though if you pressed me, I would use one of the arguments above.

**********

http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2007/09/21/the_welfare_queens_of_ramadan

**********

Questions of Good and Evil

"The view of economists is that each individual seeks to maximize his benefit. The only problem with this is that we cannot precisely define what the optimal benefit is for us. We don't know what we want. That's why we need comparisons, examples and suggestion. Try imagining an object of your desire, a beautiful woman, for example. It doesn't work as an abstract idea, because the imagined image in your head is volatile. You need a photo, a description, a model. Someone has to tell you what you think is so great that you find it irresistible -- society, neighbors and colleagues, but also the advertising and entertainment industry, ads, films and books. All desires that exceed our basic biological needs are determined by culture. We want to live as if we were actors portraying ourselves."


Great interview with Tomas Sedlacek: http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,822981,00.html

Hamartia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia

Yeah. I'm still thinking about the Tyler Clementi story.

The Tyler Clementi story

"Still, the death defined the trial, turning what might have been a peeping Tom case or, as the resident assistant said, “a roommate issue” into something far more grave."

The original article stayed with me for a while. Ian Parker writes beautifully and shows the layered personalities of Dharun and Tyler. Dharun, with the callousness and emotional conscience of a 13 year old, stumbles through mistake after mistake. A few less than exemplary actions, some with the potential to be far more serious (luckily no footage was captured!), end in disaster. But the sum of the actions don't seem to equate to the gravity of consequence. The laws of cause and effect seem off.

The case was concluded last week and Dharun was found guilty on all charges but the verdict was not the most important part of the story. Why do I feel like something was lost here? There is some message about human isolation and emotional seperation here which I can't seem to put my finger on.

I imagine myself in Dharun's shoes, a victim of my own stupidity, sacrificing my empathy for cheap laughs, until one day an event brings significance to every action making me the bigot I so despise. Crippling self loathing. Guilt unbearable. Life ruined.

And on this whole Kony thing

Bloody hell. I'm don't even...

Here's what other, more educated and articulate people have said:

1. SERIOUS: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/03/07/guest_post_joseph_kony_is_not_in_uganda_and_other_complicated_things
2. SERIOUS: http://justiceinconflict.org/2012/03/07/taking-kony-2012-down-a-notch/
3. SERIOUS: http://securingrights.wordpress.com/2012/03/07/lets-talk-about-kony
4. SERIOUS/FUNNY: http://boredinpostconflict.blogspot.com/2012/03/credit-to-real-white-knight.html 
5. FUNNY: http://i.imgur.com/K3mgn.jpg
6. FUNNY: http://imgur.com/pd6B2
7. FUNNY: http://i.imgur.com/gD992.png

Stop posting the youtube video as your facebook status. You look like an idiot.

Top three pieces of work - Part 3

Part 1 can be found here
Part 2 can be found here.

I find it easier to write when my mood is a bit pensive and even, dare I say it, existential. Writing (and not all is for this blog) is an indulgence during those moods. Volumes of writing have spewed (i think the verb is apt) forth during periods "not so cheery". Things have been on the up and up of late giving me little to no time, or enthusiasm, to write.

But I promised three top pieces of work so here we go.

HP donation and data management at EID lab - In Part 1, I discussed the setup of the EID lab. Now that we are doing 7000 tests a month, we have a significant amount of data being collected at the lab. There are multiple things we wish to do with this data:
-  Analytics to inform decisions - As an example, the data can be mined to understand EID testing coverage across the various regions and target ones with poor coverage.
-  SMS printers - Send results back to sites using 'SMS printers'. Effectively, this involves the central lab sending test results via SMS to the remote sites where they are printed on a battery (rechargeable, of course) operated devices. This will reduce the turnaround time by almost 2 days.
-  SMS reminders - Since we are now collecting the phone numbers for all the mothers, we can send an SMS to the mother asking her to return for her baby's results. This will reduce the loss to followup discussed in the Part 1
- Future enhancement - Online results? Online portal for reports and analytics? Centralised patient records?

Additional IT capacity is required to support these at the central lab. HP approached CHAI with a desire to get involved in this space. CHAI identified this gap as one where HP could add the greatest value. HP is donating, and CHAI is managing, the construction of a data centre at the central lab. This is a data centre with the works - raised floor, closed control cooling, cctv and access control, redundant servers and core switches and storage and backup devices.

In addition, we are working with the local university, Makerere, to create internship opportunities for students to assist with the development of some of these solutions.

OH EM JEE

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/radiohead-announces-australian-tour-20120227-1tykd.html

This is huge! Does someone want to fly me back for this?

Take note everyone

http://www.granta.com/Archive/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1

With those handy tips, I think I'm ready to write.

Consuming potential wages in happiness

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/26/magazine/why-are-harvard-graduates-in-the-mailroom.html?_r=2

"Academia, nonprofit groups, book publishers and public-radio production companies also put their new recruits through various forms of low-paid hazing, holding out the promise of, well, more low pay but in a job that provides, for some, something more important than money: satisfaction. In the language of economics, these people are consuming their potential wages in happiness. (Honestly, economists talk this way.)"

That is why I do this job I guess.

Satisfaction is indeed at an all time high despite the poor excuse for a remuneration that is thrown in my direction. It is possible that I am consuming my potential wages in happiness.

Having said that, after being in the country for six months, there are some simple 1st world things that I miss.
- Good toilet paper
- Decent beer
- Good eggs cooked sunny side up
- Oolong tea
- Libraries
- Roast duck on rice
- Riding my bicycle
- Fast food

A poor substitute to all of the above can be found in Kampala and with some difficulty, and some coin, the real deal can be had as well but accessibility is low. Over time, these unimportant things start being important. A short trip back home to satiate these craving and restore focus might be in order.

- And riding a motorbike on pothole free roads

Rwanda for 4 days

Steve, Frankie and I went to Rwanda last weekend. Steve and I took Friday and Monday off and drove our cars up there.

Let's do a quick comparison between the two countries. All this data is from the CIA factbook.

• GDP: Both Rwanda and Uganda have a GDP per capita of $1,200 and real GDP growth is quite comparable. Rwanda (7,% 7.5%, 4.1%) might be experiencing a slightly higher GDP growth than Uganda (6.4%, 5.2%, 7.2%). GDP in Rwanda is heavily based on agriculture while Uganda has a larger industry sector. Rwanda actually has a higher Gini coefficient that Uganda which means it has higher economic inequality (side note: Uganda is still better than the US).
• Inflation: 13.7% in Uganda (up from 4% in 2010) to 5.5% in Rwanda (up from 2.3% in 2010). The cause of this insane inflation in Uganda has been due to supply side shocks. Read more at:  http://www.trademarksa.org/news/bou-speaks-its-reforms-bring-down-high-inflation-rates
• Budget and fiscal policy: There is a significant difference here. Taxes and revenues for Rwanda is at 26% of GDP while it's only 15% of GDP in Uganda. Can someone please explain what the implications of this may be? Rwanda has a budget deficit of 2.3% of GDP while Uganda had a deficit of 6.1% of GDP

Overall, the countries seem quite comparable. Are there any essential economic indicators that I have missed?

******

I have tried to reconcile the facts above with the pothole free, beautifully lit, seemingly poverty free, Kigali. It has been claimed that great leadership, corruption free governance and strong nationalism are the secret to its "success".

I'm not convinced.

Selling goods on the side of the road is banned. This banning, though it undeniably makes for clean uncluttered pavements, results in loss of economic potential. Where did the street vendors go? Driven to destitution and then out of the city?

A large amount of money was spent on water fountains in the middle of roundabouts surrounded by well manicured grass and beautifully trimmed hedges. Who pays for the upkeep? Who pays to maintain the palm trees, ostentatiously planted in the road dividers, in a land locked country? What was sacrificed to pay for coloured (blue for roundabouts, green for taxi bays and yellow lanes) lights on the road?

I am 15% in to "Land of a thousand hills" and need to do some internet sleuthing to better understand the paradox that is Rwanda.

******

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/world/africa/01rwanda.html

Top three pieces of work - Part 2

Part one can be found here.

Drugs and Lab Reagents Supply Chain - This is quite a large areas and I'l break it down to smaller sub tasks.

a.) Supply Chain Rationalisation - There are currently 4 different supply chains in the country. Each supporting or buffering various health centres. In the current system some sites are covered by multiple supply chains, which means budgets are not being spent efficiently, while others have no support.

These supply chains needed to be aligned with the health centres to ensure optimal coverage for all facilities.

My role in this piece of work has been to analyse the past trends in ARV consumption rates, order rates and estimate the change in average monthly consumption for each of the supply chains and informing them on how much of each formulation to order to ensure there are no expiries or stockouts.

b.) UNITAID donation - Read-up on UNITAID here and here. I manage this donation for Uganda and supply all 2L and paediatric drugs in country to the 4 supply chains mentioned above. This includes forecasting national need for paediatric and 2L drugs, placing orders and clearing these shipments. ARV consumption trends tend to vary based on uptake of national guidelines and I revise the forecast every 3 months to ensure it matches consumption rates.

c.) Lab quantification - If quantifying the national need for ARVs is tricky, doing it for lab reagents and consumables is near impossible. Not all patients get the recommended tests, not all facilities do all the tests and not at the same rate or not with the same coverage. Sites are poor at ordering lab reagents so we cannot use consumption rates or issues to accurately predict future need. Even the consumption rates of these reagents vary based on test numbers, number of days a machine is run, batch sizes and number of tests per patients.

One of my tasks is to work with the Ministry of Health to quantify national need, identify available sources of funding, measure gap in funding and finally advise the government on what quantities to order for various lab platforms. Modelling this has been (is) quite a challenging task.

Lorne just broke my coffee press

"My Ma" by "Girls"

They sound like what I expected Coldplay to evolve into:

Girls – My Ma

For laughs

Cartoon from the newspaper:

In all seriousness: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/circumcision.htm

*******

This is the map to Paul (our driver's) house where we went for lunch on Sunday:

Paul had trouble representing the z-axis on a x,y map. The curve on the top of the map is meant to represent sloping down and back up.

In case you are curious, we got lost at "Kobil Gas Station" (there were two) and then again at "School Sign" (there were hundreds) and we never did find the "stony area".

Top three pieces of work - Part 1

It has been a busy few weeks after returning from the christmas break.

As my 6 month anniversary approaches, I would like to review the top three pieces of work on my plate at the moment. I hope this will also allow you to better understand the nature of CHAI's work. To treat each item in sufficient detail, I'll go through one of these each week.

Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) and ART initiation rates - HIV tests for adults is now easy and fast. These test kits are now ubiquitous in Uganda. Over 8 million HIV rapid tests are being issued out of the National Medical Stores to all the health facilities around the country. These tests work by detecting the antibodies your body produces to combat the virus.

Testing HIV exposed babies (where mother has HIV) is a little trickier as the baby is born with his/her mother's antibodies. A technique called DNA PCR is used for detection of the virus. This requires dried blood spots (DBS) to be sent to a lab, the blood to be extracted and the DNA to be replicated until sufficient copies are available for the machine to detect and identify the virus.

CHAI worked with the Ministry of Heath to implement a centralised high throughput laboratory with the capacity to serve the entire country. The intention was to develop capacity with the ministry and to reduce cost and turn around time for samples (went from around 20 days to a 3 days).

With over 7000 samples being processed monthly and results being sent back, the problem is now ART initiation. 50% of the HIV+ babies die within the first 2 years if they are not started on ART. Our analysis showed that only 23% of the HIV+ babies were actually initiated on ART.

A large loss, 39%, was getting results out to mothers. This is a tough one. Mothers don't return to the clinic unless the baby is sick and often it's quite late at that stage. We need to find a way to get mothers to come back for their results.

The second largest loss was getting babies on treatment after they have been referred from the post natal clinic to the ART clinic. Compared to the the previous loss point, this should be a no-brainer. Every HIV+ infant under 2 should go on treatment immediately. We met with all the partner (NGOs working in EID) to discuss why initiation is so low and what action we can take to improve the ART initiation rate.

Much work still needs to be done and I look forward to being part of it.

This is pretty cool

except for misspelt "just desserts"...

If Wodehouse wrote American Psycho: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/p-g-wodehouses-american-psycho

Mountains beyond mountains - part 2

Let me begin by saying, Paul Farmer is genius and one of the most hardworking and selfless men out there. My frustrations with the book do not stem from Farmer but from the writing (I feel I don't know the real Farmer at all and the whole beatification of Farmer is distracting) and the model of public health it that seems to encourage.

To balance my previous post, here are the revolutionary things Farmer has done:

- Pushing the boundaries of what is economically feasible in a development context - Farmer refused to accept that treatment of MDR TB was impractical and pushed to find ways and means of making it practical. With the cost of second line TB drugs reducing, treatment of MDR TB is now a reality. 

- The bleeding heart - Unfortunately, individual contributions for projects are not driven by impassive cost benefit analysis but rather on personal stories of salvation in the face of insuperable odds. Save the Children, had program booklets printed which contained more stories of individual beneficiaries than value analysis of their projects. Farmer's focus on the individual, his personal relationships with his patients and his tireless dedication are more instrumental in driving support for his cause - and for public health in general - than any impersonal public health report. PIH is successful because of the man and not because of his model.

- Medical breakthrough - Farmer understood DOTS, it's limitations and implications in the context of MDR TB. His contributions to the treatment of TB in the developing world are invaluable.

I have to agree with general consensus. This book is a must read for anyone in Public Health.

Mountains beyond mountains

I am currently getting through the last few pages of Mountains Beyond Mountains which is lauded as a must read for anyone in Public Health. It cannot be denied that Paul Farmer has a deep love for humanity and a willingness to sacrifice himself at its altar - a sentiment which would have resonated with the vendantic karmayogis. It is also clear that he is a brilliant man who is not shy of hard work.

The deification of Paul Farmer goes well beyond this. His story retold with the support of anecdotes from Farmer's family and friends, shows him as approaching perfection. The book develops his character like those of Atlas Shrugged - in one dimension. It leaves him unapproachable and even incomprehensible. I did not enjoy the superficial exploration of his childhood, his relationship with his parents and siblings. It felt that a little more labour would have revealed a rich vein of tales of inadequacy, loneliness and eccentricity that would have hinted at an explanation for this extraordinary man. 

The writing aside, even his model of Public Health left me uncomfortable. Farmer is reprimanded for thinking practically:

"Do you know what appropriate technology means? It means good things for rich people and shit for the poor", the priest growled and refused to speak to Paul for a couple of days.

"Good" and "shit" things are very subjective and generic concepts that cannot be used to quantitatively compare two models of public health. I would imagine a critical analysis to proceed something as follows:

Premise A: X dollars of funding is available

Premise B: There are Y patients in need in the country

Question: What model would allow you to maximise utility in population Y?

Question: What externalities have been missed and how should they be included in the model?

Question: How will future funding be impacted by adoption of this model?

Maximising individual care is wonderful at an personal level but cannot, and should not, be scaled.

A dear friend of mine who has also managed to throw off the yoke of religion had a very strange reaction to my voicing of these criticisms. I mention religion as I feel that on the path to true atheism, a rigorous unemotional analysis of the world has to be conducted, many preconceptions and support crutches sacrificed. I like to think (now I sound patronising like Dawkins. I apologise.) that the atheist will hear out arguments, argue coherently and avoid logical fallacies.  

Apparently, not so. Irrationality is core part of our being and is quick to overpower our much valued rationality as soon as one of our long enduring premises are challenged. I wonder if Rutherford got pissed when Bohr presented his model or if Newton would have been annoyed if he had heard results of Einstein's "thought experiments". 

I hope that in the future, when roles are reversed, to have the strength to have my core beliefs challenged and even refuted. I hope to be able to analyse my own arguments and change my beliefs when faced with overwhelming evidence or a more coherent argument.

"You look like rain" by Morphine

Your mind and your experience call to me
You have lived and your intelligence is sexy
I want to know what you got to say
I want to know what you got to say
I want to know what you got to say
I can tell you taste like the sky cause you look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain

You look like rain

You think like a whip on a horse's back
Stretched out to the limit you make it crack
Send that horse round and round the track
I want to know what you got to say
I want to know what you got to say
I want to know what you got to say
I can tell you taste like the sky cause you look like rain
You look like rain
Yea you look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain
You look like rain

Morphine – You Look Like Rain

Spotify is so awesome. Changed my life.

Have a read of this

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/why-the-arabic-world-turned-away-from-science

Let the games begin!

Iowa caucus after 99% of votes being counted:

Santorum: 25%
Romney: 25%
Paul: 22%

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-16404413

"5. Rick Santorum wins Iowa and much of the English-speaking world Googles his name.

Try it yourself, but please not at work or when children are in the room."

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/lizza-list-top-five-electoral-outcomes-journalists-are-secretly-rooting-for.html#ixzz1iTdQugTC

Yeah... that was me. Everything changed in the last few weeks.

New Hampshire next!

Serengeti

My last two posts have been a bit cynical but let me assure you I am much better at keep my opinions to myself during the event.

Serengeti is beautiful. Each time the car would stop at a game sighting, I would relish the sound of the wind. No birds calls (no trees), no insect sounds (at least during the day), no man made noises, just the wind. I learnt that the sound of the wind can be most soothing.

Our first lion viewing was the best. Maluta, our driver and guide, stopped short while driving down the road and started staring into what seemed like the horizon. He reached for his binoculars and screamed "Two big lions!". He looked over his shoulder to make sure there were no rangers in the vicinity and took the car on to the plains towards the lions. He got incredibly close (maybe even too close, the lion had to get up an move at one stage because of the car) and I found myself getting a bit nervous. The male lion in all his grandeur was just 3 mtrs from us. I asked dad to roll up his window which seemed to have been designed for a pissed off lion to fit perfectly. Maluta would have nothing of it and insisted that the window stays down.

le lion

for my Egyptian friends

I have one from every angle. We did circles around them.

Getting this close to a capricious animal, fine tuned through many millenia of evolution to eat you is kind of thrilling. Though he did look quite satisfied and in a contemplative mood.

The second highlight involved a lion pride. There were 6 lions lying over each other, keeping out of the sun and just being generally lazy.

lions sleep a lot... WHEN THEY ARE NOT KILLING YOU

After watching them do nothing but shuffle to find a position even more conducive to lazing around we decided it was time to go. As we drove around the kopje, 4 cubs ran in front of the car towards their crib. In my excitement and surprise, I fumbled the camera and only managed to take pic from the back once they had gone past us.

Awwwww...

These cubs had probably been out gallivanting the countryside, teasing the impalas and getting up to general mischief as animals on top of the food chain are wont to do.

As they were about to enter the shelter, the mother (I assume - At the risk of sounding like a xenophobe, all lions look the same. I guess it's okay since they are varelse and not ramen) came out and gave them the "you-didn't-come-home-for-lunch-and-didn't-even-bother-to-call-and-tell-me-and-I-made-your-favourite-dish" look. You know the one but here it is anyway:

Grrr

The cubs immediately ran to the other end of the kopje and looked back sheepishly from a distance. 

Awww... How can you stay mad at these kitties

This standoff last for about 10 mins after which the cubs were forgiven and the entire family went for a drink in the pool of rain water collected between the rocks. The end.

they be drinkin

Then there was the time the leopard went under our car trying to hunt a hare. So awesome.

I could bore you to death with all the photos, 538 of them, of lions, leopards, cheetah, giraffes, rhinos, elephants, zebras, antelopes, hippos, wildebeest, buffaloes and pretty birds. I like you so I will stop here. I will just leave these here:

That's a zebra all eaten and shit

Just 'illin

Scoping out a snack from the hill

Typical kitty. Acting like she hasn't seen me

Masai Village

I guess the anthropologist in me is more irritable than the zoologist. We pulled up at a Masai village, along with 2 other cars, about 100 mtrs off the road leading from the crater to the Serengeti plains.

We forked out the preset flat fee of $50 per car and prepared our self for our place amongst the culturally aware citizens of the world. We would soon be able to talk about the day in the life of the tribesman over cocktails and nod along with a "but of course" look on our face when someone brings up the issues facing the modern Masai.

Of course, I kid.

We were shown and encouraged to join in a dance that had stopped being an expression of joy a long time ago, shown the insides of a hut, had some tawdry jewelry pushed on us and were finally asked for a tip.

I learnt nothing. Though the whole exercise did fill me with disgust; I guess that's something.

It was not the 'Masai' that I found unbearable in their contrived re-enactment of old traditions, but rather the visitors who will go home and opine over the Masai life and its challenges. The most appalling thing was a room where they had herded all the kids so they could break into a "spontaneous" song at the sight of a foreigner and, of course, a lady who'd request a dollar or two just as you are "aww"-ing over the cutesy song and dance the kids were taught instead of their times tables. The kids started singing as soon as one spotted us 2 mtrs from the window and I had to turn around and race the other way. People were walking out with big grins on their faces feeling they had just been a silent witness to an average day at the 'kindergarten'. The sad part is, considering how many cars they get everyday, this really is the average day at the kindergarten - sitting still until a tourist walks in and singing a song until he/she hands over a dollar to the lady and walks out. It's not the Masai's fault, we encourage this crap.

Understanding a culture takes years and not $50 and half an hour jumping around as part of some dance. It's obnoxious, insulting to think otherwise.

The young kid who showed us around the house said we could ask any question. I asked some lame ones, the answers to which he pretty much made up. These are questions I should have asked:

- What do you do for fun?
- What is the biggest problem facing the village?
- How would you solve it?
- What do you want to be when you grow up?
- What questions do you want to ask me?

Who cares about which bed the female sleeps in with her kid and or what they use to thatch the huts.

Enough of my "holier that thou" rant. If you go to the Serengeti, skip the 30 mins Masai village detour and save yourself some self respect.

Gorilla tracking

It's lame. Okay not lame but definitely not worth 500 USD.

It took us a day of travel, half of it on horrendous roads, then we trekked for a little over 30 mins out of which 15 mins were through the jungle where the guide had to cut some vines to make way and we were there. Gorillas are nice to look at and all but being so similar to humans, I was expecting more action. Sure there was one climbing trees and failing. Sure there was a cute baby. Sure there were a few throwing cursory glances at us. Not enough.

The best part was the baby wrestling with his brothers. Brothers weren't too interested but the baby kept pushing himself on them. Alright, that's a tad cute but nothing I couldn't see at the zoo.

If I was a 'list' man then striking an item off might have brought me some degree of pleasure since this is the only  part of world you can see gorillas in the wild. I'm not. I am being told that the trek is what makes it. Sure. That might be true but then I don't need to pay $500 to do a trek though a forest.

"It's a combination of a tough trek and Gorilla sighting at its end" they tell me. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts? Sure. Okay. But I still can't see it being $500 worth greater.