The Interior is Not Very Far....

Choices, choices. Is not that what defines being alive. I just did not know what to choose on our "out" day here in Panama during the NetHope conference. There was an all day trip to the Chagas National Park. I am still operating in that pardigm of assuming long distances over horrible roads while in developing nations. I am being continually surprised by Panama. I have yet to hit a gravel road and the potholes are not noteworthy. Disappointed? No.



I chose the 1/2 day trip to the village of San Antonio hosted by the NGO WinRock. In about forty minutes by tour bus from our hotel on the Pacific Ocean terminus of the Canal, we exited from a well-paved highway for maybe ten minutes and parked at the entrance to a reserve. This was jungle like I had not seen before. My forays to Latin American countries that should have had tropical rain forests had all been deforested long ago. How could those people in non-Panamanian countries do such such a thing to the environment, disdaining good environmental stewardship? Oops, I have retreated to my North Ageneralized viewpoint once more. Oh yes, those de-foresters were merely trying to survive....



After disembarking, we soon saw two motorized boats coming towards us across a wide expanse of vegetation-choked shallow waters. Entering these water craft carefully ("stay low"), we arrived within 7 minutes to the dock of a small village called San Antonio, which consisted of maybe a 1/2 dozen thatched dwellings and 2-3 small concrete buildings. The purpose of the tour was to see an internet kiosk developed in partnership with Intel and Winrock to provide internet connectivity to this community of 30 persons. As I have seen all over the world, a more lasting solution to poverty is education. If your school age children lack access to the internet, you are at a disadvantage with your academic peers (e.g. research, etc.). We had the opportunity also to purchase handcrafted items constructed from articles from the surrounding forest.



We afterwards took a short hike into the jungle. I was thrilled to have my sharp-eyed friend Mark from Family Health International spot a sloth up in a tree. I also saw a couple of anteaters. The latter were drawn to the trails of leaf-cutter ants carrying their fungal incubator stock over their heads along the jungle floor. The village is apparently on an island about 2/3 of the way from the Pacific towards the Caribbean side of the Canal. I noted the increased heat and humidity that we lacked on the Pacific side.



On our return to the tour bus across the protective moat, we quickly caught up to the first boat tranversing the lagoon, since we had to take two separate boats for our group. They had snagged a submerged log on their exit. I shouted out a un-thoughful comment of, we'll send food back!. I once again have spoken without thinking, but my comment of dispair was based on the influemce of my recent completion of an account of Theodore Roosevelts' (he is much on my mind this trip - I own, and have read repeatedly, a first edition of his African Game Trails.) ill-fated trip down an Amazon river where this stout heart despaired of such jungle conditions that he contemplated taking his own life to avert negative affect on his fellow travelers.



We all arrived safely, with myself confident of long-term survival in case of mishap due to my obvious well-fed nature (the caimans would head for me first!). Nearby, we stopped at the Gamboa resort hotel who generously provides the wireless internet connection to San antonio. What a place! I need to return here with my wife for an extended stay.

Panama - A Paradigm Shift

I have arrived in Panama City to attend the biannual NetHope conference at the Ciuadad de Sabre (City of Knowledge). I am staying at the Country Suite Hotel immediately adjacent to the Pacific terminus of the Panama Canal.

This was an easy trip, especially to Central America. A short 6 hour flight from Seattle (yes, short) to Miami and then three hours to Panama. I've been flying a lot in the last 4 years so my mileage on American Airlines earned me a coupon to stay free at their Admirals Club. A bit over-rated, but definitely more pleasurable than the main Miami terminal. Plus, free coffee! That's a bonus to keep expenses down, and a boost after taking the 10:30PM red-eye flight out of Seattle!

I always love returning to Latin America. The culture is so easily engaged, plus I have a barely functioning grasp of Spanish (that is in positive comparison to my knowledge of most languages of the countries that I visit). Also, El Salvador, a couple of countries to the north, was my first trip out of the United States for Save the Children. That trip changed my occupation and future outlook on life globally. It also changed how I viewed myself. I am still pretty much a whining, self-centered norte americano fully entrenched in rampant consumerism. But I have noted some changes...

Panama is distinctly different than Honduras, Guatemala or El Salvador. I can see that it is much more stable here politically and financially. This is going ot be fun.

Field Testing in Tranh Hoa

Our training concluded at the Hanoi Country Office in Hanoi on Wednesday. Khahn, the Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist caught on very quickly. I soon discovered that he has a broad background in the PC database application Microsoft Access. This helped him to write the form scrips that enabled the skip questioning and other form objects that extends the basic design software.

By the end of the day, we had pretty much completed the test form which we were to take out to two health centers in the Tranh Hoa province about 4 hours south of Hanoi. During lunch I learned that Khahn is married with two boys, the youngest being less than two months old. With less than an hour until office closure on Wednesday, I could see that 90% of the form was finished, but could use some tweaking of a particularly elegant navigation script that was not quite working. I could see Khahn valiantly trying to change it to become functional. He, at last succeeded, but was running out of time to make the form fully usable in small ways. I suggested that I finish it up, but his work ethic was making this suggestion uncomfortable to him. Knowing he had a wife at home with two small children, I pulled rank on him as the consultant and told him it would be complete and loaded on 5 PDA's by the morning.

We discovered that the native Windows Mobile keyboard lacks sufficient Vietnamese accented characters. This was of great concern to me, but Khahn said that the Vietnamese characters are Latin-based, but understandable, to most all people even lacking the accents. The forms were fully translated into Vietnamese, sans accent marks, for our field testing on Thursday and Friday. Ngoc anh would accompany us, and she would provide logistical support for our trip in order to allow Khahn his full focus on the field testing. Ahn is a health program assistant and also very fluent in English. She will also conduct some of the interviews on our first day. I appreciated that I would be able to observe the differences in how the mothers experienced interviewers from both genders. I love this part....

I had also wanted to place a branding logo for Save the Children at the beginning of the form, as well as the form title. This might seem like candy-coating, but those PDA screens are tiny compared to a big sheet of paper. It is simple to determine the form your are going to select while in an air conditioned office, but not so for a health worker in the clinic environment.



We arrived at the Bach Lim hotel, which was rather nice, early in the afternoon. It was very warm and humid, but I was delighted to see an air conditioner in my room. I am finding that hot water is irrelevant in many tropical locations since the water is already warm. After a brief rest, we packed up and headed for the first health center.



But first we would stop at the District Health Clinic to meet the Director and his staff. Save the Children partners with the Ministry of Health providing management of the health program and technical assistance. I was soon to discover that protocol and visibility was important, especially for a foreign visitor - me!



After a demonstration of the PDA's, the director wedged into our vehicle and we arrived at the first health clinic as the mothers were arriving. Pre-planning was evident, with two tables set up outside the clinic for the interviews. One by one, them others sat with either Anh or Khahn and went through the interview.



We had placed a digital signature field on the form asking for each respondents permission to conduct the interview. I have added a data security and data privacy section to my training package, so here was another opportunity to see how trust is engendered between interviewer and respondent with technology squarely in between.





We quickly went through the 20 interviews and I thought we would then depart. Was I wrong. Khahn inidcated that we would have a summary meeting. It was towards the end of the interviews that I saw the director walk over and greet a newly-arrived group of men. I now found out that this was the People's Committee for the village.

Now then, in 1970, after finishing hish school, I awaited my lottery number that would determine if I would be drafted unvoluntarily into the U.S. Army for a trip to the southern portion of this then-partioned country. I had strong feelings, like many students of this era about going, however I am not confident of my altruisitc beliefs at the time. I did not want to go. A high draft number kept me at my production assistant job for an electronics firm (not bad for just out high school. My father had me working part-time with him at small electronics companies since I was 14 (post-high school, I was able to avoid a fast food franchise income like my friends).



So, here I was professionally representing one of the largest NGO's in North Vietnam, and the local Party leadership had come to see what was going. I knew that news of my arrival had been given to these particular men before I had ever disembarked off of the plane. I had emailed my Statement of work and a copy of passport for the visa application process. Now, they wanted to see in person who I was and what I had come to do. This was fascinating.



We all sat at a table as I listened to dialogue which seemed more like speech-making ot me - ery formal and deliberate. It was hot and humid and it had been a long day and I was ready to go. But, I knew that this was, once again, a rare opportunity to represent not only Save the Children, but also America. I am very aware of this representation. I, unlike most toursits, often travel to remote locations where the polite stares tell me silently that, other than on CNN, I am the first glimpse of a Westerner. A chance not to be passed up.

Ahn was translating for me as the speeches continued. I knew what was coming, so I opened up Pocket Word on my PDA and began jotting down a few remarks. Sure enough, Ahn asked me during a pause in the conversation if I would like to say anything.



I do not know how well it translated, since my translators all over the world oft freely adjust my comments to our mutual benefit. After thanking thme for allowing us to conduct the surveys, I told them that I was impressed with their leadership for encouraging this pioneering effort in their village. This seemed to go over well, and smiling faces and eyes turned my way. The People's committee leader directed refreshments to be brought and we soon toasted each with Vietnamese beer (Halida).
Grievences redressed, at least on a personal, local level.



We returned to the hotel and went out for dinner at a nearby eatery. Khahn in particular has enjoyed watching me encounter various foods with an abundance of invertebrates. Aha, but he did not realize that I was passionate about invertebrate zoology in my first college foray. In fact, I described to him how my personal email address is actually the genus of a nearly universally-distributed fresh water snail (the cloak comes off...) which happens to be rare in that it's shell whorl is left-handed (yes, I too, am a south-paw). My rule overseas, is if my hosts eat it, I will eat it. Except for those fried chicken feet in the Philippines (I don't knw where those chickens had been walking!)

The air conditiong went out late at nightr after Khahn and I made some last minutes changes to the forms. all had gone realy well, and my PDA field feedback notes that I took during observation indicated no problems. In fact, I was surprised at how easily the forms worked and the respondents interaction with them. The next morning everyone asked how I slept, partly in curiousity in how a sweating Westerner took the heat. I actually fell asleep quickly and awoke refreshed. A quick breakfast of Pho and we were off for an early start to our 2nd health center.



The People's Committee leadership was noticeably absent, so the beer and my well-translated speech did the trick. This time the interviews were to be conducted by the health workers (HW), therefore we would quickly train the HW's to the PDA's and how the forms work. I just love this part, because it is at this level of interface all of my work proceeds.



I watched as Ahn and Khahn expertly emonstrated the use of the PDA's and the intend and function of the health questionnaires. I noticed four of HW's trying to look over their shoulders, so I grabbed another PDA and gently approached them from the side. Now, before all of this started I noticed a rather severe dispositioned lady walk in. She stood nearly a head taller than the rest (my height) and seemed to be the senior member. When she entered the room and looked and me and made a comment without smiling. I asked Ahn, and she told me that the lady asked if I understood any Vietnamese. Put into my place again. Anyway, as I began to demonstrate, the serious lady moved immediately towards us and displaced me with her newly-acquired knowledge of the PDA form and began instructing the HW's. Instead of a slight, I just moved away and reveled at the success of peer-to-peer training unfolding.



Oops, it is late Sunday night, I must do a little packing before I head into the office for a final bit of training and my summary and recommendations presentation to the CO Director and his staff.

This is why I do this work:



More later on my visit to the huge, elaborate mausoleum/museum (etymologically related, those two words?) of Ho Chi Minh, and the Army War Museum to view downed U.S. planes....

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.