Population

Uganda's Population Problems

So there is one graph that clearly illustrates Uganda's population woes and that is the population as a function of time graph. So, before Professor Orzel chimes in with questions (see the last section of this blog), the last two data points were projections that I found in the Primary 5 Uganda Social Studies book and the fit, as labeled, is an exponential fit using Microsoft Excel. I apologize in advance. (I am giving him a hard time, he is really a good guy with a book coming out that you should all buy. He has a very good blog - just google Chad Orzel and it pops up. He is that popular).





So what this graph says is that the population is rising very, very fast and should roughly double before 2050. According to a recent Monitor article, "High Birth Rates Fail UPE Says Minister Lokeris" states that the birth rate is 3.6 percent, which according to my macintosh calculator means the population will double in 19 years. I stated in a blog a couple months ago that a poll with my primary 6 class in Bunyere Village showed that the families in this area have 7.1 kids (n=198). One person had 18 siblings and just one student had only one sibling. A man from Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) stopped by the health clinic on one of his surveys and I excitedly peppered him with questions - he must be more accurate than CIA Factbook! He couldn't tell me the average children per family, but he did tell me that he was confident it was greater than five and that a lot of people walk several miles to receive basic medical treatment.

Population Pressures

The population pressures Uganda in all kinds of ways. The article "High Birth Rates Fail UPE Says Minister Lokeris" discusses the pressure on underfunded schools with too many kids (and that the Millennium Goal for universal primary education, UPE, is impossible with the joint pressure of inadequate funding and growing population). On the opposite page a newspaper article declares "Pupils learn from tree shades in Pader." It starts, "At least 50 primary schools in Pader operate under trees due to inadequate classrooms" (Monitor, Friday October 10, 2008). The class I work with has 70 students; it may be me, but I don't think it is the most conducive environment for learning. Some people I've spoken to believe that one out of five kids attend school in this area.

From our perch at the top of the hill I see problems. As the sun was nearly set I saw three siblings from a nearby family (of six) carrying firewood from the dwindling set of trees. 55,000 hectares of forest cover is lost every year according to another Monitor Article "Uganda should join the global tree planting campaign" (October 2, 2008). The great apes in the southwest corner of Uganda (there are 700 remaining in the world) are threatened by Congo rebels smuggling charcoal (if the villagers don't use scavenged wood, they use coal).

An Eagle and No Apparent Solution

The clinic lends some of its land to families to plant crops (and Becky, John, and I have been working in the garden for over a month now, trying to get some nutritious crops ready by December), but it is not enough. The house closest to the clinic eats one solid meal per day and the kids are pretty clearly malnourished. It killed me today when I saw an eagle swoop down and steal one of the families chicks. The father had been standing, guarding the chicks from the eagle, but he was ignored. He looked defeated and I really felt for him. Six kids helps a family gather enough water and firewood and maintain their land, but after a couple generations in a village of 8 person families the land per person is severely depleted. I sense that this region is at critical point in its development and from here on out it can't continue to develop in the same way without drastically increasing hardships. I try to mentally cut a slice of land for each of the kids, but the math just won't work out. In some mathematics or physics courses, you can sometimes tell when a solution isn't right - maybe the units aren't right or the order of magnitude is suspicious, or, perhaps, the physical constraints are exceeded (I remember an intro chem problem where we needed a value for the speed of light greater than 3 x 10⁹. For this mental math, the solution just doesn't work out appropriately.

The Beginnings of Absolute Desperation

Of course, The Monitor bolsters my nightmares regularly. In one paper I read that "The pastoralists accused the Police of siding with the cultivators, participating in the burning of houses and attempted to shoot those who tried to defend their property" ("One killed in fresh Kasese land clash") and, in the same paper, an article titled "Encroachers urged to leave church land" (October 10). I distinctly remember an influential high school teacher reminding us that governments can be repressive and ignore its people with little retribution, but when families don't have bread (in this case bananas or Ankole cattle) there will be violence. So these land clashes that started a year ago may be the beginnings of absolute desperation. But maybe, hopefully, I am being overly dramatic.

Climate Change and Bananas

Climate change has made its mark and is illustrated in conversations I've had with villagers as well as in climate projections. I've been told again and again, that the rainy season is starting later. Becky and I spend roughly 1-2 hours per day irrigating 150 cabbages, 27 tomato plants, and a nursery bed of eggplant, green pepper, leafy greens, and carrots (we don't water the peanuts we planted). Small scale. It would not be possible for a family to carry enough water to irrigate all of its bananas every day that it didn't rain - there isn't enough water in the bore-hole and there aren't enough hours in the day. Remember that at the bare minimum, a family must grow plantains to fill their stomachs; peanuts, tomatoes, greens, and other nutritious crops are an afterthought. So this is a major development in the last decade, decreasing crop yields from decreased rainfall and increasing the pressure on a country scraping by.

The villagers also tell me that the wetland in the valley has all but disappeared. John Kalule explains that, when he was a kid, the valley was like a lake, but you can now walk through it easily even in the rainy season. Regionally and nationally, it is the same story. "Global warming and Greenhouse gases have caused temperatures to rise, with south-western Uganda being the most affected. This is evidenced by the reduction of the water table in Mbarara, the declining of water levels in Katonga wetland system, Lake Mburo, River Rwizi, Kitagata hot springs, Lake Nakivale, the persistent droughts since 1990 and the decline in food production...The FAO representative in Uganda, Percy Misika, says temperatures are still rising and over 80% of the country could turn into a desert soon" (Monitor, "Uganda should join global tree planting campaign," Ebenezer Bifubyeka). Bifuyeka goes on to point out that "Climate change in Karamoja, where plants are confined in forest reserves has escalated to seven droughts that hit the region between 1991 and 2000 as opposed to one drought every 10 years. This is not to mention the 40% drop in the ice caps on Mountain Rwenzori, which has resulted into decreasing river flows and freshwater."

President Yoweri Museveni recently declared that nine million Ugandans and 213 million sub-Saharan Africans are starving. Museveni blames falling food production on climate change, while the World Food Program points out that food exports to Kenya are a large part of the problem (Monitor, "9 million Ugandans starving - Museveni," John Emojong).

Think about that. The article was not dramatic and emphasized Uganda's poor meteorological resources. Nine million might have been high - starving or malnourished? In either case it is nine million people on the brink. Uganda is the size of Oregon and has 32 million people. Nine million people is 28 percent of the population. That is like getting up one morning to pick up the newspaper, looking side to side at your neighbors and realizing that the neighbors to the right of you don't have enough to eat. At Engeye, we have neighbors like that. A family with five kids 100 feet north of the clinic is not properly nourished and fights to scrape by.

Uganda and Population

There are more people every day, which puts more pressure on drastically underfunded schools. The schools fail to teach. I just finished grading a Primary Seven mathematics examination: the teacher's answer key (I scored it, too) deserved a 72% (lower than three students). The mean score (49 kids) was a 40%; the median was a 37%. These privileged few are charged with the future of their village. Their generation will have to persevere on less land, with less rain, less water resources, and more mouths to feed. The UN receives less than half of pledged funding to address universal primary education, malnutrition, extreme poverty, etc. Something has to give.

The Teacher Learns

I remember going into the primary six class and drawing a flat, horizontal line across 20 feet of blackboard followed by a swift vertical line up to the top of the blackboard, representing the world population in the last 5,000 years or so. I think the world hit its first billion in the last 150 years. We are now approaching seven billion. I explained to the kids how fossil fuels helped us achieve such a high population. I tried to impress upon them how incredible the population growth was. I vaguely remember standing on a desk and pointing to the top of the chalk line I had drawn as if to say, "look how many people there are in the world right now!" I then gravely discussed what increased population means for per capita land and how vital fossil fuels, mineral resources, and water were disappearing. I drew two stick figures and gave them 6 kids. I gave half of those stick figures six kids and so on until I had 54 sticks (four generations) on the board. I grunted as I drew them to emphasize how many kids these stick figures were having. They must have been busy! For each generation of stick figures I divided a mock village into smaller and smaller, proportional plots of land to illustrate what population increases meant on the local level. Most of these kids in my class won't be able to leave the village. This was somewhere in my first full week in Ddegeya, Uganda. I think this was the point that I realized the kids had no idea what I was saying. The lecture would have only been slightly less clear if delivered in Portugese. One girl in the front row blatantly fell asleep. I am now at the point where I can communicate ideas effectively to the students and capture their attention long enough to make sure that at least a few kids get something out of my presence. At some point I will redo the population talk, especially after re-reflecting on what population means for this village.

Physics Department at Union and Professor Orzel

This section is probably only interesting to Bilal and Mike and is a very long detour to my population graph in the next section. It has nothing to do with Uganda. This section was originally at the beginning, but I moved it to the end where it might be less noticeable (it is a not so serious section of a serious blog post).

I love the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union College. It is a tight-knit group and I'm pretty sure that the only person who has the combination of know-how and want to put my blog on RSS feed is a recent graduate of the department. One of the trials the department puts you through between leisurely summer research, horrendous, time consuming lab courses, department luncheons organized by the department problem fixer, Colleen Palleschi, and weekly department talks that the faculty can't stay awake in is "student talks." They will do anything in their power to have you talk in front of people and we are all the better for it.

But we all feared them for one reason. A seven foot giant in the department named Chad Orzel usually attends these talks and occasionally raises his hand. He has been known to use single words in the place of long sentences, which left Bilal and I to pretend to understand his explanations far too many times. "Man, this secretary was giving me such a hard time about our grant proposal." "So, umm, so, Ogothemetric proshabadasher," he would reply and giggle to himself (All physics professors begin sentences with the word "so"). Bilal and I would then back away slowly faking a chuckle.

Despite his own scary vocabulary, he detests when you use fancy words like "ascertain" instead of something like "determine" or "find out." Occasionally, after he destroyed our morale on a particularly horrible homework assignment or laboratory, one of the best and the brightest in the department would use Word's synonym do-hicky as much as possible, just to irritate him and, perhaps, to highlight the hypocritical pet-peeve.

Anyways, his vocabulary is not what we feared. We feared the questions he would ask in our "student talks." He had a different set of questions for each discipline. When students throw out 18 new, mystifying terms (proteatric neoplasyogelic acid goo) in their presentations he would slowly have them flip back to a particular slide - this is always how it started, "So, umm, could you go back seven slides to the one with the picture of the double helix?" - and he would pick the perfect question to make you stumble. Students with graphs always had it worst. I used to feel bad for the kids with two points, a line, and an R² value of one; I think he eventually stopped bothering to explain that you can't conclude a trend from two data points. He could always sense your ability and what you didn't know. He would come in with that question, let you struggle, and, thankfully, allow you to leave it answered incorrectly or unanswered.

He left me untouched until Steinmetz Day my senior year, when, with five other people in the crowd, he asked me about a complicated graph that I had stupidly made in Excel instead of Sigma Plot. At first I blatantly turned to the audience and explained that I would not answer Professor Orzel's question and asked if there were any other questions. Professor Koopmann, the student's ally, kept her hand down. Professor Orzel spoke up, without acknowledgment, "So, can you turn to that one over r-squared plot?" "No," I replied. After a minute I was forced to turn to the slide - "That is labeled as one over r-squared, but clearly, it is not one over r-squared." If I had learned one thing as a Physics student at Union it is that the Physics faculty likes to work with non-mainstream technology - they nearly rioted when they couldn't use a dos-like e-mail program called "pine" as ITS switched to a Microsoft server. Many use linux or macs and most gripe about Microsoft while using it. "Oh, yeah, I made the graph in Microsoft - you know how bad Microsoft can be..." I explained. "You know I have a copy of Sigma Plot and it can make some really professional looking one over r-squared plots," he retorted. I saw Professors Vineyard, Koopmann, and LaBrake simultaneously nod their head yes, silently wondering why Steve didn't think of that. So I am always very cautious of graphs within Professor Orzel's long reach, this blog with graphs is no different.

Open Letter, Happy Thanksgiving

Dear Union College and Greater Schenectady Community,

Over the past four months we have had the privilege of volunteering in a a rural African Village out of a small Uganda based health clinic. The village we are working in is called Ddegeya (Deh-gay-ya) and the NGO is Engeye Health, which was started by an Albany Medical School student three years ago. Uganda is an East African nation straddling the equator, bordering Lake Victoria, and is about the size of Oregon State. The village is typical of this region - no power, banana plantations on top of banana plantations, women strapping children to their back with a piece of fabric, villagers toiling in the fields, women carrying 45 pounds of water on their heads, and children in bright blue school uniforms fetching water at dawn and firewood at dusk before and after classes.

Within the picturesque village and behind the ever-present Ugandan smile is a country facing severe obstacles. AIDS has struck nearly all the families we are acquainted with; malaria pours through the village as easy as the October rains; malnutrition is typical as the families (70 percent of the people here are subsistence farmers) survive on the same unvaried staples everyday; climate change may convert 80 percent of Uganda to desert even though gasoline is $6 per gallon and very few people own cars; compounding these problems, families are large (typically six or more) and population is growing exponentially even though many struggle on the little land they have.

We have tried to address some of these problems, little by little: we planted a vegetable garden and a field of peanuts to alleviate kwashiokor, a type of malnutrition; we teach and review with students at a local primary school; we work with kids who are too young or cannot afford school fees so that they get positive, educational interaction in their formative years (reading, writing, singing, arts and creative activities, and basic solving problem skills); we tutor kids on an individual basis; we help repair the road; we do various tasks around the clinic (fetching water, inventory, statistics, etc.); and we try to convey what we observe, experience, and think to all of you back home, which helps link two disparate communities. We are about to embark on our next project - distributing protein and income generating chickens to local families who will then pass on chickens to two more families (who will then pass on chickens to two more families and so on, ideally making the project sustainable). [This idea was suggested by Union's own Megan Sesil and independently by Stephen's mother].

We feel extraordinarily lucky to be able to help on such a local level, to be able to see before our very eyes the impact of our work. But we realize that, in many ways, we are messengers from home. We take the books you send and help a child to read, we take the physics experiments and help a curious mind understand the world around them, we use the vitamins to help kids grow big and strong, we use the funds to innovate and create projects that assess village needs and help the village grow sustainably, we hear your encouragement and read your ideas and enthusiastically incorporate it into the seeds we sow, the students we teach, and the community we interact with.

For all this we thank you. We signed up to work here - it is our job, our "nine to five," our passion, our obsession. You all work - and work hard - at Union as students up until the "light show" in Schaffer, as faculty, administration, and staff catering to these inquisitive students, and in Schenectady as everyday people making up the fabric of an extraordinary city. But then you work more to help a people you've never met. Many of you we do not know (but would like to meet) as you've dutifully sat at tables in Reamer, discussed our blogs in Preceptorial classes or over coffee in Minervas, attended benefit concerts or benefit (organic) dinners, donated a book, a dollar, or an idea - your dollar, interest, and encouragement goes so far in a country lacking so much. We can guarantee you that.

Some at Union deserve special note. Megan Sesil and Professor Pease have selflessly donated their time and effort to this cause, our (collective) cause, raising awareness, sending ideas and updates, raising money, collecting donations, and packaging and sending much needed supplies. Megan has worked with Wells House, Ozone House, and WRUC (among others) to bring awareness to Ddegeya, Uganda and Engeye Health. Professor Pease has incorporated insights from Ddegeya into her preceptorial class, blending intellect with service and action. Catherine Davis, Devin Harrison, and WRUC worked with and brought six incredible, local bands to the stage in a Uganda benefit concert. Our interview with her reminded us that people here, buried in hills and tucked between banana plants and mud walls, are not alone. We are not alone. Catholic Student Association and Schaffer Library made helpful donations of money and supplies. Both our families have sent kind and timely donations for children. Teresa Sesil worked with Megan to set up a pen pal program that educated students in Yonkers, New York and Ddegeya, Uganda about varying cultures first hand (kids in both schools have really enjoyed corresponding). Lastly, our boss, John Kalule, makes everything we do possible, Dean McEvoy and Professor Fried dreamed of, pursued, and achieved a challenging fellowship program that is helping so many (in Cambodia, India, Malawi, South Africa, and Uganda), and Stephanie Van Dyke had the determination to see through the Engeye vision - without these people, we would simply not be here.

In short, we thank you all for letting us be the couriers of your goodwill. We couldn't possibly list all the people helping us address educational inequality, malnutrition, and health problems, but please know that we think about you everyday and appreciate your contributions.

Peace,

Becky Broadwin and Stephen Po-Chedley

Observations on Observation

A Different Flavor, Moon Theories, and Pine Trees in the Wind

The last couple months I have been able to watch a full, red moon rising over the hillside just after sunset (a picture that does it no justice should be posted soon). I realized that my experience of this sight is a little different since taking a course in optics, which explains why the sun appears red to us during sunrise and sunset. The sun and the moon are red because the blue light is scattered away (making the sky blue) while the red light travels on from the sun and moon to us, making the star and the moon seem red to us. I think this is called Rayleigh Scattering where shorter wavelengths of light are much much more likely to scatter away. I wondered if it mattered that the kids here will likely never know "why the sky is blue" (I didn't either, I think my parents made up answers when I asked such stupid questions - the sky is blue because it is a reflection of the ocean, stupid).

John and I were planting trees one weekend (November 1 - 2) and I was bragging about the Cassuarina trees I was planting, telling him that the trees work symbiotically with mychorizal fungi to fix nitrogen and are the ancestral roots to modern pine trees (I think he knew that already). When I brought up pine trees (John had two pine trees to plant, too) John told me that he loved the sound that pine trees made in the United States. I tried to think about that sound, but couldn't conjure a specific sound. I remember the sound of wind on a cool autumn day and I remember the sight of pine branches dancing in the breeze. I can even remember the sound of pines cracking in the extreme cold of winter, but I couldn't put the sights and sounds together. This may not be a particularly good example of John and Uganda's hypersensitivity to Nature, but there seem to be slight differences in how we understand and interact with nature.

One thing that I noticed pretty quickly that I hadn't noticed for 22.5 years in America was that the moon rises about an hour later each night. I think that this observation made me wonder why and pull from my experiences to figure out why the moonrise changes time. I recently wrote a letter to the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Union asking for a confirmation on my half-thought-out theory, but I think it works like this:
The moon revolves around the Earth's axis in roughly the same direction as the rotation of the Earth. The moon has a period of 28 days, so it sweeps out an angle of 12.9 degrees per day (360/28). So the Earth has spun an extra 12.9 degrees before you can spot the moon at moonrise. This works out to an extra 51 minutes and 24 seconds each day - about an hour (12.9deg.*24hr/360deg.*60min/hr). I have no idea if any of that is true, but it explains the problem until a better explanation comes along in the same way that the locals theorize about the start of a rainy season.

My background in America no doubt changes my perspective and understanding of things here. Very few people have physics or math past primary school and I don't think that diminishes their understanding of the world. I don't have clear examples from Uganda (although I think John was aware of the moon rising an hour later each night already), but I do have a couple examples from Blessed Unrest which I thought were interesting.

Indigenous Observers

The Mi'kmaq people know the world through sound. One of their tribal legends tells of three brothers, each of whom was granted a wish by a great magician named Glooksap. The first wanted to be tall so all the woman could see him. The second wanted to be secure in the beauty of the forest and never work again. The third wanted to never fall ill and live a long life. Glooksap called in Cuhkw the earthquake, who shook the land, seized the three, and planted them in the forest. The first became the tallest pine tree and could be seen for miles around; the second became the pine tree with the deepest roots and withstood the wind of any storm; and the third became the oldest pine tree and stood for centuries. To this day, the Mi'kmaq name their pine trees by the sound of the wind soughing through the branches one hour before sunset in the fall. Elders can remember the prior names of the native stands of pine, and detect how trees are changing due to environmental damage from acid rain and air pollution by comparing their names with the current sounds they make.

In 1981 marine biologist R. E. Johannes published Words of the Lagoon, a seminal book detailing his work with Ngiraklang, second chief in the village of Ngeremlengui in Palau. When Johannes first went to Palau to learn about reef fisheries from indigenous people, his mates in the Australian scientific community joked that he had gone "tropo," a term reserved for someone who has spent too much time in the tropical sun. Ngiraklang, who was born in 1894, and educated with only a half year of schooling in carpentry, turned out to be a phenomenal scientist and marine biologist. For fisherfolk the cycles of the moon chart a map of the ocean. They will tell the height, strength, and timing of the tides, and thus accessibility to lagoons and shallow inlets within reefs. They will also reveal the location of a school of fish, what kind of behavior they exhibit, and how susceptible they are to being netted or otherwise caught. Paluan fishermen know the best times to fish, and they always align with the moon. The night before the new moon on Namoluk Atoll is called Otolol, meaning "to swarm." Fish spawning during lunar cycles form large groups and are exceptionally easy to catch. Ngirakland could not only identify more than three hundred species of reef fish, but knew the lunar spawning cucles of more species of fish than were described in all the marine biology literature in the world. Villagers commented that Johannes was the first scientist who had inquired after their knowledge instead of telling them his own.

- Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest, pg. 100 - 101

Those sort of stories could probably fill volumes. I remember listening to an Aboriginal indigenous to North Stradbroke Island in Queensland, Australia. He described, in great detail, how the dolphins, pelicans, lunar cycles, and a variety of other qualitative indicators came together to help the people hunt mullet fish on the island. I do not remember the details, but I do remember the end of his talk as he glumly concluded that the "old ways" were eroding away as the mullet fish no longer return. (The island has large silicon and titanium mining operations and the bay that is enclosed by the island has huge fishing operations). One thing that strikes me is how accurately these people can observe changes (in trees from acid rain, in fish because of the moon, or in fish abundance because of pollution and overfishing), but the understanding may be different. Ugandans do not need to know the accepted biological reasons why plantains grow so well here, they just need to know how to keep the plantains growing well here. As Emerson said, "I have confidence in laws of morals as laws of botany. I have planted maize in my field every June for seventeen years and I never knew it to come up strychnine. My parsley, beet, turnip, carrot, buck-thorn, chestnut, acorn, are as sure. I believe that justice produces justice and injustice injustice" (Blessed Unrest, Hawken, 73 - 74). Natural and social laws here are based on what works locally and that is enough.

Changing Your Perspective

This all reminds me of a Physics Professor who constantly harped on us to "change our perspective from time to time." It was never clear which perspective we were supposed to change; in the modern physics course we were taking there was a slew of math we needed to learn with a lot of different ways of understanding it. I think it worked both ways, but he talked about "one true love" by having us calculate the odds of meeting our one true love. In the same class he told us to determine how many atoms are in a sewing needle. Physicists differ in opinion about the math behind things like dark matter (is it a weird type of matter/energy or are we just not observing baryonic matter somewhere?), the universe (expanding, contracting, renewable matter, or multiverse?) and quantum physics ("God does not roll dice" or at some level physics calculations break down to probabilities). Most people would probably conclude that the pine trees were probably not placed there by an earthquake, but in the end it doesn't disqualify the observations these people made or the changes they tracked. Where there is No Doctor cites a range of local medicines (ie bark boiled as tea from a certain willow tree to treat headaches) that work as well as accepted pills - same physiology, just a little different. The medicines might have local lore attached that is very unscientific, but if the medicines work and the local stories explain when to use the medication it is really just a matter of perspective and there is no right or wrong explanation. I think most religion can be chalked up to differing perspectives.

Your Place is a Part of You

Part of an individual's understanding with Nature is rooted in place. I remember one cool morning (low 60s) Lawrence was in a sweater and exclaimed to Becky and I that "it is very, very cold this morning." Becky and I had to chuckle a little as we took morning tea in shorts and t-shirts. It had been cool the night before, but not all that cold. I told Lawrence that I liked it, that I missed the cold and the changing seasons. He replied that, "It is because it is part of you. It is your place. The cold is part of who you are." With his accent and very sure attitude it struck me as a very wise statement. He went on, "It is because you are used. You are used to cold and it is why you like it." I am used to the cold and the hot apple cider that accompanies it in the same way that John probably was used to and missed plantains and nut sauce when he travelled to the US. I am comfortable in the cold and amongst mountains of snow. In the same way that John can pick out dozens of local plants around his village - vanilla, coffee, cassava, mango, jack fruit, peanut, maize, tomato, sorghum, etc. - I can pick out dozens of makes and models of cars in the exorbitant Potter parking lot at Union College. We know our places and are comfortable there. Uganda has the advantage of being snuggled in a largely undeveloped or, to put it differently, a pristine country.

Here it is just easier to observe Nature. There is no pavement to repel the mud and dirt from the gardens, there are no stadium lights to block out the stars, and the source of their milk and produce is very transparent. Observation is often qualitative and after four years of math and physics, I would normally be skeptical of this sort of science, but what works works well here. The farmers in Ddegeya plant at different times than those in Kyetume - they know their place.

Blindness to the Obvious

But even more interesting is that one can be blind to another's place and culture.

For most people, to understand something new requires a cognitive antecedent. When members of the Me'en tribe in Ethiopia were shown a coloring book that included an illustration of a local antelope, they didn't recognize the animal. They would smell the paper, twist it in their hands, feel its texture, listen to its sound, and even taste it gingerly, but they couldn't discern any animal from the picture alone. When anthropologists transferred the drawing to cloth, a material with which the tribe was familiar, a few of the tribespeople could make out something. A twenty-year-old woman gazed at the outline as a scientist traced the animal with her finger, and although she could see a tail, leg, ear, and a horn, when asked what the illustration represented, she had no idea. Scientific experiments repeatedly show that groups of educated, urbanized people pay no attention to unfamiliar objects directly in front of them if they focus too strongly on familiar ones.

- Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest, pg. 100 - 101

I don't know if I've blatantly missed something that was right in front of me - I hope not, but I have noticed a more keen awareness to the hillside I am living on than some of the places I've been in the United States: The way the clouds fill in certain depressions in the hills on days that will inevitably be hot, or the way the rain traces up from Kyamaganda, south of Ddegeya, before seemingly turning West to open up on the Engeye clinic, or how a red sun at sunset means good weather and a red sun in the morning means rain - just as it does in the United States. This is seemingly important because most of the kids here don't ever get enough education to understand the basic biology and soil chemistry in their gardens and will likely never even address the climate change that will hit their country hard.

In all, I've felt that I've been more attuned to my surroundings here than the the pavement of Schenectady. Part of it is that it is tougher to see Nature in America - we tuck it away in sanctuaries whereas Nature is along all the footpaths here and the shooting stars that streak the sky every few nights give a great incentive to watch. Part might be that I'm slowly being acclimatized to the culture and area - I can see past the acres and acres of banana plants and finally make out the details. It may also be that, without weather.com, the qualitative signs of weather come alive for a daily forecast, rather than the daily high, low, and chance of precipitation.

But in all, this is important because local people have a different understanding of place that, as Hawken points out, can be more precise than modern western understanding. I worry that Ddegeya will one day have a Mando's on the corner with a Kobil along the road (fast food and their version of Mobil). As varied cultures of people slowly westernize we lose local understandings and practices that interact sustainably with their individual environments. The world becomes more bland and we lose a lot of information and perspective - even if it isn't the scientific "correct" perspective of the west.

Random Blog Commenting on a Couple Random Things

What is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

If you have internet or a television it seems as though you will likely have a better idea than I do about the happenings in Congo. One of the places I wanted to visit while here is Kisora, Uganda which straddles the border of Congo and Rwanda, but unfortunately refugees are beginning to pour into Kisoro in small, but significant numbers (according to my US sources). The conflict doesn't receive a lot of attention here in the village and nobody seems to be worried at all, which is good. So if you were worried, don't be.

The BBC devotes little attention to the topic, but basically this is what I hear: After the Rwandan genocide (Hutus killing Tutsis in 1994) the Hutus fled to Congo. Now, the Tutsis are leading an opposition against the Hutu government in Congo. Whether these rebels have anything to do with the Rwandan government seems to be up for debate and some speculate that the violence has as much to do with control over Congo's vast mineral, timber, and oil resources as it does with ethnic tensions.

The Secretary General of the UN is meeting with Rwanda and DRC in Kenya in the next couple days to try to prolong a seize fire that is under effect now. Apparently UN peacekeepers were initially useless, although the UN is getting aid to effected regions to try to head off a cholera and typhoid epidemic that has been predicted from a lack of clean water.

In all, the problem is contained in Congo and if Uganda is to play any role at this point, it will be to accept refugees (which it should be getting good at after Rwanda and Sudan).

Dog-Earred Books and Where to Go in the Next Six Months

When I read, I generally try not to put notes, comments, streaks of highlighter, or dog-eared pages in the book. I remember reading that to truly read you needed to mark up, bend, and otherwise beat on a book by reading and re-reading. I completely agree with this view, but can't bring myself to do it. A stain of coffee is something I consider character, but a highlighter is an unholy tattoo. So between having a love for facts and my inability to so much as underline a sentence in a book, I tend to pick up books with indices at the end.

These books also have lots of straight-forward and very interesting bits of information that I have loved to share here in Uganda (on the blog - I am not reading excerpts of Health Care Co-Ops in Uganda to an already bored sixth grade English class). Sometimes the facts blend in pretty seamlessly - Climate Change causing increases in malaria prevalence is pretty pertinent to Uganda; others I seem to struggle to get a good fit. I think a future blog on "Observations on Observation" is a blog that doesn't quite fit together, but hopefully you will bare with me and either find the sections of the book interesting or find my personal observations interesting. If neither, I suggest googling "Chad Orzel" and perusing his blog.

Anyways, I am almost through the set of books I brought, which means I will be switching to Becky's stack of books, which I think we should all worry about. If I begin to try to make literary connections we're all in trouble. So hopefully I'll begin to immerse myself more in culture (sensitively, of course). I haven't forgotten about requests to comment on views of death, marriage, village structure, etc. so I think I will be moving to these topics as I run out of indexes. So the broad topics of population and malaria will likely slow and a more personal day-to-day life will hopefully emerge.

More with Chickens

Richard purchased a couple chickens a couple weeks ago, which I was sort of thought was cool until I realized what it meant. I don't eat eggs and I am perfectly content not eating chicken here, but now there is chicken poop all over the place. Besides, egg eater, have you ever considered what you are actually eating? The undeveloped hatchling of the evolutionary retarded version of a velociraptor. Disgusting. The chickens love hanging out on the cement pad where I also like to read and hang out. I now also love waiting for chicken poop to dry so I can scoop it away before I read. Cheers.

It was sort of cool one day when the chicken was walking around with a bit of a gimp and John declared, "That chicken is looking for a place to put its egg." He threw some hay in the corner of the building and, sure enough, a half hour later there was an egg sitting gently in the pile of grass. I wondered why the chicken wasn't more defensive over its eggs, but after observing them for awhile I realized that these birds were lucky to have made it this far in evolution at all. They truly are the clumsy, freaky looking little dinosaurs.

Water

In the sake of full disclosure, Engeye purchased a rainwater tank a few weeks ago, which has been supplying the clinic with clear, smelly water (ants got into the water), which has made me quite lazy. It makes sense, though - the water is much cleaner and there is a lot less carrying of water now.

I have been measuring the rainwater to see how useful it would be to develop a larger rainwater collection system and I am quickly learning that Uganda gets a lot of rain in big muddy clumps. In one 24 hour period it can rain over an inch of rain and then the equatorial sun can dry it all out in a matter of a couple days. When you are starting to feel safe again the clouds unexpectedly open up and force you inside again. It is near impossible to teach or have pleasant conversation as the rain beats on the tin roof above your head and mud seems to seep in from all sides.

The New Nurse and Typical Games

So Engeye has a new member of the team in Joseph - the clinic's new nurse. I have been happy with Joseph so far - he's amiable and kind to us, but there is one disturbing part of Joseph's introduction and it is in a little known game called Ludo. Ludo is a Uganda's stolen version of the game Sorry, which everyone, young and old, seems to know how to play. What disturbs me is that the people who are really good can put spin on the dice and seem to be able to summon particular numbers. People gamble on the game - can you imagine someone gambling on the game candyland? It happens here. Joseph has the same ridiculous control of the dice and even though I am 2-0 against Joseph, I feel that the next thing to come out of his mouth will be, "Why don't we put money on it?" I don't think so...I'm on to you Joseph. Both Ugandan games Becky and I know are very, very simple and all the strategies can be mastered pretty quickly, making it so the odds of you winning only depend on the number of people playing. If I play to 11 (everyone loves to play again and again and again) in Matatu (it is UNO with small twists) it is almost always 11 - 10 or 11 - 9, yet this is always met with surprise.

All jokes aside, Joseph seems to be a great guy and a good addition to the Engeye Team here. More on Joseph as he gets settled in and we are more acquainted with him and his sketchy Ludo abilities. It is his birthday this week (November 7).

Another Haircut

I've recently been told that the only picture I've posted of myself is a creepy picture of myself with a beard longer than my hair. This is not typical as I've been chided by village elders and have been referred to as Osama by too many. My hair is now a level 5 on my beard trimmer with a beard set to a level 2.

John has signed a contract as my long term barber and we set up a barber shop on the porch in front of the clinic in the evenings (complete with a mirror, which Richard holds - Richard doesn't trust John's profession haircutting skills and wants me to notice the slightest problems). Hopefully Becky will post the picture of our barber shop in the next month or so. It's like small town America all over again.

As always seems to happen, there was late '80s to early '90s love songs in the background of our outdoor barber shop, which always seems to happen when I step into a commercial enterprise in Uganda (the new nurse, Joseph, seems to like the '90s American hits).

Bringing out the Cavalry

Slowly uploading more Pictures. I shaved my beard after upsetting village elders and I actually received mail telling me I would do better with less red beard. Thanks Mike. Trying to get pic of kids reading up now. Bonus week for blogs (two blogs) since I am so happy about the supplies I couldn't wait to tell you all.

It is really tough to feel the least bit alone here after being inundated with joy and supplies last week from Union (and many others over the last few months). We received four packages from the college with books, paper, pens, crayons, scissors, flashcards, and lots lots more. We anxiously read City Mouse Country Mouse the very first day and the flashcards have been a blessing. The kids have been completely captivated by the books. They conveniently have pictures that often work out a lot of times: E is for elephant, but it also is for enjovu (Luganda for elephant) and the card has a picture of an elephant. Using all these supplies, it is tough to feel disconnected from everyone reading this and sending support from back home. We certainly feel the cavalry behind us.

Anyways, the supplies have been so helpful. Thank you everyone who contributed money, books, and supplies, sat long hours at a table in Reamer (I hated doing that), and to those who helped put it all together. There have been a few all-stars that I know about and I'm sure many others that I wish I knew about. Every week I seem to hear about some sort of educational or fund raising program aimed to help the Ugandans in Ddegeya and to make Becky and my life more comfortable and our lives more effective. I bought some flour today to complement the cream of tartar that one of Becky's relatives sent - we will be making play dough tonight and I cannot wait to see the mess of it the kids make on Monday.

A Story that was the Chronicle at Union (Thank you Lily Safford Smith, Jackie Bartley, and Keerti Murari for sitting at the tables that week):

Union Gathers School Supplies for Ugandan Children

Two Minerva Fellows this year are Union alums Becky Broadwin and Steve Po-Chedley. The two are spending nine months in the African country of Uganda, where they help out at a health clinic and teach at a local school. They also keep blogs about their experiences. Many people at Union – students, staff, and faculty -- read the blogs regularly. To some, they are an education in themselves, bringing a distant part of the world closer to home and making strangers feel like extended family. Recently, two of the regular visitors to the blogs, student Megan Sesil and faculty member Anastasia Pease, decided to organize a campus-wide drive for school supplies, which are desperately needed in rural Uganda. Last week Sesil and Pease organized a fund-raising table at Reamer. Student members of Wells House made the event a success. In two short hours, the volunteers raised 43 dollars in change (which will help with shipping costs), plus 11 notebooks, 198 pencils, 3 boxes of vitamins, 5 pencil sharpeners, 228 color pencils, 3 boxes of crayons, and 5 pens! Added to dozens of children’s books, jigsaw puzzles, packages of writing paper, pencils, and boxes of vitamins donated this week by members of the Union community, these supplies should make a difference in the lives of schoolchildren in Uganda. Minerva Fellows Becky and Steve hope to help the children learn some English and science, combat malnutrition, and have fun at school! Becky and Steve also hope to start a pen-pal program for Ugandan children and their American counterparts. If you know an interested youngster aged 8 to 14, please contact Anastasia Pease or Megan Sesil. If you wish to be a part of the school supply drive, it is not too late – just bring your donations (kids’ books, pencils, puzzles, etc.) by Humanities 020, Center for Bioethics.

Event Sponsors: Wells House, Minerva Programs, Ethics across the Curriculum.
Many thanks to all who have participated!

A few more events for Uganda, including a benefit dinner and a concert, are being organized. Stay tuned.

Election Day

At 5:00 AM I was awake and wondering about the election - I didn't expect results for several hours, but by 5:45 I was up and scanning the BBC for any hints of a result. Before 6 AM the shortwave dial was a wave of static. By 6 AM I found what seemed like a dozen instances of "VOA - Voice of America" radio, which I quickly passed in the hope of finding BBC coverage (Voice of America kindly puts an editorial "produced by the US government" on the air every night). I found the BBC in time to hear all of McCain's concession speech at 7:15 AM here. Bilal called here to let me know that McCain had won, but quickly ditched our conversation as Obama entered the stage in Chicago.

Obama's acceptance speech was general, but had in it what I wanted to hear. America really does need to be rebuilt "calloused hand by calloused hand, block by block, and brick by brick." I've thought about that a lot here that no one person can make the difference. That the people who always volunteer and always try to help others are not enough - everyone needs to pitch in to fix our society, our environment, and our relationship with the world whether it be in a soup kitchen, donating to an NGO, going on a church mission trip, or embarking on a job or service that has the benefit of more than a paycheck. I liked that Obama used the term "patriotism" in the same sentence as "responsibility." We have been loose with our patriotism and I think it was Mark Twain that put it best, "Loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government when it deserves it." Hearing the speech made me feel that I could be proud of America again. I did not vote for Obama and I was glad that he stated that "I will be your president, too" for those who did not vote for him and "for those hung around radios in forgotten corners of the world." I did like that he emphasized the strength of our ideals, rather than the strength of our military and mentioned "peace" in his speech - something that has apparently been taboo in the last eight years as George Bush played kindergarten games with nation states. "You're a stupid face and I don't like you and I'm not gonna talk to you!" (axis of evil).

They interviewed the opposition candidate in Zimbabwe and I realized that there are already a line of countries hoping to better relations or fix problems - Afghanistan, Palistan, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of Congo, China, Russia, Bolivia, Sudan, etc. As I listen more and more to the BBC, basically every African nation is expecting some kind of help and Obama can't possibly address all those international crises along with the distribution of wealth, the deficit, universal healthcare, the various financial crises, shortfalls in international aid, poverty, hunger, climate change, or basically everything that has been ignored for the past eight years. Obama is expected to deal with over eight years of poor policy decisions and I don't think that he can do it in four or eight years. Obama's military policy still has increases slated in some branches and still uses mercenaries. He did vote yes for FISA. He is not perfect and I worry that he will settle too far right when making reforms. I believe there will be change and I am hopeful that we'll have sweeping reforms, but I am cautiously optimistic.

Obama's speech reminded me of a winter day when the Buffalo Bills took on the Tennessee Titans in 2000. Doug Flutie was having a miracle season and after an 0 and 3 start the Bills made it to the wild card game against Tennessee. The Bills had a lead changing field goal with 23 seconds left when the Titans ran the kickoff back to win the game in the last Buffalo playoff appearance in nearly a decade. Obama's speech made me feel the exact opposite feelings. After 8 years of evil government, I really think that anything could be better than Bush. I refused to comment on the election beforehand, because I had said in previous elections that it was impossible that we would could not be dumb enough to elect Bush or moreso, dumb enough to re-elect him. I remember taking a Wednesday of classes off in 2004 to mourn "Black Wednesday" or the re-election of Bush and I am glad I didn't have to repeat it this year (I remember thinking that I should not be missing Professor Cervone's multi-variable calculus class, which I was having trouble in, but decided that on such a tragic day, it was the only right thing to do). In all, we didn't make the same mistake again, but the margins were small 52% to 47% - after accounting for voter turnout (60%), the victory was 31% to 28% hardly a sweeping victory. The large margin in the electoral college reminds us all how backwards our system is.

The people here are happy - I don't know if they know why - Bush has increased aid to Africa, but everyone is "so so happy" about Obama. Kenya, where Obama's father is from (Kenya is next to Uganda) declared a national holiday for November 6. The teachers at Bunyere knew about the victory as it has been all over the radio and everyone seems very optimistic that something better will happen (no pressure).

Overall, it feels good and I am happy and hopeful. I wish I could have been in Chicago, it sounded absolutely electric and emotional on the radio and I can't wait to see the atmosphere when I return to the US.

I had written a blog about the election before the election with grand schemes of swinging the McCain vote to Nader, but every week I decided not to post it. My thoughts basically coincided with Robert Bowman as quoted from the last page of A People's History of the United States. I don't think that these values coincide with the Republican Party...

We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to the people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism...Instead of sending our sons and daughters around the world to kill Arabs so we can have the oil under their sand, we should send them to rebuild their infrastructure, supply clean water, and feed starving children...

In short, we should do good instead of evil. Who would try to stop us? Who would hate us? Who would want to bomb us? That is the truth the American people need to hear.

- Robert Bowman, a former lieutenant in the US Air Force who had flown 101 combat missions in Vietnam and then became a Catholic Bishop. He was commentating on the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in National Catholic Reporter three years before September 11, 2001.

If there one thing Obama can do, it is to restore our world reputation and begin to work for the people of the United States and abroad.

[Becky and I celebrated Obama's victory with grape juice tasting wine and some Cadbury's Chocolate from Kinoni].

Malaria

This blog condenses a section from The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs.

An African Problem

HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, Yellow Fever, Tetanus, Hepatitis, Dengue Fever, the Plague, Typhoid, UTIs, osteoporosis and malnutrition are a few diseases that a sub-Saharan African might face. Some are very unlikely (Dengue), others are unlikely, but significant (HIV has a prevalence of 4-6% in Uganda), and some disease are common hardships (malnutrition, osteoporosis). Outside all of these diseases, malaria deserves its own category. Malaria kills nearly 3 million African's per year and climate scientists and epidemiologists, looking at climate predictions, believe that an additional 146 million Africans could die before the end of the century from mosquito-borne disease. Furthermore, people with HIV are twice as likely to contract malaria - HIV exists all over the world, but 1 our of every 17 Ugandans has HIV.

Malaria is an infection from the paramecium (I think these are the things we looked at in 6th grade science with Mr. Sexton. With some pond water wedged between a slide and cover slip, it is easy to pick up the on the tail of the paramecium) Plasmodium. The little critters of Plasmodium vivax are less deadly, but are also more common in other tropical areas outside Africa (ie South America or India). Moreover, the mosquitoes outside Africa are more likely to sting cattle than humans, so transmission of malaria to humans is less likely outside Africa (African mosquitos sting humans nearly 100 percent of the time; Indian mosquitos sting humans one-third of the time). On the other hand, the species Plasmodium falciparum are a particularly dangerous and more lethal brand of malaria causing paramecium - this paramecium is more common in Africa (where mosquitos are more likely to sting you!).

Nature has already seemingly tipped the tables against Africa in the way of species distribution of Plasmodium and mosquitos, but even climate exacerbates the problem. If Bilal has malaria and a mosquito stings me right after stinging Bilal, I will not contract malaria. The paramecium must first mature inside the mosquito gut and work its way to the mosquito's salivary glands for injection - this generally takes about two weeks. Incidentally, a mosquito generally has a life span of about two weeks. So, normally, a mosquito would need to be born, sting the malaria-ridden Bilal the same day, and sting me just before the mosquito dies - a seemingly improbable scenario of well orchestrated timing. Unfortunately, Africa's wet (in the rainy season) climate supports lots of mosquitos and the warm weather decreases the time it takes for the Plasmodium to complete its life cycle (sporogony). Both of these factors, more mosquitoes and a higher chance that the Plasmodium becomes active inside the mosquito, significantly amplifies the malaria problem in Africa.

A Disease of Poverty

Malaria is completely treatable and can often be prevented. Bed nets, pesticide treatment, eliminating standing water, and using DDT in endemic areas can drastically reduce the risk of contracting malaria. Further, malaria is typically easy to diagnose and treatment can be a handful of pills or a day of injections for severe cases (three rounds of injections over a day). Engeye Health Clinic routinely treats Malaria successfully (a handful of cases every day). When health care is available and preventative measures are taken, malaria is more unpleasant than the flu, but not deadly.

Unfortunately, millions of Africans cannot afford health care (Engeye charges about $1.20 to treat any patient including the necessary medications, but most clinics charge 10 times that - most people here are subsistence farmers with no cash). Bed nets are about $10 and even though most kids share a bed with their siblings, there are usually six kids in a family. Three mosquito nets could easily be five percent or more of a family's income. Looking at a 1946 geographical distribution of malaria I see that America, Eastern Europe, and Spain once had malaria, but turning to the 1994 distribution map, it is clear that malaria is now a disease of the impoverished world. Some families are forced to cut corners by buying their own quinine tablets at a discount store (this is generally the most expensive treatment - malaria is resistant to the other treatments), but buy expired tablets or an incomplete dose helping to fuel resistance while not curing the bout of malaria. Some people simply live with malaria year-round (chronic malaria).

The Costs of Malaria

I wish that there was a number I could assign to the costs of malaria. I seem to remember the Carter Center doing a study on the costs of the Guinea Worm to a small region of yam farmers in Africa - the costs were easily in the millions over one year. I can only imagine the economic devastation for Africans having to take off work or having to treat multiple family members in one year. It is widespread and perhaps the most common ailment at Engeye, infecting students, businesses, the subsistence farmers and their ability to earn money for their families. But the devastation can most easily seen by analogy. What delayed the economically critical Panama Canal for more than three decades? Malaria and Yellow Fever (another mosquito-borne disease). If some tiny mosquitos could stop the well armed (with cash, steam/coal powered earth moving equipment, and lots and lots of guns) American government from completing an important trade route, what are the economic consequences of malaria to unarmed (no health insurance, no money, no means to combat malaria) subsistence farmers of West Nilers? I imagine that the consequences are much greater, but are likely not worth adding up to the people that can make a difference.

The aid from "rich countries" to fight malaria is in the tens of millions of dollars; Sachs estimates that 2-3 BILLION dollars is needed (I think Bush earmarked 5 MILLION per year to fight malaria in 2006). America contributes 0.18 percent of GNP to foreign assistance (it has pledged 0.7 percent) or about 20 billion dollars per year, it spends 27 times that number on the military (about half of your tax dollars).

Malaria and Me!

I have come fully prepared and fully committed not to get malaria (although, after seeing malaria and its treatment, I'm not nearly as worried about it as I was before leaving America). I am armed with 270 malarone tablets (250mg atovaquone/100 mg proguanil daily) and everywhere I have stayed has bed nets. I don't use mosquito spray, but I've only had a small handful of bites the last few months. I miss some (1 so far, mostly in the first month) doses of malarone (sometimes I forget my age, my memory gets worse with short term stuff - so a tablet every day is rough), but I can proudly tout that I have taken 98.9 percent of my pills so far.