Lessons from my trip

I'm back from my trip. I think everyone should take some time off and do something for themselves. This long-ish break was a b'day present to myself, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I love traveling. There is SO much to be said for the education one receives while on their travels.

There is also a level of appreciation I feel for being back in the US (of course, the in-your-face advertising, and constant level of activity here quickly drained that out). Its nice to finally be in a place where I am understood immediately, rather than the wild gesturing and slow, repetitive speaking I've had to do. Where I can browse the magazines and books, and instantly understand what is written. And I like that everything generally works efficiently, sometimes 24 hours a day. But I do miss the European way of life; there is a tremendous emphasis on living well and a little more respect for human life there. People take care of themselves there, something that is completely missing here. Salaries aren't high there, but people seem SO much happier...continually reinforcing my belief that life isn't about money.

I generally have 3 rules when I am out traveling:

• Eat locally.
• Limit gadget use to 10-30 mins per day (I stick to the lower end usually).
• Use as much public transit, and walk as much as possible.

This allows me to be quite away from my life at home (a true vacation), and be fully immersed in another culture. This is how my greatest learning happens.

From a "Tworque" point-of-view, most of my education came from understanding the points-of-view of colonial powers. I am continually curious about what prompted Colonization, their later cessation, and generally where these "Powers" are now as a result of their past actions. Are they really better off?? How do the citizens feel about their past? And where did their methods of governance come from. Being the product of a former colony myself, has allowed me a great understanding of why my country is the way it is. It also allows me to forgive and move on, and figure out the best way to deal with the current situation. 

Of all the places I visited this time (France, Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany), Belgium was the most fascinating. 

Belgium is utter chaos now. And I was shocked that such a small and chaotic country could have have colonized a significant part of Africa. Probably not so surprisingly, looking at Belgium today reinforced the fact that chaotic colonizers tend to transfer their chaos to their colonies (Portugal is another perfect example of this). No wonder former Belgian African colonies are still in a state of extreme and violent chaos (Rwanda, Central African Republic, and Congo).  I would highly recommend reading the book "King Leopold's Ghost" further on this subject. 

Knowing England, France, Portugal, and Belgium as I do now, I'm glad I came out of a former British colony. I can honestly say that their high-nosedness, and class-based governance combined with their interest in advanced science, technology and education (ironically) created better colonies than any others. If you look at colonies that have best survived the tests of time, former British Colonies are probably most stable.  Of course there are exceptions, and I want to make it clear that colonization, British or otherwise, did TERRIBLE, terrible things. I do not sanction the act at all, but it did happen, and it sometimes needs to be analyzed at a distance.

Finally, its a pleasant change to finally have people think positively of the US. Obama has significantly "upped the ante." The past eight years were a particularly miserable time to be traveling around. I heard every kind of anti-American sentiment (quite rightly so) when I was out-and-about, particularly in the developing world. But it does get tiring, and it is SO refreshing to not have to deal with it any more.

Letter from the Field: South Sudan

Instead of my usual babbling, I thought you would enjoy an actual letter from the field.

Mike is a friend and fellow water-sanitation engineer. He's been working on international development projects for about 5 years now, regularly traveling to some of the most volatile parts of the world for his work. This is a recent letter he sent while on duty in Juba, South Sudan. His letter is published here in its entirety with his permission.

________

Before there was Lisa, there were escapades in Central Asia and East Africa and South Asia and Melanesia.  Before that, Melbourne, city I love.  But before all those things there was Haroun, the embodiment of a place that had caught my heart.  Once upon a steamy summer evening in Atlanta, after I had helped Haroun’s family move into their new apartment, we went next door to join four other families.  The people inside, black as night with tribal markings sketched into their foreheads, stood silently in the corners of the room, in the way that refugees learn to do. We broke bread.  The room was filled with melodies of praise sung by voices seeped in red soil and baked by an African sun.  I stood transfixed.  “You will make it to southern Sudan someday,” Haroun leaned over and whispered to me.  Perhaps Haroun was a prophet. 

 

What’s it like to finally arrive in a place that you’ve been interested in for over a decade? 

 

Well for one, it’s being towered over by a tall soldier who’s ensuring that you are deleting the photo you just took as you walked across the tarmac from the plane. 

 

“I’m sorry.  It’s my first time in Sudan and I wanted to get a picture of arriving,” I say as I press the delete button at the bottom right of the camera.  The soldier stoically stares at the next photo that appears on the screen.  It’s a photo I took while Lisa and I were driving down the LA freeway to the airport.  “That’s from Los Angeles, not here,” I assure him.   He nods and motions me towards arrivals. 

 

Turns out that the airport isn’t the only place in Juba where uniformed men disapprove of cameras toted by foreigners.  The streets, the marketplaces, anywhere near the parliament building, and especially crossing the Juba Bridge, the only crossing of the Nile for over 500 kilometers to the north or south.  But if you want to photograph the Juba Bridge, you just go over to the fancy restaurant with its white polyester tablecloths situated on the bank of the river 250 meters downstream from the bridge.  Order and coke and take as many photos as you like. 

 

I’ve come to Juba to do an evaluation of the USAID funded Juba urban WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene) project.  Before I left I was under the impression that I’d be walking around with groups of project staff doing household surveys and leading focus group discussions and inspecting construction quality of toilets.  Before I left I was also under the impression that I’d be evaluating the first ever piped water network in Juba’s history.  I was wrong, on both accounts.  Turns out that back in the 1920s when the British were still the colonial power, they installed over 50 kilometers of pipes in what was, at the time, quite a remote outpost town.  The water system hasn’t been upgraded or maintained during the past 60 or so years that Sudan has been embroiled in its particularly vicious civil war. 

 

As turns out, USAID also didn’t want me to lead teams of Sudanese staff traipsing around Juba interrogating people about their toilet use and handwashing practices.  I came to realize on my first afternoon in Juba that my job was to interview a lot of government officials, to examine the policy framework of the new-ish, quasi-autonomous government of South Sudan, and to provide strategic recommendations as to how USAID should further invest in urban WASH in South Sudan (and indirectly, about how to assist the quasi-autonomous nascent government).

 

Juba 2009 has whispers of Kabul 2003.  Bustling, hopeful.  On the streets craftsmen are making furniture, welders are fusing iron gates.  People are buying and selling.  Music emanates from bamboo-walled restaurant shacks.  Motorcycles zip about.  Mobile phones charging at wooden stands.  All in a city where there’s no electricity grid.  Juba’s booming. 

 

At newly opened restaurants where Kenyan and Ugandan wait staff serve cold drinks and imported food to the throngs of foreign businessmen and aid workers, the faces from Europe and North America sit at broad tables with their compatriots from East Africa.  They talk of low capacity in South Sudan, lower than anywhere else they’ve worked.  Of the restlessness of the population, since benefits from the peace dividend have turned out to be lower than what was expected.  The elephant in the corner of the room is the referendum that’s scheduled to occur in about 18 months.  According to the arrangements of the 2005 peace agreement, South Sudan gets 6 years of autonomous rule and then there’s a referendum where southerners get to vote on secession.  Everyone expects an overwhelming yes vote from the population.  No one expects the government in Khartoum to allow it to happen, this being the same regime that has waged a repressive war against the south for as long as anyone can remember and then a few years ago decided to shift war efforts to a once unheard of part of Sudan called Darfur.  And just in case you were wondering, the oil fields are in South Sudan. 

 

The lodge where I’m staying is at the edge of the rapidly sprawling city.  It’s really nice accommodation, especially for Juba standards.  A year and a half ago the population of Juba was around 250 thousand, there were 6 km of paved roads, and $100 a night would get you a canvas tent and a shared pit latrine.  Now there around 400 thousand in Juba, about 20 km of paved roads, and $150 a night gets you a private air conditioned hut inside a barbed wire fence containing one of the three pools in South Sudan.  In between the huts, the grounds are covered with portulacas.  In daytime the flowers open up, transforming the land into a carpet of purple.  As you walk around Juba, even in the areas where there isn’t any running water – much less swimming pools – you see that families have planted portulacas.  Patches of hopeful purple flowers in a sea of brown dust.  In Juba Arabic they’re called “sahb ahkeer,” which means “flower of sunrise.”  I hope it’s sunrise for Juba; for South Sudan.

 

“I hope your son is able to return to South Sudan someday,” I told Haroun a decade ago, when last I saw him. 

 

I’m still hoping. 

 

Love from South Sudan,

Mike

Summer Break

I'm going on break until September 15. When I go on break, I usually cut myself off from modern technology, and retreat to the ancient and well-worn technologies of pen, paper, my thoughts, and nature. I might write or tweet in between, but not much. Until then, enjoy the respite as I will...

Have a great rest of the summer. Be safe and I look forward to seeing you back here in about 7 weeks!

Navigating Air Travel's New Reality

Following up on yesterday's post, I came across this interesting article. The author went through the same sort of experience I went through but was more patient and giving to the airline industry...or atleast, she tried to explain the problems more gently and made a different point.

I am sitting in seat 10B on flight 744 from Dallas to New York, getting a front-row view of where air travel is headed in this country. Booked two weeks in advance, my coach-class ticket cost $1,258 round-trip—and that was without checking a bag, changing my ticket, or any other innocuous act that could have upped my tab by hundreds of dollars... [My] only gustatory options on this three-hour dinnertime flight are a standard-issue flagon of plonk and an unwholesome assortment of snack foods. Together, they set me back more than $10.

....

Raising prices for diminished service isn't a winning strategy for keeping customers. Indeed, in a recent Condé Nast Traveler survey, fully 82 percent of readers said they'd travel less if prices rose by 20 percent or more. And while 47 percent said they would be willing to pay extra for an in-flight meal, most balked at the other fees, with only 20 percent saying they would shell out to check a bag. Most agreed the air travel experience has headed south: 70 percent of those surveyed said they had experienced a flight delay of more than an hour in the past year, and nearly 30 percent said a carrier had lost their bag or canceled their flight.

How bad will it get? Here, we look at the many ways in which you will feel the airlines' changes—and what you can do to minimize the pain.

[READ MORE]

The stupidity of short-term thinking

photo courtesy: Innaminnafly

I'm flying to Europe for six weeks in August (and I won't be blogging much during that time as I know you are all dying for a break! :-) ). And, I'm VERY VERY annoyed at the airline industry right now.

Travel is a luxury item, and with the economy struggling as it is, only crazy people (like me) who are footing their own bills or business people who have someone else footing their bills are doing the traveling. The once high-flying (pun-intended) airline industry is struggling to pay their own bills, and is consequently trying to punish anyone who is trying to help them out.

Normally, with packed flights through most days of the year, airlines keep peak season rates relatively low. But with such low demand, airlines are trying to make their profits entirely in the peak season...so poor, unfortunate idiots like myself are stuck with abnormally high rates. (I try my best to avoid peak traveling seasons in general, because I dislike crowds intensely. But this time, I had no choice.)

This is what I call stupid short-term thinking. While they make money in the short-term (really??), in the long-run, they are "shooting themselves in the foot." And here's why:

• They are losing on the majority of people sitting on the fence about traveling. I know plenty of people who suddenly have a lot of time on their hands and have been contemplating traveling, but have given it up because of the exhorbitant rates. Airlines are betting on the few who HAVE to fly, not on the potential of people who might fly if their deals were better.

• They are losing out on customer loyalty. What few airlines realize is that a lot of frequent travelers are loyal, and are powerful word-of-mouth marketers. I am loyal to Virgin Airlines for example (amazing customer service and in-flight service!!), and Southwest Airlines, and I used to be to JetBlue before their customer service started sucking. When you bully people into doing things they don't want to do or don't think is fair, they will hold it against you. In this case forcing us to pay unfair fees and putting up with awful customer service while it will get us this time, will lose us in the long run (this is why I will NEVER fly Northwest/KLM again!)
  

• Allowing poor business practices to continue, even flourish: The larger US Airlines have the absolute worst service in the world, and they have no excuse. For years, the US government notoriously protected their airline industry, allowing awful business practices to endure. When the markets finally opened and protectionism was terminated, these "institutional airlines" (US Airways, Delta, American Airlines, United, etc) struggled. Their burgeoning bureaucracy made them inefficient against innovative, nimble, emerging airlines like Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Frontier, and others. The older airlines have only survived by capitalizing on their monopoly routes, their loyal customers, and building alliances with better airlines around the world.

Still struggling, the institutional airlines turned to stupid short-term thinking, taking their ire out on the customers. Fly one of them and you'll find yourself paying for everything. None of the institutional airlines have on-demand entertainment, a common availability amongst every first-world airline. If you want it, you pay for it. Many of these airlines are locked into lengthy and heavy contracts with labor unions; so their staff are often old, cranky, angry people who have seen a once glorious job go sour. Naturally their customer service is terrible. Further, they've cut down on seat spacing, have aging fleets, ancient in-flight entertainment, and make you pay for everything, including your water and your luggage (in addition to your already sizable airline ticket).

Its ridiculous to me that these airlines are thriving in this economy. And why?? Because the now cost-conscious consumer is forced to go with the cheapest deal, not the best airline. While hunting around today, for example, Delta Airlines was charging $1121 for a round-trip ticket to Paris; Lufthansa, a relatively superior airline, was charging $1600 (which is currently average for all non-American carriers). Normally, I would pay the extra $100 or $15o over Delta just to get better service. But this time, I can't even afford the $1121. But its my only choice, so I take it. So here we have it...the market is working against us and them.

Yes, airlines have investors and shareholders. But shareholders are reasonable people. Everyone knows that the economy is doing terribly. It would be ridiculous to expect that Delta would churn out record profits at this time...

My point is this...short-term thinking, without considering the bigger picture is very stupid and dangerous. While the ailing US institutional airlines continue to get through another year, its only a matter of time before they will have to bow out. After all, GM just did...only a matter of time with the rest...

Thwarting Terrorism

The Taj Mahal Hotel in Mumbai, during the 26/11/08 attacks. photo courtesy: computerweekly.com

What is the best way to thwart terrorism?? Well, how about we start with where and how a regular person becomes a terrorist...

I was reading this article about Ajmal Kasab the 21-y/o sole surviving terrorist from the Mumbai Attacks on 26/11. He was recently arraigned in court, and strong international interest followed what he had to say. Young and alone, Kasab confessed to his deeds, but what struck me was the story that he told...

He told [the judge]... that he was broke and tired of his job working for a decorator in Jhelum, a small town in Pakistan, and making a pittance. He and a friend had hatched a plan. They would earn cash by robbing people. And to improve their banditry skills they would seek out military training from the easiest source available to a young Pakistani man: Islamic militants.

Mr. Kasab and his friend went to Rawalpindi, he said, and asked in the market where they might find mujahedeen. They were directed to the office of Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian and American investigators say that Lashkar-e-Taiba planned the attacks in Pakistan. Although Pakistan initially denied that any of its citizens had been involved, it has now charged five men believed to be Pakistan-based Lashkar operatives with involvement. The organization’s founder, Hafez Saeed, has not been charged.

In the months before the attack, Mr. Kasab said in court, he and the other attackers were taken to a safe house in Karachi, the coastal city that is the commercial capital of Pakistan and is a world away from the Punjabi village where his family lived.

There the young men were cut off from the world. He said they and their trainers were not told where they would go next nor were they given any details about their mission, though it was clear that it would involve lethal weapons and deadly force.

“They told us we were to wait for some time,” Mr. Kasab said in court. “There was some problem.” They were warned sternly that “nobody will disobey” their orders.

In a month and a half, they were allowed out of the house only once for a training exercise when they were taught how to navigate the inflatable boats that they would use to leave Pakistani waters.[...]

In his TEDGlobal talk this morning, Prime Minister Gordon Brown (who gave a splendid talk largely on foreign policy and Third World Development) said that we needed to start being more effective than the Taliban and other terrorist organizations. The reason these terrorist organizations are SO effective is because they take poor frustrated young men and treat them like human beings. Suddenly they have food, attention, and a roof over their heads, and they have "purpose"; but this comes at a cost...they must sell their souls. The way to turn around terrorism is to more effectively get to these people before the terrorists do.

On this note, I highly recommend reading Three Cups of Tea, and watching this great documentary by Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy who did a phenomenal (and brave) job of covering the Taliban's recruiting mechanisms.

The meeting of great minds: Jobs and Gates

Information Technology and the personal computer have really changed the way the world works. The two big pioneers that took computing from a distant "techie-only" space and made it accessible to the rest of the world were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Both came of age at around the same time (1975-77), followed completely different models of development, and had a significant impact on each other and the development of information technology.

Recently, I came across a rare interview that brought the two together to recount the "rivalry" and the contributions that each brought to the other and their common field. Here they are in parts (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11)

(and can I say that the interviewers are just plain annoying!! Barring them, its a great interview!!)