BRAC Uganda - Final Week 7

Today is my last day at BRAC. I can’t believe how quickly the time flew by and I wish I had just a few more weeks. In the last few weeks, my teammates and I have accomplished quite a bit. We used data from the sweet potato farmer program and analyzed whether certain factors are linked to child nutrition. I was specifically interested in farmers’ experiences of major climate events that led to crop loss. These climate events were survey questions asking farmers whether they had experienced major crop loss due to droughts, flooding, or pests and diseases. After running analyses in STATA software, we found that 88% of farmers experienced crop loss due to drought, 21% due to flooding, and 40% due to pests and diseases. When running a regression to see if there are any relationships between climate events and having a stunted child (short for their age) in the household, we found that drought reports were related to having a stunted child. We submitted a total of four abstracts to two conferences on different themes with the research. For my two colleagues, I believe this is their first conference submission. They are talented and I know one might have an interest in pursuing a PhD or further graduate school.

Yesterday, I held a 2-hour training workshop with 11 attendees. It was exciting to apply my skillsets from UCLA to others. I focused the workshop into 3 components: GIS mapping, qualitative theory, and international graduate school admissions. Of course, my actual experience is far more limited than my coworkers who all have years of field experience. And while academia tends to use expensive and proprietary software like ArcGIS for geographic mapping and STATA or SAS for statistical programming, I realize these are prohibitive in Uganda with their expensive licensing fees. So I sought out to learn and then teach a free GIS software called QGIS. I developed a step-by-step guide for open-access and free data and then integrated this into QGIS. We had some minor downloading and internet hiccups, to be expected, but my 13 attendees created colorful and beautiful maps of Uganda. I’m glad most shared the “wow” moment when your maps function and you have a color schematic of dots that were once longitude and latitude coordinates.

I met with my supervisor and main coworkers today. We put together a 3-month plan to publish the academic papers we began as abstracts! I’m looking forward to working remotely with this talented team and meaningful project. Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in a dream, working in Uganda and doing work that positively impacts thousands and millions of people. Right after this meeting on a Friday afternoon, I walked back to my office space and there was cake, soda, and a bulletin of kind sticky notes waiting for me! My coworkers had surprised me by all chipping in money to buy a cake. And as customary to other farewell parties, each person went around the room to say something nice. It was incredibly sweet and so bittersweet that I’ll be leaving without any concrete return plans. I know I leave this experience with more knowledge and connection to Sub-Saharan Africa than even before. I also know that these friendships remain and I foresee an amazing future for so many BRAC programs here. I feel more than privileged to have this opportunity, funding, and time to be in Kampala. Until next time!

BRAC Uganda - Week 4

My month here at BRAC and in Kampala has been wonderful and productive. I’m happy that I have some weeks to spend here and wish I had even more time. My coworkers have been a source of support in navigating to new areas by public transit in Kampala and helping me troubleshoot things like registering my local SIM card. Every work day we have a in-house cooking team make us lunch. The lunch is less like cafeteria food and more like homecooked local food, which I look forward to every day. The typical Uganda food includes maatoke (a plantain-based mashed potato-like staple), posho (a millet-based staple that is closest to Tanzania/Kenya’s ugali), beans in a savory sauce, chicken, beef, goat, fish (Nile Perch is the common variety from Lake Victoria), avocado, collard greens, cabbage, and sweet pumpkin. I find all of these ingredients at local street vendor stands. Food is quite affordable, especially produce, in Kampala – which I know that farming is a main employment and a majority of Ugandans live off of their land.

I went on a field visit to a local branch with my coworker, Patrick. These branches house microfinance activities that give poor women access to loans and credit. They mostly operate in rural areas throughout Uganda and other BRAC countries. I specifically stop by the Abaita Ababiri Branch, which is somewhere in between Kampala and Entebbe (the main airport town an hour away). Patrick has been overseeing a launch of a new research study about maternal and child health. There are about 20 enumerators working on piloting a sample design. BRAC designs its programs from census data and then breaks down larger geographic regions in sub-counties, districts, parishes, village, and household level. The economists ensure that they are sampling a representation from an area before they scale up the actual program. Today, Patrick is ensuring quality control by talking to one of the enumerators and checking on how households are selected into the study. I simply tag along to observe the branch, it’s like a smaller version of the many housing compounds at the BRAC headquarters. BRAC’s rigorous approach to their programs mimics an academic research study, which allows them to measure their effectiveness and know when to pivot or continue working programs.

My day-to-day goals at work are to dig deep into the sweet potato smallholder farmer program that I was interested in from the beginning. Patrick and others have shared the STATA code and datasets with me. The program conducted a pilot sampling design in 2013, a full baseline study of about 8,000 households in 2015, and a midline evaluation of programs in 2016. They plan to conduct the endline, final evaluation phase, of the program in late 2017 to early 2018. I’ve been excited to pour through the data, seeing how many questions they ask each household about farming practices, typical meals eaten, household food insecurity, child health status, womens’ health statuses, income sources, vitamin A knowledge, sweet potato knowledge, economic losses, loans currently held, and many other topics. I am interested in child health outcomes and nutrition since my finance and loan knowledge on outcomes is limited. I supplement my statistical programming with reading national documents and similar research studies on the related topics.

Outside of this project, I am also planning my upcoming training workshop, which is customarily held by graduate student interns during their time at BRAC. The topic is up to me and I want to provide a useful skillset. The previous interns held a beginners STATA workshop, which was a nice starting point to attend and observe how they conducted the workshop. I asked my coworkers which topics within my skillsets would be most useful for their work. They all have a range of research experience across different topic areas and types of methods. I specifically identified GIS mapping and qualitative research methodology as the two key areas where many staff desire but do not have current training. A few of my colleagues had also been asking me about graduate school abroad – admissions processes, standardized test taking, and especially about funding. Some colleagues are interested in masters while others a PhD with interests in both economics and public health. I decide to hold a two-hour workshop in my last week on three topics: GIS mapping, qualitative theory, and graduate school admissions.

Not all is work, I also immerse in outside activities. One weekend, I went to a multi-day music festival called the Nyege Nyege Festival in semi-rural Jinja, Uganda. The three-days of events featured African and international artists while drawing attendees from across the region. Last weekend, I took a long bus trip to Kigali, Rwanda for a weekend. The very inexpensive (~$22 USD) roundtrip bus ride is about 9 hours each way. I love local bus rides, where you get to see the country passing by, and take in scenes that you entirely miss on planes. In my suburban Kampala neighborhood, I go on occasional jogs, walk around the local area, and take the vans into central Kampala. 

BRAC Uganda - Week 2

I’m back in East Africa. It’s been two years and my fourth trip to the region. This time, I get to take in Kampala and work with a highly respected global health organization, BRAC. Based on some past experience and a lot of luck, I manage to receive funding from UCLA and a connection through my work with the WORLD Policy Analysis Center to work with BRAC and spend 7 weeks here.

I stay at a small compound in a detached one-bedroom unit. It’s much nicer than what I could afford in LA. I have a garden, solitude, and a short commute to BRAC. Each morning, I walk a few blocks to the main road, Entebbe-Kampala Road, raise my hand to hail down a commuter van and hop inside – much to the amusement of locals. I pay attention on the 6km ride (having missed my stop a few times) and learned the local dialect for “stop” or “drop me off here please”. Because of the congestion of cars in Kampala, traffic is actually worse than LA. It takes me about 45 minutes to go the 3 miles to work. If I go to downtown Kampala and leave during rush hour, which seems to span most of the day, it takes 2 hours to get home. But for now, I feel proud about navigating the area.

BRAC is an NGO (non-governmental organization) that was founded in Bangladesh. BRAC was a pioneer in the 1970s using microfinance, women’s empowerment, health education, and other social programs to uplift people out of poverty. Their successful model has now been replicated in Africa with headquarters in Kampala, Uganda and programs across Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and Sierra Leone. In Uganda alone, their programs impact 2 million people. To be an intern here is a privilege and an honor. The goal of my internship is to help the research director publish academic papers on BRAC Uganda’s many programs. When I first landed, I wasn’t entirely sure what the programs were, who I would work with directly, or really anything that wasn’t on the website. But like other scenarios, I adapt and learn and create a plan for my short time.

I sit next in an office with three other women working on different programs including menstruation, education, and community health promoters. I’m based in the research department, which has about 13 projects. BRAC’s Ugandan programs are well-run. They have local branches throughout the entire country with microfinance branches lending primarily to women. A few major funders include the World Bank, Japan Social Development Fund, and the Mastercard Foundation. Most full-time staff are either Ugandan or Bangladeshi and any Western-world participants are interns or research fellows. I always like this model, which is not so common in the international development world dominated by high-income countries.

I first learn about a project that I immediately want to work on. I read up on about 20 different projects happening at BRAC Uganda across economic, social, job training, health, and wellbeing initiatives. I was invited on a meeting to review and critique a presentation on a nutrition project. This project was set-up as a randomized control trial with seven arms. The program works with smallholder farmers, those cultivating 5 acres or less of land, and trials an intervention to grow orange-fleshed sweet potatoes in addition to health education and financial insurance. The goal is to improve the nutrition status of the entire family, especially young children. Most farmers in Uganda are women and subsistence farming makes up a large share of employment throughout the country. I learn that BRAC is monitoring whether families eat a more balanced diet and whether child outcomes like underweight, wasting, or stunting are improved. My dissertation topic is on child stunting, so I already knew there would be great fit. I’m excited about what the next few weeks will hold.

“Dinner with a sex worker and begging child”

I sat at the corner burger place in Addis eating a burger. The place is close to where I live and super cheap, the ideal pit stop from my long day. It is also frequented as the corner where sex workers stand. When I arrived for a quick bite, no one was there and I was in the middle of reading a novel and nibbling at my burger. A boy, about 10, approaches me asking if I wanted to buy any of his boxed tissues. He wore worn out khakis, a red striped shirt and carried out a haggard grain sack turned bag. He has soft features and long lashes that make him appear with both childlike gaiety and transforming into an adolescent. I politely decline on the tissues, perfectly content with using toilet paper as my all purpose tissue. The boy sits on the muddy concrete in the corner. He doesn’t yet have a name in my world but I’ve seen too many like him. These kids that grow up far before they are ready and are sent to shine shoes, sell trinkets, or worse, beg for money and trained to incite pity and pleading. I’d always been internally torn, wanting to help these kids and their mothers but also realizing that children begging and succeeding in obtaining money only further perpetuates the vicious cycle. Also, it’s not entirely certain that the money collected would benefit the kids themselves, particularly if there is a sort of child-begging pimp or parents that are addicts involved.

So I reconciled a long time ago in my life to buy these children food if possible. And also to get to know them. The thing I love most about working with children is their ability to dream unrestrained and they are not yet buckled to society and life’s expectations. Children that are beggars are no different in that regard, but they also carry a heavy burden on their shoulders that kids shouldn’t have to carry. When I’ve invited kids out to lunch, I ask the question that I ask of all people of all ages and from all backgrounds, “what is your dream job?” One boy in Dar-es-Salaam desired to be a boat captain, a Moroccan child wanted to work in a mosque, another boy in Port-au-Prince dreamt of becoming a construction engineer. I feel that a person’s vision and their dreams reveals so much about them and their core. Each time I ask a begging child this question, it both inspires and crushes me. I love their ability to dream beyond their circumstance and yet aware that poverty will severely limit nearly every opportunity in their lives. I suppose I do this as my personal method of giving without pity but I hope to give with seeing this individual as a whole person with their own pain and hope and life story.

The boy in Addis mumbles something after I decline on the tissues and I ask if he would also like a hamburger. He nods and I beckon him to sit next to me. He sits two chairs away, keeping his distance but complying. As we wait for the burger to be grilled, a sex worker taking the first shift of the night sits in the other direction one chair away from me. I ask the boy his name and he replies in his perfected Amharic that sounds like a Spanish tongue roll, “Brook.” My not-so-perfect firingi ears asks him to repeat his name like three times. The sex worker chimes in and annunciates every syllable for my slowness. Next I try to ask for his age in English. He doesn’t understand and the sex worker chimes in again and translates. She continues to translate my barrage of questions that is probably annoying both the boy being interrogated and the translator. It starts to rain and then pour in the chilly night, being rainy season in Addis, but our conversations are becoming less awkward and forced. I take out my Amharic Lonely Planet guide and ask if Brook likes music and reading. He replies yes to the music and no to the latter. He does not have a house but does go to school. He waves across the way and I look to see another boy, the same age as him toting tissue boxes for sale. He nods when I ask if that is his friend. I show him pictures of my friends and a view of the secluded LA wilderness that I call home.

I also strike up a conversation with the sex worker. She sips a macchiato as I learn that she is from Addis and curiously leans in when I show Brook pictures from my phone. Her and I laugh about something that I can’t quite recall. I realize that she too is a person with her hopes, dreams and stories. People are quick to judge sex workers and objectify this population both physically and morally, but they are human and it’s certainly not my duty to lay prejudice on anyone. My lack of talent for hearing and retaining names, however, leaves me at a loss of remembering her name immediately after she tells me. Still, I’ve found that a common language exists in humanity that does not have a name but is expressed in a smile, humor or kind eyes. Her English is functional and we have simple exchanges but she didn’t understand my question to Brook about his dream job until I explain it in a few more different ways – making charade hand gestures and saying big, adult, man, job, work, doctor, lawyer – and then it clicks and she asks him. Brook wants to be a doctor, it may have also been suggested to him but hey, that’s a great ambition regardless. I smile and give him a high five. I show him a picture of me working with doctors – why? I have no idea except to signal that they’re cool in my book. My words get translated when I tell him that I think he is very smart. As my translator comrade gets a call to begin her night of work, the hamburger finally arrives. Brook asks for it to be wrapped up to go, presumably to share with others. The sex worker enters a car in the darkness of the night. I shake Brook’s small hand and tell him, “goodbye Dr. Brook.” 

Kampot - childhood stories

Bedtime stories my dad would recite to us at night painted imagery of his home country, his loving mother and the large family and friends in his small home town by the river. Cambodia was where the river carried my dad, skipping school to swim across the banks. Sketches of his two-story corner home and the palm trees that adorned the water bank would take place with colored pencils on our dining table if we begged dad to draw it out. There were crickets caught and beta fish snatched from shallow rice paddies. I tried to envision the mountains and clouds in the distance. This is how my dad would keep the memory of his childhood alive and also his parents and 5 sisters. As a child, I never understood the sadness in dad's voice, wanting to make it ok. I never realized how detached from loss, his loss, as a kid as I do now as an adult.

I imagined it would be both beautiful and tragic visiting Kampot, Cambodia. It's been a trip that we as a family would take "one day." I sort of decided the one day was now and I would take the flight and 9 hour bus ride myself. As the bus neared Kampot, I could already smell the durian and my eyes watered, the sleep river town looked just like the stories and sketches. It was rainy and the dimples of the river centered the entire town. Emerald green mountains embraced by fluffy white clouds stood in the distance. I felt immediately at peace in Kampot. Everyone moved slowly and there was a relaxing ambience afloat amongst tourists and locals.

With my dad's help, I wove up and down the streets and found the exact house he grew up in. His talented sketches were accurate and the home is now a market and an up and coming French wine bar. I looked up at the windows and imagine what my dad as a child would peer out to. As the monsoon rains poured, it soaked and cleansed me. As I sat inside my local Cambodian stay and watched the rain pour some more, I began to write creatively and to write poetry, something I've seldom done in the past few years. I realize the connection I had to this town and my dad's joy and sorrow, it was the tapestry of connection with my dad's family. It is their love that lives on in my dad that lives on in me and here I was seeing the actual atmosphere of it all a generation before I was born.

 The river so often talked about by my dad where he would throw off his school uniform and swim across the bank.

 Dad's childhood home that housed him, his parents, 5 sisters and their children.

 Traversing a little rainy alley way leading to my AirBnB stay.

 French influence is seen and felt like the terrace of this cafe.

My lovely AirBnB place which is nestled among local houses. So I awoke to roosters, clanging, breakfast making at 6am - loved it!

Living in the Present

During a parent-teacher conference, my fourth grade teacher told my parents that I daydreamed a lot. I suppose even at an early age I had my head in the clouds. The negative aspects are that I can zone out in boring classes or work meetings, have my mind wander somewhere else, lose track of my location and pay poor attention to details. The positive aspects are the imagination and creativity that comes with being a dreamer, envisioning the great potential of things and generally easy going nature. During my two week stay in Thailand last year, I met a monk at a Buddhist temple that was sharing his wisdom. He talked about staying present and not letting the mind wander like while sitting in traffic. A year wiser, I continue learning about the importance of being truly present in the moment. When the mind wanders to the past or the future, it goes to situations and places outside of our control and at the cost of losing the very moment you are alive in. The more that the mind escapes from reality or the present moment, the more of  fantasy world can be created. I try to apply the living in the present now by focusing during boring meetings and less pondering in general and it’s true, I find more beauty surrounding me and devote my attention to the people or environment surrounding me.

100 Gourdes

On my daily rendezvous in Haiti, I stop with my companions/translators/friends, Junior and Jean Woody to have street food for lunch. The other week Junior and I ate lunch in a public park area and across from us sat two street boys that looked no older than 11. I invited them to have lunch with us. I ask my favorite question to ask any person, “what is your dream?”. One boy who said he was 12 years old even ;though he was so malnourished he looked more like 7 or 8, said he wanted to be a construction engineer. The other boy who was sick and laying down said he wanted to be anything that God would allow him to be. Junior translated a story they were telling him how they slept in the park and someone stole their shoes. Imagine someone else in so much poverty that they would steal shoes from homeless street children. Right then and there, how could anyone not feel the injustice of these children who never asked for that life and should be in school, focused on homework and imagining the world to be endless of possibilities? Junior later told me that it was not uncommon for wealthy people to hire street boys for a tiny amount of money to commit revenge crimes like murder and beat people. 

Regressing back to a week later at lunch with Jean Woody and Junior, we sat and ate and right outside the hut-like lunch area sat 5 boys/men staring at us while we ate. They looked us right in the eyes with every bite with the kind of hunger that pervades beyond the stomach but into their souls. I didn’t divert my eyes but I didn’t look at them every time. I finished my lunch and there was nothing left but bones but the boys and men still wanted my styrofoam container of nothing. That’s when it really hit me how hungry they were.  Junior asked what I was thinking but might not have had the courage to do, to give them some money. I was debating in my head about how I could buy them all rice and beans but wasn’t sure if that was a good idea...in a lot of aid work, giving something free to a few could lead to a lot more trouble like the summoning of friends and then a group of people asking for things. It’s happened a few times before to me in different cities. I gave Junior 25 Gourdes to hand to them and the 5 boys/men were excited but then I realized it wouldn’t nearly be enough for 5 people so I gave Junior 100 Gourdes instead. The 5 starving males were riled up and figuring out how to share the bill. They talked loudly amongst each other and ran towards another area presumably to buy food to share. It was obvious that their excitement and candor meant that 100 Gourdes was way more than they typically get. 100 Gourdes is equivalent to $2.40.