People here have an impossible time with my name. The majority think my name is Gareth, maybe because they have more historical exposure to British names, and if I don't correct them (usually more than once) that's typically what I go by. But there are some other fun ones.
The car mechanic, a hilarious Portuguese guy (maybe Mozambican?) with whom I've spent a lot of time lately while trying to buy a cars, calls me one of two things. His favorite when he's most animated is MisterGreg, which sounds more like Mista Grrreg with a rolled r. Sometimes he calls me Mister Geret, which is almost Garrett but shorter. He does know how to spell my name, because he gets it right on the bills I've paid.
The taxi driver our office uses a lot uses a variant of that, calling me Jerret, or Gerrat (with a soft G). It sounds something like jer-rot, again with a rolled r in between.
I've learned to respond to anything that sounds like it starts with a G.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Phone Companies Are All the Same
Phone companies are the same the world over. We have an ADSL internet connection (don't know what the A stands for, or for that matter what DSL stands for) at our house. Two weeks ago, Swaziland Post and Telecommunications Company cut us off because the last tenants hadn't paid the bill within the appropriate time period. They turned our phone back on last Monday after a quick phone call. So far so good.
But the Internet didn't work. So I called back Monday, talked to someone after a few tries, who promised to call me back. They didn't. Tuesday, same thing. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, same thing. Finally Today, a Tuesday and a full 8 days after I started, I convinced a technician to come to our house, who hit a few buttons and we were back up and running. Stuff I could have done over the phone. Awesome. My US telcom training came in handy.
Maybe SPTC has an internet presence like Comcast, and now that I've complained about it on the Internet they'll try to make me a happy customer. What are the chances they refund the lost week?
But the Internet didn't work. So I called back Monday, talked to someone after a few tries, who promised to call me back. They didn't. Tuesday, same thing. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, same thing. Finally Today, a Tuesday and a full 8 days after I started, I convinced a technician to come to our house, who hit a few buttons and we were back up and running. Stuff I could have done over the phone. Awesome. My US telcom training came in handy.
Maybe SPTC has an internet presence like Comcast, and now that I've complained about it on the Internet they'll try to make me a happy customer. What are the chances they refund the lost week?
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Unintentionally Long Update -- Finally (almost) Settled
I'm long overdue for a real update on what's been going on, and many thanks to those of you who keep prompting me to write.
In the usual style -- one day I'm going to write impossibly good prose for this thing -- here's another relatively unrelated list of things that have been happening in my life.
1. I have moved into a permanent house! My colleague Joe and I are renting a 3 bedroom house in a neighborhood called "Dalriach East" which is just above the main part of town on a hill. It's a 70s era place with a great view of Pine Valley and a huge yard great for 4th of July parties. The rent is cheap, but it was completely unfurnished so we have to purchase literally everything, from beds and couches to a fridge, microwave, etc. We've got much of it now, but our living room is still conspicuously empty. Couches and a kitchen/dining room table are next on the list, which will just about complete the collection.
Our address is either: 58 Panorama Drive or 188 Panorama Drive or 58/188 Mbandezi Street, depending on who you believe. They're all the same place, I think, or maybe our house is something else entirely. It's very unclear. Street names/numbers seem to change all the time. When the water company called to turn on our service they just asked me to describe the house relative to other things. If you're interested in visiting, head up Pine Valley road from town and go straight instead of turning off into the valley. Go over two speed bumps, you'll see a set of three big white flats on the left, and our driveway is straight ahead.
This calls for pictures, but I don't have them with me so I'll update later.
On a related note, I finally bought a car. It's a 2000-something VW Golf (again, these things are never clear), and though it's not formally in my possession yet, I should have it later this week once the international wire transfer is taken care of. I haven't completed a wire transfer yet, and nothing seems to be as easy as it should be, especially when dealing with banks/credit card companies by phone, but I'll give it a shot.
The car is an import from Japan, so the radio runs from 60-something to 90.1 or so, rendering it almost completely useless here in Swaziland. This is common here with imported cars. Before completing the purchase I'll take it to a mechanic, but it seems to be a total crapshoot as to whether you purchase a reliable car or not. I went to one of the more reputable dealers, so hopefully it will turn out okay.
2. I am no longer completely inept at my job. So that's good. Over the past couple of months I have been working with the National AIDS program to quantify the amount of HIV drugs that the country will require over the next 5 years as part of a big grant application. It's a fascinating exercise, using more assumptions than we would like, but it's near impossible to project what the global market for HIV/AIDS drugs will look like in 5 years. This involves trying to estimate what the patient populations will be (difficult), what the prevalence of TB/HIV co-infection will be since it has an impact on what drug regimens patients can take (difficult, and a moving target), what drugs will be available and at what cost (somewhat less difficult), and probably hundreds of other similar estimations. I've been learning all the stuff by doing, and while I'm not an expert by any means, I'm starting to at least understand all the different components and how they fit together.
I've had a chance to visit a couple of government hospitals in the last few weeks, to see how the pharmacy system works in practice, and it's eye opening, though not necessarily in the ways I expected. The HIV pharmacy is typically separated from the main hospital pharmacy. This is partly because the health system here (and in many places) is siloed horizontally, where HIV/AIDS is one program, TB another, Maternal Care another, etc. Another explanation revolves around issues of HIV patient stigma. One pharmacist explained that HIV patients do not like to queue in the same line as other patients, since they will be recognized as positive when they receive their medicines. On the other hand, all it takes is one look at the ART (anti-retroviral treatment) line to see who is there, so I'm not 100% sure that explanation flies. I suspect it may be an after-the-fact explanation, but I don't really have enough insight to know.
Another surprise has been how healthy The HIV patients that queue appear to be. Compared to the regular pharmacy line where you can tell people are really sick, most of the people who come to the ART window look just like you or me. It is impossible to tell from walking around that 25% of the people in this country are infected. I think I was imagining a lot of people looking like Tom Hanks from the end of Philadelphia or something, but it turns out that the lesions he had are called Kaposi Sarcoma and can equally be treated by medicines.
The two hospitals I've seen are fine, if not western by many standards. They appear to have many of the functions of a basic western hospital, but the standards for sanitation and cleanliness are not close and the buildings are a concrete shells that feel more like a prison than a hospital. That said, the doctors seem to be knowledgeable and focused on providing good treatment, as well as dedicated to improvement.
3. I have met a lot of great people here, though do not spend much social time with Swazi people. It's hard to say whether the expats make that true or whether it's Swazi culture, though I suspect it's more on the expat culture. The social circle I arrived into is nearly all expats, and it has been an easy group to fit into. It's fairly diverse group of Americans, Canadians and Europeans. Our office (6 of us) is almost all American, with the exception of our Swazi administrative assistant, but the UN and some of the other organizations here are much more international.
4. I'll leave you with one more SiSwati language lesson, as I am slowly struggling to learn. The longer I have been here the more I am thinking that I should formally learn the language, so I might start taking classes one of these days if I get my act together. Here's the standard greeting, which for the most part isn't so hard, except for the end:
In the usual style -- one day I'm going to write impossibly good prose for this thing -- here's another relatively unrelated list of things that have been happening in my life.
1. I have moved into a permanent house! My colleague Joe and I are renting a 3 bedroom house in a neighborhood called "Dalriach East" which is just above the main part of town on a hill. It's a 70s era place with a great view of Pine Valley and a huge yard great for 4th of July parties. The rent is cheap, but it was completely unfurnished so we have to purchase literally everything, from beds and couches to a fridge, microwave, etc. We've got much of it now, but our living room is still conspicuously empty. Couches and a kitchen/dining room table are next on the list, which will just about complete the collection.
Our address is either: 58 Panorama Drive or 188 Panorama Drive or 58/188 Mbandezi Street, depending on who you believe. They're all the same place, I think, or maybe our house is something else entirely. It's very unclear. Street names/numbers seem to change all the time. When the water company called to turn on our service they just asked me to describe the house relative to other things. If you're interested in visiting, head up Pine Valley road from town and go straight instead of turning off into the valley. Go over two speed bumps, you'll see a set of three big white flats on the left, and our driveway is straight ahead.
This calls for pictures, but I don't have them with me so I'll update later.
On a related note, I finally bought a car. It's a 2000-something VW Golf (again, these things are never clear), and though it's not formally in my possession yet, I should have it later this week once the international wire transfer is taken care of. I haven't completed a wire transfer yet, and nothing seems to be as easy as it should be, especially when dealing with banks/credit card companies by phone, but I'll give it a shot.
The car is an import from Japan, so the radio runs from 60-something to 90.1 or so, rendering it almost completely useless here in Swaziland. This is common here with imported cars. Before completing the purchase I'll take it to a mechanic, but it seems to be a total crapshoot as to whether you purchase a reliable car or not. I went to one of the more reputable dealers, so hopefully it will turn out okay.
2. I am no longer completely inept at my job. So that's good. Over the past couple of months I have been working with the National AIDS program to quantify the amount of HIV drugs that the country will require over the next 5 years as part of a big grant application. It's a fascinating exercise, using more assumptions than we would like, but it's near impossible to project what the global market for HIV/AIDS drugs will look like in 5 years. This involves trying to estimate what the patient populations will be (difficult), what the prevalence of TB/HIV co-infection will be since it has an impact on what drug regimens patients can take (difficult, and a moving target), what drugs will be available and at what cost (somewhat less difficult), and probably hundreds of other similar estimations. I've been learning all the stuff by doing, and while I'm not an expert by any means, I'm starting to at least understand all the different components and how they fit together.
I've had a chance to visit a couple of government hospitals in the last few weeks, to see how the pharmacy system works in practice, and it's eye opening, though not necessarily in the ways I expected. The HIV pharmacy is typically separated from the main hospital pharmacy. This is partly because the health system here (and in many places) is siloed horizontally, where HIV/AIDS is one program, TB another, Maternal Care another, etc. Another explanation revolves around issues of HIV patient stigma. One pharmacist explained that HIV patients do not like to queue in the same line as other patients, since they will be recognized as positive when they receive their medicines. On the other hand, all it takes is one look at the ART (anti-retroviral treatment) line to see who is there, so I'm not 100% sure that explanation flies. I suspect it may be an after-the-fact explanation, but I don't really have enough insight to know.
Another surprise has been how healthy The HIV patients that queue appear to be. Compared to the regular pharmacy line where you can tell people are really sick, most of the people who come to the ART window look just like you or me. It is impossible to tell from walking around that 25% of the people in this country are infected. I think I was imagining a lot of people looking like Tom Hanks from the end of Philadelphia or something, but it turns out that the lesions he had are called Kaposi Sarcoma and can equally be treated by medicines.
The two hospitals I've seen are fine, if not western by many standards. They appear to have many of the functions of a basic western hospital, but the standards for sanitation and cleanliness are not close and the buildings are a concrete shells that feel more like a prison than a hospital. That said, the doctors seem to be knowledgeable and focused on providing good treatment, as well as dedicated to improvement.
3. I have met a lot of great people here, though do not spend much social time with Swazi people. It's hard to say whether the expats make that true or whether it's Swazi culture, though I suspect it's more on the expat culture. The social circle I arrived into is nearly all expats, and it has been an easy group to fit into. It's fairly diverse group of Americans, Canadians and Europeans. Our office (6 of us) is almost all American, with the exception of our Swazi administrative assistant, but the UN and some of the other organizations here are much more international.
4. I'll leave you with one more SiSwati language lesson, as I am slowly struggling to learn. The longer I have been here the more I am thinking that I should formally learn the language, so I might start taking classes one of these days if I get my act together. Here's the standard greeting, which for the most part isn't so hard, except for the end:
Person 1: Sawubona (Hello) -- easy
Person 2: Yebo (Yes/greeting acknowledgment) -- easy
Person 1: Unjani (how are you?) -- pretty easy
Person 2: Ngiyaphila, Unjani (I am well, how are you? pronounced nee-ah-pee-la, but the "nee" starts with the sound that "ing" ends with) --hard
Person 1: Ngiyaphila
The Ngiya which forms the beginning of "I am well" is the first-person singular pronoun (I think). It's much easier to travel with more than one person, because then you can say "siyaphila" which doesn't have any linguistic tricks to it.
A few others:
Ncesi (Nesi, but with the same tsk-tsk click after/on top of the N) means "I'm Sorry, or Excuse Me"
Ngiyabonga means "I thank you" while Siyabonga means "we thank you"
Ngiya Xholisa also means I'm sorry, in a more apologetic way rather than excuse me. This one uses the X click that is a "cluck" sound that you make with your tongue on the bottom of your mouth, but instead of starting with your tongue on the top of your mouth, start with it on the side of your mouth. If you know how to pronounce "Xhosa" which is a main language/tribe in southern Africa. I can't think of when you might use the clucking sound in English, but this is a softer version of what can be a very loud click.
That's all for now, apologies to everyone whose e-mails I haven't returned.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Reflections on My First Month (long overdue)
**Note: I wrote this a month ago, and some of it's already out of date, but I figured better late than never now that I have internet at home. I know I'm wayyyy overdue for a new post, and I'll try to get to it this week, but for now, here's an update from a month ago. Imagine it is dated June 7, and it will make things more clear. Update from month 2 will include new thoughts and updates, I swear.
I’ve been in Africa for a month already. What follows is a bit of a disorganized stream of consciousness, but it will have to do:
Apart from being extremely small, Swaziland is an extremely comfortable place to live. “Africa Light” is probably a good description, given the country’s large network of paved roads, well-stocked grocery stores, restaurants, yoga classes, drinkable tap water, etc. We met some Peace Corps volunteers living in Mozambique last weekend who said it felt like they were back in America because (among other things) people stood in lines and signs actually tell you where to go.
Speaking of meeting people, I’ve been consistently reminded (or perhaps taught) that it’s an extremely small world. Since being here I’ve met several people who know my family and friends, including one girl who went to college with Val and knows Lani, and another who knows both Nick and Val.
- Boston to London
- London to Johannesburg
- Johannesburg to Manzini
- Johannesburg to Nairobi
- Nairobi to Johannesburg
- Johannesburg to Manzini
- Johannesburg to Gaborone
- Gaborone to Johannesburg
- Johannesburg to Manzini
I’m not doing well with taking pictures. I would love some ideas about how to improve, for those of you with amateur or professional experience. The second trick is finding a way to get myself into some of the pictures that are taken with my camera. Another work in progress.
The people here are great, and I’ve enjoyed meeting a really diverse group of people from all over the world. Mostly western European and American/Canadian, but people who have lived all over the world and tend to have much more experience with the developing world than I.
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