Sunday, July 22, 2012

Update At the End


Weeks have gone by.

Miles have gone by with their villages and town centers, and the faces of communities and their leaders remain with me.

I’m in the unfortunate position that I am somewhat dissatisfied with the quality of data my research team has brought back to me. I think I'll get something out of it, though I will have to pick and choose. This is pretty much entirely because of time. Even the sharpest need a couple of dry runs to get the bugs worked out, and these fellows are no different. I don’t hold them responsible. 

I hold myself responsible, for not figuring out faster that I needed to get more permits/ducks in a row.

I hold my Master’s program responsible for not using their many connections to better provide support and guidance for me – especially when I’ve had only one year to complete this. However, this is the inaugural class. And I knew coming into this that there would be bumps in the road, and that our bumps would benefit the classes to follow.

I hold my students and their collaborators responsible for not knowing their own permitting regulations… sort of. I mean, can I really blame them for just telling me the status quo, and not realizing that having a foreign researcher who wasn’t originally under their umbrella would be different than foreign students who are under their umbrella? 

But regardless. We’ve learned bunches! Figured out how to do proportional piling reasonably well (though a little late), refined the focus group strategies, and learned a lot about connecting the dots between district, subcounty, parish, and village. 

There was also random knowledge gained. Greetings and thank you's in three languages, ate way more bananas than anyone ever should (in my opinion), and learned about bacterial banana wilt – probably one of the most serious threats to the food supply here.

And now I leave in two days.

And submit the first draft of my case study tomorrow.

Which begs the question: why am I writing a blog post?
Answer: to get my creative juices flowing.

Here goes nothing!

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Hard Work and a Day Off


So, I should probably update on what I’m actually here for. And what I’ve done to distract myself from it. I’ve avoided it because it’s not going very well. I’m tied up in paperwork six ways to Sunday, actually. This is, I suppose what happens when you try to coordinate a project between two nonprofits, to universities, and a government agency. Interestingly, it’s the US university that is making this truly difficult.

I’ll not go into details (it’s boring and probably best left to private conversation anyway), but suffice to say that ethical board approval is tedious, extensive, and exacting. Add to that a healthy dose of international misunderstanding and miscommunication, plus a sprinkling of “it’ll happen when it happens” attitude, and you have yourself a pretty good idea of what I’ve been dealing with for the past two weeks.

Progress has been made, but time is tick tick ticking away. I now have less than 4 weeks left here, and have barely started a 2.5 week application process. This is seriously concerning. People are starting to push me to extend my time here, something I REALLY don’t want to do.

So, last weekend, to distract myself from the endless trips to various offices, waiting, talking, and shuffling papers, I went white-water rafting! The White Nile has been dammed, which is too bad, but there are still lots of great rapids! Two rapids that our guides referred to as class VI, which I’m told is unusual. One of which we had to portage around, the other of which we went down on the lower class side. The one we portaged was... enormous, in every sense of the word: height dropped, volume of water, length of the whitewater section(s), size of the obstacles, lack of any calm patches… I wish I had had my camera to take a little video of! It was humbling to sit there and imagine going down.

I’ve included a couple pictures:


This one is our first rapid of the day, a good one!


Above water…


Soon to be very much underwater… 
                            
The last picture is immediately before I spent a bit longer underwater than I had hoped. I got stuck under the boat, and couldn’t get above water. Fortunately, it was probably only a few seconds. It sure felt like longer, though! All in all, it was a really great day. A perfect distraction!

Thursday, June 28, 2012

A Saxy Lady's Memories


Sometimes I think I should have gone into music instead of science. I went to a Goat Rodeo Sessions concert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAPM6EueWXY) and just about fell to pieces with joy. (I hope that's a good link, I can't listen to it here, or use up all of my data!). It’s been 5 long years since I played music seriously, let alone with other people seriously. I mean, I can’t keep away from most musical instruments for too long, eventually they just call me over. Especially my parents’ piano. My piano, I hope, someday. It’s from my mother’s side of the family, an unpainted baby grand of unusual make (I can’t remember). It has a good touch, no sticky keys and – best of all – a mellow rich timbre full of resonance, harmonics, and depth.

But even playing that piano (or even the loveliest concert grand I’ve been privileged to touch) is nothing, nothing! compared to playing in a group that is dedicated, practiced, and locked into each other. I miss the Saxy Ladies. We were four, we were women, we were in college, we played a saxophone or two a piece. Sarah-with-an-H, Sara-without-an-H, E. Penn, and me. Oh what fun! Laughing about “The Office” and practicing 3-4 times a week. The occasional gig. We swung, we rocked, we soared, we always performed in bare feet. And a handful of times, we touched something very special.

One evening, in our second year playing together, we were working on a delightful classical piece whose name I don’t even remember (I need to develop a better memory for names… this is sad), but that we all loved. We were on the second level of the now destroyed Mac music building, and we had been playing for 40 minutes or so. And we started this piece, and half way through something it became clear this wasn’t a usual run through. We played with one mind, breathing ebbing flowing… waiting… moving, soaring. And we realized it, and we let it keep flowing. And when we arrived at the last note we let it end, together, and stopped. Amazed. Looked at each other, with eyes wide and grins growing. “That was good!” E. Penn  said. I could only nod. “Really good,” Sara-without-an-H said. We laughed and shivered. It was a little scary to pick up our horns again after that… sometimes, it’s hard to follow your own act.

Which brings me back to science, which I love for its methodical care and dedicated search for understanding. It’s the other side of me, the intellectual. Good music, though, is and has always been pure emotion for me. Expression and sharing, the best and sometimes only way I can communicate what I feel. I have to be careful, because if I spend too much time with my head buried in the words of intellect and not enough time with my spirit soaring or dancing or resting on a string of sound… I will not be whole. Perhaps the same could have been said if I had pursued music. If you’re wondering, I do remember why I didn’t try to turn my love for music professional. I didn’t want to kill such love with too much practice. And I felt (and feel!) called to biology, with it’s secrets and patterns and webs of living and dying. Still, sometimes I think I'd have been better off 

Friday, June 22, 2012

A Familiar New Place

Kampala.
Uganda.
How are you so familiar to me? I know almost nothing about you, and have certainly never been here. And yet... the taxis, the trees, the air, the food, the helpful people, the annoying people, the pace of life, the energy... are all as familiar as an old pair of jeans. A dusty pair of jeans, with a patch, that you can't quite give up! Except that I never wear jeans here.

I came in part because of the connections of my advisors, in part because they have the right elements for me to put together the research I'm really interested in, and in part because I wanted practice Swahili. Too bad they don't so much speak it here... irony! I keep trying to get back to a place where I can use that delightful language and I keep getting detoured to other (wonderful) places. I guess I'm very lucky.

I've come to the conclusion that this place is the Boston of East Africa. Hilly! This city is very hilly, the buildings old and full of their own history, or new and shiny. The roads are twisty, the intersections complicated and often one way this way, one way that way. The traffic is terrible, the drivers concerning, yet it moves most of the time. But when it jams... boy howdy does it jam! Then you'd bed pick a boda bada, a motorbike... but that's as good a way as any to die. So I try to avoid it.

Ugandans are quite friendly! And maybe it's that I give off the air of someone who knows where she's going (which is complete pretense half the time... good acting skills?), but the "lizards" on the streets here aren't so bad so far. Though the boda bodas will charge a mzungu (white person) price if they can.

The new things are mostly in the levels of society I'm working with. Meeting folks in the ministries, staying with expats, going to a concert -- they have a music school, and a good one! A symphony orchestra, too. Plenty of Africans in it, which was cool. This experience has thus far been a bit like Peace Corps, but the institutions behind me have different motivations and a different sort of cache, a different power... but I'm still the low budget traveller, just I try to dress a little better. Keep my clothes as clean as I can, since I know these professors and deans, these coordinators, CEOs, etc. will give me short shrift if I don't.

I need to take my camera and take some photos... to show the little shops and taxis and potholes that are so familiar, the big mango tree by Jinja Road that soars a hundred plus feet into the air! To show the seven hills, and the red-tiles roofs that climb up and over them, the humid air softening the contrast between the red roofs and the green trees and vines climbing everywhere. To show the little chickies, the proud rooster, and the baby black mamba that visited my hosts home tonight. It is all much the same, Kampala, as many of the other cities in Africa that I have seen. Prettier, but still it's a different flavor of the same ice cream.