In the City....Vietnam

As I had hoped, the staff here at Save the Children have let me gain liberty to do it on my own, albeit very selectively. It is a very safe city. I needed some Vietnamese currency, so the hotel suggested I walk to an ATM a block away. This was very fortunate since ATM's are few and distant here. The hotel doorman walked outside onto the street and just pointed down a side street. One must constantly be aware of traffic, even on side streets. This city is filled with hordes, no armies of motor bikes going everywhere! I used my credit card to withdraw some Vietnam Dong for our visit to the countryside - 4 hours to the south by vehicle. I also wanted some extra money for shopping this weekend, etc. So, by pulling a couple of hundred US dollars equivalent, I found myself a millionaire by Vietnamese standards: 2.6 million Dong! I also took a taxi both to and from the office today. I am enjoying this city unlike all others. Very exciting, clean and safe.

By the way, in the picture above, the bowl on the left is filled with tiny live crabs - very fresh!

When I returned to the hotel this afternoon, the fresh bowl of fruit had been replaced with a different variety. Usually, it contained what appeared to be small chestnuts, but actually something like tiny kiwi fruit. These did not interest me and they must of noticed my lack of interest. Today, it was filled with short, stout bananas. Now, I often see the banana type all over the tropics which are the starchy plantains used for cooking. I thought that these were those. Oh, to my delight, this was absolutely the most succulent, delicious bananas I have ever had anywhere in the world. Not only were the bursting with flavor, but seemed combines with flavors of peach, cherry, orange. They were incredible. Vietnam has delightfully surprised me.



Above is a picture of my partner, Khahn, studiously and earnestly developing his health form for testing the next two days. I put a few touches to it this evening, so all ready....

Oh, And I Almost Forgot....What Almost Happened

8/12/2007 - London Café,
Addis Ababa Airport, Ethiopia

Well, I almost pulled a Jack Nicholson from Five Easy Pieces. I sat down and looked at a menu and finally decided on a egg sandwich. Hoping to make it quasi-McDonalds, I decided to ask for it with cheese, since I noticed that there was also a toasted cheese sandwich on the menu. When the waitress inquired as to my order, I replied that I would like the egg sandwich with cheese. Confused, she asked if I wanted the toasted cheese sandwich or the egg sandwich. I replied that I wanted an egg sandwich with cheese, to which she solemnly shook her head. I then began to suggest that since they had both a toasted cheese sandwich and an egg sandwich available in the kitchen, could they not simply take the cheese from....and there I stopped myself. I paused, smiled, and said, "just the egg sandwich and a water, please". That was close.....

The waitress brought this huge egg sandwhich with ripe tomatoes, sliced hot peppers and french fries. After two Ethiopian oranges sodas, I was amazed that it came to only $5.00 US.

If you are wondering what connection this episode has to do with Jack Nicholson, you would need to see the movie mentioned above with the interaction between Jack and the diner waitress...

In Hanoi

My flight from Bangkok arrived at the airport here in Vietnam a little before 8PM and I was comfortably installed in my 4th floor room at the Green Park Hotel in downtown Hanoi before 10PM. I was able to get a pretty good nights sleep, but the time zone difference with my departure country of Uganda the prior day had me predictably up at 2AM.

Traffic, even at night, is different here. The two lane roads coming in from the airport has many motorcycles in the right lane, and the cars and trucks in the left lane. As we entered the heart of Hanoi, many young couples were out for a cooler foray on their motorcycles. It is hot and very hunid here, much more so than any other place that I have been in the world, even Bangladesh and the Philippines.

I am awaiting my ride to the nearby Save the Children office after having breakfast up on the top floor of the hotel. This is one of the better hotels that i have stayed at, which I partly rate by having a in-room hot water maker for coffee!

The Mothers in Bukuma Village

The actual field testing occured Tuesday afternoon. The mothers would not be back into their houses until then since like most women in developing countries they needed to transport water and firewood to thier households. I turn on the tap and hit the thermostat when needed and complain bitterly if the power goes out for a few days and the well pump ceases back in the U.S......

The team armed with PDA's fanned out after the two Save vehicles deposited us just a few kilometers from the office. Still, we were in a far different place with small brick or wattle houses separated by a few hundred yards. Each house had a cleared perimeters being well swept. As usual I was drawn to the anxious and inquiring stares of the children, always the youngest standing behind an older brother or sister. I am always cautious in approaching groups of children, not only to not frighten them, but to assess the appropriateness of it. I ask staffer about this and here it was fine, but I do not want ot turn and deflect a rock or a stick thrown my direction. But, as always, the tall, well-fed, blued-eyed, pale-skinned stranger is welcomed. Take pictures of them, then after showing them themselves the exclaim with glee and crowd about me. I love it.



After each interview, I asked the HEW how it went. They all mentioned that it went well with no problems. Now, culturally, it is always difficult to determine if I am being given the polite answer or the true assessment. Probing questions often help, but the consensus was in. They had no problems. Even when it began to rain, the mother took the HEW indoors to finish the survey. People normally do not remain in puring rain to converse. A plastic bag serves as an inexpensive moisture deterrent (this I learned from my managers' daughter while sampling with a PDA on high volcanic slopes).

A typical interviewer is shown in the following picture:



Note the male interviewer on the left of this picture and half of the team (the team split into two different villages) sitting on the right following the interviewer with their own PDA forms. There is an enacted timer on the PDA form and each interview took on an average of 16 minutes. The grandmother (who happneded to be blind) is seated to the mothers right. I have seen this scene so many times all over the world. It is fascinating to see it duplicated in so many different environmental and cultural contexts. We at Save the Children have strong technical advisers who maintain contact with the current trends and methodologies for our programs across other NGO's. They also provide a uniform methodology by remaing in constant contact with our Country Office program managers all over the world. This takes great effort and requires a high cost to do so. Donate to your favored NGO (how pretentious of me!)

What I am accumulating is a trans-CO knowledge of certain programs across many of our areas of program delivery, and not simply from the programmatic view, but actually in the field. Food Security in Save is based on the same model, mostly linked with health provisions (the two are undeniably linked), but I am able to talk to the managers who have to get the food rations delivered by truck over impassable roads to the villages in time. How do tell they communicate to the mothers who are going to carry their malnourished babies many kilometers in hot humid weather the next day that the trucks broke down or that a political demonstration blocked the road. The mothers simply arrive without the food distribution. I have never seen this happen and it seldom, if ever, does, but Food security managers always describe it as their biggest fear - the logistics. If it happens, some of those babies might not have reason to return next distribution cycle.....go figure.

I must finish packing. It is Sunday and I will be picked up in a couple of hours to go to Entebbe Airport to depart to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. A few hours layover (I will be vigilant Lee...), a connection in Bangkok Thailand, then onto Vietnam. This is great.

In Luwero

Olivia and I left Kampala for the trip to the Save the Children sub-distict office in Luwero on Monday. It is about 60 kms north of Kampala, and I am excited to get out of the city and into the project areas of Save. They had some pretty bad rains here and the roads out of the city are clogged. Not far north of Kampala a large and impressive bridge is being built which is at right angles to the main north-south highway. I have no idea how long it has been constructed, but there was no noticeable evidence of activity going on. The bypass that went below and around the bridge, was filled with muddy water, some of which was pouring into the adjacent shops lining the bypass. A low car had attempted to cross through the flooding water and had stalled, effectively stopping the heavy traffic of vehicles, over-crowded wildly decorated buses and myriad trucks. Fortunately for us, our direction was fairly clear since most traffic mid-morning is back into Kampala.



After but a couple of hours we arrived at the municipality of Luwero where Save's office is. The area that we had just passed through was hilly and filled with trees and lush shrubbery. Banana trees abounded. I have found that the diet here is high in starches and rather uninteresting for my palate. I tried cassava for the first time, and potatoes, both sweet and Irish (our regular American Idaho variety), rice abounded. Chicken was omnipresent, but I found that is was rather tough and sinewy. We were greeted warmly as we entered the compound. I was met first by the administrator, David. There was a moment of confusion since we both thought we were repeating the others' name rather than providing our own (mine is David as well, in case I have not identified myself prior...).



Also, a quick note, I always have a predilection for both drivers and the lonely compound gate guards. At one point, after having always greeted the gate keepers upon entering each day, I went and sat in the tiny guard booth for a chat. These booths, as I have seen all over the world, are so small an afford essentially a place out of the rain. I noted after I left the booth after concluding a delightful comparison of cell phones, that I was cast a few glances. Perhaps, one does not fraternize in the guard booth. It had 2 windows and an open door, but I am somewhat egalitarian nature so I did not inquire. The picture of the guard follows this text.



We were graciously conducted to a large meeting room and provided with refreshments continually. Luc was busy in the Kampala office but would join us later today. The purpose of this training was for the Health Extension workers (HEW) who would actually use the PDA form for the Family Planning survey. this frankly the most exciting aspect of my visit, since these are the persons in direct contact with the beneficiaries. this is where the mobile processor connects with the people in need.



I was really surprised at how quickly and eagerly the HEW's took to the PDA's. I never noticed any sleepy eyes during the next three days and I was plied with questions. The HEW's explored the PDA's beyond my introductory training evidenced by needing to re-configure in preparation for my upcoming training in our Vietnam CO.

To go backwards in this time line, at the conclusion of the PDA training with the M&E, IT persons at the Kamapala office, Luc and I knew that we needed a form to be used by the HEW's in Luwero. The LQAS Family Planning (FP) form that Luc had derived from the Flexible Fund FP master form was one of the most articulate and well constructed form that I have seen introduced during on of my sessions. While it was strait forward, it needed a series of scripts behind the scenes of the PDA form for control of data. for example, a interviewer can literally record with pencil any numerical value for a persons age in years; in this case the LQAS FP survey is inclusive only of women from age 15 to 49. This might seem a low possibility happening, but actual field survey circumstances are less that optimal. Crying children distract a Moms attention, cooking chores, husbands, hot, humid, precipitation. So, inadvertent values are records for the simplest questions, and unless found by the interviewer, the person who then receives the form to hand-transcribe the survey data into a computer perhaps miles and weeks later has no idea of the correct value.



So, in our form, over the weekend, I placed an implicit value range allowed in the age field and made it it a required field, i.e."you must provide a value and it must be correct. This increases the data accuracy and frankly incorrect values are difficult to surmise post-interview and are either discarded or altered. The LQAS-type survey contains mostly dichotomous questions, Yes or No, etc. Also the LQAS statistical model provides a high degree of confidence with only a sample count of 19 (really). Therefore, if only one survey is inaccurate of the total of 19, the degree of confidence diminishes quickly.

I realized that Olivia, who I observed had both the mental regimen and eagerness to build these mobile databases, did not yet have the knowledge to build this type of form. However, I invited her to give it a try and then we will compare ofrms for our Monday training. I later told her that this put her in an almost impossible position, but I wanted her to give it a try independently of my instruction. I worked most of the weekend, only going out once to walk a mile or so, in order to the have a viable test form ready. In addition the LWAS FP form incorporates a skip questioning pattern. Th is simply a built in logic. If the respondent answers Yes, then the interviewer asks the succeeding question. However, if the respondent answers No, then the interviewr goes to question 42 in the 3rd section. Using a paper form in the field, this seems fairly straight forward once again, but there can be many distraction during the interview. also, paper forms, although much larger than a PDA screen, are often crowded with details and instructions and can be disorienting. On a PDA-designed form, a simple scrit automatically moves to the correct question based on the response. The scripts are simple in construct and actually make sense:

exitscreen:
if answer == Y then
goto [FP303A]
else (which is equivalent to a "No")
goto [FP301B]
endif

The [FP303] is actually a question code within the form, as well as [FP301B]. It's pretty simple. So, by monday we had a form to train with. Of course Olivia was stopped at something she had not encountered in the training, and quickly resolved it. So, with 7 PDA's passed out ot the HEW's we began our training!

A Clean Sweep

This being Sunday, it is a quiet day. The hotel is sleepy as well as the surrounding streets. I am pretty much finished in preparation for our trip to the program impact area tomorrow, so I will get a start on my assessment report, which I will deliver verbally and in paper form to the Country Office Director at the end of the week. Already, I can see the report recommendations emerging in my mind - all I have to do is to write it.

I have observed that after newly arriving in a country, I am struck by peculiar disconnected images. There is much to see here, just in Kampala. But, I seemed ot have taken particular notice of the street sweepers. These are likely paid municipal workers who patrol the streets. I have seen these sweepers in other countries as well. Here, they are all women. I saw a mother and adult daughter (I suppose) arrive to the area directly across from my breakfast table this morning. The mother first emerged from up the street dragging on a rope what looks like a large plastic 5 gallon vegetable oil container cut in half vertically. In her hand was the typical straw broom. Its bristles are similar to those in our long-handled straw brooms in North America, yet without the handle. Instead the 3 foot long bristles are fasted and the hand end. This lady was carrying an older, well worn broom barely a couple of feet long. This necessitates bending over at a back-breaking angle all day long. But, behind here came here daughter with a new 3 foot long broom. After sitting their parcels down, the mother picked up the new broom and began sweeping leaves, paper bits and dust from the broad sidewalk to the street gutter. I have watched these sweepers before, executing long broad sweeps for maximum effort. She had not swept long, for as soon as her daughter changed into a smock, she unceremoniously threw down the longer broom and walked a short distance away. Her daughter then picked up the new broom and began sweeping, all the while her mother shaking a finger at her less-than-elegant sweeps and speaking to her.

What a job. Again, I am struck oddly for even noticing this,even though it unfolded below me. I know that I would of looked at this scene rather than possibly more interesting scenes. But I think that I have left that paradigm that I used ot have before I traveled so much when I used to mentally criticize, "why do they not use a gasoline-powered blower? Where are the municipal street sweeper trucks?" Labor is cheap in developing countries. A gasoline blower would be beyond income reach of a street sweeper, not to mention the gasoline cost. A street sweeping truck would employ ONE worker. Employment is preferable than efficiency....

Another observance difficult to avoid is the security guards walking through town. I have always seen the guards with shotguns standing at the entrance ot banks, ATM's, and in Central America even at the McDonald's fast food restaurants and most all middle class dwellings. But here in Kampala the preferred weapon seems to the AK-47 automatic machine gun. When passing them on the street, they are simply gonig to and from work. Still, it is unnerving....they definitely have the advantage for I carry but a folding Swiss Army style Leatherman knife. I feel that it is much more useful in the long run, perhaps even for survival in a non-human threatening situation.

Still Tethered....

It is Saturday. It was beautiful sunshine as I ate my breakfast at the Terrace Restaurant on the Hotel mezzanine. So, I decided to don my cultural spacesuit and venture out onto the streets of Kamapala. Of course, I first prudently inquired at the front desk as to the saftey for my excursion, but the response was consistant with my security briefings before I left the U.S. One must just be aware as in any large city. Pickpockets could jostle you for a wallet, but I always keep all valuables (in part, the rest are ALWAYS locked in my room safe, never the hotel safe where several persons have access) in my fanny pack which is situate on the front of my waist and clipped to my pants belt loop. The biggest dangers overseas statistically are for pedestrians being hit by cars, or on the road. I took extra care on Kampalas congested streets since the follow the reverse street travel direction of the U.S.

I stepped out onto the street corner opposite the hotel and was immediately targeted by taxi drivers offering a ride. I have watched them from the safety of the hotel and they keep a watchful eye for hotel guests, so I expected this and politely declined with a shake of my head and a smile. Still, as in most overseas location, I draw curious stares. I always try to move this towards my advantage and practice a bit of American ambassadorship and smile. Not far from walking south along Nile Street, a main thoroughfare, I spied a group of workman placing flat paving stones along the median of the road. Kampala is preparing for the CHOGM (Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting) coming in November. Representatives from 29 former British Commonwealth nations are arriving along with the Queen of England.



So, Kamapala is sprucing up its image! I crossed the street carefully and approached the work crew. Of course they all eyed me curiously as to why I approached them. I could see that the foreman was also there, as I knelt adjacent to the paver. I finally indicated his good craftsmanship since his paving stones followed his leveling lines for both straightness and height. Oops, this drew the foreman's attention and he suddenly noted that the paving stones' height exceed the curb height. Soon, I departed as the foreman heatedly discussed this error with the worker.



I then walked a few blocks in a round about fashing. I had established a "home" breadcrumb back to the hotel with my GPS unit before I left the hotel. Kamapala is, like most developing country capitals, jam-packed with many people traveling about - even on a Saturday. A motorcycle taxi driver that I encountered told me that it would rain later. I remarked that it was difficult for me to "read" the weather since it was not my native country. It looked sunny and warm to me. He was right. Back at the hotel I was distracted by crashing thinder and flashes of lightening as I did some PDA form testing. This is not even the rainy season!