Homestay in the North, Etosha National Park, and preparing to go home

This week, we travelled to the Northern part of the country. We did homestays with families in rural areas and visited Etosha National Park where we saw lots of animals.

My homestay was with a mother and father, their baby, and a cousin. Their homestead is about a 1km drive into the bush from the main road. They have a small house with bedrooms and a living room. There is no running water in the house (but they do have a tap outside) and the house is not connected to the electric grid. However, they do have a gas ("petrol") powered generator which they use in the evenings to power two lights in the house and the TV. Unlike many people in urban areas of Namibia, they don't have satellite TV, so they only get the one channel that is broadcast nationally ("NBC," the Namibian Broadcasting Company...no relation to NBC in the US, as far as I know). Also, for the record, my cell phone had 5 bars all the way out there....

The kitchen is a fenced area outside. Cooking is done over open fires. While I was there, we ate rice and beans and chicken and porridge (and Fanta) for lunch and dinner and toast for breakfast. They also have a "bathing room" outside. When I first heard this, I thought this referred to what I would call a bathroom. However, it turns out it is literally a "bathing" room, used for washing (using a bucket of water and some soap). There is an outhouse 100m out into the bush.

They also have a traditional round hut on the homestead. This essentially acts as a spare bedroom for them....when people come to visit they stay there. The parents in my family were in their 30's, but apparently people of previous generations often prefer staying in the traditional hut instead of the house when they visit. So, basically, the hut acts as the in-law's suite.....

They have a bunch of chickens and goats, but these are used just for the family (they aren't sold to make money). Both parents are teachers so they have a relatively stable income.

Northern Namibia is a malaria zone. The family has bednets that hang from the ceiling and go over the beds to keep mosquitos from biting at night. The other advantage of the bednet is that it provides some amount of peace-of-mind that the big spiders won't attack during the night.... : )

After the homestay, we traveled to Etosha national park and game reserve. Etosha is about 22,000 square kilometers (for comparison, Ohio is about 116,000 square kilometers), so it is quite a large area. People can drive through the park, but are not allowed to get out of the vehicle they are traveling in (except at particular fenced-off camps and resorts which are located throughout the park).

It is the dry season, so it hasn't rained since March or April. Thus, all of the animals have to come to the watering holes to drink, which is nice because you can park near the watering holes and see lots of animals. Also, the camp we were staying at was located right next to a watering hole, so we could sit there and watch lots of animals.

We saw lots of springbok, kudu, oryx, zebras, jackals, giraffes, elephants, and rhinos. We didn't see any predators, unfortunately.

Tomorrow (Sunday), I'll be flying back to the US. I'll be leaving Windhoek at 11:35 am (local time), flying to Johannesburg, then getting on a plane to Dulles (which will stop to refuel in Dakar, Senegal for an hour), then I'll fly to Cincinnati. If all goes well, I'll be back by 10:00 am (Cincinnati time) on Monday. It's amazing that it is possible to be here, and then be back in Cincinnati ~30 hours later!

Environment, Healthcare, end of internship, final project, travel to the North

Sorry it has been a few weeks since I have posted anything....

Two weeks ago, the focus of our development class was on healthcare. We visited two hospitals in Windhoek: the state run "Central Hospital" and the private "Roman Catholic Hospital." It was interesting to see and compare both hospitals. Usually, I think of Catholic institutions as working with poorer people. However, in this case, poorer people typically go to the much cheaper state hosiptals.

The university in Namibia has recently started a medical school to start training medical personnel in the country for the first time (previous they had to study abroad--often in South Africa). The state hospitals (and private hospitals) are relatively well-equiped. However, when we were there, one of the fancy imaging machines was broken--unfortunately, replacement parts for high-tech medical equipment are not made in the country, so they have to be shipped in from elsewhere. Also, there is no one in the country who is trained to fix these kinds of machines, so they have to be flown in from South Africa or Europe.

It was also interesting to see the lack of medical privacy in the hospitals we visited. In one case, we were led through the ICU and told in detail about the conditions patients were being treated for. I doubt that in the United States a hospital would be willing to lead around a group of college students and do that!

The next week we discussed environmental issues, and I wrote a paper about the connection between environmental issues and economic development in Namibia. Some interesting tidbits: global warming is expected to cause some scary things in Namibia including increased desertification, less rain, and higher intensities of rain when it does rain (which leads to flooding). Apparently, there is enough vegitation in Namibia few little enough cars and industry that Namibia actually takes more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than it puts in, at least in some years. However, Namibia will feel some of the worst effects of climate change.

Interestingly, the increased focus on burning less fossil fuel around the world has increased interest in nuclear energy and increased prices for uranium, which is heavily mined in Namibia. So, at least in that way, Namibia can benefit a bit, even though it is being hurt in other ways.

This was our last week of classes and internships. I finished working at the afterschool progam, and handed over the math study guide which I had been writing at their request. It covers arithmetic, fraction/decimals/percents, and algebra....about 70 pages total.

We also presented our final projects this week. One group made a board game about the education system in Namibia, one group talked about the relationship between food security, nutrition, and HIV/AIDS, and I made a giant flowchart showing the interdependence of various issues in Namibia.

This week, we will be traveling to the Northern part of the country and doing a two-day rural homestay, and visiting the game reserve. Then we'll leave next Sunday to fly back to the US!

Nick Kristof article about reporting on Africa

I'll post a more lengthy update in a few days, but for now: this is an interesting article...

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/westerners-on-white-horses/

Swakopmund, Walvis Bay, etc.

Last week, we took a trip to the coastal cities of Swakopmund and Walvis Bay.

On Thursday, we visited the Gobebab research station, which is a small compound way out in the middle of the desert. They do lots of weather and climate monitoring and some biological stuff with the local flora and fauna. They are far enough away from any towns that the information they collect on things such as greenhouse gasses is very free of local "noise" in the data. They also study energy-efficient ways of doing things--they are not connected to the public power or water systems (way too far away), so they produce all of their own electricity and pump all of their own water. They have several different types of solar panels and they are comparing the output and longevity of the different types. They also have some other cool stuff like solar stoves (a giant parabolic mirror with a space in the middle for a pot--boils water in 15 minutes) and big canvass things that collect fog for use as drinking water.

After a brief stop at the Walvis Bay lagoon (lots of flamingos), we visited the Walvis Bay Export Processing Zone. One of the problems of resource-rich countries in Africa (such as Namibia) is that companies come in and mine the resources, but the people of the country don't see much of the profits. One of the ways Namibia (and other places) have tried to address this is to encourage companies to do more of the processing of the raw materials in-country. Among other things, this provides jobs to lots of local people. Namibia's Export Processing Zone is essentially a tax-haven created by the Namibian government to encourage companies to do some processing and manufacturing within the country. The companies pay absolutely no taxes, and agree to hire a large number of local workers (but lots of these jobs sometimes don't seem to ever materialize).

Actually the Export Processing "Zone" is entirely abstract: there is not a physical zone, but these companies can set up their factories anywhere in the country under this arrangement. Some of the companies have been criticized for poor working conditions. The plant we visited (which makes car parts for various car-manufacturers) tries heavily to avoid this image--they have a giant garden in the back which even has a pond and, more notably, has grass (which is pretty rare in that area), but it seems the employees don't really spend much time there (even though they get a 1-hour lunch break....which was heavily promoted by the plant manager who was giving our tour). The factory has several enormous 150-ton presses which are used to create the parts the company makes...it was cool to see those in action. However, it was pretty depressing to see all of the workers doing the exact same small task over and over again on each individual part--they have jobs, but very boring jobs...

In a slight change of pace, we next climbed an enormous sand dune (~150 meters high). Quite the leg and cardio workout! We hung out on top for a while and looked at the ocean (which was visible from the top). A few people took disposable cameras up with them and took some pictures, so I'll try to get copies and put them up (digital cameras would have been harmed by getting covered in sand).

The next day, we visited a uranium mine. The mine itself was an enormous hole in the ground (2 km long, 1 km wide, and 400 m deep)--seriously a big hole in the ground. We got to see some pretty cool shovels and dump trucks (the tires on some of the trucks were taller than our bus). The trucks are so big that "normal-sized" vehicles, such as our bus, for example, have to have a very tall flag on top when they drive in the same areas so that the dump truck drivers can see the vehicles over the edge of the dumptruck.

The uranium is embedded in granite, so what they do is blast a section of the mine and load the rubble into giant dumptrucks. The dumptrucks take it out of the mine and dump it into a series of crushers connected by conveyor belts. After the rock is sufficiently crushed, they do a bunch of chemistry to it (sorry, I didn't follow the exact details of what the guy was saying--it involved sulfuric acid) and the end result is lots of waste, and a bit of uranium-oxide, which is shipped to Canada and France for further processing.

Interestingly, the government of Iran owns a 15% share in the mine (gasp!). As it turns out, owners of the mine actually have no claim to any of the material that is produced (they just get the profits after it is sold), so no one who owns a portion of the mine can actually produce any uranium for themselves; there are lots of international regulations about who can actually buy or take possession of the uranium. Also, in the case of Iran, they can't even access their profits due to international sanctions, so their share of the profits gets frozen in a bank here. The person at the mine wasn't sure yet how last week's new set of sanctions might affect this arrangement...

That afternoon, we visited an informal settlement in a township outside of Swakopmund. We visited a local leader and got to hear about how she mediates local conflicts. She spoke a language with clicks, so it was interesting to get to hear this in person. We also visited a school funded by Angelina Jolie (apparently, she gave birth to one of her kids in Swakopmund). Finally, we visited an afterschool program which is kind of similar to the program that I am working at back in Windhoek. They do a variety of programming for the kids including academics, life skills, athletics, music, computer skills, field trips, etc. Contrary to the program I am working at, this program selects relatively high achieving students in the local schools who just need a little extra support (my program takes students with a wider variety of academic achievement). Interestingly, the person we spoke with there grew up in Cincinnati and went to Ursuline...

While in Swakopmund we had the opportunity to spend time in town and explore the shops, restaurants, and beaches (the place we were staying was 2 blocks from the beach). There is a strong German influence in Swakopmund, and there are lots of German restaurants and German people.

We watched the Ghana vs. Uruguay game at a restaurant in town. All of the people were definitely supporting Ghana, the one remaining African team. It was miserable to be in a restaurant full of people who were all very sad that they lost... : (

I also got the opportunity to do yoga on the beach, which was pretty fun. The instructor of one of my classes also happens to be a yoga instructor. We did yoga with a couple of people who turned out to be a sushi chef and a sushi waiter, and we had dinner at their restaurant. It was delicious!

Pictures are posted at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=179449&id=617471723&l=630aa4ebee I don't have pictures of everything, since I didn't want my camera to get full of sand, but there are several cool pictures...including a few pictures of the sun setting over a (moving) train which happened to be exactly between our bus and the sun at just the right moment....

On Sunday, we traveled back from the coast to Windhoek (about 3.5 hours). Sunday was also the 4th of July. Obviously, it's not a very big deal around here. It is interesting to be in a country that only gained its independence in 1990 (within my lifetime). Lots of people remember very clearly the years before independence and the independence struggle. Independence day here is in March, so I won't be here then, but I imagine people think of it very differently than people in the US think about our independence day (since our country's independence came so much longer ago...many, many generations)....

Visit with USAID, and trip to the coast

First of all, pictures from my homestay are now posted on facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=178467&id=617471723&l=bfc55f0c4b

This week we visited the Windhoek offices of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), which has a particularly convenient acronym, since their job is to spend foreign aid money from the United States government. See: http://www.usaid.gov/locations/sub-saharan_africa/countries/namibia/index.html It was interesting to get to talk to them to hear about some of the work that they are doing and learn about how they decide what projects get funded (answer: it is mostly determined by congressional earmarks).

This week our group also read a few chapters from Dead Aid (http://www.amazon.com/Dead-Aid-Working-Better-Africa/dp/0374532125/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top). This book argues that foreign aid has been harmful in a number of ways and is in fact responsible for a number of current problems in various African countries. I am convinced by her arguments that foreign aid has, in at least some cases, been quite harmful (or at least not particularly helpful), but I am not convinced that foreign aid is inherently flawed and cannot possibly be helpful, as she seems to argue in the selections we read....


This week, we are traveling to Swakopmund on the Atlantic coast. We'll be visiting a research center, an "export processing zone" (foreign companies get various financial incentives to operate from there), a uranium mine (mining is a big industry in Namibia), and a couple of other programs. We'll also get to do some touristy things like climb a sand dune and go to the beach...

Basic Income Grant

Today, we met with a person from the Basic Income Grant Coalition for Namibia. (http://www.bignam.org/index.html). Namibia has among the highest levels of wealth inequality in the world, with a Gini Coefficient of about .68 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient). The Basic Income Grant is one proposal for trying to address this problem. The plan would be that every person in the country would get 100 Namibian dollars (about 14 US dollars) every month from the government, to be paid for most likely with increased income taxes on the rich. EVERYONE would get the grant, regardless of their existing wealth or income (but wealthy people would end up paying back the grant plus some extra in increased taxes).

The idea is that since many people in the country struggle to pay for food, school fees, medical expenses, etc. on an ongoing basis, this money would allow them to pay for the basics (with the added benefits of less crime--stealing things to pay for food, and more education--since school fees will get paid, etc.). Additionally, there will be much higher demand for various goods (since people can actually afford to pay for things). People can use the money to start small shops and businesses (which would be able to sell things to the people who now actually have some money that they are able to spend), and in the process the new businesses would create an additional source of income for the people running them (and possibly hire additional employees).....who will then have additional income that they can spend elsewhere, etc.

The group advocating for this proposal ran a pilot study for two years in one village, which was extremely successful (over the two years, the town greatly improved its malnutrition rates, crime rates, school attendance rates, etc.). The link above has lots more information about this. I think the Basic Income Grant is a really cool idea, but I'm not yet convinced that it would necessarily work if rolled out on a national level (but it's possible that there is not any additional useful research that could be done short of actually just implementing nationally and seeing if it will work).

My first concern is that this creates huge inflationary pressures on prices for things that people would likely want to try to buy particularly in small shops in various towns that can easily adjust their prices. If you were to draw a circle around most neighborhoods, towns, and villages, there will be a significant net influx of money into the areas (excluding only the few rich neighborhoods). Since there is suddenly lots more money in those areas, prices could rise pretty quickly. Ideally, the added demand would allow new shops to open up and eventually bring down prices, but I'm not sure how long it would take for people to save enough money to start new business (particularly if the cost of doing business is higher because the increase in prices becomes fairly widespread). The worst-case scenario would be that this inflation does end up occurring, and then the government gets politically pressured into pegging the dollar value of the grant to the (now somewhat higher) cost of living, which could cause prices to increase even more, and further increase the cost of living, leading to a vicious cycle of inflation. The argument that the value of the monthly grants should be increased to match the cost of living does actually seem pretty fair (and would certainly be popular), which makes that scenario kind of scary. I haven't studied enough economics to know how likely such a scenario is, but it doesn't seem impossible.

Also, one thing that was observed in the town doing the pilot study was that people from other places moved to the town once the grants started to be distributed (the newcomers weren't eligible for grants themselves, but being in the town was apparently financially desirable anyway....although its not clear if this was just due to the fact that family relatives who did get the grants were sharing with the newcomers or also whether the town economy was strengthened enough to make it worthwhile to move there simply due to more jobs and opportunities being available due to the presence of the grants). It seems that most of these people moved from nearby towns and rural areas into the particular town. If the basic income grant is rolled out nationally, people wouldn't have any reason to move from town to town to benefit from the grant....however, I can guess that people from other countries (relatives of Namibians, or not) would likely try to move into the country. I don't know whether there would a plan to address this...

Overall, I think it is a really cool idea, and I hope it can be successful. I'm not sure it is possible to know exactly what will happen if it is rolled out nationally without simply just trying to roll it out nationally and seeing what happens. There seems to be a growing consensus that a government-run national basic income grant is inevitable (first of all, many people think it seems like a really good idea...and second of all, getting an extra N$100 every month is, understandably, something that most people will probably support!). I'm curious to see what happens with this....

Today

Today my group met with one of the Deputy Directors of the National Planning Commission for Namibia. This is the agency that is tasked with planning for what kinds of development projects the government should emphasize in the short and long term. They created "Vision 2030," an ideal for what the country will be like in the year 2030. We read some of this document in class, but it was nicely summarized by our presenter as: "basically, by 2030, we want to live like you guys [referring to the Americans in the room], whatever that means."

As a sidenote, it is interesting to be in a country that is so new (~20 years since independence) and which has such a small population (~2 million) so the scale is so small that people and institutions that are extremelly influential on the national level are relatively easily accessible...

Back to national development: it is actually a very interesting question regarding development as to what being "more developed" actually should mean. In many cases, the answer seems to end up being to try to make the institutions and culture of [insert country here] more like the institutions and culture of the US....which is a little strange since the US doesn't tend to rank at the top of such things such as life satisfaction. Apparently, instead of judging its own success by how much its GDP has increased, the country of Bhutan has instead started measuring its "Gross National Happiness (GNH)." (See http://www.grossnationalhappiness.com/).

Coincidentally, today's TED talk is related: http://www.ted.com/talks/chip_conley_measuring_what_makes_life_worthwhile.html
As mentioned in that talk, I think that a country that is helping people move up Maslow's Hierachy is indeed making development "progress," whether or not GDP is increasing....