Giving Thanks: A List

I am currently stuck in South Africa because the Nigerian Embassy in Washington's concept of "expedite" is very different from mine. I had to overnight my passport there mid last week to get a business visa to enter Nigeria, where I should be right now. So far the Nigerians (at least those working for the immigration service) are living up to the stereotypes (absolutely hilarious stuff here) that other Africans have of them - they don't answer their phones, they don't return messages, their working hours are a misnomer all around, they're extraordinarily rude, and you have to bribe them to get them to do anything.

Yes, I realize making broad generalizations like that about the 160 million Nigerians is the same thing as saying all Americans drive around in the most fuel inefficient pickup trucks available, equipped with semiautomatic rifle racks that enable short reaction times for when they come across Muslims, but this has been a horrendous experience and I'm furious with them.

I also spent the better part of the past two days dealing with the general incompetence of our IT organization - my computer had been battling a virus for the past month or so (we think we traced it back to sharing files on memory sticks in Kenya... if that isn't a perfect metaphor for the HIV / AIDS pandemic here...), but it finally succumbed to the disease the other day. Turns out IT's solution was to install a third antivirus tool and re-run all the scans... Gee, I wish I had thought of that. Anyway, I spent all evening yesterday trying to fix the problem myself (as well as attempting to raise hell with the immigration service in Nigeria, the Nigerian Embassy in Washington, the US Embassy here, and the US State Department), which I think I've finally done.

Along with everything else that has happened on this trip, those experiences and the holiday inspired me to make a list of reasons (in no particular order) for why we should be thankful for being born in the US / the West in general.

World travelers, what else should be added to the list?

Reasons we should be thankful for living in the US:

• It is generally not necessary for hotel security staff to outnumber guests


• You typically don’t have to worry about your hotel’s housekeepers banging on your door at 6:30am, yelling that they need to borrow the ironing board for another guest


• If it’s after 8pm, you have retail options that don’t involve fried (or more accurately, “soaked in warm animal fat”) chicken, inventory stored in roadside garbage bags, or prostitution


• Businesses operating hours aren’t determined by a daily spin of the wheel of fortune


• Prices are printed on tags and aren’t calculated using a sliding scale based on a light meter reading of skin pigmentation


• You don’t have to pay people for guiding you out of your parking spot


• You can’t get black lung disease from riding public transportation


• Bathrooms are preferable, clean alternatives to street corners and alleys


• Gutter puddles are a nuisance, not a primary source of drinking and cooking water


• You don’t have to re-use cooking oils for days because you can’t spare the penny to walk a few kilometers and buy a tablespoon of new oil that you carry home in your reused plastic bag (though my grandma grew up in Oklahoma during the Great Depression and she used to save cooking fats)


• Going to school is a more lucrative option for families than having your kids do barefoot tumbling and gymnastics on dirt streets littered with rotting food waste, petroleum residues, and human / animal waste


• You can afford to buy shoes for your kids, even though they need a new pair at the bank-breaking rate of at least once a year (maybe more? I have no point of reference when it comes to kids)


• You don’t have to prioritize nutrition and health care for your livestock (village food source and difficult to transport to distant veterinary facilities) over your children (village food drain and more mobile)


• When bribery happens, it’s at least for respectable sums (Chicago and some Congressional Representatives excluded)


• When you ask five people for directions, you don’t get eight different responses, all absurdly, inexplicably, wildly false (Boston excluded)


• When you run out of all other options, you don’t have to go get yourself infected with HIV in order to qualify for the local soup kitchen


• The majority of adults don’t think “burning dinner” is a perfectly justified reason for beating a woman


• Criminals and the mentally deranged can afford to actually load their semiautomatic weapons with bullets (er, wait…)


• Security guards can afford to actually load their weapons with bullets (ok, better)


• When you order a medium Diet Coke, you don’t get a Dixie Cup filled with Coke Light, and you don’t have to worry about the ice poisoning the drink


• You associate the smell of chlorine with lazy summer days, not safe, thirst-quenching refreshment


• You don’t have to first test the sink for running water before lathering up with hand soap


• Restrooms involve toilets and toilet paper, not toxic waste pits and watering pots


• Washing your clothes is a nuisance to be put off as long as possible, not a backbreaking work day in its own right (trust me… it takes about two hours to do a very light week’s worth of clothes for one person by hand, plus another couple of days to dry, if the weather is right… if not, then we’re talking mildew and another round of washing)


• When you set off a metal detector, security actually looks for a metal object


• If you get hit by a car, the first question usually concerns what the driver did wrong, not why the hell you didn’t get out of the way


• Getting the first ding in a new car is a negative experience, not a relief that you can finally go back to driving “normally”


• A reduced level of smog isn’t the primary criterion for declaring a beautiful day


• You don’t have to pay the police to get your lost or stolen property returned


• You don’t have to worry about taking off your “outside” pants before sitting on any light-colored furniture (New York excluded)


• A mid-life crisis involves a Porsche and a divorce, not becoming a grandmother at age 25

Me, Elephant, Cobras, and Indian Fort

No, it's not a scene from Napoleon Dynamite, it's a picture of me from Jaipur, India.  Apparently this photo is much more humorous than I'd realized.  I thought it was cool... there are persons who I will not identify who thought it looked ridiculous.  So, I thought I'd put it up to a vote.  In the comments section of this post, please submit your vote - ridiculous, or ridiculously awesome?

The Seeds Are Always Greener

An entertaining conversation that illuminates humans' inability to ever find balance.

I was sitting at my desk in the client's office here in Johannesburg the other day when one of my colleagues came by to ask me something (she lives in South Africa, but is from Zimbabwe).  I had a bunch of seeds on my desk from a seed, nut, and fruit snack mix, from which I was picking out the fruit.

Seeing the seeds and furrowing her brow in a look of confusion, she pointed to them and asked, "What the heck are those?"

"What?"

She jabbed her finger at the seeds.

"Those?  Seeds."  I gave her a look like, "What else would they be?"

"What?  Are you going to plant them?"

"Huh?  No!  I'm eating them."

"Are they roasted, or what?"

"Uh, I think they're just raw."  I ate one. "Yeah, I think they're raw.  Want to try one?"

Still confused, "You got them at a store?"

"Yeah, the grocery store.  Er, sorry, the supermarket."  Apparently 'grocery store' is an American term.  It's elicited blank stares in several countries now.

"So you went into the store, looking for a snack, and you bought that?"

"Uh, yes?  Why?"

"I would never buy that."

"Why not?"

"Why would I eat seeds?"

My unspoken response was, "Well, because in the US and Europe, our food supply has become so big, sophisticated, and secure that most people only eat mass-produced, processed foods that make them fat and lack proper nutrition, so we've started reverting back to natural, non-processed foods for health reasons.

"It's understandable if that seems strange given that in most of the developing world, the only foods available are of the most basic, non-processed variety and in scarce supply, so that when the opportunity arises, people are going to obviuosly consume the most calorie-, fat-rich, cooked foods possible to safely satiate hunger, build fat supplies for future instances of food scarcity, and leave things that require nearly as much energy to procure as they provide when consumed - like seeds - for the birds."

Dubai Detour

From India, I flew through Dubai to get to Johannesburg. As disappointing Abu Dhabi was, Dubai was surprising. It is every bit what you would expect from a tiny, energy-rich kingdom in the Middle East. On the surface of it, everything is brand new, the naked Mideast sun glinting off all of the polished glass, steel, and marble twisted into shapes you don't normally associate with buildings. The airport was massive, spotless, and high-tech, packed with giant flat screen displays and lots of open space. The thought occurred to me that "this is what the US should look like".

I thought about how the US and Dubai were in very different yet very similar positions 30 years ago. The US was being terrorized with stagflation, a small band of psychotic Iranians were holding us hostage, the national mood was dour, oil prices were wreaking havoc on the economy, and there weren't any great prospects for an economic rebound. Dubai was a small city-state trying to move past border skirmishes with Abu Dhabi, trying to absorb refugees from the Lebanon civil war, and had a modest economy built around trade.

As oil prices spiked in the late 70s and 80s, Dubai's rulers used their magical wells of decayed-dinosaur money to build a real economy - today energy is only 6% of their GDP, with the primary pillars being tourism (including the world's only seven star hotel and the manmade island communities you always see on the Discovery channel), real estate, construction, trade, financial services, and a fledgling high-tech community.

Our decaying dinosaurs in Congress found their own magical well of money as well - the deregulated financial system.  Only instead of plowing our Monopoly money into investments that actually did something (oh I don't know, like building the next generation of energy technology), we instead used it to buy and sell houses to each other and let the Chinese pull the biggest financial scam in history (selling us worthless crap denoted in a fiat currency valued precisely to empty our pockets and fund the development of sophisticated capabilities to steal our military and technology secrets to be used against us in Cold War II) while a small group fraternity brothers relived the life of Caligula.

So today, we're staring into the abyss of stagflation once again (I dare suggest), we're still being held hostage by an isolated band of Iranian whackjobs, and the people with their eyes open are once again looking around, wondering where exactly from where all the promised economic growth is going to come.  Our infrastructure is crumbling, and Dubai's is popping.  Etc...

Ok, I'm exaggerating to make the point... Dubai is actually not in that great of shape economically right now, but still, I think it's the country's infrastructure serves as a stark illustration of where the US should be relative to the deep hole we're in right now.  And, the US will no doubt emerge from the hole stronger than ever while Dubai's economy will remain eclipsed the revenues of mid-pack Fortune 500 companies.  Anyway, I'm detouring again... back to my observations of the place.

I had a seven hour layover, so I decided to head out of the airport and explore a bit.  US citizens don't need to apply for a visa ahead of time, so it was kind of weird to just breeze through immigration in the heart of the Middle East (I suppose the sorts of American invasions they worry about involve B-2 bombers and MRAPs).

Earlier I mentioned that on the surface, Dubai appears to be a vision from the future.  However, when you take the monorail (which is really cool and totally silent... in stark contrast to the racket of Chicago's El) from the airport to downtown, you (quickly) pass through the parts of town where ordinary Emiratis live. 

The horizon is dotted with the satellite dishes Mideasterners depend upon to get uncensored television broadcasts (though the UAE is very liberal when compared to some of its neighbors like Saudi Arabia), sitting on top of dirty stucco buildings, half of which look like they're going to fall down under the weight of all the clothes drying on lines, punctuated with mosque minarets every 100 feet or so (each block easily had its own mosque... speaking of minarets, I was in a book store in the airport when it was time for Dhuhr, the midday prayer in Sunni Islam... just as the as the prayer was starting to be sung over the PA system, the longest, rattiest, dirtiest American white trash mullet walked right past me, looking at books... seriously, like he could really read?  I frantically started looking through my bag for my camera to take a video, but alas, I missed the opportunity... I've found my Moby Dick though... before I die, I must catch a mullet like that on video with an authentic Dhuhr in the background providing the soundtrack).

Unfortunately, on my way to the monorail, I was befriened by a bespeckled, creepy Drew Carey look-alike from Germany named Neihls who was on his way to holiday in Thailand (for god knows what) and who decided I looked like I knew where I was going.  Once we bought our tickets and a train was approaching, I ducked into the bathroom and took my time, washing my face and wondering who actually used the little garden hoses they have as toilet paper substitutes.  I figured Niehls was certain to board the train without me, but nope, when I came out he was standing there, looking like Ralphie from A Christmas Story, lost in Dubai.

Anyway, Niehls and I headed to the Burj Dubai because I had to see what a building twice the height of the Sears Tower (that's right, Willis, Sears) looked like.  In short, it was breathtaking.  As you can see from the photos, it's impossible to get far enough away to get the whole thing in a camera frame without ending up with a lot of buildings and other stuff obstructing the view.  They need like a one mile radius around the thing so tourists will be able to get photos with it.

Unfortunately, construction is way behind schedule and it's still not open, so I wasn't able to get to the top and snap some pictures of the surrounding continent.

Due to a combination of wanting to shake Niehls, not walk around in the 9am blazing sun after already being in a serious state of shower-neediness with another nine hour flight ahead of me, and get my Christmas shopping done in one of Dubai's ultra-modern malls, I told my Bavarian friend I was going to hang out in Starbucks to get some work done until the mall opened at 10am, and that was about the extent of my Dubai experience.  I'm dying to go back though and take the bus tours they have that run through the old, cultural parts of town and the allegedly incredible beaches (though not THAT incredible), as well as all the shiny new architecture.

Below are some of my photos from the daytrip (I totally didn't even think to get a picture of Niehls until it was too late... we'll forever have Dubai).

For some reason I thought the Arabic version of the CPK sign was really cool... a weird juxtaposition of an icon of Americanism in a culture that hails from the other end of the spectrum.

To give some perspective, I took a picture of the base of the Burj with other nearby "skyscrapers" in the frame.  The building to the immediate left is a bit behind the Burj so it's actually bigger than it looks, but still, it's maybe 30-40 stories?

In the same location, trying to get the top of the building in the shot.

You can see how massive the base is.

I apologize for another shaky handheld video, but it was the only way to really capture the size of the building.

A couple other shots of the building and city.

Summertime in South Africa

Yes, I am alive... thanks to everybody who was worried :) I've been in Johannesburg since Sunday (I think?), and today we wrapped up our assessments for South Africa and India, so it's been a crazy week. I have a ton to relay from India, the trip here via Dubai, my travails driving a manual car on the wrong side of the road, my consular adventures with the Federal Republic of Nigeria and it's troublesome nationals, etc., but first, I have to complain about the weather here.

Allegedly it's been summer here since October, yet since I've arrived it's been raining and in the 50s. I personally don't mind so much, and it's actually quite entertaining to see South Africans' reactions. When we were trying to bribe the Nigerian consul (true story), there was a lady walking around in the full Nigerian traditional dress, including the big headdress, wearing a big fur coat (it was like 60+ degrees... the Nigerians are known for having lots of money but no certifiable source of legal income, which is how I'm assuming a consulate staffer could afford the coat... yes that's a broad stereotype for Africa's most populous country, but more about Nigeria later).

The headdress looked like this, only not so much.

By far my favorite reaction to the weather came from the guy delivering room service the other night. As I was signing the check, he started talking about the crazy weather, to which I responded, "Oh, I actually prefer the cold!"

"Oh, no sir, not me! I'm actually afraid of the cold, so today was a bad day!"

It wasn't a language barrier, he was literally saying the cold scared him... like he was afraid his car was going to break down and he would freeze to death waiting for a tow truck.

Killing Kids to Save Them?

I'm bummed that I'm going to have to leave India soon (tomorrow we fly to Hyderabad, then back to Delhi on Friday... I leave for Jo'burg very eary Sunday morning, as in 4am... who schedules a flight at 4am?). Not just because I'm loving this country, but also because of the work we're doing here.


Rajasthan's #2 bureaucrat asked us yesterday why they would risk poisoning kids with too much iron in their diet by fortifying cereals (the raw stuff, not the breakfast variety). While part of the answer was that we're not talking about high enough doses to push any kid over the line (it would take 600 times the levels of nutrients in fortified foods to be toxic... if someone is at 599 times the dosage level of iron, they're probably in the habit of gnawing on the family's cookware and / or licking the local blacksmith's anvil at night and have much bigger problems than the bowl of porridge they're eating... if not, it's impossible to eat 600 times the serving size), the focus of our discussion was around how that may be the very rare case for a handful of kids, but as a matter of public policy, we had to go with the decision that would have the biggest net improvement in lives and public health, even if the policy harmed some.


On one hand, that's a heavy thing to say... but on the other, when you see how many kids are outright suffering and dying so unnecessarily (there is actually more than enough food in the world, it just doesn't get to the people who need it... since that is a big problem to solve, an easy interim solution is fortification, even though in the US and Europe, pretty much everything is fortified... ironically, we have malnutrition in the West because we eat too much of the wrong stuff... in the developing world, it's because they eat too little, and what they do eat is also the wrong stuff, just a different variety), it's a no-brainer.


Though I can't imagine having to stand there and explain that to the parent of a child that was killed by a policy decision. I would want to personally dismember the bureaucrat / politician who made a decision that killed my kid.


(Thanks to Joel for inspiring this post.)

Karma India

Today was a long, crazy day.  The highlights:

It was a gorgeous day today, so we were working on the outdoor terrace this morning before heading to our first meetings, and I saw the following painted on the entryway to the hotel.

Part of ancient Indian culture (long before the Austrian whackjob hijacked the symbol), you see swastikas all over India... even as a Westerner who knows the history of the symbology, it is still a bit jolting every time I see it.  The word "Aryan" actually refers to a vaguely-understood ancient common language from which North Indian languages originated.  There also is a linkage to Persian... the most obvious being the phonetic similarity to "Iran" (I wonder what Hitler would think about Ahmadinejad?).  Anyway, the history seems to be very murky, but at some point, the myth arose that the Aryans were actually a people who came from eastern Europe and Persia who expanded and conquered, including most of modern-day India.

I don't think there is any dispute that the ancient inhabitants of the area that includes modern North India had a very distinct culture, of which the swastika was a prominent symbol that had nothing to do with little-man Adolf and his demented ideas.  All of the real science definitively disproves any sort of notion that they were a superior race, and it seems the consensus is that there was no Aryan conquering, either.

Anyway, the point of all this is that the Aryans and the swastika were part of a benign ancient culture that has heavily influenced modern Indian culture.  In modern India, it appears to be a symbol of good luck and general religiosity (our driver here has a new SUV, inside of which he has a big orange swastika that was painted during a new car blessing at this temple).

I found my answer to my question about where all the food comes from today, twice.  I asked how it was possible to feed everybody without seeing the roads clogged with trucks delivering produce (about half of the population is vegetarian).  It's a pretty simple answer - the roads are clogged enough during the days, so trucks are only allowed to run at night.

The second answer was a glimpse into the food manufacturing sector.  Today we met with a major supplier of fortified food staples (e.g. dal, rice, porridge mixes) for the World Food Program and state government's feeding programs.  They only feed a very small portion of the state's population that is most vulnerable, but still, their factory dedicated to Rajisthan (the state we're in and assessing) produces 200 tons of wheat flour a day.  And that's just for Rajasthan - other states have their own dedicated factories for different products.  Rajasthan's population is just over 50 million people - only 23 countries have larger populations than that, and Rajasthan isn't even near the top of the list in India.  India's biggest state is Uttar Pradesh (they refer to it as UP, though it's nothing like Michigan), which has over 165 million people.  Only China, the US, Indonesia, and Brazil have more people than that one state.

Speaking of trucks, I absolutely love the trucks here.  There are all intricately painted with a rainbow of colors and adorned with all kinds of tacky junk like silver Christmas tinsel (Christmas is a major holiday here, just like in the US, including all the trees and lights in homes, shopping malls, etc.... they're obviously not predominantly Christian, but they like the excuse to give / get presents since there is no analog in Hinduism... I'm sure having the British here for a couple hundred years helped as well).

And some pictures of the trucks:

Objectively, they are so tacky.  They are covered in the corniest rhyming sayings, like on a fuel tank you may find "This is my queen.  She only drinks the water from Iran." (Or something like that... obviously that doesn't rhyme in English, but it does in Hindi.)  But for some reason, I absolutely love seeing these things, especially at night when they're lit up with different colors of lights.  I think they really embody this country.  Everything is rich and colorful - the food, art, clothing, personalities, traditions, wisdom, colloqualisms, etc.  My impressions of India reminded me of China, but the two couldn't be further apart - I felt like China had no soul, and I feel like India is the Earthly embodiment of the collective souls cycling through samsara, with all the implications inherent in being so, good and bad.

On a much less karmic level, I also learned that those crazy Indian mustaches you sometimes see (below) are an exclusive tradition of Rajasthan.  I'm so going to grow one for Halloween next year.

After our last meeting wrapped up tonight, we headed to Chokhi Dhani - a five star resort that is a recreation of a traditional Rajasthan village.  (En route we passed a traditional Indian wedding dancing down the street with lit chandelers... I have some awesome video, but I'll have to post it later.)  Chokhi was really cool - I got a red dot painted on my forehead, we ate a bunch of traditional street food, watched a magician, a traditional puppet show, dancing, music, a couple of people dressed up in traditional garb for what was the equivalent of a Six Flags photo, and had an amazing dinner.

There were two events of high drama though.  The first was some punk little guy who was screaming at his wife, throwing her around, and then punched her in the face, making a loud smack, in front of 50 people or so.  Resort employees grabbed the guy, who started yelling at them in English to back off because, "She's my wife!  I can beat her!"  (I was fighting the instinct to punch the twerp, but I realized I would probably need the assistance of the US consul in talking my way out of the Jaipur jail.)  The employees tried staying between him and his wife, but not very successfully.  Commotion ensued for about 10 minutes... I thought they were trying to keep some order while they called the cops.

Nope, they just wanted to get him out of the resort, and had no intention of calling the cops.  While hitting your wife is not legal in India, apparently nobody would report it because it's still such a male-dominated society, and the wife would never agree to press charges.  I couldn't believe all those people were willing to just stand around and let them leave, god knowing what was going to happen to the woman once they left.

If that wasn't enough to ruin the night, one of our Indian colleagues realized she'd been pick-pocketed in the resort, to the tune of 40,000 rupees (only $800, but a small fortune here).  Her first reaction was understandably shock, but her second action was a total surprise.  She told me that in India, losing money was a blessing in disguise because, "That means something bad was about to happen to you, but by losing the money, you basically bought your way out of it with God."  I wonder if that applies to trips to Las Vegas as well?

When she was frantically looking through her purse, one of the very attentive waiters came over and kept cryptically asking if she needed help.  It turns out she had left the envelope of cash at the entrance, and the staff had somehow figured she was probably the owner.  Two waiters escorted us to the administrative offices, where after a brief conversation confirming the money was hers, they handed it back to her in its entirety.

That was probably six months salary for one of those guys and anybody could have easily pocketed it without a chance of anyone ever finding out, but they not only turned it in, they went out of their way to find the rightful owner (think about how many Six Flags staffs would just hope the owner never returned looking for the wad of cash). 

Going back to my comments about India's soul - yes, people get pick-pocketed every day, but still, I think this incident is another reflection of the character of this country and its people.  (The incidence of domestic violence aside... I was assured those sorts of things are rare, but I have a feeling it's much more prevalent behind closed doors.  While India is making great strides in erasing the vestiges of the caste system and institutional sexism, they still have a long way to go... so does the US though.)

Which reminds me of one other fact I learned today.  Meeting with UNICEF, I asked if part of the solution to getting field staff compliant with the execution of nutrition and health programs is "top-ups" (basically paying government workers extra money to actually do what they're supposed to do in the first place... it's backwards, but the only way to get things done in some developing countries).  She looked at me with a puzzled gaze - "Why would we do that?  It has nothing to do with money."  From what I've seen, in every other developing country, the attitudes are, "How can I get rich off these people?"  Instead, India seems to have the cohesion as a people and society that has been so badly tattered by the Western development model.