Dear Namibia Public Health Fellow,
There has been a change of plan. You will no longer commence the public health masters program at UNAM in February 2010. For unspecified reasons, you have been denied admission. Should you require an explanation, please do not hesitate to contact us, but don’t get your hopes up.
Au lieu d’inscrire dans ce programme, tu vas étudier tout seul. Pour approfondir tes connaissance mathématiques, on a choisi l’étude du livre classique « Mathematical Biology » de la Professeure Edelstein-Keshet. En plus, un cours de la statistique pour épidémiologie te servira bien et par conséquent on choisi le texte auto-pédagogique « Statistics for Epidemiology ». D’ailleurs il faudra que tu repasses un peu les techniques pour la création des tables en CSPro. Et finalement pour t’enseigner écrire en LaTeX, tu devras créer un syllabus pour le tutorat de SAT un Namibie. En premier lieu, il faudra que tu établisses un partenariat avec l’ETS pour pouvoir baser le manuel d’instruction sur les exemplaires dans les examens que les candidats de SAT feront.
Dunque sarai impegnato di quatro progetti in totale. Ti soggeriamo di scriverti uno schema della settima affinchè riesca a fare tutto cio. Nonostante tutto questo, devi cercare di scrivere articoli su temi riguardando la salute pubblica. Per esempio il problem del riscaldimento mondiale pùo essere la base di un articolo interessantissimo. Infatti, puoi scrivere sul nuovo edificio del sindaco di Swakopmund il desgno del è molto assicura l’uso efficente dell’energia sia solare sia eletrica. Comincia questo articolo il pìu presto possible.
Please note that we still expect you to keep your eyes open for any opportunities for another public health job, as this is part of your fellowship. However, such an opportunity may only arise by the middle of the year.
P.S. Dr Tjama Tjivukua studied in the US, he has a PhD in chemistry, organic chemistry and graduated with Honors at at time when the opportunities for a young black high cool graduate were bleak. He created his own fellowship too, as did many others.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Stavamo giocando nel parco tre settimane
Ho scritto questo picolo recito dopo un pomeriggio passato nei giardini nazionale, i cosi detti "parliament gardens" colla mama.
Stavamo giocando al badmington nel parco “I giardino del parliamento” quando nel percorso di fronte a noi un gruppo di giovani stava avanzando verso l’altra parte del parco. Stavano cantando i bagliando allo stesso tempo, un canto cristiano di cui ho riconosciuto il nome di Dio in Ebraico “Yaweh”. Abbiamo smesso il nostro giocco e mamma si e tornato verso loro per guardare loro divertimento. È stato ovvio che si sono completamente persi nella fisicalità e la gioa del ballo-canto. Allora, io ho deciso di giungerli e sono andato a la loro processione che mi somogliasse a quella eucaristica.
Sebbene il tempo fosse turbato e ventoso, ci siamo divertiti un sacco.
E poi, di colpo, quando sono tornato a casa, tutta una esperienza italiana, italofona, di Duino nei primi classi di Italiano tra altri giovani, mi è venuta in mente,
Per questo, mi sono messo a scrivere gli eventi del pomeriggio afinche' non dimenchi mai quello che ho pravato qui e in Italia.
Stavamo giocando al badmington nel parco “I giardino del parliamento” quando nel percorso di fronte a noi un gruppo di giovani stava avanzando verso l’altra parte del parco. Stavano cantando i bagliando allo stesso tempo, un canto cristiano di cui ho riconosciuto il nome di Dio in Ebraico “Yaweh”. Abbiamo smesso il nostro giocco e mamma si e tornato verso loro per guardare loro divertimento. È stato ovvio che si sono completamente persi nella fisicalità e la gioa del ballo-canto. Allora, io ho deciso di giungerli e sono andato a la loro processione che mi somogliasse a quella eucaristica.
Sebbene il tempo fosse turbato e ventoso, ci siamo divertiti un sacco.
E poi, di colpo, quando sono tornato a casa, tutta una esperienza italiana, italofona, di Duino nei primi classi di Italiano tra altri giovani, mi è venuta in mente,
Per questo, mi sono messo a scrivere gli eventi del pomeriggio afinche' non dimenchi mai quello che ho pravato qui e in Italia.
NDF and Blood
The NDF. The Namibian Defence Force serves the people of Namibia, they would give their lives of any us on the battle field – they literally give their blood. “The people of the NDF were eager to donate blood and they checked ‘no’ ‘no’ ‘no’ in all the boxes”. These boxes are on the blood donation form and they ask the donor about previous contact with sex workers, partners with other concurrent sexual relationships and HIV positive partners. Interestingly, the NDF men and women did not hesitate to tick “no” in the boxes that asked “Are you donating blood in order to go for an HIV test?” or “Are you HIV positive?”
I donated blood today and happened to strike up a conversation with the nurse that was attending to my pouch which slowly filled with the life-giving crimson stuff. She remarked that going to the NDF is not cost effective, because “out of 100 donations, you can only accept 10.” She said this in passing – as if she was just giving an example of the senselessness of a blood drive at the NDF – rather than referencing a precise statistic. But she made me think as lay I there, reclining, squeezing that red ball in my hand to pump blood. The blood donation clinic stopped going to the NDF about “three years ago”, but they probably still have records of the times they did drives there. Is it possible to access these records in order to determine the HIV seroprevalence in the pool of donors on particular blood drives?”
HIV seropositive blood is but one of many cases when blood is rejected. The presence of other infectious microbes – such as Hepatitis virus – would also warrant a rejection. However, if the reasons for rejection are recorded by the Blood Transfusion Service of Namibia, one could tease out the HIV positive blood. The account of the nurse suggests that most of the NDF personnel who donated did not declare their seropositivity for a number of infectious diseases – including HIV. Without such a declaration, their blood was accepted unknowingly by the Blood Transfusion Service. In reflecting on reasons for which this declaration was omitted, denial of engaging in high risk activities for HIV coupled with ignorance of HIV status comes to mind. I based this hypothesis my other observations, where I discovered that soldiers in the NDF are prone to engage in sexually risky behavior (concurrent partnerships, involvement with sex workers). I wonder to what extent the people that go for blood donation in the NDF are a representative sample of the whole NDF. Is the sample a fairly equal mix of men and women and are the donors from all different divisions of the NDF or are they mainly soldiers?
When the NDF seroprevalence study is done, it would be illuminating to compare these findings with seroprevalence reported from blood drives in the past. Moreover, the seroprevalence reported by VCT sites accessed by the NDF could be compared to that of blood drives, especially since people who donate blood were probably ignorant or in denial of their status, while persons who visit VCT tend to take charge of their lives after testing. Here, I assume that firstly there would be no ethical problem in accessing the records of the blood drives at NDF, given that the identifying information of the donors is removed. Secondly, there would have to be a large enough a sample of people that donated for it to be considered a statistically meaningful sampling of the NDF. And the issue of representative sampling would have to be determined, by asking the blood transfusion service about the profile (sex, age, division ect.) of the NDF members that donated years ago. I know I am assuming quite a bit, but even if none this is possible, it is worth thinking about it.
I donated blood today and happened to strike up a conversation with the nurse that was attending to my pouch which slowly filled with the life-giving crimson stuff. She remarked that going to the NDF is not cost effective, because “out of 100 donations, you can only accept 10.” She said this in passing – as if she was just giving an example of the senselessness of a blood drive at the NDF – rather than referencing a precise statistic. But she made me think as lay I there, reclining, squeezing that red ball in my hand to pump blood. The blood donation clinic stopped going to the NDF about “three years ago”, but they probably still have records of the times they did drives there. Is it possible to access these records in order to determine the HIV seroprevalence in the pool of donors on particular blood drives?”
HIV seropositive blood is but one of many cases when blood is rejected. The presence of other infectious microbes – such as Hepatitis virus – would also warrant a rejection. However, if the reasons for rejection are recorded by the Blood Transfusion Service of Namibia, one could tease out the HIV positive blood. The account of the nurse suggests that most of the NDF personnel who donated did not declare their seropositivity for a number of infectious diseases – including HIV. Without such a declaration, their blood was accepted unknowingly by the Blood Transfusion Service. In reflecting on reasons for which this declaration was omitted, denial of engaging in high risk activities for HIV coupled with ignorance of HIV status comes to mind. I based this hypothesis my other observations, where I discovered that soldiers in the NDF are prone to engage in sexually risky behavior (concurrent partnerships, involvement with sex workers). I wonder to what extent the people that go for blood donation in the NDF are a representative sample of the whole NDF. Is the sample a fairly equal mix of men and women and are the donors from all different divisions of the NDF or are they mainly soldiers?
When the NDF seroprevalence study is done, it would be illuminating to compare these findings with seroprevalence reported from blood drives in the past. Moreover, the seroprevalence reported by VCT sites accessed by the NDF could be compared to that of blood drives, especially since people who donate blood were probably ignorant or in denial of their status, while persons who visit VCT tend to take charge of their lives after testing. Here, I assume that firstly there would be no ethical problem in accessing the records of the blood drives at NDF, given that the identifying information of the donors is removed. Secondly, there would have to be a large enough a sample of people that donated for it to be considered a statistically meaningful sampling of the NDF. And the issue of representative sampling would have to be determined, by asking the blood transfusion service about the profile (sex, age, division ect.) of the NDF members that donated years ago. I know I am assuming quite a bit, but even if none this is possible, it is worth thinking about it.
Regret in the shelves?
Pancho peered at the single shelf of the wall cabinet and read the word “Will to Die” along the rib of a book. He took out the think brown book and on the cover was a portrait of a man in a white suit and cap with a ghostlike expression on his face. It was an oil painting with blurry colors like the one of the vampire by Munsch. He read the back and found out it was a collection of writings – fiction and non – on Johannesburg townships of the 1950s and how they were places of splendor for the writer. He was about to start reading when a hot regret caught him. Yes he peered along the shelves and saw how the books were slanted, not tightly packed as that of shelf filled to capacity. Why oh why did he not bring back those booklets on the United Nations and Namibia and even a book by Andrei Urnov “South Africa against Africa” , these cold war publications that allowed him to write his history internal assessment on the contact group. Did anyone collect them after my leave of Italy? And in the US, why did he not bring back that ethnography of Mama Lola A Vodoo Priestess in Brooklyn? He paced up and down, with the heat on his chest regret closing in on his heart. Then he stopped. He thought a bit and went to his room where he took the Ethnography “Will to Live” and “The Origin of the Species”. The former he read entirely and reread parts of it – captivates him still. The latter he read snipits, but he wanted it when he was 16 since he knew how much controversy it caused in cold Europe of 1859.
So that is that.
That is that indeed.
So that is that.
That is that indeed.
First view - Etseiko
I remember two years ago, more than two years ago. How I was outside Frist campus center with two other classmates, both young women, who were premed and in my genetics class. I don’t recall who they are by name. One of them told me “I am doing this medical anthropology class where we have to look at pedigrees and it is so easy compared to what we are doing here” as we waited outside Frist, the north lawn, just under the statues of Benjamin Franklin and the man who discovered induction (why can’t I remember, is it just Henry ? Did I really have to give away my physics books!).
I never gave medical anthropology much though then. In fact, it appeared less rigorous compared to genetics, since my classmates told me how the anthro majors found the pedigree analysis so hard : “I am in a class where these anthro majors go – this is so hard!” . We had a good chuckle at their struggle, ironically, since I was struggling with genetics then – struggling to keep up with the material.
I am writing this because today I am interested in medical anthropology and I just had a discussion about traditions governing marriage. In the Oshiwambo tradition, a person may not marry a partner with whom they share a maternal family member. More clearly, the maternal lines may never ever be the same of a bride and groom to be.
I found this out by speaking with my mother’s friends about the introduction of a the future groom to the family of his bride to be. In Oshiwambo it is called Etseiko. “Etseiko is the introduction of a man to the family of his future bride. That is all that it is, no tradition, no funny things…” explained Martha, one of my mother’s good friends. Etseiko is the first formal meeting between the groom and the future in laws and formal it is since my cousin Clemens dressed real nice for his Etseiko just last week. It is during Etseiko that the parents of the bride to be interrogate the family members of the groom, in Clemens’s case these were his two elder sisters, on his family. “Where are you from? What village? And your family members are they related to so and so, could they be related?” are some of the questions that are asked to establish whether there is any blood relation. In the event that maternal lines cross, the wedding is called off indefinitely as such an intersection could have devastating effects on the children the couple could have. “People found out that those children from the same maternal line tend to be abnormal” told me Marta, “so it is not allowed”.
I wondered whether there is a relation between this tradition and genetics. Mitochondrial DNA inherited maternally is what comes to mind. From my knowledge, I postulate that by marrying into the same maternal line, the same mitochondria are inherited from one generation to the next. For this too happen, the germ cells of a mother divide and so do the mitochondria. During cell divisions the mitochondria are segregated to the daughter cells in a random manner, which after many division, results in the segregation of genetically dissimilar mitochondria from each other. So mitochondria carrying mutations of disease eventually end up in one ovum while normal mitochondria end up in another. For this too happen, many cell divisions are needed and this can be achieved through consecutive generations of women in the same maternal line. However, this process of segregation will ensue regardless of the genotype of the father of the daughter. So the marrying of men to women in the same maternal line has no affect on it. Therefore, this is unlikely to be the reason for this tradition.
On the other hand, the X chromosome is probably the reason. If a man and women are in the same maternal line, the man must carry the same X chromosome as his wife. Marrying within the same maternal line increases the chances that an X chromosome with a recessive mutation will be homozygous in women, leading to genetic disease. Yes it appears that the pedigree analysis needed for this medical anthropology is pretty simple.
But how far back does one have to go for a relative to be counted in “the maternal line?”
How distant must one be to be cleared during the Etseiko? In any case, why would one care about what relation there is between the tradition and genetics? Is it because we can learn more about genetic disease inheritance through this tradition or is it just nifty to notice overlaps? Since hereditary abnormalities, like dwarfism, still occur amongst the Owambo – their system is not full proof. Once we know the way a disease is passed on, are we supposed to inform people so they can change their traditions accordingly, or should we just advocate for genetic screening for fiancées? With the advent of genetic testing, how will Etseiko change – if at all – and what will it mean for the way people chose a life partner?
I never gave medical anthropology much though then. In fact, it appeared less rigorous compared to genetics, since my classmates told me how the anthro majors found the pedigree analysis so hard : “I am in a class where these anthro majors go – this is so hard!” . We had a good chuckle at their struggle, ironically, since I was struggling with genetics then – struggling to keep up with the material.
I am writing this because today I am interested in medical anthropology and I just had a discussion about traditions governing marriage. In the Oshiwambo tradition, a person may not marry a partner with whom they share a maternal family member. More clearly, the maternal lines may never ever be the same of a bride and groom to be.
I found this out by speaking with my mother’s friends about the introduction of a the future groom to the family of his bride to be. In Oshiwambo it is called Etseiko. “Etseiko is the introduction of a man to the family of his future bride. That is all that it is, no tradition, no funny things…” explained Martha, one of my mother’s good friends. Etseiko is the first formal meeting between the groom and the future in laws and formal it is since my cousin Clemens dressed real nice for his Etseiko just last week. It is during Etseiko that the parents of the bride to be interrogate the family members of the groom, in Clemens’s case these were his two elder sisters, on his family. “Where are you from? What village? And your family members are they related to so and so, could they be related?” are some of the questions that are asked to establish whether there is any blood relation. In the event that maternal lines cross, the wedding is called off indefinitely as such an intersection could have devastating effects on the children the couple could have. “People found out that those children from the same maternal line tend to be abnormal” told me Marta, “so it is not allowed”.
I wondered whether there is a relation between this tradition and genetics. Mitochondrial DNA inherited maternally is what comes to mind. From my knowledge, I postulate that by marrying into the same maternal line, the same mitochondria are inherited from one generation to the next. For this too happen, the germ cells of a mother divide and so do the mitochondria. During cell divisions the mitochondria are segregated to the daughter cells in a random manner, which after many division, results in the segregation of genetically dissimilar mitochondria from each other. So mitochondria carrying mutations of disease eventually end up in one ovum while normal mitochondria end up in another. For this too happen, many cell divisions are needed and this can be achieved through consecutive generations of women in the same maternal line. However, this process of segregation will ensue regardless of the genotype of the father of the daughter. So the marrying of men to women in the same maternal line has no affect on it. Therefore, this is unlikely to be the reason for this tradition.
On the other hand, the X chromosome is probably the reason. If a man and women are in the same maternal line, the man must carry the same X chromosome as his wife. Marrying within the same maternal line increases the chances that an X chromosome with a recessive mutation will be homozygous in women, leading to genetic disease. Yes it appears that the pedigree analysis needed for this medical anthropology is pretty simple.
But how far back does one have to go for a relative to be counted in “the maternal line?”
How distant must one be to be cleared during the Etseiko? In any case, why would one care about what relation there is between the tradition and genetics? Is it because we can learn more about genetic disease inheritance through this tradition or is it just nifty to notice overlaps? Since hereditary abnormalities, like dwarfism, still occur amongst the Owambo – their system is not full proof. Once we know the way a disease is passed on, are we supposed to inform people so they can change their traditions accordingly, or should we just advocate for genetic screening for fiancées? With the advent of genetic testing, how will Etseiko change – if at all – and what will it mean for the way people chose a life partner?
Doing things differently, Dec 12th
Doing things differently
I would have done things differently. The only things that I would do differently are those I have thought of. For anything else that does not come to mind, I would not do differently, because if it was unsatisfactory then why would I do it differently?
I would have not refused to take the garbage out. I was busy scribbling, those brouillons, which were to be posted and I just said “No I will take it out later”. My mother implored me “please take it out, or they will steal the bin [ it has been stolen before outside]” but I kept saying “I will do it later”. This was my time to write and I just did not want to deal with rubbish. She stormed out of my room cursing my genes, I wish I could translate this well “The cursed genes of Ben [my father], you are infected, cursed genes”. I would have been calmer and just said “yes I will” and just taken it out. After all, I needed a break from sitting there, on this not so comfortable plastic chair.
I need to be calm, that is key and not let what I call emotions rule me. What is the difference between the off hand and the reasoned approach? Is it what Plato spoke about in Republic IV, using the appetitive part of the soul instead of the part of reason? I need to use the reasoned one. I think the avoidance of conflict or misunderstanding is the main advantage to using the reasoned part, otherwise we feel so self righteous using the emotional part.
I am guilty of a wrong approach when it came to addressing an issue I care about at work. At work it is, but this issue matters to me a lot. The matter of prisons – which have clinics, according to the people I called at these prisons, but were excluded from the health facility census. I found this out at the very end of the census, I noticed, by chance. Noticing this after the census fieldwork was already over was unfortunate, but not something to beat myself over about. I could have just emailed the two people that I answer to most of the time, Anna and Mr Dumeni, and told them about it. Instead, I wrote an advocacy style email that began with the words “Take a look at these prisons, all of which have clinics” to everyone involved everyone involved in the census, about 9 people – some here and some overseas in the US. I listed the omitted prisons, all 9 of them and even highlighted the word “juvenile” in the prison that was a juvenile detention center. In my three paragraph letter, I spoke “prisons being unaccounted for” and how “saddening it was that the prisons are excluded from the census” given that the next day was human rights day. I spoke about human rights in implicit terms that prisoners have a right to adequate health and I underlined the importance of knowing about HIV services : counseling and testing and anti-retroviral therapy. This email was sent to everyone supervising the census, including the donor partner (the USAID representative, who is an American). I hope that they would do something about this and I did end the letter by saying “something needs to be done, at the very least the report must mention this caveat of the NSPA (Namibia Service Provision Assessment). I even undermined the concept of calling this a census, given that only a sample of the prison clinics was on the original sample list of health facilities. 3 out of 13 prisons were there, leaving 10 out and 1 was done on the fly by interviewers who found it.
When I spoke to Anna about it, she was very stern throughout our talk. “What was the whole issue about human rights?” she asked with a confused expression on her face. All I could reply was the pathetic “Well it was human rights day the next day, so I put it in there.” Indeed, how pathetic, I could not even muster the courage to say that prisoners have the right to adequate health care and by leaving them out we cannot know if their rights are met. Anna explained how the facilities I mentioned were not on the list because the ministry of defense – the one responsible for these prison sick bays – submitted only three prisons to be surveyed for their health facilities. The reason for this was “because these are the largest sick bays and they may soon become clinics”. Since Anna was rather dispassionate in providing these answers, there was not point in asking her to consider that if we the health facility census decides to include sick bays in the census, then it is important to do them all. She told me that “I did not ask them why they gave only these or why the were the largest, if you want to find out, contact the ministry of defense, but don’t send us anymore emails [about your finding], we don’t care.”
My advocacy email just did not work. When I spoke to Mr Dumeni he told me that “when a problem arises, just contact us first”. But I did contact him and all the rest. Of course, what he meant was to just contact him and Anna personally, before sending it to the whole crowd. This is what Anna meant about me making “unfounded claims” in an email. I should have understood this to mean “first find out why this is the case from us, the Namibian people you worked closely with before blowing it of proportion.”
Anna also felt that it was not part of my job to write this email. I jumped to defend my stance and said it was, since I had been calling the ministry of defense health facilities for about two days in order to clarify information collected about them, when it dawned on me that there were only three prison clinics for the whole of Namibia in the data. Here, I have no regret, I needed to impress upon her that I cannot ignore major gaps in the data, even though it is not my job to rectify it.
The exchange I had with Mr Dumeni was cordial. He clicked away on his computer, but at least he made more eye contact than Anna did. In speaking with him, I realized how the limitations of a census can be used a pretext for excluding sites from the data. “What is the methodology of a census” he asked me.
I replied that “it is an attempt to get every site into the data, but you may not get them all, so try and get as much as you can.” Here he came in for the kill : “So if you don’t get all the sites, does it mean that it is no longer a census [ as I claimed because prisons were excluded] or is this just a limitation of the whole thing.”
“It is a limitation,” I conceded, but then came back saying “But if a facility is not even on the list for facilities in the census, you cannot even attempt to get it. The census is an attempt to get it all.”
“Yes that is true” he admitted while his gaze took refuge at the computer monitor. He did not want to admit the implications of this, I assume. Nonetheless, he was friendly, as he always is and he understood. I ended our mini meeting by thanking him for all he had done for me and choosing me. He was grateful and said “We don’t know what we would have done without you.” I wonder too how this census would have been had I been somewhere else, someone else.
I would have done things differently. The only things that I would do differently are those I have thought of. For anything else that does not come to mind, I would not do differently, because if it was unsatisfactory then why would I do it differently?
I would have not refused to take the garbage out. I was busy scribbling, those brouillons, which were to be posted and I just said “No I will take it out later”. My mother implored me “please take it out, or they will steal the bin [ it has been stolen before outside]” but I kept saying “I will do it later”. This was my time to write and I just did not want to deal with rubbish. She stormed out of my room cursing my genes, I wish I could translate this well “The cursed genes of Ben [my father], you are infected, cursed genes”. I would have been calmer and just said “yes I will” and just taken it out. After all, I needed a break from sitting there, on this not so comfortable plastic chair.
I need to be calm, that is key and not let what I call emotions rule me. What is the difference between the off hand and the reasoned approach? Is it what Plato spoke about in Republic IV, using the appetitive part of the soul instead of the part of reason? I need to use the reasoned one. I think the avoidance of conflict or misunderstanding is the main advantage to using the reasoned part, otherwise we feel so self righteous using the emotional part.
I am guilty of a wrong approach when it came to addressing an issue I care about at work. At work it is, but this issue matters to me a lot. The matter of prisons – which have clinics, according to the people I called at these prisons, but were excluded from the health facility census. I found this out at the very end of the census, I noticed, by chance. Noticing this after the census fieldwork was already over was unfortunate, but not something to beat myself over about. I could have just emailed the two people that I answer to most of the time, Anna and Mr Dumeni, and told them about it. Instead, I wrote an advocacy style email that began with the words “Take a look at these prisons, all of which have clinics” to everyone involved everyone involved in the census, about 9 people – some here and some overseas in the US. I listed the omitted prisons, all 9 of them and even highlighted the word “juvenile” in the prison that was a juvenile detention center. In my three paragraph letter, I spoke “prisons being unaccounted for” and how “saddening it was that the prisons are excluded from the census” given that the next day was human rights day. I spoke about human rights in implicit terms that prisoners have a right to adequate health and I underlined the importance of knowing about HIV services : counseling and testing and anti-retroviral therapy. This email was sent to everyone supervising the census, including the donor partner (the USAID representative, who is an American). I hope that they would do something about this and I did end the letter by saying “something needs to be done, at the very least the report must mention this caveat of the NSPA (Namibia Service Provision Assessment). I even undermined the concept of calling this a census, given that only a sample of the prison clinics was on the original sample list of health facilities. 3 out of 13 prisons were there, leaving 10 out and 1 was done on the fly by interviewers who found it.
When I spoke to Anna about it, she was very stern throughout our talk. “What was the whole issue about human rights?” she asked with a confused expression on her face. All I could reply was the pathetic “Well it was human rights day the next day, so I put it in there.” Indeed, how pathetic, I could not even muster the courage to say that prisoners have the right to adequate health care and by leaving them out we cannot know if their rights are met. Anna explained how the facilities I mentioned were not on the list because the ministry of defense – the one responsible for these prison sick bays – submitted only three prisons to be surveyed for their health facilities. The reason for this was “because these are the largest sick bays and they may soon become clinics”. Since Anna was rather dispassionate in providing these answers, there was not point in asking her to consider that if we the health facility census decides to include sick bays in the census, then it is important to do them all. She told me that “I did not ask them why they gave only these or why the were the largest, if you want to find out, contact the ministry of defense, but don’t send us anymore emails [about your finding], we don’t care.”
My advocacy email just did not work. When I spoke to Mr Dumeni he told me that “when a problem arises, just contact us first”. But I did contact him and all the rest. Of course, what he meant was to just contact him and Anna personally, before sending it to the whole crowd. This is what Anna meant about me making “unfounded claims” in an email. I should have understood this to mean “first find out why this is the case from us, the Namibian people you worked closely with before blowing it of proportion.”
Anna also felt that it was not part of my job to write this email. I jumped to defend my stance and said it was, since I had been calling the ministry of defense health facilities for about two days in order to clarify information collected about them, when it dawned on me that there were only three prison clinics for the whole of Namibia in the data. Here, I have no regret, I needed to impress upon her that I cannot ignore major gaps in the data, even though it is not my job to rectify it.
The exchange I had with Mr Dumeni was cordial. He clicked away on his computer, but at least he made more eye contact than Anna did. In speaking with him, I realized how the limitations of a census can be used a pretext for excluding sites from the data. “What is the methodology of a census” he asked me.
I replied that “it is an attempt to get every site into the data, but you may not get them all, so try and get as much as you can.” Here he came in for the kill : “So if you don’t get all the sites, does it mean that it is no longer a census [ as I claimed because prisons were excluded] or is this just a limitation of the whole thing.”
“It is a limitation,” I conceded, but then came back saying “But if a facility is not even on the list for facilities in the census, you cannot even attempt to get it. The census is an attempt to get it all.”
“Yes that is true” he admitted while his gaze took refuge at the computer monitor. He did not want to admit the implications of this, I assume. Nonetheless, he was friendly, as he always is and he understood. I ended our mini meeting by thanking him for all he had done for me and choosing me. He was grateful and said “We don’t know what we would have done without you.” I wonder too how this census would have been had I been somewhere else, someone else.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Christmas
Christmas brings many things. (23/12)Glad tidings - unimportant rejection letter from the University of Namibia for the Master in Public Health. I am not being ironic, because now I will be able to go to a course in Mathematical Biology held in Cape Town done by a Princeton graduate studying epidemiology at UC Berkeley. Being rejected though, kinda burns. I have to find out why, work experience, GPA or what? In any case, this is my challenge, to see how much I want to do public health by doing some more of it next year. I want to be in a place where I can say "yes! This is what I must do now, the masters and I have some thesis ideas".
Cooking was good on the 24th. We had the traditional "Budni vecher" dinner. I cooked the stuff, all vegan, as it is supposed to be, but soo good. Soup of beans, cabbage leaves filled with season rice (as Esmerelda put it - one of the guests who is a beautiful colored lady who was in my same grade school (primary school) and who has a kid with a Bulgarian-Lebanese dude I have never met). It was great company and the bulgarian pumpkin pie (with walnuts and more phylo dough) crusty tasty layer, was great.
Presents ( a plate) for my father. I was washing the dishing (plates) when my mother asked "I read a bit of the note you put for your father with the plate, I don't know, what you want to say with it?" I was angry at the fact she read it and I said "It is for him, because he will need plates in the new place where he is staying." From that point on, a wide rivere opened up between me and my mother, which she filled with her outbursts and accusations of me being a traitor by encouraging my father to move in with his whore. I escaped then, so I visited my cousins who live in Havana. Havana is an informal settlement in Windhoek. On side of Evaline street there are stone houses and on the other I saw sprawling right angled homes made of crinkled corrogated iron. Some brick here and there, but it was just here and there. There are public toilets and high floodlights intersperesed inbetween every 20 houses of so, but that is it, it appears. Gravel roads. My cousin had a great meal and I brought stuff too.
My cousin Nango stays there, she works as a cashier at Spar - a grocery store in Marua Mall. There is a Spar here too, nearby, where we shop often, I get whole wheat buns with pumpkin and sunflower seeds there. The contrast between my family and hers exists.
Plate, that plate. Kept my mother up all night and the in morning, she stormed in my room, half awake I made out what she said, whith eyes flaring a real monster "I suggest you move out and stay with your father and his kurva [whore]".That was thing morning.
We had a meal just now of roasted eggplant,carrots, garlic and yoghurt (bulgarian style) and I prayed for peace. That rift between us is still there, and I shovelling out the heaps of scathing words that came into it.
Cooking was good on the 24th. We had the traditional "Budni vecher" dinner. I cooked the stuff, all vegan, as it is supposed to be, but soo good. Soup of beans, cabbage leaves filled with season rice (as Esmerelda put it - one of the guests who is a beautiful colored lady who was in my same grade school (primary school) and who has a kid with a Bulgarian-Lebanese dude I have never met). It was great company and the bulgarian pumpkin pie (with walnuts and more phylo dough) crusty tasty layer, was great.
Presents ( a plate) for my father. I was washing the dishing (plates) when my mother asked "I read a bit of the note you put for your father with the plate, I don't know, what you want to say with it?" I was angry at the fact she read it and I said "It is for him, because he will need plates in the new place where he is staying." From that point on, a wide rivere opened up between me and my mother, which she filled with her outbursts and accusations of me being a traitor by encouraging my father to move in with his whore. I escaped then, so I visited my cousins who live in Havana. Havana is an informal settlement in Windhoek. On side of Evaline street there are stone houses and on the other I saw sprawling right angled homes made of crinkled corrogated iron. Some brick here and there, but it was just here and there. There are public toilets and high floodlights intersperesed inbetween every 20 houses of so, but that is it, it appears. Gravel roads. My cousin had a great meal and I brought stuff too.
My cousin Nango stays there, she works as a cashier at Spar - a grocery store in Marua Mall. There is a Spar here too, nearby, where we shop often, I get whole wheat buns with pumpkin and sunflower seeds there. The contrast between my family and hers exists.
Plate, that plate. Kept my mother up all night and the in morning, she stormed in my room, half awake I made out what she said, whith eyes flaring a real monster "I suggest you move out and stay with your father and his kurva [whore]".That was thing morning.
We had a meal just now of roasted eggplant,carrots, garlic and yoghurt (bulgarian style) and I prayed for peace. That rift between us is still there, and I shovelling out the heaps of scathing words that came into it.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Etanga!
Beaucoup de choses me rappellent d’Etanga. Ça fait un an et cinq mois que j’ai fini mon stage-étude à Etanga, un coin très rural de la Namibie. Toutes les fois que j’essaie à ignorer ses signes qui me incitent à écrire un petit récit de n’importe quoi sur l’Etanga et la danse qui s’y déroule aujourd’hui et celle qui s’est déroulée pendant mon séjour-là , je recule. Mais maintenant, je ne peux plus résister à tout ça, et j’écrit.
Dans le journal quotidien namibien, « NEW ERA » ou « nouvelle époque » a publié un article sur le changement de vie à Etanga. J’aurais écrit une traduction de l’article si je l’avais trouvé, mais il m’échappe. Des toutes fois, il s’agit des allocations sociales qui ont été déboursées aux gens à Etanga il y a quelques jours. Pratiquement toute le monde est dépendante de cet argent de l’état pour débrouiller car le via traditionnelle basée sur l’élevage des bœufs et des vaches ne plus durable. Les allocations sont dépensées pour acheter du farine de mais, du sucre et d’autres produits alimentaire qui constitue la diète fondamentale de peuple, Himba, Zimba et Tjimba. Une femme Ovahimba de la famille Tjambiru, laquelle qui m’a accueilli dans son petit village-camp pendant mon séjour, a même parlé de gens paresseux qui n’arrivent pas à produire assez pour se nourrir et qui par conséquent achètent toujours du mais. À quel point sont-ils arrivés ? Quel sera l’impact de ce changement radical sur la santé de ces gens ? Du point de vue d’un anthropologue médical, ce changement structurel risque d’apporter de nouveaux défis pour la santé, comme le diabète et d’autres maladies non-communicables lesquelles ces gens ne subissaient pas il y a cents ans. Comme Hélène et Philip Goubier ont constaté eux même chez les Tjambiru où ils ont filmé, le problème de l’abus de l’alcool demeure partout et de tout part dans cette région de la Namibie.
Les gens là, pourtant, continuent à s’habiller traditionnellement, surtout les femmes, puisque le corps de la femme contient et préserve le patrimoine culturel d’un peuple en permettant les femmes de profiter de l’intérêt de touristes auxquelles ils revendiquent dix dollar (quatre vingt euros centièmes) par photo.
Alors, je dois finir ce récit par dire que mes responsabilités domiciles exigent que je cuisine quelque chose pour mon frère, puisque l’heure de diner est déjà passée. Mais, je continue à penser à mes amis Ovahimba, de la famille des artistes – la famille Tjambiru, qui déambulent par les pâturages de Koakoland (le nom de la terre « rouge » avec de l’herbe jaune et forêts éparses de la région de Himba, Zimba, Ovatua et Tjimba ».
Dans le journal quotidien namibien, « NEW ERA » ou « nouvelle époque » a publié un article sur le changement de vie à Etanga. J’aurais écrit une traduction de l’article si je l’avais trouvé, mais il m’échappe. Des toutes fois, il s’agit des allocations sociales qui ont été déboursées aux gens à Etanga il y a quelques jours. Pratiquement toute le monde est dépendante de cet argent de l’état pour débrouiller car le via traditionnelle basée sur l’élevage des bœufs et des vaches ne plus durable. Les allocations sont dépensées pour acheter du farine de mais, du sucre et d’autres produits alimentaire qui constitue la diète fondamentale de peuple, Himba, Zimba et Tjimba. Une femme Ovahimba de la famille Tjambiru, laquelle qui m’a accueilli dans son petit village-camp pendant mon séjour, a même parlé de gens paresseux qui n’arrivent pas à produire assez pour se nourrir et qui par conséquent achètent toujours du mais. À quel point sont-ils arrivés ? Quel sera l’impact de ce changement radical sur la santé de ces gens ? Du point de vue d’un anthropologue médical, ce changement structurel risque d’apporter de nouveaux défis pour la santé, comme le diabète et d’autres maladies non-communicables lesquelles ces gens ne subissaient pas il y a cents ans. Comme Hélène et Philip Goubier ont constaté eux même chez les Tjambiru où ils ont filmé, le problème de l’abus de l’alcool demeure partout et de tout part dans cette région de la Namibie.
Les gens là, pourtant, continuent à s’habiller traditionnellement, surtout les femmes, puisque le corps de la femme contient et préserve le patrimoine culturel d’un peuple en permettant les femmes de profiter de l’intérêt de touristes auxquelles ils revendiquent dix dollar (quatre vingt euros centièmes) par photo.
Alors, je dois finir ce récit par dire que mes responsabilités domiciles exigent que je cuisine quelque chose pour mon frère, puisque l’heure de diner est déjà passée. Mais, je continue à penser à mes amis Ovahimba, de la famille des artistes – la famille Tjambiru, qui déambulent par les pâturages de Koakoland (le nom de la terre « rouge » avec de l’herbe jaune et forêts éparses de la région de Himba, Zimba, Ovatua et Tjimba ».
I wonder why I spend so much time here. Ok Letme just say something.
Life is indeed what happends when you are making plans (John Lennon). I was planning the things I needed to do before the 18th December, when I probably will go up north (no internet) to visit my cousins and grandma when my mom called from outside "When you see your father later today, get the key for the house he keeps there".
My father kind of lost two keys for the house and plus he has moved out.
I replied instinctilvely and said "No you ask him, I don't want to communicate on my behalf". This threw my mothers nerves awry and she barged into my room yelling
"Why can't you do this, why? So simple!" Her eyes were glaring and on fire, she took my lap from its case and drop it as she shouted in desperation, her whole face mugging.
I just kept quite and sighed and then said I would. I still hear echoes of her outrage "How can you say this? Just a simple thing."
I said it because my mother does use me as a channel for communication for her angry messages to my father and I just don't like it.
But I can't take this either.
So she said, "tell your father to divorce me!" when she came back to my room.
And that's what i'll do.
Life is indeed what happends when you are making plans (John Lennon). I was planning the things I needed to do before the 18th December, when I probably will go up north (no internet) to visit my cousins and grandma when my mom called from outside "When you see your father later today, get the key for the house he keeps there".
My father kind of lost two keys for the house and plus he has moved out.
I replied instinctilvely and said "No you ask him, I don't want to communicate on my behalf". This threw my mothers nerves awry and she barged into my room yelling
"Why can't you do this, why? So simple!" Her eyes were glaring and on fire, she took my lap from its case and drop it as she shouted in desperation, her whole face mugging.
I just kept quite and sighed and then said I would. I still hear echoes of her outrage "How can you say this? Just a simple thing."
I said it because my mother does use me as a channel for communication for her angry messages to my father and I just don't like it.
But I can't take this either.
So she said, "tell your father to divorce me!" when she came back to my room.
And that's what i'll do.
Moth destroys
Do set yourself for treasure on earth were rust and moth destroy. The words of the Gospel according to Matthew. Today, I realized there were many moth holes in my colothes, packed away in a quasi ordered manner. I also lost my green Princeton “keep Bulter Green” bottle at the public pool. No problem, it was just a bottle, not a person. I wonder if I will ever have children, how will I ever, ever deal with it if they are lost and abducted and hacked to death by some serial killer ? I realized there was no reason to worry. But I am still pissed off. Thank goodness though that the Lord is there and that I need not to worry. I seek you Lord, please give me your living water.
The vestiges of my Princeton life, the material stuff, are decaying. But what I carry in me, will last for as long as live.
A DAY LATE:
Praise the Lord I FOUND the bottle. It was just there in my room lying on the carpet. I did not see, maybe it was hidden next to mattres or something( I sleep on the floor only, because it is too hot and beds are just too soft, not good for the back. I sleep on just a two layer duvet, that is nice).
There is a wild fyling cockoroach here, on our curtain and I don’t know what she wants with me. Yes, she is flying and I can’t catch her.
Now I wonder where she went?
The vestiges of my Princeton life, the material stuff, are decaying. But what I carry in me, will last for as long as live.
A DAY LATE:
Praise the Lord I FOUND the bottle. It was just there in my room lying on the carpet. I did not see, maybe it was hidden next to mattres or something( I sleep on the floor only, because it is too hot and beds are just too soft, not good for the back. I sleep on just a two layer duvet, that is nice).
There is a wild fyling cockoroach here, on our curtain and I don’t know what she wants with me. Yes, she is flying and I can’t catch her.
Now I wonder where she went?
Baby Haven
Joao Biehl is Brazillian. His anthropological work “The Will To Live” documents, analyzes and gives meaning to how Brazil experienced the universal ART distribution it implemented from 1995 to early 2000s. He writes about his country and how people at the margins of society – the outcast prostitutes, drug abusers, homosexuals and generally indigent – were unable to access the life saving anti-AIDS drugs because the state health facilities could not meet the needs of patients who struggle to survive, let alone adhere to an ART regimen (Bielh, Will to Live). I wonder to what extent people in Namibia cannot access the ART regimens that are universally available. Besides the institutional praise our ART rollout has received from UNAIDS, PEPFAR and the Global Fund, we still only cover 77% of patients who need ART. Are people who wander the streets, such as sex workers and homeless people, including children, who face violence on a daily basis, included in the remaining 13% of those in need? To what extent is the surveillance of the epidemic in Namibia able to include people with no permanent physical address or records, people who have never been tested and are not on the “pre-art” program of CD4 count monitoring? Additionally I am interested in how local “circuits of care” emerge as a complement to government health services.
In “Will To Live,”Biehl tells the story of a grassroots health institution in the city of Salvador, a house of care called Caasah. Some people admitted to Caasah experienced transformation whereby they did not only adhere to their treatment, but also demanded its access for others. Thus, they became “patient citizens” which engaged with medical and political institutions. A similar institution to Caasah is “Baby Haven” in Windhoek Namibia. This a safe house for babies that are typically removed from their abusive parents by social workers. It reminds of “Angel’s Wings” in Trenton – a foster home for kids from abusive homes – where I volunteered by very first week in the United States. Somehow my initial post college life mirrors my initial college life, where volunteerism featured prominently. However, just as the two volunteer experiences were different – my time at “Baby Haven” differing from “Angels Wings”, Caasah is distinct from “Baby Haven”. Caasah deals with adults and “Baby Haven” with children, however these categorizations are not absolute. Caasah did take in a 14 year heamophiliac boy who was HIV positive and taught him how to live with the ARV regimen. “Baby Haven” takes in all babies, regardless of seropositivity. The times I visited there, they had two HIV positive children who lived there and who were given medication there. The Haven is a home for these children and it is also provides medical care, administering medical and engaging with the state health facilities, much like Caasah.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that “Baby Haven” recruits mothers who suffer from problems such as drug and alcohol abuse that leads them to abandon their babies. Brenda is one such mother. She worked as drug and alcohol addicted prostitute before the organization found her: “They helped me change my, they took me from the street and started taking ARV” said Brenda with no shame to a group of women from the St Boniface Church and myself. It is indeed important to realize that were it not for “Baby Haven” Brenda may never have started treatment or worked as a volunteer a “Baby Haven”. Her local world must have been transformed by her time in this house for babies, analogous to the transformation of Caasah residents in Brazil. Miles apart in distance, yet these two organizations have a similar motif – people who find the Will to Live.
Indeed, Brenda spoke confidently as she told us of the difficulties faced by Baby Haven and by herself. She initially could not attain a birth certificate for child, just because she could not name the father. As a sex worker though, how could she? Her child was born on the street. Therefore, she sought assistance at the Council of Churches of Namibia, where she mentioned she also works on a voluntary basis. The Church wrote a letter demanding that she be issue with a birth certificate, but the ministry of home affairs still refused to provide it. Finally, she involved the media and her story was all over the country after which her daughter finally received the certificate.
I can’t bother to finish this post it is just so boring to write. I need to find a cooler way to write up these “anthro” observations. In any case, what more can I say here.
Brenda was given agency through this grassroots home for babies, “Baby Haven”. Her life has changed. However, the sad thing is this place does not receive funding from the government even though they supplement the governments work – taking care of babies, providing them with ART and food, helping women turn their lives around.
In “Will To Live,”Biehl tells the story of a grassroots health institution in the city of Salvador, a house of care called Caasah. Some people admitted to Caasah experienced transformation whereby they did not only adhere to their treatment, but also demanded its access for others. Thus, they became “patient citizens” which engaged with medical and political institutions. A similar institution to Caasah is “Baby Haven” in Windhoek Namibia. This a safe house for babies that are typically removed from their abusive parents by social workers. It reminds of “Angel’s Wings” in Trenton – a foster home for kids from abusive homes – where I volunteered by very first week in the United States. Somehow my initial post college life mirrors my initial college life, where volunteerism featured prominently. However, just as the two volunteer experiences were different – my time at “Baby Haven” differing from “Angels Wings”, Caasah is distinct from “Baby Haven”. Caasah deals with adults and “Baby Haven” with children, however these categorizations are not absolute. Caasah did take in a 14 year heamophiliac boy who was HIV positive and taught him how to live with the ARV regimen. “Baby Haven” takes in all babies, regardless of seropositivity. The times I visited there, they had two HIV positive children who lived there and who were given medication there. The Haven is a home for these children and it is also provides medical care, administering medical and engaging with the state health facilities, much like Caasah.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy that “Baby Haven” recruits mothers who suffer from problems such as drug and alcohol abuse that leads them to abandon their babies. Brenda is one such mother. She worked as drug and alcohol addicted prostitute before the organization found her: “They helped me change my, they took me from the street and started taking ARV” said Brenda with no shame to a group of women from the St Boniface Church and myself. It is indeed important to realize that were it not for “Baby Haven” Brenda may never have started treatment or worked as a volunteer a “Baby Haven”. Her local world must have been transformed by her time in this house for babies, analogous to the transformation of Caasah residents in Brazil. Miles apart in distance, yet these two organizations have a similar motif – people who find the Will to Live.
Indeed, Brenda spoke confidently as she told us of the difficulties faced by Baby Haven and by herself. She initially could not attain a birth certificate for child, just because she could not name the father. As a sex worker though, how could she? Her child was born on the street. Therefore, she sought assistance at the Council of Churches of Namibia, where she mentioned she also works on a voluntary basis. The Church wrote a letter demanding that she be issue with a birth certificate, but the ministry of home affairs still refused to provide it. Finally, she involved the media and her story was all over the country after which her daughter finally received the certificate.
I can’t bother to finish this post it is just so boring to write. I need to find a cooler way to write up these “anthro” observations. In any case, what more can I say here.
Brenda was given agency through this grassroots home for babies, “Baby Haven”. Her life has changed. However, the sad thing is this place does not receive funding from the government even though they supplement the governments work – taking care of babies, providing them with ART and food, helping women turn their lives around.
Letter!
Chère David,
Je suis très content de t’écrire maintenant puisque j’y ai pensé toute la journée. Comment maintenir une amitié avec quelqu’un qui vive de milliers de kilomètres de toi ? J’ai beaucoup de choses à faire comme l’étude des mathématiques en préparation pour ma maitrise en santé public. Mais j’imagine qu’il est très intéressant être David à Washington car la conférence du changement climatique se déroule à Copenhague depuis Lundi. A propos de ton boulot, est-ce que tu es en train de communiquer avec la délégation américaine là-bas ? La nouvelle de 7.2 milliards d’Euros pour les pays en voie de développement qu’est-ce tu en pense ? D’après ce que je sais de la Namibie, ces ressources financières ne serviront à rien s’il n y a pas de programmes concrets qui son prévus à mettre sur point avec cet argent. En plus, les européens doivent revendiquer une responsabilité de ceux qui vont gérer ces fonds.
Alors mon amie, il faut que je me couche, car je suis fatigué et demain je vais à la messe. Aujourd’hui, c’était très drôle – moi j’ai dansé dans le parking du lycée qui dans notre quartier. J’ai fait de petits trucs que j’appris depuis l’été jusqu'à Novembre d’un danseur de Hip Hop qui m’enseigne dans un petit studio à Windhoek, avec des jeunes gens.
Davide, fait moi savoir quand tu viens en Namibie, je peux t’amener au Synagogue ici, où je ne suis jamais allé. Et puis il y a les bêtes sauvages africaines qui t’attendent (te voir bien soir)
Hugs Pancho !
P.S.
Italian lesson!
Don’t you miss me teaching you bits and pieces of Italian? Allora, da questo punto passo all’italiano affinche (tu) impari la lingua in un modo organico (impari = apprenda). I put in brackets the subject, so you know I am speaking to you =( Ho messo in parentesi il soggeto tu affinche sappia che ti sto parlando.)
Reading italian (leggendo italiano)
How to pronounce it? (Come pronunciarlo?)
Chi = Ki
Che= Ké
Ci= chi
Sci= sh
Ce= che, Che Guevara
Ge= ge (like in jeans)
Gi= gi (Gigi)
Gli= gli ( there is no g instead it is more like “lee”, but say it with a smile) = non c’è una g invece tipo “lee” ma dillo sorridendo.
Useful experssions
La donna fu trovata morto a terra e il suo corpo privo di abiti. Solo un bravo indaguatore puo sciogliere i dubiti sulla causa della sua morte.
La femme fut trouvée morte par terre et son corps a été privé de vêtements. Juste un super « investigateur » peut effacer des doutes sur la cause de sa mort.
Sciogliere = to dissovle.
Oh David, do you happen to know how I can use LaTeX, without a liscence for Windet. For some reason my Windet keeps on failing to compile, even documents that compiled before nicely into pdfs (my CV) just fail. What do you use.
See you
Je suis très content de t’écrire maintenant puisque j’y ai pensé toute la journée. Comment maintenir une amitié avec quelqu’un qui vive de milliers de kilomètres de toi ? J’ai beaucoup de choses à faire comme l’étude des mathématiques en préparation pour ma maitrise en santé public. Mais j’imagine qu’il est très intéressant être David à Washington car la conférence du changement climatique se déroule à Copenhague depuis Lundi. A propos de ton boulot, est-ce que tu es en train de communiquer avec la délégation américaine là-bas ? La nouvelle de 7.2 milliards d’Euros pour les pays en voie de développement qu’est-ce tu en pense ? D’après ce que je sais de la Namibie, ces ressources financières ne serviront à rien s’il n y a pas de programmes concrets qui son prévus à mettre sur point avec cet argent. En plus, les européens doivent revendiquer une responsabilité de ceux qui vont gérer ces fonds.
Alors mon amie, il faut que je me couche, car je suis fatigué et demain je vais à la messe. Aujourd’hui, c’était très drôle – moi j’ai dansé dans le parking du lycée qui dans notre quartier. J’ai fait de petits trucs que j’appris depuis l’été jusqu'à Novembre d’un danseur de Hip Hop qui m’enseigne dans un petit studio à Windhoek, avec des jeunes gens.
Davide, fait moi savoir quand tu viens en Namibie, je peux t’amener au Synagogue ici, où je ne suis jamais allé. Et puis il y a les bêtes sauvages africaines qui t’attendent (te voir bien soir)
Hugs Pancho !
P.S.
Italian lesson!
Don’t you miss me teaching you bits and pieces of Italian? Allora, da questo punto passo all’italiano affinche (tu) impari la lingua in un modo organico (impari = apprenda). I put in brackets the subject, so you know I am speaking to you =( Ho messo in parentesi il soggeto tu affinche sappia che ti sto parlando.)
Reading italian (leggendo italiano)
How to pronounce it? (Come pronunciarlo?)
Chi = Ki
Che= Ké
Ci= chi
Sci= sh
Ce= che, Che Guevara
Ge= ge (like in jeans)
Gi= gi (Gigi)
Gli= gli ( there is no g instead it is more like “lee”, but say it with a smile) = non c’è una g invece tipo “lee” ma dillo sorridendo.
Useful experssions
La donna fu trovata morto a terra e il suo corpo privo di abiti. Solo un bravo indaguatore puo sciogliere i dubiti sulla causa della sua morte.
La femme fut trouvée morte par terre et son corps a été privé de vêtements. Juste un super « investigateur » peut effacer des doutes sur la cause de sa mort.
Sciogliere = to dissovle.
Oh David, do you happen to know how I can use LaTeX, without a liscence for Windet. For some reason my Windet keeps on failing to compile, even documents that compiled before nicely into pdfs (my CV) just fail. What do you use.
See you
Bottle found
A DAY LATER:
Praise the Lord I FOUND the bottle. It was just there in my room lying on the carpet. I did not see, maybe it was hidden next to mattres or something( I sleep on the floor only, because it is too hot and beds are just too soft, not good for the back. I sleep on just a two layer duvet, that is nice).
There is a wild fyling cockoroach here, on our curtain and I don’t know what she wants with me. Yes, she is flying and I can’t catch her.
Now I wonder where she went?
Praise the Lord I FOUND the bottle. It was just there in my room lying on the carpet. I did not see, maybe it was hidden next to mattres or something( I sleep on the floor only, because it is too hot and beds are just too soft, not good for the back. I sleep on just a two layer duvet, that is nice).
There is a wild fyling cockoroach here, on our curtain and I don’t know what she wants with me. Yes, she is flying and I can’t catch her.
Now I wonder where she went?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Review of OYO's dance: Together
How does one even to relate the experience of the outdoor performance of OYO, underneath the setting sun? The performance was only an hour and half long, but it was a collection of no less than six pieces. They were performed by the dancers of OYO – the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation. The dancers are referred as OYO staff who in fact dance as part of the mission to communicate important messages surrounding AIDS. The idea of community that is critical for successful work at the grassroots level in Namibia’s sprawling human settlements permeated throughout the dancing. Within the confines of limited space, peopled jived together, pushed and bumped each other and propelled one another of the ground to spin on shoulders and backs, almost like the batons used by the jazz dancers of old. It was thus fitting that the performance was called “Together”, as the group dance was primal.
To write about dance, I must be moved by it. The opening piece, Memories of Joy, made me want to move indeed! The dancing is set to the Michael Jackson song The Way You Make Me Feel and began with heavy rhythmic stepping of people that came on stage as lines moving in from opposite ends. The dance resembled a series of interconnected poses and the music gave them a suave feel. The guys and girls spread their arms open in relaxed manner like hip urban folks reveling in their coolness. To me these were clearly young people who walked and hopped with attitude from one foot to another. I recognized several common hip hop dance moves that were once popular in Namibia, such as that of rocking and stepping back and front while clicking the finger – they seemed to be having plain fun, rather than a routine for the stage. It was also about romance as the men and women paired off, sharing each others weight, men picking up girls on their backs. Then one couple dances together, cuddling, while the other surround them. The lyrics “the way you make me feel” was given vivid meaning in the movement, I thought. The piece ends as it started, with the dancers walking off by raising their knees high and stepping to the down beat, like a heart beat. However, one dancer remains on the stage and he speaks to the audience when the music stops. “That was memories of joy” he says before taking out a pack of condoms and lamenting the state of irresponsible sexual behavior amongst Namibia’s youth. He does not only speak about sex, he alludes it physically, by thrusting his hips to the rhythmic clicking of his tongue; he relates to us this potentially lethal rhythm of love. The fun times we witnessed (through the dance) were now put in context of behavior that may cost you your life.
Another dance that showed how HIV affects a community was MCSP (Multiple Concurrent Partners). I for one am well informed about how partner concurrency greatly increases the risk of HIV infection, because I deal with this in my public health work. However, to see this through movement of people dressed in red (seropositive) mixing with those in black (seronegative) enlightened my perceptions of this process. The two groups danced real close together in clump, their shoulders were rolling delicately, their legs rippling and torsos twisting, it was almost as if they were struggling to come out of a net. There was so much movement that I felt the members of the two groups lost themselves in it much like people lose their inhibitions under the influence of alcohol and just get down and dirty with anyone around. They really brought the message out through dance.
But in other cases I wish that the message of OYO was more present in the dancing. To illustrate my reservation, I will give a critical appraisal of Dumped, a piece by British choreographer Zoie Golding, who was one of the guest artists that worked with OYO in 2009 and Philippe Talavera, the director-founder of OYO.
My first impression of Dumped was that of men competing for a woman. At the onset they push each other aside as they all want to get down with this woman. She wraps her leg around them, in a manner reminiscent of the tango, and sensuously slid her waist down their legs. This seemed to be an indication of sex and foreshadows what came later – an ostensible pregnancy underneath her dress. Once pregnant she stands at the deep, far away corner of the stage while a group of people move across the stage. The group moves in synchrony with a meditative slowness, ducking down, coming up as they slowly wade through the space .They sit down and turn their backs to look behind and stare at the pregnant woman. With her profile to us, she stands too look at them, resting her hands on her enormous abdomen. I only comprehend the meaning of Dumped when she walks towards a triangular wall made of people standing on top of each other. She removes her baby and lets it go at top of the wall. And that was it, the dumping of a baby. Towards the end of the piece, we witness how a man attempts to get at this woman, but he is blocked, pushed back and eventually grounded – two other men make him sit down. His attempts at breaking through were rather insipid, my heart did not flutter out fear that he would break through and get to her, in what seemed to be an act of retribution.
At end of the piece the baby dumper is comforted by another woman as they embrace. Her friend then asks “why did you dump your baby?” and the woman replies “I don’t know, I was confused, I was desperate,” she replies with a miserable expression on her face.
But I did not see her dance this feeling of hopelessness! We hear it on the news that yet another mother dumped her living baby in a rubbish bin or river bed. However, the closest Dumped came to reflecting or refracting this social problem in art was the acting of the woman at the end of the piece. The act of dumping a baby is most certainly done in isolation, but the whole piece was full of many people, busy jumping into each other, which perhaps detracted from the dance of the protagonist. Granted, this movement is interesting, but if I wanted to see that, I would watch professional companies such as Pilobolus that are superb at making bodies interact. OYO is not a professional dance company, but they have the potential to impress upon me a physical message of how a woman becomes a baby dumper.
As an AIDS welfare organization, OYO aims to employ the arts to reach young people about HIV/AIDS. Currently, their dance works are interesting to watch and therefore catch one’s attention. They get the point across. However, I wonder whether they simply aim to use art to raise awareness or do they want to dig deep and present an insightful perspective on the issues surrounding HIV, AIDS and teenage pregnancy.
Together was performed at the FRANCO Namibian Cultural Center, 2nd December 2009.
To write about dance, I must be moved by it. The opening piece, Memories of Joy, made me want to move indeed! The dancing is set to the Michael Jackson song The Way You Make Me Feel and began with heavy rhythmic stepping of people that came on stage as lines moving in from opposite ends. The dance resembled a series of interconnected poses and the music gave them a suave feel. The guys and girls spread their arms open in relaxed manner like hip urban folks reveling in their coolness. To me these were clearly young people who walked and hopped with attitude from one foot to another. I recognized several common hip hop dance moves that were once popular in Namibia, such as that of rocking and stepping back and front while clicking the finger – they seemed to be having plain fun, rather than a routine for the stage. It was also about romance as the men and women paired off, sharing each others weight, men picking up girls on their backs. Then one couple dances together, cuddling, while the other surround them. The lyrics “the way you make me feel” was given vivid meaning in the movement, I thought. The piece ends as it started, with the dancers walking off by raising their knees high and stepping to the down beat, like a heart beat. However, one dancer remains on the stage and he speaks to the audience when the music stops. “That was memories of joy” he says before taking out a pack of condoms and lamenting the state of irresponsible sexual behavior amongst Namibia’s youth. He does not only speak about sex, he alludes it physically, by thrusting his hips to the rhythmic clicking of his tongue; he relates to us this potentially lethal rhythm of love. The fun times we witnessed (through the dance) were now put in context of behavior that may cost you your life.
Another dance that showed how HIV affects a community was MCSP (Multiple Concurrent Partners). I for one am well informed about how partner concurrency greatly increases the risk of HIV infection, because I deal with this in my public health work. However, to see this through movement of people dressed in red (seropositive) mixing with those in black (seronegative) enlightened my perceptions of this process. The two groups danced real close together in clump, their shoulders were rolling delicately, their legs rippling and torsos twisting, it was almost as if they were struggling to come out of a net. There was so much movement that I felt the members of the two groups lost themselves in it much like people lose their inhibitions under the influence of alcohol and just get down and dirty with anyone around. They really brought the message out through dance.
But in other cases I wish that the message of OYO was more present in the dancing. To illustrate my reservation, I will give a critical appraisal of Dumped, a piece by British choreographer Zoie Golding, who was one of the guest artists that worked with OYO in 2009 and Philippe Talavera, the director-founder of OYO.
My first impression of Dumped was that of men competing for a woman. At the onset they push each other aside as they all want to get down with this woman. She wraps her leg around them, in a manner reminiscent of the tango, and sensuously slid her waist down their legs. This seemed to be an indication of sex and foreshadows what came later – an ostensible pregnancy underneath her dress. Once pregnant she stands at the deep, far away corner of the stage while a group of people move across the stage. The group moves in synchrony with a meditative slowness, ducking down, coming up as they slowly wade through the space .They sit down and turn their backs to look behind and stare at the pregnant woman. With her profile to us, she stands too look at them, resting her hands on her enormous abdomen. I only comprehend the meaning of Dumped when she walks towards a triangular wall made of people standing on top of each other. She removes her baby and lets it go at top of the wall. And that was it, the dumping of a baby. Towards the end of the piece, we witness how a man attempts to get at this woman, but he is blocked, pushed back and eventually grounded – two other men make him sit down. His attempts at breaking through were rather insipid, my heart did not flutter out fear that he would break through and get to her, in what seemed to be an act of retribution.
At end of the piece the baby dumper is comforted by another woman as they embrace. Her friend then asks “why did you dump your baby?” and the woman replies “I don’t know, I was confused, I was desperate,” she replies with a miserable expression on her face.
But I did not see her dance this feeling of hopelessness! We hear it on the news that yet another mother dumped her living baby in a rubbish bin or river bed. However, the closest Dumped came to reflecting or refracting this social problem in art was the acting of the woman at the end of the piece. The act of dumping a baby is most certainly done in isolation, but the whole piece was full of many people, busy jumping into each other, which perhaps detracted from the dance of the protagonist. Granted, this movement is interesting, but if I wanted to see that, I would watch professional companies such as Pilobolus that are superb at making bodies interact. OYO is not a professional dance company, but they have the potential to impress upon me a physical message of how a woman becomes a baby dumper.
As an AIDS welfare organization, OYO aims to employ the arts to reach young people about HIV/AIDS. Currently, their dance works are interesting to watch and therefore catch one’s attention. They get the point across. However, I wonder whether they simply aim to use art to raise awareness or do they want to dig deep and present an insightful perspective on the issues surrounding HIV, AIDS and teenage pregnancy.
Together was performed at the FRANCO Namibian Cultural Center, 2nd December 2009.
6 months on
A mere six months have passed since I graduated from Princeton University as a molecular biology degree holder. I left so much behind me, including my wish to enter the world of laboratory research in the field of microbiology, biophysics and transient dreams of studying medicine. I returned to Namibia to do some job in public health and here I am writing this after the end of my job on the Namibia Health Facility Census. “If you had not been here, God only knows what would have happened to this census” said Jeanne, the data entry manager and programmer I trained under. I was her employee and also her student. “You have done an incredible job and I want you to know that” she has repeated in the last few days of finalizing the computerized data for the census. Apparently, I did work hard for this census, making sure the health facility data was entered correctly by data clerks which meant rectifying errors, clarifying ambiguities and making sense out of inconsistencies (when possible). Yet I still missed something that would have greatly enhanced the quality of the data collected. I did not realize we missed 9 of the 13 prison clinics in Namibia until the fieldwork was over.
The irony! Here I was really eager to do some public health project in the prisons, whether it be molecular epidemiological (HIV drug resistance) or more medical anthropological (qualitative study on HIV), but I did not immediately seek the questionnaires that evaluated services in our prisons. During September 2008, at the start of my senior year, I was gripped by this idea – the idea that doing a study in Namibian prisons would be something worthwhile. It was a specific aspect of transmission between men who have sex with men, a group that is often overlooked in Namibia. Why did I not look for those prisons earlier? In any case, there is a small chance the clinics within each of these prisons will be surveyed and they will be added to the data set. I hope this is the case.
In any case, however, I was challenged today about the worth of the whole exercise. Today, after a talk on HIV, AIDS and human rights, a local gynecologist said: “There are just too few prisoners compared to the total number of people infected with HIV in this country, they are just not epidemiologically significant”. I spoke to him when we snacking on the free food after the end of the talk and told him that I certainly disagreed To me, the problem is of significance since the inconsistent access to antiretrovirals in the prisons coupled with unprotected sex suits the emergence of HIV drug resistance. Perhaps I should have gone deeper and spoken about how antiretrovirals prevent HIV from reproducing in cells, but when the drugs disappears, mutants that can replicate and increase in number, which increases the chance of a drug resistant mutant arising. I figured that since he was a doctor, he already knew all this. Did I need to tell him the repeated infection with HIV leads to inter strain recombination, increased genetic diversity and thus greater chances of drug resistance? I guess not, but, he just seemed to shrug off the whole resistance thing as a non-issue.
The indifference of the doctor towards the plight of the prisoners coupled with the exclusion of most prisons from the Health Facility Census echoes what anthropologist Joao Biehl calls “apparent invisibility” of the most marginalized AIDS victims. Biehl wrote about how doctors in the Caridade Hospital in Salvador, Brazil felt “poor and marginalized patients were not considered worth treating”. Located in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic of Brazil, the Cardidade Hospital could not accommodate the numerous patients, from the streets, that needed hospitalization and treatment for opportunistic infections (Will To Live, Biehl). I wonder whether a similar system of biomedical ethics operates in Namibia, whereby the men and women of the prisons are just not important to the government which must cater for the HIV treatment of hundreds of thousands of free men, women and children. Moreover, prevention programs assume people can choose to use a condom and be faithful to one partner, while inmates are often coerced into sex. A hopeless case, one where prisoners will never be able to protect themselves is probably what the government thinks when the thought of prisoner ever crosses their mind. But prisoners include juveniles, including those held a juvenile detention center in the north of Namibia that was not included in the health facility census.
To be taken seriously, any grant advocating for research to be done in the prisons will require me to do back it up with the primary literature. I need to assess to what extent the movement of people to and from prisons constitutes a bridge for HIV drug resistant strains. Luckily, there is a place underneath the central hospital, in the basement, where I can access a world of journals. It is called TICP and is run by an organization called “Management Sciences for Health” which is part of a whole slew of American know-how groups that help fight AIDS in Namibia. Which leads me to ask the question: How do I position myself as a future public health student who is a local Namibian, but who also graduated from an esteemed university in the United States? I believe I am in a good position, for I can empathize with the Namibians while at the same time claiming some sort of “American” expertise, way of thinking and doing. However, the danger is that Namibians, especially those in government, will see me as a one who merely seeks to advance a foreign, “imperialist”, American agenda, one that is counter all that is Namibian. I am counting on that not happening. So when I discuss issues of the prisons, I must bear in mind how I handle the issue men who have sex with men, which the government of Namibia just does not want to acknowledge.
For the coming year, I excited about the masters in public health program and the possibilities of thesis research, including a topic related to prisons, is alluring.
The irony! Here I was really eager to do some public health project in the prisons, whether it be molecular epidemiological (HIV drug resistance) or more medical anthropological (qualitative study on HIV), but I did not immediately seek the questionnaires that evaluated services in our prisons. During September 2008, at the start of my senior year, I was gripped by this idea – the idea that doing a study in Namibian prisons would be something worthwhile. It was a specific aspect of transmission between men who have sex with men, a group that is often overlooked in Namibia. Why did I not look for those prisons earlier? In any case, there is a small chance the clinics within each of these prisons will be surveyed and they will be added to the data set. I hope this is the case.
In any case, however, I was challenged today about the worth of the whole exercise. Today, after a talk on HIV, AIDS and human rights, a local gynecologist said: “There are just too few prisoners compared to the total number of people infected with HIV in this country, they are just not epidemiologically significant”. I spoke to him when we snacking on the free food after the end of the talk and told him that I certainly disagreed To me, the problem is of significance since the inconsistent access to antiretrovirals in the prisons coupled with unprotected sex suits the emergence of HIV drug resistance. Perhaps I should have gone deeper and spoken about how antiretrovirals prevent HIV from reproducing in cells, but when the drugs disappears, mutants that can replicate and increase in number, which increases the chance of a drug resistant mutant arising. I figured that since he was a doctor, he already knew all this. Did I need to tell him the repeated infection with HIV leads to inter strain recombination, increased genetic diversity and thus greater chances of drug resistance? I guess not, but, he just seemed to shrug off the whole resistance thing as a non-issue.
The indifference of the doctor towards the plight of the prisoners coupled with the exclusion of most prisons from the Health Facility Census echoes what anthropologist Joao Biehl calls “apparent invisibility” of the most marginalized AIDS victims. Biehl wrote about how doctors in the Caridade Hospital in Salvador, Brazil felt “poor and marginalized patients were not considered worth treating”. Located in the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic of Brazil, the Cardidade Hospital could not accommodate the numerous patients, from the streets, that needed hospitalization and treatment for opportunistic infections (Will To Live, Biehl). I wonder whether a similar system of biomedical ethics operates in Namibia, whereby the men and women of the prisons are just not important to the government which must cater for the HIV treatment of hundreds of thousands of free men, women and children. Moreover, prevention programs assume people can choose to use a condom and be faithful to one partner, while inmates are often coerced into sex. A hopeless case, one where prisoners will never be able to protect themselves is probably what the government thinks when the thought of prisoner ever crosses their mind. But prisoners include juveniles, including those held a juvenile detention center in the north of Namibia that was not included in the health facility census.
To be taken seriously, any grant advocating for research to be done in the prisons will require me to do back it up with the primary literature. I need to assess to what extent the movement of people to and from prisons constitutes a bridge for HIV drug resistant strains. Luckily, there is a place underneath the central hospital, in the basement, where I can access a world of journals. It is called TICP and is run by an organization called “Management Sciences for Health” which is part of a whole slew of American know-how groups that help fight AIDS in Namibia. Which leads me to ask the question: How do I position myself as a future public health student who is a local Namibian, but who also graduated from an esteemed university in the United States? I believe I am in a good position, for I can empathize with the Namibians while at the same time claiming some sort of “American” expertise, way of thinking and doing. However, the danger is that Namibians, especially those in government, will see me as a one who merely seeks to advance a foreign, “imperialist”, American agenda, one that is counter all that is Namibian. I am counting on that not happening. So when I discuss issues of the prisons, I must bear in mind how I handle the issue men who have sex with men, which the government of Namibia just does not want to acknowledge.
For the coming year, I excited about the masters in public health program and the possibilities of thesis research, including a topic related to prisons, is alluring.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Today dance!
Stavamo giocando al badmington nel parco “I giardino del parliamento” quando nel percorso di fronte a noi un gruppo di giovani stava avanzando verso l’altra parte del parco. Stavano cantando i bagliando allo stesso tempo, un canto cristiano di cui ho riconosciuto il nome di Dio in Ebraico “Yaweh”. Abbiamo smesso il nostro giocco e mamma si e tornato verso loro per guardare loro divertimento. È stato ovvio che si sono completamente persi nella fisicalità e la gioa del ballo-canto. Allora, io ho deciso di giungerli e sono andato a la loro processione che mi somogliava a quella eucaristica.
Sebbene il tempo fosse turbato e ventoso, ci siamo divertiti un sacco.
E poi, di colpo, quando sono tornato a casa, tutta una esperienza italiana, italofona, di Duino nei primi classi di Italiano tra altri giovani, mi è venuta in mente,
Yes I did dance with this group of people in the park, in our parliament gardens. They are gardens of the parliament. We dance and sang, bent over with my legs waging and booty shaking. There were a whole group, Christian I guess, and the singing was incredible. The energy. There was one woman who was about my age (they were alll about my age) that was backing up to me as she was moving her body and legs with great fevor in my direction. Cool, I though I just kept on dance. It was clouldy and very windy, and drizzzly, but we ended only when the leader, who danced the most and sang the most, a man in cream shirt, became like a choir conductor and finaled us on a loud, long held note.
Sebbene il tempo fosse turbato e ventoso, ci siamo divertiti un sacco.
E poi, di colpo, quando sono tornato a casa, tutta una esperienza italiana, italofona, di Duino nei primi classi di Italiano tra altri giovani, mi è venuta in mente,
Yes I did dance with this group of people in the park, in our parliament gardens. They are gardens of the parliament. We dance and sang, bent over with my legs waging and booty shaking. There were a whole group, Christian I guess, and the singing was incredible. The energy. There was one woman who was about my age (they were alll about my age) that was backing up to me as she was moving her body and legs with great fevor in my direction. Cool, I though I just kept on dance. It was clouldy and very windy, and drizzzly, but we ended only when the leader, who danced the most and sang the most, a man in cream shirt, became like a choir conductor and finaled us on a loud, long held note.
What we did not know
What we did not know
What we did not know
Outside of the windows there are blue and black hues of Senegal,
The plane is still
I stand up from my seat and walk along the aisle
And then it rushes forward with a great velocity into the sea
The water pushes against us
And I hear water crash
Or something we did not know
Against us
Gargling us, and sucking us in fast
Necessitating me to sit down behind a seat, to protect me
Against that force,
The whole hollow interior of the plane is rushing forward
into the dark blue,
Velocity,
Ferocity,
Is this the Air France Atrocity?
Who knew,
L’avion a disparu
L’areo scomparso
But,
I never knew
Of this
Until only later at the end of our flight
After I had awoken from this dream
Did the lady sitting across the aile,
Next to me and my mother,
Did she tell me
After I told her
Baruh hashem, we have landed
Did she say
Thank goodness,
We have landed,
It is no easy task
What I then knew
Was that I had the power to wake up within my dream
And then again to the world I live in
To write,
What we did not know
Outside of the windows there are blue and black hues of Senegal,
The plane is still
I stand up from my seat and walk along the aisle
And then it rushes forward with a great velocity into the sea
The water pushes against us
And I hear water crash
Or something we did not know
Against us
Gargling us, and sucking us in fast
Necessitating me to sit down behind a seat, to protect me
Against that force,
The whole hollow interior of the plane is rushing forward
into the dark blue,
Velocity,
Ferocity,
Is this the Air France Atrocity?
Who knew,
L’avion a disparu
L’areo scomparso
But,
I never knew
Of this
Until only later at the end of our flight
After I had awoken from this dream
Did the lady sitting across the aile,
Next to me and my mother,
Did she tell me
After I told her
Baruh hashem, we have landed
Did she say
Thank goodness,
We have landed,
It is no easy task
What I then knew
Was that I had the power to wake up within my dream
And then again to the world I live in
To write,
World AIDS DAY LETTER TO SGAC
Dear Princeton University Students,
On behalf of all the Namibian people, I sincerely thank you for coming to this concert to raise money for the global fund. I say this as the first Namibian student to graduate from Princeton and as an alumnus of the student global AIDS campaign. I am here at home and I am writing to you as employee of a Global Fund project. For the past five months, I have been doing a census of all the health facilities – that is clinics, hospitals, health centers, army sick bays and voluntary and counseling centers for HIV in Namibia. I work for the Ministry of Health which implemented this project and gave me the job as the data editor for the census. Thanks to the global fund, the government will finally know what needs to be done to improve the health services provided to children, mommies, daddies, aunts and uncles in Namibia. Our public health facilities will be better equipped to deal with the menace of TB, Malaria and AIDS. Plus, I get to use my earnings to become a public health student and do research next year - awesome! Your role as audience members, organizers and artists is much appreciated.
Pancho Mulongeni, ‘09
On behalf of all the Namibian people, I sincerely thank you for coming to this concert to raise money for the global fund. I say this as the first Namibian student to graduate from Princeton and as an alumnus of the student global AIDS campaign. I am here at home and I am writing to you as employee of a Global Fund project. For the past five months, I have been doing a census of all the health facilities – that is clinics, hospitals, health centers, army sick bays and voluntary and counseling centers for HIV in Namibia. I work for the Ministry of Health which implemented this project and gave me the job as the data editor for the census. Thanks to the global fund, the government will finally know what needs to be done to improve the health services provided to children, mommies, daddies, aunts and uncles in Namibia. Our public health facilities will be better equipped to deal with the menace of TB, Malaria and AIDS. Plus, I get to use my earnings to become a public health student and do research next year - awesome! Your role as audience members, organizers and artists is much appreciated.
Pancho Mulongeni, ‘09
The art of problem solving
The Art (Craft) of Problem Solving.
A washing machine and laundry that is stuck at the bottom of it – this everyday problem taught me a lesson in problem solving. The lady that works at our house, Ndeapo, showed me, not told me for her English is minimal, the laundry within the space in-between the drying basket and the machine. In other contexts, we call this the interstitial space ( was Drosophila or the Mitochondrion? Oh MolBio) in any case it is that space in between.
We set out to remove the things from it. First I tried reaching, but no matter how thin my forearm may appear to be, it did not pass to the bottom. Then, Ndeapo handed me the umbrella and I tried and then she tried, we poked around at the bottom hoping to somehow bring out. These trials brought us no success. So we decided to try another instrument, a long, narrow stick, but again we had no luck in griping the clothes at bottom.
What did I want? I wanted to get the clothes out. So what did I want? I needed something to grab the clothes so I could yank them out. Enter the coat hanger. Alas there was no way it reached the bottom. Plus it kept on hooking the basket. Our next recourse was to combine two earlier methods the umbrella and stick. We pinched the articles of clothing in between, but there was no way to pull them out.
This is the point where I became frustrated and tried again, in vain, to reach for the stuff with my arm. I still could not get through and had I been calmer I would have remember the fact. But then Ndeapo unwound the coat hanger. Ingenious! What did I want - a hook1 Now what to do when my hook can’t reach? Make it longer. We were excited and so I went in with the hook, but it just did not hook. Somehow, the material was not catching. Then I thought, I want something to stick into the clothes, then I can slide them up along the wall. The umbrella had a pointed end so I attempted. Knowing that I wanted force to stick into the damp material, I applied force. Then I dragged it up along the wall and due the small interstitial space, the pressure remained on the clothing and I dragged up along the walls until I could grab it.
My focus on what I wanted really allowed me to identify how I could do. Using old tools in new, crisp ways can solve the problem. However, I also used the new long hook for the next article. I just decided to give another go, I wanted to ride on the wave of confidence. At first, it was just not hooking and I was about to give up. But then I calmed myself down and I was patient and concentrated. I give it my all and I managed to hook onto something and I fished it out ( a pair of underwear) followed by a sock
The last item remaining was the most challenging. It is only found in Bulgaria and I wonder how it got the bottom of our washing machine in Namibia. This instrument we keep by our shoes, it is called “Oobuvalka” and it is long and thin, with a curved surface like a spade. At one end it has a hole. I knew that I had to use the hook to get in that small hole. Of course the hook did not work, because it is a hook and how to hook a hole that is on the surface of something. But I knew what I wanted. A long spiky thing. I used the other end of the unwound coat hanger. And after unbending it a bit more, I went in. I caught the hole easily, to my surprise. The harder part was dragging it out. It would slip out of the hole as I pushed up along the wall. So then it dawned on me. I needed to grab the “oobuvalka” when it came within my reach. And that is what I did. So I combined the hook thing with a reach technique at the end. It solved my problem.
The question “What do I want?” states the obvious. However, it sometimes the obvious is strangely camouflaged amongst the many thoughts that run through the mind at the encounter of a problem.
A washing machine and laundry that is stuck at the bottom of it – this everyday problem taught me a lesson in problem solving. The lady that works at our house, Ndeapo, showed me, not told me for her English is minimal, the laundry within the space in-between the drying basket and the machine. In other contexts, we call this the interstitial space ( was Drosophila or the Mitochondrion? Oh MolBio) in any case it is that space in between.
We set out to remove the things from it. First I tried reaching, but no matter how thin my forearm may appear to be, it did not pass to the bottom. Then, Ndeapo handed me the umbrella and I tried and then she tried, we poked around at the bottom hoping to somehow bring out. These trials brought us no success. So we decided to try another instrument, a long, narrow stick, but again we had no luck in griping the clothes at bottom.
What did I want? I wanted to get the clothes out. So what did I want? I needed something to grab the clothes so I could yank them out. Enter the coat hanger. Alas there was no way it reached the bottom. Plus it kept on hooking the basket. Our next recourse was to combine two earlier methods the umbrella and stick. We pinched the articles of clothing in between, but there was no way to pull them out.
This is the point where I became frustrated and tried again, in vain, to reach for the stuff with my arm. I still could not get through and had I been calmer I would have remember the fact. But then Ndeapo unwound the coat hanger. Ingenious! What did I want - a hook1 Now what to do when my hook can’t reach? Make it longer. We were excited and so I went in with the hook, but it just did not hook. Somehow, the material was not catching. Then I thought, I want something to stick into the clothes, then I can slide them up along the wall. The umbrella had a pointed end so I attempted. Knowing that I wanted force to stick into the damp material, I applied force. Then I dragged it up along the wall and due the small interstitial space, the pressure remained on the clothing and I dragged up along the walls until I could grab it.
My focus on what I wanted really allowed me to identify how I could do. Using old tools in new, crisp ways can solve the problem. However, I also used the new long hook for the next article. I just decided to give another go, I wanted to ride on the wave of confidence. At first, it was just not hooking and I was about to give up. But then I calmed myself down and I was patient and concentrated. I give it my all and I managed to hook onto something and I fished it out ( a pair of underwear) followed by a sock
The last item remaining was the most challenging. It is only found in Bulgaria and I wonder how it got the bottom of our washing machine in Namibia. This instrument we keep by our shoes, it is called “Oobuvalka” and it is long and thin, with a curved surface like a spade. At one end it has a hole. I knew that I had to use the hook to get in that small hole. Of course the hook did not work, because it is a hook and how to hook a hole that is on the surface of something. But I knew what I wanted. A long spiky thing. I used the other end of the unwound coat hanger. And after unbending it a bit more, I went in. I caught the hole easily, to my surprise. The harder part was dragging it out. It would slip out of the hole as I pushed up along the wall. So then it dawned on me. I needed to grab the “oobuvalka” when it came within my reach. And that is what I did. So I combined the hook thing with a reach technique at the end. It solved my problem.
The question “What do I want?” states the obvious. However, it sometimes the obvious is strangely camouflaged amongst the many thoughts that run through the mind at the encounter of a problem.
November 28th
Letting the writing flow. The pent feelings that accumulate throughout the week want expression in my blog. So here it is and there will be no editing here – this is a free indirect discourse a stream of consciousness.
Yesterday my friend visited me, one of my best friends ever. I have known him for about 16 years. Together we baked this Bulgarian pumpkin pie – tikvenik . The pumpkin was sitting in a basked on our dinner table (where we never have dinner by the way, we eat on the kitchen table) for a while and I decided it was time to slaughter it. In Bulgarian tikva is pumpkim and I heard that in Hebrew it means hope. So hope it was, especially since Namibia went to the polls this past weekend to elect the president and the national assembly. My mother though likens the head of our incumbent and soon to be reelected president to a pumpkin. Ahem, that’s where the politics of this blog ends for now, besides, I would not want anyone to read this, Namibia is tiny. Oh yeah and I did not vote. No public debates, no innovative policies, no politician disclosing his or her HIV status for the sake of encouraging others to stay alive – no vote from Pancho.
My friend and I spoke about the young people in Namibia our age and how hard it is to relate to them. They are fixated on cellphones. My friend Willie Horn works at the central hospital, a stones throw from where I work at the ministry of health. During his lunchbreak, he and his friends, Elricious, another guy that dresses rather suave and a girl Celeste, sit on the benches outside and play with their cellphones. I just could not relate to that. I tried to strike up a conversation, but I struggled to express myself in Afrikaans. Of course they speak English. However, they speak to each other in Afrikaans and to partake in their exchange I felt I had to speak it. So I told them I was going to do a masters next year at the University of Namibia, in public health. “Nou wat is public health” Celeste het vir my gevraa. (What is public health, Celeste asked). I could not explain in Afrikaans what it was so I just said “epidemiology” but then she did not know what that was either. So I just muttered something about sickness and such and left it at that. She was sweet and wished me good luck.
Speaking with Chinonto, my good friend of 16 years in my room, I mentioned how one relates to these youths. With good humor Chinonto said “You just buy a cellphone with the latest application and you show it to them.” He chuckled and added “at first I also thought it was hard, but over time you just get used to it [mindlessly playing with the phone over lunch break]. Thank goodness me and Chinonto have each other. That way we provide ourselves with good, edifying company amidst all of this mind rotting. “It’s not that I feel better than them, it’s just that I am not like that” said Chinonto. I agree with this, but how can I still engage with them? Is there a point? I guess this is what happens when you access the best education and move around really interesting people. In any case, Lord please help them, I pray.
Help me to be able to approach them with love and kindess and humilty.
Help to reach out to my brother , so I can show him that there is way more possible apart from going out every night and texting friends. Help me mould his potential into action.
Yesterday my friend visited me, one of my best friends ever. I have known him for about 16 years. Together we baked this Bulgarian pumpkin pie – tikvenik . The pumpkin was sitting in a basked on our dinner table (where we never have dinner by the way, we eat on the kitchen table) for a while and I decided it was time to slaughter it. In Bulgarian tikva is pumpkim and I heard that in Hebrew it means hope. So hope it was, especially since Namibia went to the polls this past weekend to elect the president and the national assembly. My mother though likens the head of our incumbent and soon to be reelected president to a pumpkin. Ahem, that’s where the politics of this blog ends for now, besides, I would not want anyone to read this, Namibia is tiny. Oh yeah and I did not vote. No public debates, no innovative policies, no politician disclosing his or her HIV status for the sake of encouraging others to stay alive – no vote from Pancho.
My friend and I spoke about the young people in Namibia our age and how hard it is to relate to them. They are fixated on cellphones. My friend Willie Horn works at the central hospital, a stones throw from where I work at the ministry of health. During his lunchbreak, he and his friends, Elricious, another guy that dresses rather suave and a girl Celeste, sit on the benches outside and play with their cellphones. I just could not relate to that. I tried to strike up a conversation, but I struggled to express myself in Afrikaans. Of course they speak English. However, they speak to each other in Afrikaans and to partake in their exchange I felt I had to speak it. So I told them I was going to do a masters next year at the University of Namibia, in public health. “Nou wat is public health” Celeste het vir my gevraa. (What is public health, Celeste asked). I could not explain in Afrikaans what it was so I just said “epidemiology” but then she did not know what that was either. So I just muttered something about sickness and such and left it at that. She was sweet and wished me good luck.
Speaking with Chinonto, my good friend of 16 years in my room, I mentioned how one relates to these youths. With good humor Chinonto said “You just buy a cellphone with the latest application and you show it to them.” He chuckled and added “at first I also thought it was hard, but over time you just get used to it [mindlessly playing with the phone over lunch break]. Thank goodness me and Chinonto have each other. That way we provide ourselves with good, edifying company amidst all of this mind rotting. “It’s not that I feel better than them, it’s just that I am not like that” said Chinonto. I agree with this, but how can I still engage with them? Is there a point? I guess this is what happens when you access the best education and move around really interesting people. In any case, Lord please help them, I pray.
Help me to be able to approach them with love and kindess and humilty.
Help to reach out to my brother , so I can show him that there is way more possible apart from going out every night and texting friends. Help me mould his potential into action.
Review of Ombetja Yehinga Organisation dance
This a review I just wrote, which I thought I used to much time to do.
Alright, I did not spend so much time, but I felt the choreography was not that great and really, I feel that with my limited time, I could have spent it writing something else.
Here it is anyway, it is really short.
So how effective is sensitization about social problems through dance? The dancers of the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation (OYO) did communicate a message, but I wish that this message was more present in the dancing. To illustrate my reservation, I will give a critical appraisal of Dumped, a piece by British choreographer Zoie Golding, who was one of the guest artists that worked with OYO in 2009 and Philippe Talavera, the director-founder of OYO. The piece was performed alongside five other pieces in a show called “Together”, which was commissioned in commemoration of World AIDS day.
My first impression of Dumped was that of men competing for a woman. At the onset they push each other aside as they all want to get down with this woman. She wraps her leg around them, in a manner reminiscent of the tango, and sensuously slid her waist down their legs. This seemed to be an indication of sex and foreshadows what came later – an ostensible pregnancy underneath her dress. Once pregnant she stands at the deep, far away corner of the stage while a group of people move across the stage. The group moves in synchrony with a meditative slowness, ducking down, coming up as they slowly wade through the space .They sit down and turn their backs to look behind and stare at the pregnant woman. With her profile to us, she stands too look at them, resting her hands on her enormous abdomen. I only comprehend the meaning of Dumped when she walks towards a triangular wall made of people standing on top of each other. She removes her baby and lets it go at top of the wall. And that was it, the dumping of a baby. Towards the end of the piece, we witness how a man attempts to get at this woman, but he is blocked, pushed back and eventually grounded – two other men make him sit down. His attempts at breaking through were rather insipid, my heart did not flutter out fear that he would break through.
At end of the piece the baby dumper is comforted by another woman as they embrace. Her friend then asks “why did you dump your baby?” and the woman replies “I don’t know, I was confused, I was desperate,” she replies with a miserable expression on her face.
But I did not see her dance this feeling of hopelessness! We hear it on the news that yet another mother dumped her living baby in a rubbish bin or river bed. However, the closest Dumped came to reflecting or refracting this social problem in art was the acting of the woman at the end of the piece. The act of dumping a baby is most certainly done in isolation, but the whole piece was full of many people, busy jumping into each other, which perhaps detracted from the dance of the protagonist. Granted, this movement is interesting, but if I wanted to see that, I would watch professional companies such as Pilobolus that are superb at making bodies interact. OYO is not a professional dance company, but they have the potential to impress upon me a physical message of how a woman becomes a baby dumper.
As an AIDS welfare organization, OYO aims to employ the arts to reach young people about HIV/AIDS. Currently, their dance works are interesting to watch and therefore catch one’s attention. They get the point across. However, I wonder whether they simply aim to use art to raise awareness or do they want to dig deep and present an insightful perspective on the issues surrounding HIV, AIDS and teenage pregnancy.
Dumped was performed at the FRANCO Namibian Cultural Center, 2nd December 2009.
Alright, I did not spend so much time, but I felt the choreography was not that great and really, I feel that with my limited time, I could have spent it writing something else.
Here it is anyway, it is really short.
So how effective is sensitization about social problems through dance? The dancers of the Ombetja Yehinga Organisation (OYO) did communicate a message, but I wish that this message was more present in the dancing. To illustrate my reservation, I will give a critical appraisal of Dumped, a piece by British choreographer Zoie Golding, who was one of the guest artists that worked with OYO in 2009 and Philippe Talavera, the director-founder of OYO. The piece was performed alongside five other pieces in a show called “Together”, which was commissioned in commemoration of World AIDS day.
My first impression of Dumped was that of men competing for a woman. At the onset they push each other aside as they all want to get down with this woman. She wraps her leg around them, in a manner reminiscent of the tango, and sensuously slid her waist down their legs. This seemed to be an indication of sex and foreshadows what came later – an ostensible pregnancy underneath her dress. Once pregnant she stands at the deep, far away corner of the stage while a group of people move across the stage. The group moves in synchrony with a meditative slowness, ducking down, coming up as they slowly wade through the space .They sit down and turn their backs to look behind and stare at the pregnant woman. With her profile to us, she stands too look at them, resting her hands on her enormous abdomen. I only comprehend the meaning of Dumped when she walks towards a triangular wall made of people standing on top of each other. She removes her baby and lets it go at top of the wall. And that was it, the dumping of a baby. Towards the end of the piece, we witness how a man attempts to get at this woman, but he is blocked, pushed back and eventually grounded – two other men make him sit down. His attempts at breaking through were rather insipid, my heart did not flutter out fear that he would break through.
At end of the piece the baby dumper is comforted by another woman as they embrace. Her friend then asks “why did you dump your baby?” and the woman replies “I don’t know, I was confused, I was desperate,” she replies with a miserable expression on her face.
But I did not see her dance this feeling of hopelessness! We hear it on the news that yet another mother dumped her living baby in a rubbish bin or river bed. However, the closest Dumped came to reflecting or refracting this social problem in art was the acting of the woman at the end of the piece. The act of dumping a baby is most certainly done in isolation, but the whole piece was full of many people, busy jumping into each other, which perhaps detracted from the dance of the protagonist. Granted, this movement is interesting, but if I wanted to see that, I would watch professional companies such as Pilobolus that are superb at making bodies interact. OYO is not a professional dance company, but they have the potential to impress upon me a physical message of how a woman becomes a baby dumper.
As an AIDS welfare organization, OYO aims to employ the arts to reach young people about HIV/AIDS. Currently, their dance works are interesting to watch and therefore catch one’s attention. They get the point across. However, I wonder whether they simply aim to use art to raise awareness or do they want to dig deep and present an insightful perspective on the issues surrounding HIV, AIDS and teenage pregnancy.
Dumped was performed at the FRANCO Namibian Cultural Center, 2nd December 2009.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
This week first of December
The week has been quite eventfull. I met a Princeton alumn on Tue, World AIDS day. Went to a performance by Ombetja Yehinga on Wed that commemerated World AIDS Day (watch this space for a review). On Thursday I was home and yesterday I visited my friend Chisha.
All this week and last, I have been walking to work. But not everyday, somedays my mother dropped me off if she was ready to leave the house by 8. Wait is that the tortoise moving outside? I should go see, out my window!
Yes there she is sticking her long neck out from her shell from underneath the lemon tree. I am off them to give her (I assume it's a she, a leopard tortoise that is a protected species, but we have one as a pet at home, of course illegally). I mean in Namibia, people just have these animals.
I need to go giver her some cucumber peels and leftover lettuce from lunch today.
I cooked a nice lunch,with a salad too. My brother, praise the Lord, agreed to wash his own dishes! This is incredible!
Alright!
Take care dear readers (friends I assume).
I plan to post alot more, concerning my visit to the home for orphans and vulnerable children, baby haven. The kids were on my back, riding on my back. I was carrying two at once today, one in the front and on my back. On my chest and by my shoulders .
It reminds me of paterning in dance, a weird pilobus type thing. And they all liked to hold my hands pulling on them as they walked up my knees and then did a backwards flip.
Except the one boy who tried but could not. He is HIV positive and is seven years old. I could not believe his age, he looks much younger, four. He apparently started walking this past year, according to the volunteers at this place, "Baby Haven". His illness kept him dilapitated for so long. However, I believe he has been on ARV all his life, though I am not sure whether he was taking it before he came to Baby Haven.
All this week and last, I have been walking to work. But not everyday, somedays my mother dropped me off if she was ready to leave the house by 8. Wait is that the tortoise moving outside? I should go see, out my window!
Yes there she is sticking her long neck out from her shell from underneath the lemon tree. I am off them to give her (I assume it's a she, a leopard tortoise that is a protected species, but we have one as a pet at home, of course illegally). I mean in Namibia, people just have these animals.
I need to go giver her some cucumber peels and leftover lettuce from lunch today.
I cooked a nice lunch,with a salad too. My brother, praise the Lord, agreed to wash his own dishes! This is incredible!
Alright!
Take care dear readers (friends I assume).
I plan to post alot more, concerning my visit to the home for orphans and vulnerable children, baby haven. The kids were on my back, riding on my back. I was carrying two at once today, one in the front and on my back. On my chest and by my shoulders .
It reminds me of paterning in dance, a weird pilobus type thing. And they all liked to hold my hands pulling on them as they walked up my knees and then did a backwards flip.
Except the one boy who tried but could not. He is HIV positive and is seven years old. I could not believe his age, he looks much younger, four. He apparently started walking this past year, according to the volunteers at this place, "Baby Haven". His illness kept him dilapitated for so long. However, I believe he has been on ARV all his life, though I am not sure whether he was taking it before he came to Baby Haven.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
World AIDS day
World AIDS Day December 1st 2009.
Somehow I did not make it to a single World AIDS day commemoration. I was working at green and white building, learning how to use the CSPro Language. It was fun.
We had a few laughs later on about Private hospitals that had no laboratories according to our census, but that will be resolved tomorrow.
I went to a talk advertised by the Namibian Scientific Society. My mother tells me it is dominated by whites and when I arrived, I was one of two non-white people. There was another black dude there, about my age and it turns out he was not a random audience member but a student doing research with the speaker Steve Bellan from USCF
I had wanted to talk with the presenter Steve Bellan before I arrived at his presentation. It was really a crisp presentation and I really enjoyed it, I loved being talked to and being explained to about science. Steve does work on anthrax and carcasses of the zebras claimed by the Bacillus anthracis. His problem is to figure out the incidence of anthrax in Etosha National park in Namibia. I really liked his thinking – he pointed out that just because most of the anthrax carcasses are found within the proximity of the Okakuejo rest camp in Etosha is not necessarily indicative of clustering of anthrax deaths. The most likely explanation is reporting bias – most of the scientists collect data within the vicinity of the rest camp and not deep in the park where they are no roads. He spoke about detectability analysis, which sounds interesting and I will look it. I must make an effort to do it and just say I will.
Steve is really young, and he is a grad student, which is not what I envisioned before coming to his talk. But I am sure he did not envision meeting me there either. I braced myself for talk given in the American style, which is a story, something that I miss since graduating from Princeton. So I went up to him and said “Thank you so much for your talk, they are so few scientific talks here, even at the University here.”
I went on to tell him about my interests in epidemiology, which is what Steve studies. In fact he uses mathematical methods in epidemiology and he spoke of these in his talk, though briefly. Though I feel he could have gone into serious depth, I feel cool that he gave us a feel of what he does, rather than inundating us with esoteric methods.
“I did a course in mathematical methods of ecology in my senior year, but I could not pay so much attention to it because of my thesis”, I told him, though I could have just said I wish I was better organized so that I could have done better at this grad course. Then came the moment of revelation, when he probed : “Did you do this at UNAM?” Given the infrastructures of our small African country, with our young University and our small scientific society with very few members I too would have doubted that mathematical methods of ecology were available at UNAM. “No I said, at Princeton”.
“Princeton?” he immediately replied “I went to Princeton too.” What followed was a rather dispassionate exchange where I asked his class year (2006), who did his thesis with (can’t remember) and a handshake. I say it was dispassionate because I did not shout “You went to Princeton too! Wow the world is small! We will be in touch!” and because he spoke very normal, though with a sharp focus.
Then again, Steve was warm to me from outset, when I first approached him. He gave me his email before he found out we both walked out of Fitz-Randolph gate and told me about the workshop he does in May. He jut radiated friendliness and approachability.
As I said Steve, we will be in touch.
Somehow I did not make it to a single World AIDS day commemoration. I was working at green and white building, learning how to use the CSPro Language. It was fun.
We had a few laughs later on about Private hospitals that had no laboratories according to our census, but that will be resolved tomorrow.
I went to a talk advertised by the Namibian Scientific Society. My mother tells me it is dominated by whites and when I arrived, I was one of two non-white people. There was another black dude there, about my age and it turns out he was not a random audience member but a student doing research with the speaker Steve Bellan from USCF
I had wanted to talk with the presenter Steve Bellan before I arrived at his presentation. It was really a crisp presentation and I really enjoyed it, I loved being talked to and being explained to about science. Steve does work on anthrax and carcasses of the zebras claimed by the Bacillus anthracis. His problem is to figure out the incidence of anthrax in Etosha National park in Namibia. I really liked his thinking – he pointed out that just because most of the anthrax carcasses are found within the proximity of the Okakuejo rest camp in Etosha is not necessarily indicative of clustering of anthrax deaths. The most likely explanation is reporting bias – most of the scientists collect data within the vicinity of the rest camp and not deep in the park where they are no roads. He spoke about detectability analysis, which sounds interesting and I will look it. I must make an effort to do it and just say I will.
Steve is really young, and he is a grad student, which is not what I envisioned before coming to his talk. But I am sure he did not envision meeting me there either. I braced myself for talk given in the American style, which is a story, something that I miss since graduating from Princeton. So I went up to him and said “Thank you so much for your talk, they are so few scientific talks here, even at the University here.”
I went on to tell him about my interests in epidemiology, which is what Steve studies. In fact he uses mathematical methods in epidemiology and he spoke of these in his talk, though briefly. Though I feel he could have gone into serious depth, I feel cool that he gave us a feel of what he does, rather than inundating us with esoteric methods.
“I did a course in mathematical methods of ecology in my senior year, but I could not pay so much attention to it because of my thesis”, I told him, though I could have just said I wish I was better organized so that I could have done better at this grad course. Then came the moment of revelation, when he probed : “Did you do this at UNAM?” Given the infrastructures of our small African country, with our young University and our small scientific society with very few members I too would have doubted that mathematical methods of ecology were available at UNAM. “No I said, at Princeton”.
“Princeton?” he immediately replied “I went to Princeton too.” What followed was a rather dispassionate exchange where I asked his class year (2006), who did his thesis with (can’t remember) and a handshake. I say it was dispassionate because I did not shout “You went to Princeton too! Wow the world is small! We will be in touch!” and because he spoke very normal, though with a sharp focus.
Then again, Steve was warm to me from outset, when I first approached him. He gave me his email before he found out we both walked out of Fitz-Randolph gate and told me about the workshop he does in May. He jut radiated friendliness and approachability.
As I said Steve, we will be in touch.
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