September 2010
3 posts
WatchTrying again to post our short film in an easier format.
My story on Tanzanian school fees →
Finally, my story about the problem of school fees at schools in Tanzania is out today. Here’s a copy
Update
With deep gratitude for the people who have been reading and e-mailing me about the blog, I apologize that it ended so suddenly. After my time in Europe I was only back briefly in Tanzania before returning to the United States. I had a few good adventures, but the moment of the blog had passed. Still, look out for some more photos and perhaps occasional posts to come up. Also, my story on...
May 2010
3 posts
By sheer coincidence, I posted a short item on Esther Duflo yesterday; turns out she’s extensively profiled in this week’s New Yorker (unfortunately not offered on their web site). The article explores in much more depth the exact issue I mentioned yesterday: the pursuit of scientific analysis — randomized trials — about what works and what doesn’t in development...
http://blog.ted.com/2010/05/social_experime.php →
One of the themes I’ve been writing about in this blog the last few months is trying to identify some middle-way wisdom in the debate between the pro-aid and anti-aid sides in the great intellectual debate over global development. Part of the answer, I think, lies in countless non-obvious bits of wisdom about what works and what doesn’t, determined through experience and careful...
April 2010
12 posts
On the rainy season, Swedish nurses and the...
Should you be approached by anyone seeking charitable contributions to support East Africa, by all means give all you can — unless the solicitor attempts to justify his pitch with the claim the “rains failed” this year. Tanzania, at least, has many problems, but the rains most definitely have not failed this year. The only thing they have failed to do is stop, for three weeks.
As a result,...
Rwanda
Whenever the torpor and not infrequent sense of hopelessness in Tanzania seemed to be wearing us down, people would tell us “Go to Rwanda.” So we did, for five days over a long Easter weekend. Unfortunately, the blog has backed up a little, so I’m going to release several entries at once so you can read them as a whole, if you wish. I’ll post the individual entries in reverse order — each...
March 2010
10 posts
Reading List Update
Among the pleasure of the last few months has been a long, unprecedented and uninterrupted stretch of time for unassigned reading, made possible by 1) unemployment and 2) the Amazon Kindle and a tiny used book store/coffee shop near our home. Since some of you took up my call for suggestions, and perhaps may be looking for suggestions yourself, here’s the list so far, with a one-sentence review of...
On the rainy season, Maasai security guards and...
This time a week ago Moshi was a broiling, dust-covered city covered with parched, seemingly long-dead grass. The bushes outside our front doors looked unsalvageable. One sees clearly why, when the rains fail, as they did two rainy seasons ago, it is a complete disaster. Basically every species of plant here has evolved to barely survive 10 months of desert-like climate and hang on just long...
on big guns and checkpoints, accountability,...
Some assorted Wednesday afternoon musings from Tanzania….
_ If you’re looking for a test of whether a country is moving in the right direction or not, here’s the best quick one I can think of: ask people who live there if, on balance, they are relieved to see the police. I’d say Tanzania is right on the boundary.
I was worried I wouldn’t feel safe here, and fortunately, for the most part I...
On free and "a little something to chew on"
Duke University’s Dan Ariely, author of the best-seller “Predictably Irrational,” has made a good living as an iconoclast of the rationality models of classical economics, part of a no-longer-so-new generation of scholars who enjoy pointing out how irrationally people actually seem to behave in life as opposed to on paper. One of his favorite stories concerns an experiment about an Israeli...
February 2010
15 posts
from Zanzibar
A very quick post from Zanzibar, site of a well-deserved 5-day R&R break. Really, one should only post photos from Zanzibar, but that will have to wait until I get back. Wordwise, I’ll just say it’s really spectacularly beautiful here and nice to have a little pampering, and to the extent parts of it are a little bit touristy — there’s a kind of Islamic Jimmy Buffet vibe going on —...
On Swahili, Schools and Politics
For all the problems and poverty Tanzania, this has probably been one of the better places in Africa to live over the last 40 years, not so much in a positive sense but because of a relative absence of sheer political horror. It’s a backhanded compliment, to be sure, but not an unimportant one.
I’ve been reading Martin Meredith’s 2006 book “The Fate of Africa,” which tracks the continent’s...
Leiningen Versus The Ants. →
In case anybody needs a good Sunday afternoon Man Vs. Nature read, I’m posting the Carl Stephenson’s classic 1938 short story “Leiningen Versus The Ants.” Seventh grade English, Mr. Bradshaw, anyone? Some of you may remember. It reads a little dated but it’s hard not to be riveted by a story about a column of carniverous ants 10 miles long and 2 miles of wide. Little...
On brain drain, morality and the No. 1 seed in the...
I’d always assumed that in some kind of tournament to establish the worst global trouble— education vs. health care, global warming vs. ethnic conflict — one particular powerhouse of problems would win again and again: corruption. It is, of course, utterly demoralizing to its victims, but its most destructive property is that it prevents the solving of all other problems. A...
Sounds and sights, Tuesday morning, central Moshi
Honking horns. The blare of the call to prayer from the Mosque. A bell clanging at the Hindu temple. Offers of “Taxi! Taxi?” and “safari?” from the street. The sound of chiseling, from workers on impossibly dangerous ledges above.
Everywhere women carrying extraordinary loads balanced on their heads — flour, rice, huge baskets of bananas and avocados and a half-dozen...
On Resilience ... Or, Follow the Flour
I came to Africa hoping to broaden my horizons, expand my capacity for empathy, understand something of a very different part of the world and — I hope — enjoy myself. But failing any or all of those things, I told myself I would at the very least build up my reservoir, such as it is, of the quality of resilience that would serve me well in the future. The topic bubbled to the...
Meet the Press
I’ve been hanging out a bit in a coffee shop in central Moshi in the afternoons and buying a newspaper or two from George or Jonas, two vendors who wander with their stash through some of the places expats frequent. They sell the English-language Kenyan and Tanzanian dailies and, for a bit more, a Guardian from London. On special occasions they they’ll flash you an...
1 tag
Tanzanian Freakonomics
Tanzania is a country whose economy was basically wrecked for decades by a failed socialist master plan, and I figured my visit here would bring out my inner Milton Friedman — enthusiasm for the virtues of property rights, enforceable contracts, minimal bureaucracy and assorted other shibboleths from the quad of the University of Chicago. But in one area I’ve become area...
The Wealth of Nations (Part 1)
One of the big questions in Tanzania, and one I’m sure my curiosity will return me to, is why is a country blessed with relative national unity, political stability and (again, relatively) high-minded founders so incredibly poor? Not just poor by global standards but even compared to its neighbors. I’m already hearing a lot about “Kenya envy,” which is hard to imagine and perhaps not even...
January 2010
6 posts
Medicine
I’ve started to catch a few short glimpses of medical care here, walking around KCMC, the main local hospital, with Maria and others. It’s the best for hundreds of miles but still of course in many ways a very sad place. Still, it’s already clear many problems here fall into the category of complicated and others are excrutiatingly simple, and it’s hard to know which is...
5 (relatively) good things about Africa
Sorry - still trying to transfer photos from my camera and post them. Despite a packing operation on the scale of D-Day and brining my own personal Radio Shack store, I somehow managed to bring the wrong USB wire for the camera. So I’ll just have to run down to the Target and …. oh wait, never mind. Could be a couple days. But working on it. Who says journalists dwell on the negative?...
What I'm really doing here →
Night and Day
Nobody wants to read about a 26-hour trip, but just one brief note - can I just say how tall the Dutch are? I’d forgotten. The average KLM female flight attendant must be 6’2. The locals in the Amsterdam Airport make it look like the departure lounge at Pandora International. This prompts in me an academic question: Why are the Dutch not better at basketball, in the mold of small countries that...
Blogging from Africa
I am indeed one Very Lost (Half) Tribesman. After 10+ years working as a professional journalist, I’m now on leave to spend 6 months or so in Africa, accompanying my wife on a research fellowship to Moshi, Tanzania, at the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Though I love to travel, I’m probably, in all honestly, more of a Rome-and-Paris kind of guy than all this. Tanzania will certainly be an adventure.
A...