Yesterday I experienced one of the classic Maseru experiences – getting caught in a snap thundershower. It is the rainy season in Lesotho, and due to a series of topographic and meteorological conditions I do not understand, whenever we have serious rain here (about once every two days) it is accompanied by the most incredible lightening shows I have ever seen outside of the Nevada desert. The locals are decidedly blasé about them, only getting aroused to chuckle at my exclamations when a sheet of lightning bolts lights up a full quarter of the sky. Truly beautiful, though I do not look forward to getting caught in one while doing a mountain top hike.
I had ample opportunity to enjoy the show when I decided to walk home from the office yesterday. “Decided” is perhaps a strong word, as at the end of the day I had found myself alone in the office with only six maloti (~93 cents US) in my pocket. Earlier in the day I had been out to visit one of the area clinics that we are planning on of adding to a DHL-based sample transport network. Currently one of the three staff members will strap samples to her back and catch a series of taxis and buses into the central hospital where they can do various blood analyses. Not the best system, particularly because it means the clinic operates at 2/3 capacity much of the time. Until the transport network is set up we are subsidizing their travel costs, and because I did not have the chance to file a requisition or hit petty cash before heading out, I anticipated giving them the money out of pocket and then getting reimbursed by the end of the week. Actual costs being slightly higher than I had previously calculated (what a surprise), I found myself with six maloti in my pocket at the end of the day. [Note: As a mugging minimization effort I do not carry a wallet and normally have the equivalent of only about US $20 on me at any time. That is more than enough for daily food and transportation needs but little enough that I am more than happy to part with it gracefully should someone the need occur.]
Normally a quiet trek of around thirty minutes, about ten minutes into my walk a nice fellow sidled up to me and warned that the rain was coming quickly. Surely enough, five minutes later (that period being just long enough for him to describe his agricultural scheme requiring “just a bit of capital”) the storm hit. Within a few seconds I was soaked. Normally people do not run outdoors in Maseru (the exception I have seen being high school age boys at night wearing full track suits), but a few people were hurrying for cover, and I took that as circumstantial permission to jog home without committing a major faux pas.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Thursday, January 24, 2008
My first weekend
On Saturday I didn’t have any plans so I decided to explore the city on foot. First stop, the infamous gym. As I took the tour, I was proudly informed that the king of Lesotho (His Royal Majesty King Letsie III) regularly exercises there. I can believe it. In terms of size and quality, imagine a two-story, fully stocked Gold’s Gym, then add in indoor and outdoor pools, interior and exterior basketball courts, squash and tennis courts, sauna and sweat bath, and a clubhouse with a range of amenities from a top flight restaurant to conference space for groups of 150+. Pretty swank, and by far the nicest facility of any kind I have yet seen in the country. I do not know how much chance I will have to use it, but with a monthly membership fee of $20 (US), I am hoping to find some opportunity. After hearing the entire pitch and narrowly avoiding the hard sell (health clubs are the same the world over), I wandered off to see Maseru’s central strip, the Kingsway.
As you walk along the Kingsway, taxis and vans pass by, honking incessantly. The taxis (4+1s, so called because they seat four plus the driver) and the vans (called conbis(sp?)) travel on preset routes, picking up and dropping people off as they go. I’m not sure how you divine where the taxis are going, but the vans all have a kid in the back whose primary responsibility apparently is to lean out the window and shout the destination of the van, holler at girls (as well as the odd white guy), and generally add to the noise pollution of the place. I preferred to walk today, but I’m looking forward to trying one in the future.
At one point I joined a large crowd in front of a music shop. A promoter had set up a tent and a duo was performing. The music was good, a nice hip-hop beat with Lesotho inflections and lyrics in Sesotho (the local Bantu-language). What caught me off guard was that the duo was a pair of albinos. The three of us were the only white faces in the crowd, and at one point I got a nod from the performers, a gesture I chose to interpret as one of solidarity but which, based upon the crowd’s response, may have been more in line with “Hey, look at the white guy!” I eventually wandered on, but when I passed by again about an hour and a half later they were still going strong, the crowd continually replenished by a steady stream of people walking the Kingsway.
On Sunday, my first attempt to attend church ended in a qualified failure. With the church address dutifully copied from the Internet, I got into the taxi feeling relatively confident. My cabbie, upon hearing that I was going to the Mormon church, smiling said that he knew it well. Success! Five minutes later I found myself in front of the Maseru cathedral. It turns out that 1) the Catholic Church is referred to locally as the Roman Church and that 2) the difference between Rs and Ms in Sesotho may not be as clearly defined as it is in English. Mormon/Roman – five minutes, some wild hand gesticulations and a few terse conversations with the dispatcher in Sesotho and we still never got it completely figured out.
It’s okay, I’ve got the address, right? Wrong. While we knew from the address that the church was in the same general neighborhood as the cathedral, that was about it. Property numbering in Maseru is only sequential on certain streets – other areas are more haphazard. After ten minutes of fruitlessly circling the cathedral district I had pity on my cabbie, bid him goodbye, and struck out to find the church on foot. After wandering for another thirty minutes and bothering a series of good-natured but ultimately unhelpful passersbys, I threw in the towel. At just that moment the cathedral bells rang out the start of Mass, and I thought to myself that some church is better none. It was only after getting safely ensconced in the middle of a pew that was at about 120% of holding capacity that I realized I was in the Sesotho Mass, not the English Mass.
What can I say about the service? The Lord’s Prayer sounds the same and has the same cadence in any language. The cathedral is a beautiful example of colonial construction (wood with a hewn stone façade). The preacher gave a lively sermon that had the congregation rolling with laughter and employed a variety of hand motions that had me snickering at points, lack of comprehension aside. The choir was amazing, and the lady sitting next to me was kind enough to share a hymnal so I was able to sing the congregation numbers. The only lyrics I explicitly understood were “Hosanna” and “Glory in Exelcius Deo,” but I think I got the gist. The place was packed. Chatting with a deacon afterwards, it turns out that what I attended was the second of three Masses they would do in the day, and all of them would be to overflowing houses. Lesotho is ~40% Roman Catholic, and it struck me as a very vibrant, friendly, faithful community. Hopefully I’ll have better luck finding the Mormon services next week, but one of our drivers has invited me to attend his Pentecostal service should I fail, and that is not an entirely unappealing Plan B.
As you walk along the Kingsway, taxis and vans pass by, honking incessantly. The taxis (4+1s, so called because they seat four plus the driver) and the vans (called conbis(sp?)) travel on preset routes, picking up and dropping people off as they go. I’m not sure how you divine where the taxis are going, but the vans all have a kid in the back whose primary responsibility apparently is to lean out the window and shout the destination of the van, holler at girls (as well as the odd white guy), and generally add to the noise pollution of the place. I preferred to walk today, but I’m looking forward to trying one in the future.
At one point I joined a large crowd in front of a music shop. A promoter had set up a tent and a duo was performing. The music was good, a nice hip-hop beat with Lesotho inflections and lyrics in Sesotho (the local Bantu-language). What caught me off guard was that the duo was a pair of albinos. The three of us were the only white faces in the crowd, and at one point I got a nod from the performers, a gesture I chose to interpret as one of solidarity but which, based upon the crowd’s response, may have been more in line with “Hey, look at the white guy!” I eventually wandered on, but when I passed by again about an hour and a half later they were still going strong, the crowd continually replenished by a steady stream of people walking the Kingsway.
On Sunday, my first attempt to attend church ended in a qualified failure. With the church address dutifully copied from the Internet, I got into the taxi feeling relatively confident. My cabbie, upon hearing that I was going to the Mormon church, smiling said that he knew it well. Success! Five minutes later I found myself in front of the Maseru cathedral. It turns out that 1) the Catholic Church is referred to locally as the Roman Church and that 2) the difference between Rs and Ms in Sesotho may not be as clearly defined as it is in English. Mormon/Roman – five minutes, some wild hand gesticulations and a few terse conversations with the dispatcher in Sesotho and we still never got it completely figured out.
It’s okay, I’ve got the address, right? Wrong. While we knew from the address that the church was in the same general neighborhood as the cathedral, that was about it. Property numbering in Maseru is only sequential on certain streets – other areas are more haphazard. After ten minutes of fruitlessly circling the cathedral district I had pity on my cabbie, bid him goodbye, and struck out to find the church on foot. After wandering for another thirty minutes and bothering a series of good-natured but ultimately unhelpful passersbys, I threw in the towel. At just that moment the cathedral bells rang out the start of Mass, and I thought to myself that some church is better none. It was only after getting safely ensconced in the middle of a pew that was at about 120% of holding capacity that I realized I was in the Sesotho Mass, not the English Mass.
What can I say about the service? The Lord’s Prayer sounds the same and has the same cadence in any language. The cathedral is a beautiful example of colonial construction (wood with a hewn stone façade). The preacher gave a lively sermon that had the congregation rolling with laughter and employed a variety of hand motions that had me snickering at points, lack of comprehension aside. The choir was amazing, and the lady sitting next to me was kind enough to share a hymnal so I was able to sing the congregation numbers. The only lyrics I explicitly understood were “Hosanna” and “Glory in Exelcius Deo,” but I think I got the gist. The place was packed. Chatting with a deacon afterwards, it turns out that what I attended was the second of three Masses they would do in the day, and all of them would be to overflowing houses. Lesotho is ~40% Roman Catholic, and it struck me as a very vibrant, friendly, faithful community. Hopefully I’ll have better luck finding the Mormon services next week, but one of our drivers has invited me to attend his Pentecostal service should I fail, and that is not an entirely unappealing Plan B.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Introduction
Howdy. My name is Daniel Evans, and I recently moved to Maseru, Lesotho. Lesotho, for those of you unfamiliar with The Mountain Kingdom (as I was myself prior to taking this assignment) is a small, mountainous country completely surrounded by South Africa. Lesotho is ethnically homogenous, the name of the country itself translating as “the land of the people who speak Sesotho.” With only 2.3 million people Lesotho is a very small country, the vast majority of that population living in rural villages. Lesotho has a very substantial HIV/AIDS problem, with an estimated adult infection rate of ~25%. In 2004 the government began a rigorous program to address both the spread of HIV and to provide free universal anti-retroviral treatment. The scale-up of the program has encountered a number of obstacles, but currently in excess of 22,000 people are receiving treatment and the number continues to grow.
I arrived here a week and a half ago to work as a Procurement Technical Advisor for the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI). The CHAI team works with international donors and local governments to provide a variety of services, the most noticeable being supplying and facilitating the effective distribution of pediatric anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and other drugs designed to prevent mother to child HIV transmission. In terms of my specific job, I’ll be handling the procurement of pediatric ARVs for the country and then working as a technical advisor with the national Ministry of Health, Global Fund country team, and other aid groups to ensure that appropriate quantities of adult ARVs get into the country and to the hospitals and clinics that need them.
While this blog is meant to cover my time in Africa and most of that will be spent working, I do not envision talking about the specifics of my job that much. There are a few reasons for this. First, procurement is not exactly sexy. No commercial soliciting donations will ever feature me in a windowless office working on a spreadsheet. I meet with vendors, I review invoices, I create forecasts in Excel and argue with various stakeholders about quantification assumptions. Essential work, but not lending itself to interesting narrative (at least to someone of my modest talents). If you have a specific question about something such as the merits of making a contract DDP versus making it DDU with appropriate coverage amendments in the tender terms, I’d be more than happy to correspond with you personally, but I am not going to put everyone else through that. Secondly, there is a fair amount of sensitivity associated with the work and a misconstrued comment or an accidental admission could have serious reverberations. I am working with a lot of people who care very deeply about what they do and have in many cases devoted their lives to helping others. Differences of opinion and outright disagreements are inevitable in situations where you are making tough decisions involving trade-offs with profound human consequences, let alone when you have people working together from very different cultural and work backgrounds. To ensure that clashes or fuel for such does not flow from anything written here, I will largely steer clear of work-related entries. For similar reasons, do not expect to see any pointed criticisms of Lesotho in this blog. The country has its share of issues, as does every country (though it has been pointed out to me locally that at least Lesotho does not export its problems to other parts of the world). What excites me about working here are the number of people I have already met who are excited about improving the situation.
I arrived here a week and a half ago to work as a Procurement Technical Advisor for the Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI). The CHAI team works with international donors and local governments to provide a variety of services, the most noticeable being supplying and facilitating the effective distribution of pediatric anti-retrovirals (ARVs) and other drugs designed to prevent mother to child HIV transmission. In terms of my specific job, I’ll be handling the procurement of pediatric ARVs for the country and then working as a technical advisor with the national Ministry of Health, Global Fund country team, and other aid groups to ensure that appropriate quantities of adult ARVs get into the country and to the hospitals and clinics that need them.
While this blog is meant to cover my time in Africa and most of that will be spent working, I do not envision talking about the specifics of my job that much. There are a few reasons for this. First, procurement is not exactly sexy. No commercial soliciting donations will ever feature me in a windowless office working on a spreadsheet. I meet with vendors, I review invoices, I create forecasts in Excel and argue with various stakeholders about quantification assumptions. Essential work, but not lending itself to interesting narrative (at least to someone of my modest talents). If you have a specific question about something such as the merits of making a contract DDP versus making it DDU with appropriate coverage amendments in the tender terms, I’d be more than happy to correspond with you personally, but I am not going to put everyone else through that. Secondly, there is a fair amount of sensitivity associated with the work and a misconstrued comment or an accidental admission could have serious reverberations. I am working with a lot of people who care very deeply about what they do and have in many cases devoted their lives to helping others. Differences of opinion and outright disagreements are inevitable in situations where you are making tough decisions involving trade-offs with profound human consequences, let alone when you have people working together from very different cultural and work backgrounds. To ensure that clashes or fuel for such does not flow from anything written here, I will largely steer clear of work-related entries. For similar reasons, do not expect to see any pointed criticisms of Lesotho in this blog. The country has its share of issues, as does every country (though it has been pointed out to me locally that at least Lesotho does not export its problems to other parts of the world). What excites me about working here are the number of people I have already met who are excited about improving the situation.
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