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.