Stormy Weather

We've had some good storms here recently. Yesterday morning on the way to work we stopped to take a few pictures of this one before driving into it. This, by the way, is what my daily commute looks like. I took these pictures about about 45 km outside of Niamey, the capital. Most of the year it's not nearly this green, but we're in the rainy season now.

Awning Jumping

It goes without saying that the possibility that there may have been a plot to assassinate Obama in Denver is pretty disturbing. But what's up with this?

When authorities knocked on the man’s door, they say he jumped out of his sixth floor window, landing on an awning and running from the scene. They say they soon found him with a broken ankle.

Did this really happen? I know jumping out of windows onto awnings looks great in movies, but it always strikes me as less than believable that (a) there would conveniently happen to be an awning directly below your window on the occasion that you needed to jump out of it, (b) somebody would actually be confident enough in the awning to take the jump, (c) the awning would be strong enough not to let the jumper just tear through it but soft enough that that the person would survive the impact, and (d) there wouldn't be some kind of supporting frame of, say, metal or wood underneath the awning.

Francoise Mbango Etone is Even Awesomer than I Thought!

I mentioned Francoise Mbango Etone in the previous post as my favorite story of these Olympics. After reading this article about her, I like her even more. Since winning gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics she's been more-or-less constantly at odds with the Cameroonian authorities who are eager to exploit her success for their own political purposes. The president of the Cameroon Athletics Federation went as far as to claim that "Francoise Mbango does not respect Cameroon. She has rubbed Cameroon in mud on numerous occasions". Of course nobody has shown less respect for the people of Cameroon or done more to muddy the name of that country than Paul Biya, the president since 1982, and his famously corrupt regime but that's beside the main point, which is that Mbango's Olympic success occurred in spite of the efforts of the Cameroonian authorities, not because of them.

In addition to being a good anecdote about a determined woman persevering over the forces that conspired to hold her back, I like this story because it's a happy version of a more somber, generic story about the obstacles that confront talented people in corrupt environments. This story is easily recognizable to anyone who has spent time in Africa because it happens every day. I know a very successful local artisan who was recently almost put out of business because some local elites resented how much money he was making purely on his own ability. I have a hard working Nigerienne friend with a graduate degree from a US university who struggled to find a job here in Niamey where visiting Le Directeur at a hotel room wasn't part of the interview. These stories are a dime a dozen. The tragedy is not just that talented individuals are prevented at every opportunity from making the most of their abilities, it's also that countries like Cameroon and Niger desperately need the skills and efforts of the same people who are the biggest targets for this kind of exploitation.

The Non-Main Events

Despite my expertise on the subject, I haven’t paid much attention to this year’s Olympics. I’ve followed the main stories a little bit—Michael Phelps and his eight gold medals, the Jamaicans’ dominance of the sprinting events—but I haven’t been especially drawn in. I don’t know if this says more about the Olympics, professional athletes, or my own curmudgeonly outlook, but I feel like it’s only a matter of time before either Phelps or the Jamaican track team is accused of doping. Anyway, what makes the Olympics interesting to me are the less anticipated stories that tend to occur away from the main events. Remember that swimmer from (I think) Central African Republic in the 2000 Olympics who had to swim a qualifying heat that was the longest distance he ever swam in his life?

Probably my favorite story from these games so far is Francoise Mbango Etone, the Cameroonian winner of the gold medal in the women’s triple jump. Unsponsored and self-coached, the 32-year-old worked her way back to the gold medal despite taking two years off since winning gold in the 2004 Olympics because she was injured and gave birth. But my favorite part was the moment after her first-place finish became official. She ran over to the stands to celebrate with her supporters (her family, I assume) and somebody handed her a Cameroonian flag. Instead of the usual track star routine of prancing around the stadium waving the flag or draping it over her shoulders, she did what virtually every African woman I’ve ever met would do when handed a colorful piece of fabric that size. She wrapped it around her waist like a pagne and went on with her business.

l'Amitié

This short article on Cote d'Ivoire's declining tourism industry mentions a beach village named Assouindé. As a volunteer in Cote d'Ivoire, I spent about a week there between finishing pre-service training and installing myself in my village. This post-training Assouindé trip was something of a tradition among PCVs, and volunteers found reasons to spend time at Assouindé on countless other occasions as well.

The default hotel for PCVs in Assouindé was called Hotel l'Amitié (Friendship Hotel). They had little bungalows right on the beach that were pretty bare-bones but dirt cheap. They also had a big wooden deck, where if you could tolerate waiting several hours for your food, they served their specialty of pasta with a red, creamy, seafood sauce that I still think about six years later. Mosts nights there were bonfires and drumming on the beach. There was an older woman in the village who sold freshly made fruit juices. Next door to the hotel there was an Italian man with a pet chimpanzee who ran a little cafe where you could get good coffee or limoncello. If you wanted anything else, say, some bangui (palm wine) or coutoucou (local hard liquor), the guy who ran l'Amitié would get it for you.

I heard through the Peace Corps rumor mill that l'Amitié was burned down by locals not long after the war broke out. Its owners, like the men interviewed in the tourism story, were Burkinabé and would have made natural targets in the ethnic violence that was widespread in the early phase of the war.

Cote d'Ivoire is supposed to have presidential and legislative elections in November as part of the national reconciliation. The peace process has been characterized by a number of apparent breakthroughs that have ultimately failed to hold up, and it would be foolish for an outside observer to predict whether this time things will be any different. Nevertheless, I'm hopeful and optimistic that the US isn't the only country that will be changing direction in November.

No Accounting for Taste

Probably my favorite development blog is that of Chris Blattman, a Yale professor who focuses mostly on Africa and offers a good mix of commentary on current events, academic research, and anecdotes drawn from his own experiences.

Yesterday Blattman commented on the peculiar celebrity status of soft rock crooner Michael Bolton in the war torn African countries of Liberia and Uganda, noting also that in northern Uganda, "Bolton is easily eclipsed by Dolly Parton and Bette Midler."

Although I'm sure I've been forced to listen to my share of those three artists over the years, none of them would have been on my list of "noteworthy random Western singers you hear a lot of in Africa". Off the top of my head, my list would probably begin with Celine Dion, Lionel Richie (esp "stuck on you"), and the Scorpions (huge in Madagascar!), although I'm sure I'm neglecting some important ones here.

Then there's the curious phenomenon of this song, which also happens to be the current ring tone on my cell phone.

Good News for Coffee Drinkers (?)

This is sort of a curious article about the health effects of coffee from the New York Times. It's entitled "Sorting Out Coffee's Contradictions" and one of the early paragraphs asserts that "hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers." Such an opening led me to assume that the research shows a mixed bag of positive and negative health effects. But the actual research cited in the article seems to be overwhelmingly positive. A more appropriate summary would seem to be, "We used to think coffee was pretty bad for you, but the more recent studies show the dangers are overblown and it's actually pretty good for you". The main points from the article:

• Hydration. They used to think that caffeinated drinks were diuretics (i.e. they make you pee) but this turns out only to be true when you consume caffeine at very high dosages (bigger than a Starbuck's 'grande').


• Heart disease. There's no enduring evidence showing a greater risk of heart attacks or abnormal heart rhythm among regular coffee drinkers. In fact, coffee may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.


• Blood pressure. No apparent association between coffee and high blood pressure, although cola apparently does contribute to high blood pressure.


• Cancer. Pancreatic or kidney cancer? "Little to no effect". Liver cancer? Coffee may lower your risk. Breast cancer? No connection.


• Bone loss. Kind of ambiguous results, but whatever negative effects coffee might have on calcium levels are more than made up for if you already consume the recommended amount of calcium in your diet.


• Weight loss. Coffee apparently speeds up your metabolism so you burn more calories, but long-term studies show either no connection between weight and coffee or greater weight gain among coffee drinkers. So you're not going to lose weight by drinking coffee, but I'd argue that if coffee drinking is the best weight loss plan you can come up with then you probably deserve to stay chubby.


• Exercise. Coffee apparently augments the benefits of aerobic and anaerobic exercise.


• Parkinson's disease. Coffee drinkers (but not decaf drinkers!) had 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson's disease in a recent review of studies.


• Type 2 diabetes. People who drink four to six cups of coffee per day (both regular and decaf) had a 28 percent lower risk of this kind of diabetes, according to another recent review.

And now for the real shocker:

• Mood and mental performance. Surprise! Coffee drinkers "report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability".

Really, that's pretty much the whole article. So please show me the "contradictions" and the studies that damn coffee as a potential killer that reportedly come out every month. Otherwise I'll just have to conclude that all that coffee I drink is pretty good for me.

Olympic Medals, Social Mobility, and Poverty Reduction

Friends who endured the last semester of graduate school with me may remember my frequent references to a shadowy endeavor I usually called "the Olympics paper". Just in time for Beijing, my former professor and I have finally thrown open the doors to this project and shocked the world with our insights about why India, despite a huge population and a rapidly growing economy, wins so few Olympic medals. Well, that's probably an exaggeration, but we did get this writeup in the UK-based Guardian:

Controversially, the paper contends that social mobility is the key to countries' success at the Olympics. Populations that are better informed and better connected to opportunities, in societies where information and access are widespread "tend to win a higher share of Olympic medals", they said.

It's probably natural to have some quibbles about the way somebody characterizes and reports on something you spent so much time on, and I'm not sure how I feel about getting hit with the "academic" tag, but the article is a pretty good summary of our paper. Those interested in taking a look at the paper itself may do so here.

Hell is an Airport in Africa

I had a great month of July in the States. I spent a lot of quality time with my family, managed to run just about all the errands on my list, reconnected with more friends than I would have thought possible given the limited time, and had a productive week of work related meetings and activities in Washington. But after all the traveling and living out of my suitcases for a month, I was anxious to get back to my home in Niger where I could catch my breath a little bit and get back to work on a few things that have been hanging over my head in the “need to get done” file.

My trip back didn't exactly go smoothly. The itinerary had me flying from Washington to Dakar, Senegal, where I was scheduled to have a 9 hour layover before continuing on to Niamey (via Bamako, Mali). My flight out of Dakar was canceled when the airport workers in Niamey went on strike but they put me on the next flight, two days later. That second flight was overbooked (I'm assuming because of all the people who had been left stranded by the strike two days earlier) and I was one of the ones who got bumped, so they told me I'd have to wait for the next flight, three days later. The third time proved to be the charm and after a 5 hour delay I finally left Dakar on Monday evening, arriving at my house at 3 AM yesterday (Tuesday) morning. I spent most of the day yesterday back at the Niamey airport trying to get my bags out of customs but eventually concluded my arrival yesterday afternoon, about a week after leaving Washington.

As luck would have it, my friend Tim (Timmy, to a few of the Rest’s loyal readers, who previously contributed a few photos of a fish he ate in Uganda) recently took a job in Dakar and moved there about three weeks ago. So not only was I able to avoid taking a hotel room and trying to kill time for almost a week in a completely unfamiliar city, I also got to do a good amount of catching up with Tim, who I hadn’t seen in over a year and who I missed being able to see in Washington by just a few days. We explored his new neighborhood for Senegalese food, wrestled with the kids who live next door to him and got to know the rest of their family, spent a day at the beach, and revived a few ongoing arguments dating back to 2002. In the end, I felt much less like a stranded traveler than somebody who won an unexpected trip to visit Tim in Dakar for a few days.

Feel free to interpret this story as a little parable about how I experience life as a foreigner in Africa. Rarely do things work out as planned, or on schedule, but for every frustrating experience there seems to be more than enough serendipity to compensate.