The Third Day in Bamako

I feel great this morning. This climate is really agreeing with me. It is dry, unlike the high humidity that I usually encounter in other tropical climes. It is helped by the fact that Bamako is distant from the ocean and is situated at over 1,000 feet elevation.

This is my third day at the Save the Children office and all traces of jet lag have disappeared. It does not usually affect me to the degree that I hear from a lot of fellow travelers. The main difficulty is catching up on sleep after traveling for a couple of days.



I asked that, on my return to the hotel last evening, if I could stop at a store. Because of the jet lag, I have awakened each morning at two to three AM. It is curious that the former occurs on the first morning after arrival, then progresses an hour later each successive day. I am now back to my usual four or so awakening time. The stop at the store was to purchase some instant coffee for those early morning rises. Otherwise, I have to wait until the kitchen opens at 6:00 AM (although there is no response until after 6:30 AM) to order coffee. I also paused long enough at the store to obtain, what I thought, was milk for a coffee creamer. One must be careful with dairy products overseas since the can have dubious pasteurization and salmonella is no fun. Well, in my haste, I picked up a tall, slender quart of thin yogurt. Oh well...

this morning, arrangements are being finalized (lodging, transportation) for our trip to the village of Bougouni to conduct our field tests. I love getting out to the field, as I will not really know what ot expect. Not only from a tourist/ traveler point of view, but also from a professional aspect. A mantra has developed in my work of late, "what works in the air-conditioned cubicle will not necessarily work in the field". I see this over and over during my assessment trips for mobile data collection using PDA's.

I first encountered this painfully during my 3rd of 4 trips to our El Salvador office in 2004. Upon arrival, I asked the PDA team how the PDA's were doing for their data collection. They smiled and replied fine. Upon review of their collected data, I sensed that all was not well. I immerse myself into their processes during my assessments so that I embrace the program culture. i could tell that omething was not right. they should of had a higher quantity of records, and there was a curious consistency to the records that were collected. Well, to make a longer story shorter, I pretty much demanded a field visit. I interviewed each of the health workers who had PDA's. They very politely, but with evident lack of enthusiasm, they each replied that they were happy with the new technology. I knew better, since I had learned from my few trips to Latin America that often it is difficult to have problems revealed to you (we do not want you to feel bad!). I pressed the last PDA user rather strongly and she suddenly stood and declared emphatically that she did not like using the PDA's and that they had doubled her data collection work load. I was so relieved to obtain the real situation and I profusely thank her for the feedback, and to heal over my pressing (very un-Latin). Below is a picture from this session



I then found that the PDA collection form had been designed back at the office with a checkbox on the form that required that a respondent answer all questions asked before concluding the interview. Well, this is seldom practical, since a mother has meals to cook, young babies to care for. In this way, field interviews are unlike those conducted in calm, peaceful offices! From this valuable lesson learned, we removed the must answer all questions functionality on the PDA form and all was well. In order to overcome this obstacle, the health worker reverted back to collecting data on paper forms and then hand-entering the data onto the PDA's in the evening in order to satisfy the office. We had, indeed, doubled her work.

I love field testing....