Impressionable Minds

First, sorry for this being brief since this is a subject that deserves more explanation. I will have to do that later.

This morning we visited a Dhaka slum where the World Food Program is providing fortified cookies that deliver 67% of the key vitamins and minerals the kids need everyday. This is necessary because their only other source of food is the small amount of rice that their mother can afford to buy and cook every day. On really special occassions, they manage to round up some vegetable scraps and spring for a small sachet of spices to cook a "curry". Most countries refuse to allow NGOs to introduce nutrition vehicles like cookies because they fear sending the wrong message and building bad habits, e.g. eating "junk" foods. Bangladesh is so poor and the government is so weak and ineffective that they are thrilled to have the cookie program.

I was in the slum this morning, but I still can't believe that they exist. It was like being on a movie set... impossible to process as real. We were for the first time literally in the heart of the slum, walking through the tiny alleys, stepping over the cooking fires, having to politely decline residents' invitations to step into their homes (which were maybe 4ft x 4ft tin rooms with maybe a 6ft ceiling height and a mattress if they were lucky), etc..

(I don't have time to post all the pictures on the blog yet, but for an unguided tour, check out http://picasaweb.google.com/ckurasek/CK361BSelectedPhotos and start with the picture of the tiny, black and white baby goat... that was when we arrived in the slum. Also a couple of brief videos at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCNBpZGxeOQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOcv6kV5SM)

But the kids were remarkable. They were happy, energetic, and full of hope, despite the fact that they quite literally were the poorest of the poor humans gracing the face of the Earth, packed into the world's most population dense country (the city states like Singapore are more dense, but they are generally more middle class and living in high-rises). When I asked what they want to be when they grow up, about 80% said doctors. A few said teachers, a few others scientists, and one boy a mechanic.

I asked one of the officials from the NGO that was running the informal schools in the slum (there are four covering 10%-15% of the kids in the slum... the WFP cookie program is funded through their emergency relief fund - triggered by the spike in commodity prices last year - and is set to expire in June of next year... if they can't find more funding, the kids will go back to being malnourished and spending their days working in the markets with their parents instead of attending school... providing food is one of the only ways to get families to send their kids to school in slums) what the realistic odds were of any of the kids making it to high school (grade 6+ in Bangladesh), much less making it into a profession, and she said, "Honestly, the odds are not a single one will make it."

One of the things that struck me though was the lucidity and intelligence of the kids, even those who were only in the equivalent of the second grade and received three hours of informal education a day. They were as sharp and vibrant as any kid in any school in the West, whereas the adults were much more in a stupor, much more difficult to communicate and interact with (through a Bengali translator, of course), and much more clueless about the world. I get the impression that their lens to the world is mysticism and most think that Westerners have magic powers (like the Kenyan cab driver who handed me his cell phone and said, "It's broken. Virus." Totally perplexed, I stared at the phone, looked at him, turned back to the phone and said, "Um. Ok. Yeah, it looks broken." "Press the buttons, the numbers don't come up." "Hm, yep, you're right." "Can you fix?" "Can I fix your phone??" The Kenyan consultant with us got mad - "He doesn't know how to fix your phone! Why would he know how to fix your phone?!" I figured he thought that all Westerners built their own computer chips or something).

For various reasons I've previously discussed, I am convinced the number one intervention that can have the biggest, broadest, most permanent impact on the lives of the billions suffering around the world is rudimentary education. If our brains are not shaped by the right stimulation, behaviors, experiences, and knowledge by say age five, an educated child and an uneducated child might as well be different species of animal. It seems like there's a point of no return whereby you can no longer have rational discussions based on the simple understandings of the world that we take for granted.

Things like sanitation - how can you convince a mother that the way to keep her kids from dying is to simply make sure she uses water from a "special" source, when she thinks you're crazy for trying to tell her that there are invisible bugs living in the well water that are trying to kill her family? How can you convince her to send her child to a room full of paper to sit around for three hours playing and drawing when that kid could be helping earn extra grains of rice by begging in the street?

The lack of basic education underlies virtually every problem faced in the developing world to some extent. This is particularly relevant given a proposed bill currently being debated in Uganda's Parliament that makes homosexuality and being infected with HIV crimes punishable by death.

CNN's coverage can be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/12/08/uganda.anti.gay.bill/index.html

Maggie brought this to my attention, indignant and perplexed at how a modern government could even be considering something like this. Perhaps cynically, I was not as shocked - yes, they are putting in motion an egregious evil, but I don't think it stems from hate as much as it stems from ignorance. If they believe HIV is God's way of punishing the sinning homosexuals of the world, then in their minds, they are doing something holy.

But can we really expect to change their ways of thinking when one of their national newspapers publishes garbage like the following article? "How to tell if someone is gay"... consider this quote from one of Uganda's budding legal scholars: "I know what gay people are like. Controlling the issue of gays is hard because there are no stringent laws against it. So many high profile people including Pastors have been suspected but government never investigates." If someone had shown me this article printed out without any identifying text, I would have bet a lot of cash that it was from The Onion.

The full article can be found here: http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2773:how-to-tell-that-someone-is-gay&catid=40:street-talk&Itemid=73

Clearly there are tools at the disposal of the more human rights-oriented societies in the world, such as sanctions and other punitive measures (or war when all other options are exhausted), but these are only stopgap measures... they work only as long as someone is vigorously pursuing / enforcing them. I don't see how we ever put an end to cancerous ideologies like these unless we get to the minds of future generations before they're permanently molded into vessels capable of nurturing and propagating ignorant, dangerous, self-destructure belief systems and incapable of nuturing and propagating belief systems based on the branches of accumulated human wisdom that foster a more just, peaceful, propserous civilization.

So, upon relating to folks my first-hand experiences with the world's organizations and programs dedicated to development and the conclusions I am evolving that they are all utterly hopeless, set up to fail, and misguided, several people have asked me, "Ok, so then what are we supposed to do?" I'm not totally sure I have tactical recommendations at this point, and I do think we who have also have an obligation to help those who don't with their immediate needs, but a long-term, permanent solution has to start with universal education.

Until 95% of the world's 14 year-olds have the equivalent of at least a fifth grade, secular education, I really don't think we can realistically expect to conquer the seemingly simple, endemic problems at the root of humanity's worst ills - hunger when there is enough food out there; diseases when there are simple preventions and treatments; war based on silly, misunderstood anecdotes of history; hate based on ignorance and fear; etc.

Attempted Nigerian Kidnapping, Finally!

I've probably built it up more than it warrants, but here's the story.

Everybody in South Africa and Kenya warned us to not use any sort of credit / debit / banking card of any kind with any establishment in Nigeria for any reason because within minutes of handing it over, there is a 95% chance you will have purchased a new home entertainment set and donated it to a needy Nigerian criminal syndicate.

Subsequently, my team member who managed to get a visa (by flying home to Belgium) settled her bill when moving hotels by wiring the funds directly to the hotel's account. As she was attempting to leave, the hotel informed her that she still owed them the money. She double-checked with her bank, they confirmed the money had been transferred, and they initiated an investigation to find out where they money went since it supposedly disappeared.

She left her business card and problem solved, right? Not in Nigeria.

The hotel manager got aggressive with her and had hotel staff surround her (her Accenture-provided armed guard hadn't arrived yet for the day). He informed her that if she didn't hand over a credit card or cash, they were going to kidnap her and hold her until she, her company, or her family coughed up for the "bill" / ransom. He even went so far as to call a (supposed) relative of his in Belgium, implying a threat to her family.

She kept her wits about her and managed to get out of the situation after convincing him that she wasn't leaving the country, just transferring to a different hotel within Lagos, just down the street. Given that he now knew where to find her, my first reaction upon hearing about this was to call the guy in charge of Accenture's security in Nigeria who went ballistic (or as ballistic as a reserved English security professional can get).

Turns out the security folks have great relationships with the local government and police force (I would love to know the details) and the guy laid down the law. The manager tucked his tail very quickly and even apologized, claiming there was no intent to "intimidate" her... because really, kidnapping in Nigeria is sooooo misunderstood these days.

One of our South Africa-based clients (originally from Ghana) told me about a similar situation he encountered in a Lagos hotel. He always prepays in cash for everything in Nigeria, but once was informed upon checkout that he owed a special "tax" on his bill. Recognizing it as a shakedown, he scoffed and attempted to leave, reminding the manager that he'd already paid for his stay upon checking in.

One of the bellhops physically yanked his backpack off his shoulder, ripped his luggage out of his hand, and told him he wasn't going anywhere. Knowing he really had no recourse that didn't invovle a high risk of bodily harm, he went ahead and paid the "tax" and got out of there.

I think he summed it up best when he said, "The Nigerians are my West African brothers and I love them. But they are crazy motherf***ers and I don't want anything to do with them."

Dhaka Diaries

Bangladesh is a trip... I really don't know where to start, so I will stick to a chronological approach, at least to start.

I was reminded upon boarding the flight to Dhaka of one of the few things I dislike about being in this part of the world - the incessant need for people to push / cut / dart to the front of lines.  As we were walking down the jetway doing the usual boarding shuffle, guys kept blatantly cutting in front of me. I just chuckled, but I really wanted to ask them if they thought getting on the plane sooner would snag them a better seat or get them to their destination sooner.

Apparently the answer was yes, because when I got to my aisle bulkhead seat, there was a man sitting in it. I asked him if he was in 8G, to which I received a courtesy nod. I pointed to the "8G" printed on my ticket, and he pointed to the third seat in, next to his wife. So I pointed back at him, and then we had a non-hostile staring contest that I won.

One of the things I love about this part of the world is that everything is a free-for-all. As we're taxiing to the runway, people were getting up to grab things out of the overhead bins, people were talking to each other on their mobile phones, putting their bags in the aisles, etc.

Similarly, as soon as we landed, people popped up and started getting their things down. The flight attendants tried a couple of times to get people back in their seats, but quickly recognized the futility. Naturally, as we were standing waiting to deplane, people were literally shoving their way up the aisle. I suppose at the point they could make the argument that they will get home earlier, but really?

As we stepped off the plane, I found it strangely comforting to smell the warm, humid wood fire + diesel perfume that marks the developing world. Back in the cultural chaos of South Asia, my level of happiness snapped up from the "Miserable Africa" notch to "Happy and Content". (I think the nation I most want to visit is Myanmar / Burma... I just may go sneak across the border to pull a stunt like this guy and shop my story to the highest bidder... though I may want to wait until Tiger's women stop coming out of the woodwork.)

Since I'd just received my emergency passport, I didn't have a business visa to enter Bangladesh. Luckily, Bangladesh will let Americans apply for arrival visas under a limited set of conditions, including if you are coming from a country that doesn't have a Bangladesh diplomatic mission. Nigeria (the godforesaken country) is on that list, and since I was supposed to be there prior to Bangladesh, I had my letter of invitation and all the other paperwork necessary for the arrival visa, fully prepared for a laborious explanation of my situation. Turns out I just had to pay the guy 100 takas (Bengali currency, about $1.50 USD) for a 15-day landing permit, no questions asked.

There are some advantages to being in the world's 39th most corrupt country (tied with Pakistan, the Philippines, and Belarus).

The first thing I see once I clear immigration:

Bangladesh is a Muslim country, but I didn't think it was THAT observant. Turns out it's not - those were pilgrims returning from the Hajj in Mecca.

I also found humorous the luggage of choice here. Also telling was the section of baggage dedicated to jugs of water. Apparently when Bengalis travel, they bring big containers of clean water with them (I forgot to take a picture, but will try when I fly out). I have yet to fully understand what the deal is, but I will find out.

My first impression of Bangladesh was that it's a more crowded (earlier I'd posted India's population density of about 1,000 people per square mile compared to about 85 in the US... Bangladesh is about 2,900, squeezing 160M people into a country slightly smaller than Iowa), dirtier, poorer version of India. For good reason - like Pakistan, Bangladesh used to be part of British India, and even further back they share cultural and ethnic heritage.

When the British granted independence in 1947, modern day Bangladesh and Pakistan decided to join together as a single Muslim state comprised of West Pakistan and East Pakistan, despite being physically seperated by about 1,000 miles of India. West Pakistan was effectively in charge, and proceeded to exploit East Pakistan's resources (not just natural resources but also all of the industrial outputs from the British-built factories) and treat those in the East as second-class citizens.

When West Pakistan decided to declare Urdu as the official language of the country (most people in East Pakistan only spoke Bengali and English), that appears to have been the last straw, and Bangladesh launched a successful nine-month war for independence (given it was a war with modern Pakistan, India naturally helped out the Bengalis). Today Bangladesh straddles the fence, maintaining amicable relations with both India and Pakistan.

However, that doesn't mean it's a stable country. The first president and "Father of the Country" was assassinated in 1975 when army tanks rolled into the presidential compound and assassinated him, his family, and his staff. Two of his daughters were in West Germany at the time and survived, and today the eldest is the current prime minister. After the coup, the officers leading it changed the constitution to give themselves immunity from prosecution... the Supreme Court just recently got around to ruling on the case and invalidated that amendment and sentenced the officers to death.

One of the risks we have to take into account is the risk of a coup / major political upheaval. The current prime minister has supposedly survived something like 27 attempts on her life. I cannot confirm it, but I was told the 2008 elections were the first in the history of the country without some sort of post-election strife.

Clearly Bangladesh has a lot of problems and a difficult road to developed nation status. Among other things, Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world, ranking 162 out of the 194 countries listed on the CIA's Factbook, with a per capita GDP of about $1,500 (compared to about $2,900 for India, $6,000 for China, and $47,000 for the US).

As if they didn't have enough challenges with overpopulation, malnutrition, dismal literacy and education rates, pollution, malaria, water tables poisoned with naturally-occurring arsenic, etc., about one-third of Bangladesh floods on an annual basis during the monsoon season. As you can see in the following map, most of Bangladesh is a river delta.

If you thought New Orleans had a rough time during Katrina, on more than one occassion over 100,000 Bengalis have been killed by typhoons (about 500,000 was the worst in 1970). Bengladesh is one of the first and worst places being hit with rising seas and changing weather patterns (irrespective of to what you attribute the underlying cause, things are a changin' here).

Things aren't all doom and gloom here. Like India, the people are extremely nice (though Bengalis seem to be a little bit less warm than Indians... not totally sure yet what I'm picking up there) and the place feels like it's alive.

One of my favorite encounters so far was in a meeting today with CARE, a US NGO focused on fighting poverty. In the middle of the meeting, our Bengali consultant got on his cell phone and was working on scheduling additional meetings - full volume, sitting at the table, not making any effort to be discreet. I literally burst out laughing when the guy from CARE answered his own ringing phone a few minutes later, leaving me and the other Accenture consultant sitting there exchanging smirks while they wrapped up their calls. I was reassured that sort of thing happens all the time.

Also like India, mid to high-ranking officials in both government and the private sector always have little remote controls they keep on their desk. When they need something, they press the button (which they do about 5-10 times in any given meeting), a chime / bell rings, and one of their minions scampers in to see what the boss wants (coffee, a file, an adjustment to the A/C which is always turned on as a courtesy to us Westerners, etc.)

The following are just some photos from today. The first is one of the kids hustling on the street - unlike beggars, he was actually working to sell popcorn and got angry at me when I took his picture and didn't buy anything. I felt badly, but really, should I be supporting third world child labor? Probably, since there aren't many other options for him, but I'm rationalizing to myself.

These pictures were taken outside Dhaka's wholesale produce market. It looks like mud churned up on the street, but it's really crushed / decomposing lettuce / generic roughage. No, it didn't smell that great.

Here is a view of the same market from CARE's offices. You can see how massive, crowded, and chaotic it is (not to mention polluted).

As we were leaving, I had to jump out of the way of this car backing down what I naively thought was a sidewalk... you know, not being paved, people were walking on it, etc.

This piece of utility artwork is for the Bagel... China has nothing on this place.

Some of the Bengali scenery.

This guy was singing Qur'anic verses for money... thought it was kind of cool.  Like an idiot, I used my photo camera to take the video instead of the HD Flip camera.  I am going to for sure get a lot of HD video here though... it's hard to appreciate the energy, vitality, and chaos here from the pictures.

From Dubai: The Saga Continues

My day today / the last 24 hours:

I had a meeting in the morning, so I was in the client's office for a few hours, then headed back to my hotel room to pack. In the course of doing so, I couldn't remember where I'd hidden all the Christmas presents I'd picked up as I've been hopping around. After tearing the room apart, I concluded they were either stolen, or I left them in the room safe at the last hotel I was in, which was two weeks ago... so pretty much the options were stolen or stolen.

Frantic, I went back to the hotel where they told me they didn't have anything. Ready to jump from a high building (if there were any around) / call the police, they realized they spelled my name wrong on the reservation. Using the right name, something did come up in the computer, though I wasn't sure what... the staffer had to go check the safe. Ten minutes later she calls me at the front desk to describe what I had left. My initial relief that she'd found my stuff started evaporating as I sat there for another ten minutes, only to finally see her walking back with a manager, both empty-handed.

The manager told me they did find something and it was logged as being in the safe, but it wasn't in the safe, so he was checking the other safe in the front office. Needless to say, it wasn't there either.

The net is that after another 15 minutes of torment, he finally came back with the bag of my stuff, and everything was there. From the bribery coaching I'd received, I knew South Africans love getting their hands on greenbacks... I was told that in the event of being pulled over by the police, just hand them a $1 USD bill and they will let you go, even though that is not a lot of money there (the equivalent of maybe $5 in the US, taking exchange rates and relative prices?). Given that it's near the holidays and they literally saved me from excruciating self-torment, I whipped out a $20 bill and asked him to share it with everyone who was involved with finding and safe-keeping the presents.

He literally turned around and booked it while the two women at the front desk, having seen me pull out US currency, had on saucer plate-sized eyes and reacted like he was absconding with their first-borns and started yelling at him to come back with the money (this is a four star hotel, so the staff was otherwise very professional with a stiff sense of decorum). I didn't want to get involved, so I just ran out to get to US Consulate, where I had an appointment to get an emergency passport (since the Nigerians still have yet to respond to any of my messages and continue to hold my passport hostage... Side note: On the flight from Jo'burg to Dubai, I watched District 9 - the sci-fi film about aliens being interred in Johannesburg ghettos, an allegory to the camps / ghettos set up during apartheid... the only humans living in the ghetto are Nigerians, who are there to steal / scam the aliens out of their weaponry so they can use it in their global criminal gangs... The Nigerians seem to be in general very bitter, saying the whole world discriminates against them and treats them all like criminals... the more I learn, the more it seems like the stereotype is broadly supported with fact, but I will have more on that when I post the near-kidnapping experience our team had there).

Before I could head to the consulate, I had to fill up the rental car with gas. I stopped at a Shell station where the attendant (all stations are full service in SA) told me I couldn't use a credit card, but I could use a debit card. I handed him my debit card, which he informed me was not an actual debit card, despite Citibank clearly labeling it as such. Apparently "real" debit cards don't have raised numbers like credit cards. I surmised this was not a case of incompatible technology, but rather a case in which the management didn't want to pay the fees associated with routing transactions through Visa / MC / Amex networks.

I drove down to the next station where the attendant informed me my debit card would work... until the tank was full. At that point, he decided my card actually would not work because again, it had the "raised numbers". Having reached my hustling saturation point, I turned indignant and told him that he was going to have to use the card, which I knew would work, because I didn't have any cash and was about to leave the country. He actually turned out to be an honest guy and confirmed that it would work, his boss just wouldn't let him run it. So I asked to speak to the boss, who was sitting under an umbrella next to the car wash with 4-5 other employees, watching some workers dig a ditch. Surprisingly, the attendant even introduced me by saying he had made a mistake and told me the card would work.

The boss informed me that their computer systems wouldn't take a debit card with raised numbers. I asked if we could just try it, and he said sure, but it won't work. So I said, "Great, let's do that," and started walking back towards the store. He again said we could try, but it would just be a waste of time, so I should just take cash out of the ATM.

So for about five minutes I kept shuffling us towards the store while we cycled through a refrain of "I understand it won't work, but just humor me... it will take two seconds, and if it doesn't work, I'll take the cash out and no problem," and a response along the lines of "Yes, we could try it, but I'm not going to because it won't work / it will screw up the computers / it will waste our time / etc."

There was a police officer there sitting in his truck, so finally I pointed to him and said, "Ok, so you're saying if I go ask him about this, he will tell me you can't take my 'debit' card?" His response was something along the lines of, "He's not working here... he's from another district...." ????

That quickly led to, "If you want to talk to the owner of the station, he's the fat white guy right there."

So I talk to the fat white guy who levels with me and says, "Yeah, that will work, but I don't want to pay the bank fees." After informing him that I was just a poor American who didn't have any cash, etc., he agreed to let me use it.

The card was returned as "void" from the cashier, so I asked to see the printout showing the bank's message. I explained to them that "void" wouldn't be the response from the bank, it would be something like "declined". At that point though, after a good 20 minutes playing this game and running out of time until my consulate appointment, I completely lost my patience, just took the cash out, and stormed out of there.

I pulled out of the gas station and turned onto the highway on-ramp, only to slam on the brakes to avoid a mixed line of cars reversing and fully driving the wrong way. There was an accident that had completely clogged the highway, and in Africa the direction of traffic is a democratic decision. So there was another 5-10 minutes of fun, trying to reverse / turn around without being hit by cars turning onto the on ramp, cars driving the wrong way, and reversing cars. Though I did watch a pissed-off guy back in to a big BMW that was trying to turn around with complete disregard for any sort of right-of-way (if there is such a concept in such a situation).

Somehow I managed to find my way around the accident on side roads and reached my exit with 10 minutes to go until my appointment. When I finally came around the last bend and saw Old Glory flapping in the breeze, I swear I could hear the Battle Hymn of the Republic playing in the car. Despite having to negotiate with security for five minutes to let me park in the compound and avoid parking half a mile away (the State Department website malfunctioned when I was trying to print out my appointment confirmation / parking pass), I don't think I'd ever been so relieved to be on American soil with other Americans. The consular staff got a kick out of my story about the Nigerians holding my passport hostage... they said that was a new one for them, but they weren't too surprised.

The next travail came when trying to pass through immigration (unless you count having to pay $250 in excess baggage fees). Apparently the officer I drew was not familiar with the concept of an emergency passport. He kept asking me how I got into the country without having "any stamps or anything" in my passport. Determined that I had illegally snuck into the country and was subsequently attempting a legal exit / that I was a spy, he got angry and yelled over to his boss, a big hairy white guy named Peach (Africans have some great first naming conventions... like Dudu from the hotel staff and Justice from the airline).

Peach apparently was familiar with emergency passports and / or sympathetic to the CIA and quickly cleared me (I'm not looking forward to the interrogation I'm going to get in the US - "Um, so I was in South Africa, Dubai, and Bangladesh, and the Nigerians took my passport hostage.")

Then, after playing musical chairs with a large family with screaming kids (I've learned that's the price of getting bulkhead seats on international flights), I ended up sitting next to a Nepalese Imam who teaches at a Madrassa in South Africa who was determined to convert me to Islam. He actually was a very nice guy and he asked for my business card so he could "keep in touch" with me. I'm actually very much looking forward to hearing from him and adding him to my list of friends in the Muslim world,

And now I'm about to shut down and board my flight to Bangladesh... very interesting country and I'll have a lot to post once I get there.

Uncle Sam is the Man

The government's reputation for incompetence is so deeply ingrained within us that it's become cliche. My recent experience with the Nigerian government serves as a stark reminder of how good we really have it.

As I've previously complained, I am currently stuck in South Africa after overnighting my passport to the Nigerian embassy in Washington about two weeks ago for an "expedited" business visa. Since then, the embassy hasn't even answered their phone, much less the series of messages I've left for them.

This came after the experience with the Nigerian consulate here in Johannesburg. After our connection there told us he would be able to secure us a visa, we arrive, wait for over an hour for someone to help us ("business hours" are apparently rough approximations for when they will be working), are told we will receive the visas that day, then are told we have to apply in our home countries, it is implied a "special circumstances" payment will grease the wheels ("if we want to discuss this matter further, we have to do it in my office upstairs"), then our negotiator is told the official is insulted because as a senior official, he doesn't take bribes (aka. we didn't have enough cash).

So, off to Washington goes my passport, along with an "expedite" fee, both of which remain in Washington, as far as anyone can tell.

After a week of beating our respective heads against the Nigerian wall, I decided to start raising hell with the Nigerian immigration service and see if the US State Department could do anything to help me. At this point I am ready to just skip the Nigerian assessment and go straight to Bangladesh. (I made sure to inform the Nigerians that the purpose of my trip was to assess whether or not my client should make a nearly $10M investment in their country.)

Surprisingly, the Nigerians have yet to respond.

However, the State Department responded to my enquiry literally within hours, despite it being submitted on a federal holiday. They informed me that there are policies in place for precisely these sorts of situations - if another government is causing an "undue delay" to travel plans because of excessive processing times for things like visas, the local Consulate will issue me a second passport that is valid for two years.

(Another situation covered is that in which certain governments will not allow entry to a person who has in their passport a visa from certain blacklisted countries. For example, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon - also known as Syria Lite - will not allow you to enter their country if you have a visa / entry stamp from Israel in your passport.)

I talked to the Consulate this morning to find out how long it would take to have a second passport issued, fully expecting it to take two to three days.

Me: "So how long would it take to get the new passport."

Consulate: "About 45 minutes."

"For what?"

"The passport."

"You mean the application?"

"Yeah. It might take an hour."

"And when would the passport be ready?"

"Forty five minutes to an hour. We print it right here."

"Are you serious? I come in and will have a new passport in an hour??"

"Yes, just go online and make an appointment."

So, the moral of the story is that at least compared to highly-corrupt, third-world governments, ours is pretty awesome.

(Fun fact: Uncle Sam was actually a real guy named Samuel Wilson from New York.  During the War of 1812, he supplied the US Army with dried meat in barrels stamped with "US", which obviously stood for United States, but soldiers called it meat from "Uncle Sam", a dual reference to the army and Sam, which eventually became synonymous with the US government.  Thankfully, "Brother Jonathan" and "Columbia" never really caught on.  The character Uncle Sam was partly inspired by John Bull, the personification of Britain.)

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.

Where Did All These People Come From?

Everybody knows India and China are the world's most populous countries (little known fact - the US is a distant #3), but you don't really appreciate it until you visit and see how many people are packed into such a small space. What you don't realize is that India is only about 1/3 the size of the US in terms of land area. Couple that with a population four times as large, and you get an average population density of over 1,000 people per square mile, while the US average is about 86 and China's is 363.

That means people are on top of each other, everywhere (in the first picture below, you can see the smoke from the explosion that's still burning). I literally do not understand how the country is able to get that much food to that many people in such a confined space every day. Where does it all come from? I guess that's part of the problem.

Wherever you go, people (and cows and camels) are living in every inch of available space. As we were leaving a meeting today, I saw this group of people hanging out in an empty lot across the street.

I realized they were all living there. Inside the little hut - which is an abandoned milk stand - there were about three little kids laying down, taking up what looked like about half of all the available space. (The most striking thing was how happy some of the kids seemed... they were playing, running around with big smiles, despite the fact that their mom was busy stoking a garbage fire to cook their dinner... my theory on their happiness will have to wait for its own blog post.)

One of our Indian colleagues was talking about how improving the nutrition situation will help reduce the size of families. Perplexed, I asked why. She went on to explain that families had to play the odds here - they will have five or six kids, hoping at least one or two will survive to adulthood.