msafiri mzungu

Umbrella

jackie — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 14:34:49 +0000

Bagpipe alert

jackie — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:28:30 +0000

Chihuly exhibit

jackie — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:46:43 +0000

It’s all glass.

MFA, Boston, June 2011.

Back to posting

jackie — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 18:49:18 +0000

I haven’t posted much this past year. Not because I haven’t thought about the topics that I usually post on. I have. But posting used to fill a need for me – it allowed me to process some of my ideas and share my experiences while traveling. This year, I haven’t needed to write a post in order to process ideas. I’ve had enough people in my masters program and throughout my life to fill this role, and enough papers that required me to write it all down.

So I stopped. And I felt ok about that. But now I’ve realized that by stopping posting, I’ve also stopped most of my photography. And I’ve lost my outlet for sharing my images. So in an effort to remember to carry my camera with me, I am now going to start posting again. Sometimes on thoughts/reflections/learnings, but mostly on my photography.

Here’s the first image. A stairwell in my college.

Old maps of Africa

jackie — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 22:45:09 +0000

I like maps. I especially like old maps. And I spend a lot of time in Africa. Combine all of these things, and you get this:

Mapping Africa

A very interesting BBC audio slide show that shows how old maps can chronicle the the history of the continent. Check it out.

Managing technology

jackie — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 22:54:59 +0000

When I spent a couple years traveling through Africa, I often posted on the content of what I saw/learned/experienced. It was easy; every day I noticed or learned something new about the culture in which I was living or the field in which I was working.

Since starting my masters program in the UK, I have also learned something new every day. This knowledge is, I believe, equally as valuable as field experience, but it comes in a very different form that has been harder to distill into blog posts. Now that I have one and a half semesters behind me, though, I hope to focus more on the content of what I’m learning about technology and development, both in and out of lectures.

The focus of my learnings has shifted from on-the-ground observations (while traveling) to techniques and strategies for managing technology in a development context. To do this, I’m first learning about strategies used to manage technologies in industries in the West.

One of the first things I learned was Mike Gregory’s framework for the technology management process, which breaks down the process into five steps:

1. Identification: scan the market and competitors for potential product ideas
2. Selection: pick a technology based on competitive/market analyses, etc.
3. Acquisition: turn that technology into a product (R&D, manufacturing)
4. Exploitation: develop and sell that product (to bring in revenue)
5. Protection: ensure ownership and protect the trade secret

It’s not necessarily linear, nor is it necessarily circular, and there’s lots of feedback loops happening along the way. But it’s a simple way to break down the technology management process, and it’s something every successful technology company has done at some point.

In my experience, organizations working with appropriate technologies in Africa focus on identification and selection. Sometimes they get to acquisition. Few, if any, get to exploitation. My theory is that because most of these organizations are donor-dependent rather than revenue-dependent, they don’t really have to.

White balance

jackie — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:48:58 +0000

I’m glad that my white balance was set wrong on my camera for this photo.

Obsessed with widgets

jackie — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:00:35 +0000

A student in my masters program last year wrote his dissertation on a business model for a pedal-powered pump for fecal sludge to be used in slums in Tanzania. He also, as part of his research, created a cool “widget” – the “People Powered Poo Pump”.

The technology was actually not so new. The student came from MIT and worked with Global Cycle Solutions, whose focus is on pedal-powered technologies (recognize the blue stand and attachment in this article? GCS developed those). The business model was more interesting, in my opinion.

But as his dissertation was picked up by the media, the spotlight was focused on the widget. Because cool widgets are a selling point.

Unfortunately, the fact that the media likes a widget does not mean that it’s going to work. As Kevin Starr points out in his talk at PopTech, such was the case with LifeStraw, OLPC, and PlayPumps.

(This is the sOccket. Lots of hype. Little to show for it.)

In order to mitigate seduction by “cool widgets”, Starr recommends we ask ourselves the following question for every new technology in the spotlight:

1. Is it needed?
2. Does it work?
3. Will it get to those who need it?
4. Will they use it right?

I like it. Short and sweet. Now if only we answered these questions more often before we support organizations, we’d start supporting more realistic and effective solutions.

(For those of you who watched the video from yesterday’s post, you’ll have heard this already. But I thought the points were so important that they needed their own post.)

(Image from here.)

Mission statements

jackie — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 20:02:49 +0000

Kevin Starr from the Mulago Foundation doesn’t find the average mission statement of development organizations very useful, as most of them look like this:

“… blah blah blah blah grassroots blah blah
blah empower blah blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah sustainable blah
blah capacity-building blah blah blah blah
blah blah innovative blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah blah blah blah blah strategies blah
blah participatory blah blah blah…”

Instead, he wants something in this format:

verb + target + outcome < 8 words

Starr gave a talk at PopTech where emphasized the need to distinguish between the organizations that say they’re doing a good job with those that are actually having an impact. A clear, concise and measurable mission statement helps. Watch the full video here:

Why I don’t take malaria prophylaxis

jackie — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 13:50:53 +0000

Since the start of January, I have had incredibly vivid dreams. I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night soundly, and it’s beginning to get unpleasant. At first I thought it was stress-related, because I’ve been significantly more stressed and busy this term than I have in a long time. But my sleep patterns have been so consistently poor that I’m beginning to think that stress is not the only underlying reason.

Let’s rewind a bit. From June 2007 to June 2008, I was on Mefloquine, an anti-malaria drug taken weekly. I wasn’t in areas with malaria that whole time, but the Mefloquine prescription starts one week before you’re in a malaria zone and lasts for four weeks after. I traveled so much during that year that I was on Mefloquine continuously.

Mefloquine is notorious for giving people vivid dreams. Add that to the list of other side effects, and it’s a pretty scary drug. (“Mefloquine may have severe and permanent adverse side effects.” Fantastic.) To top it off, apparently it’s not uncommon for people who have taken Mefloquine in the past to continue experiencing side effects long after they’ve stopped taking it (does almost 3 years count?), especially during period of high stress.

Mefloquine is probably one of the worst malaria prophylaxes, but it’s one of the more common because it’s cheap and weekly (as opposed to expensive and daily). Other options such as Malarone have a better reputation, but they’re all still rather powerful drugs.

So in June 2008, I stopped taking malaria prophylaxis altogether. Here’s why:

1. Malaria prophylaxes are powerful, and I don’t want them in my body. Especially for long period of time. I don’t like taking regular pain killers, and the thought of putting something significantly more powerful in my body scares me. Also, would you want to take a drug that gives you side effects years after you’ve stopped taking it?

2. Malaria prophylaxes don’t always work. Certain prophylaxis only protect against certain strains of malaria, and there’s no guarantee that’s the one you’re going to get. I have a friend who spent a few months in Africa on two separate occasions, took prophylaxis both times, and got malaria, both times.

3. Malaria tests and treatments are easy to come by and more trustworthy in Africa. If there’s one test that every clinic has the ability to do, it’s a malaria test. Ok, there are probably some rural and poorly stocked clinics that are currently out of the supplies, but in general this is one of the most common diseases that clinics deal with. Both the test and the treatment are also cheaper in Africa (there’s a higher demand for them), and frankly I trust them more. Western doctors probably see very few malaria patients, and so no matter how much experience they have in medicine, they are less likely to be as familiar with malaria.

So I sleep under a mosquito net, I get myself tested if I feel sick, and I carry a treatment (just in case I’m somewhere without access to a treatment). Now I just need to get rid of the side effects from my year on Mefloquine back in ’07 – ’08.