A Caveat on Expectations and Predictions

A Caveat on Expectations and Predictions

November, 2014

Getting Readddddy!

Despite the unstable way my bicycle moved (never entirely willing to go in a straight line on the narrow dirt paths between houses) and despite Johanna’s bicycle needing constant roadside repair and even though we got lost more than once (or possibly only knew where we were once), my second trip to Dala was breathtaking. The feeling of the wind in my hair, laced with red and brown dust from the path we flew on (which later proved to pose a challenge to rinse out), the freedom to abruptly stop and arbitrarily watch some boys play fútbal on a barren patch of land and the short rest we took sitting on a small poured cement bridge with our feet dangling over the ledge sipping on a cold drink is difficult to compare to anything.


Not a single person frowned at what others might perceive as an intrusion as we sped by giggling on our rickety bikes, waving at kids and smiling at adults. We weren’t there as slum tourists – gawking at them like zoo animals. We were just there as people and were met with curiosity and warmth. Each times that Johanna’s chain broke on her bike, local boys ran to our assistance and with sticks and mechanical skills that we both lacked, fixed it. Each time they adamantly refused tips and just smiled and laughed and told us to ride slower so that it wouldn’t happen again (we tried to listen the 2^nd time).

I was warned when I arrived in Myanmar on August 15^th that people would be courteous and there was no reason to fear hostility from people in Yangon but to be aware that they would likely be very guarded and careful around expats. I was told there was a sense of mistrust towards the trickle of expat businessmen and the sudden flocks of tourists coming into Myanmar so suddenly since the opening of Myanmar around 2010. After decades of being notoriously shut off from the rest of the world, Myanmar was suddenly a hotspot of foreign activity and the drastic change, which was coupled with numerous other changes, must have been startling.

Nope.
(credit: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/opinion/7250-the-new-expat-s-burden-in-myanmar.html)

A growing tourism industry has changed that somewhat, with the number of tourists growing from around 791,000 in 2010 to more than 2.04 in 2013 but there remains a lack of clarity as to what motivations drove some foreigners in and what the impact of us would be (as demonstrated by declarations by a radical group of Buddhist monks about the desecration of Buddhist culture following what they demeaned a blasphemous depiction of Buddha on Facebook as part of a promotion for a local bar which resulted in the arrest of the expat manager). This sense of uncertainty is not helped by the tendency for the expats who reside here to stay in expat enclaves and rarely make attempts to get to know non-expats living in Myanmar, except perhaps their drivers and staff, as is common among expats everywhere.

Foreigners coming into Myanmar are also often poorly informed of what they should expect upon arrival. Little news came in or out of Myanmar for decades. Even expats in country were able to collect but little information even about their own work and projects. 

Definitely worth a read and easily accessible.

Exhibit A: Census and Predictions 
Differ by NINE Million

There is precious little data available, as demonstrated by the importance of the recently conducted census, the first in 30 years which proved that previous population estimates and other demographic information used by the government, local NGOs and INGOs was in many cases erroneous. Prior to the census, the total population of Myanmar was estimated to be 60 million, a number derived from estimating population growth and projecting previous figures based on this. In reality, it turn out that the population of Myanmar is 51.4 million people. That’s almost nine million people that were in fact not there. An error of that magnitude has huge implications on the planning of the provision of services by the government and its development partners, among other things.

Even simple things like accurate maps (especially digital ones that could be used on a computer for GIS work or for GPS navigation) which would correctly identify where roads, rivers and villages are located, are difficult or near impossible to acquire.  Basic and essential data remains unconfirmed or entirely missing.

Exhibit B: Lots of Missing Data and the Population Data, as discussed, is just WRONG.

Travel within Myanmar is still restricted by the government, with certain areas requiring permits and guides in order to be accessed by even NGOs while others remain entirely off limits to foreigners (and to a certain extent, to the people of Myanmar from outside these areas).

Sentiment towards foreigners in these areas is no doubt very different from what I have experienced in Yangon, Bagan (Nyang Yu) and Inle Lake (Heho).



And different from what we experienced that afternoon in Dala.

As we sped along the road, people turned to look and wave. 

Dala, despite being only a short 3 min ferry ride from Yangon, is still a small village and when there are foreigners there, they ride on trichaws to specific sites (pagoda, market, orphanage) with a guide. Rarely do they hire two bikes off a local man 5 minutes walk from the ferry and ride about aimlessly and giddily down little paths too narrow for trichaws for three hours.

Blissfully Break by the Water

With my legs off the pedals and pointed straight out, head tossed back and with an eye barely on the road, someone snapped a picture of us and laughed. I laughed back.

Top: Jo. Bottom: My.

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Homesick Without a Home?

Homesick Without a Home?

December, 2014

Can I be homesick?

The first “home” I remember is the student housing complex where my parents were living at the time of my birth. I remember a sandbox where I’d consume my suggested daily value of sand and I remember climbing a bike rack and possibly my first concussion.

As well as a toddler can, I remember our first move, to our next home: an apartment across Helsinki near the amusement park, from which every morning we could hear the sounds of peacocks waking up. It was small when we lived there - my mother, my father, my two brothers and I. I remember our backyard, with its sheltering of sparse Finnish trees and its seemingly steep cliff on top of which we would eat after sauna-ing, the bustling if still at the time slightly scary street outside and the furry and huge though friendly dog that lived next door that always seemed so excited at our footsteps it threatened to burst through and bury us in kisses, to the horror of my younger brother who was at the time afraid of all canine varieties despite size or ferocity. I'll grant that we may actually have lived in two apartments in that building but there time found us when the next time to move again.

Soumi

But this time we weren't traveling just to the other side of the neighborhood like last time. We weren't settling into the suburbs of Helsinki where my aunt lived in what then seemed like a mysterious haunted castle. We weren't going to live at the farm my mother’s family owned where I remember Santa Claus coming with his portly belly to try to give me my presents only for me to hide behind the Christmas tree. We weren't picking up to go to marvel the colder, more northern Finland I hardly knew, to Joensuu where my grandparents lived in a two (maybe three?) floor house with a great yard and berry bushes where my father and his siblings had once lived. 

We were flying over a vast ocean to a distant foreign land called America, though at the farewell party. my parents assured all our friends and family that it wouldn’t be a long stay; a year for my father to complete some post doctorate work at a place called Yale. I ran around, intermittently wearing nothing but face paint, and danced and shouted with my friends. To me, this was also my 5th birthday and I wasn’t going to be robbed of a chance to have some fun. A year meant nothing to me, unawares as I was of how time twists and turns into over a decade so easily.

America the Cozy in Connecticut

First came the condominium in Connecticut, where we arrived with our belongings in an assortment of suitcases and cardboards in the middle of a blizzard and made quick friends with the only neighbors willing to brave the snow. I learned to ride a bike, listened to Britney Spears and the Spice Girls, ate cookie dough (raw!) and developed my first crush there before we were flooded out of the condo (literally) and after washing ashore on two temporary refuges we washed up (not literally) at a beautiful house on hill. My little brother and I would roam the little forests behind our house while our older brother honed his skateboarding abilities by losing large portions of his knees on gravel and picking up so many deer ticks, I questioned whether there were any left for the rest of us. In school, I was learning about fractions with cookies and Y2K had just been averted when we took a short ride to another very different world.

The rough streets of NYC

Our first NY “home” was a house in the Bronx where we lived at ease for some time before “home” officially meant simultaneously two places – one now beyond the Atlantic Ocean and a few assorted seas and mountains. And even after being reunited after that, “home” permanently became two places and I split my belongings in three: one for the first “home”, one for the second “home” and one for moving. 

On the move (in California visiting my brother)

Another six apartments, a few countries and some years later, I was slated to make a place my own “home” which I can’t sincerely say I tried in the brownstone where I first lived or any of the three proceeding college dorms. But I've also visited countless countries and stayed in numerous "homes" across the world in that time.

Now? I’d say I’m somewhere in the spectrum of homeless so I suppose one would only think it natural to say that I might feel ‘homesick.’

But with so many ‘homes’ that I can’t even be certain I haven’t missed one somewhere or counted one twice, I suspect I’m ‘homesick’ for a place I don’t even think exists anywhere but in my head – but whether in memory or in abstraction or in desperation, I can’t tell. I’ve used the word “home” to describe more places than I honestly can or care to remember. 

So how am I to know where I want to go back to?

But maybe the question of where I want to go back to is a question more of when. It isn’t a physical location so much as a point in time in my past when my general mood was one which many would associate with safety- what is safer than home? - and would attribute most readily to that rush of relief one feels in that moment when, after a long and tiring journey, one falls backwards onto an unmade bed with faith that the familiar slightly stained comforter, starting-to-un-tuck sheets and drool speckled pillow will catch your descent and embrace your return to where you belong. 

Where is “my” bed? Where, if I could choose, would I want to sleep tonight? Or, as speculated previously and as I believe to be more germane to the question I’ve posed, when does this bed exist in the time-space world I’m peering into? 

“I think I want to go ‘home,’” I say when I just mean: “Could we please return to the physical location we were prior to the physical location in which we find ourselves in this exact moment?”

I’ve said “I think I want to go home” to nobody in general and about nowhere in general while hosteling in Europe and I haven’t meant any place more significant than the hostel, where I wouldn’t even be able to necessarily locate my assigned bunk, where my welcome would end the instant my funds did and where I certainly wouldn’t have said I felt particularly safe. Except perhaps in relation to the location where I was when I said it.

I’ve asked, “Can you bring this ‘home’ with you?” to the people with whom I’ve crashed and who have generously opened their home (no quotation marks) to me. I’ve speculated about whether we’re missing groceries at a “home” where I feel an intruder. I’ve called hotels, airplane lounges, bars and couches “home.” 

I’ve texted, “I’m going home” to be met with “where?” as a response.

What is “home” if it isn’t where family is? The dictionary says home is “the place where one lives permanently, esp. as a member of a family or household.” Despite being the most useless definitions ever to help define where I’m meant to be, it gives us some direction in the quest for an answer. 

Does that mean my home is Finland, where my oldest brother, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and other family live? Is it the United States of America with my father, step-mother and brothers (in which case, Connecticut or New York?)? Could it be in Malawi with my mother (and for how much longer? Does this definition allow for me to include friends-as-good-as-family? And if so, that gives more questions than it provides answers.

Homesick is defined as: “experiencing a longing for one's home during a period of absence from it.” And thus we return to the initial quandary, how can I be homesick without a home? Or is this an entirely mistakenly labeled emotion that isn’t really homesickness but something else altogether? 

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A (Self Indulgent) Dive

A (Self Indulgent) Dive
December, 2013

"Vas señorita," they tell me. But I'm not ready yet. Inhaling my last breaths of real air, I treasure the moment. "Chica!" I hear again and now I'm almost ready. "Bonita, estas preparada?" I hear as I kick back and fall backwards off the boat. Suddenly I'm in, not quite submerged but underwater and panic hits.

When my brother came diving with me, he described hitting the sea and being taken by surprise by the sudden rush of water into his mouth as he lost his mouthpiece and the sense of a lack of control as his goggles filled up. I recall shaking my head sagely and telling him that if only he had held his regulator right that then this would have been avoidable. What I didn't tell him was what I meant. The water in your mouth and eyes was avoidable. But not the panic. 

I panic until I'm totally submerged. When I begin to descend to 6 or 10 or 18 or even, as it turns out, 25 meters all the panic that I'm stricken with at the surface, all the fears of drowning, of oxygen deprivation, of decompression sickness and of nitrogen narcosis disappear. I'm suddenly confident in my ability to dive effortlessly, to swim naturally and to not sink to the bottom, not float unexpectedly to the top. Like a fish in water they might say. 

Then the real magic begins, at the bottom of that dive. A deep breath takes me slowly floating a few centimeters up, just enough to avoid that particularly sharp piece of coral. A longer exhale takes me down to duck a nearby line and a slight kick of my fin takes me through a possible entanglement. A little turn to the side moves me far enough away to not scrape my stomach and get a tetanus prone scratch from the sunken submarine. Underwater, I find the confidence that I lack entirely above water. 

But that's not the only reason I love diving. 

I'm notorious for "zoning out". Mid conversation even when I'm speaking, I'm prone to be thinking about something entirely different. My mind is somewhere far from whatever I'm avidly and eloquently telling you about. It's a frustrating sensation to have a wandering mind. I can't easily sit by the pool and relax because I might well be thinking about all the things I urgently need to do in New York when I return or penning my next blog entry as I am now. I can't sit on the subway and "turn off" either. I begin to obsessively catalogue what the current forgotten genocides are or list all the things that the person across from me is doing that are and aren't presentable. I can't sit at a dinner table in quiet silence and I can't walk from my room to the library without a song blaring in my headphones. 

But underwater for the first time I discovered a kind of tranquil, calming, soothing silence. In my exhales, I can hear my breath bubbling next to my ears and upwards. On the inhales I can hear the surge hitting the dunes on the contours of the bottom and the movement of the sand. I see the fish in their own little world swimming around me, ignorant of my troubles, ignorant of how I look, ignorant of how I feel and instead rightly self consumed with their surroundings. I see the aquatic plants billowing in the underwater "wind," the current. I see the coral live and breathe even though it isn't visible to the eye. And I feel a whole new world that I had previously been ignorant to come alive. 

I turn onto my back to check on my dive buddy and signal the 'okay' to make sure alls well with him as well and when I receive the 'okay' back I attempt to recover to my original position: belly down and fins above the rest of my body. I continue slowly moving forward. This is the most graceful I've ever felt. Even more graceful than when I took the stage to perform a ballet, granted that wasn't very graceful in my minds eye. This is the most at peace I've ever felt. Even more at peace than in my own bed at the end of a day, which isn't very at peace at all. This is the most in control I've ever felt. Even more in control than when every morsel that entered my body was strictly regulated. But we all know that wasn't very in control either. This is even the most alert I've ever felt. I wasn't more alert in the beginning of a sparring match, at the top of a mountain before descending with my snowboard or on the back of a motorcycle moving tens of miles an hour. No this might be my peak. 

What I hope is that I can take this centered, alive and yet relaxed feeling with me. That I can commute these sensations into the life I have to continue to live above water. Because if I can, life will be both easier and more efficient. It will be more focused yet more at ease. And what could beat that? 

My life has been one characterized by the constant need to fight and struggle. By restlessness when others are at ease and by a confusing disarray of sensations at all the wrong times. Yet would I only be able to export what diving brings me to my studies, to my interactions, to my time alone, I think life would be, in a word, better. 

Too long didn't read? Go diving.

Under Five Mortality Rate

Under Five Mortality Rate
June, 2010

I remember the panicked look on her older brother’s face as he rushed into the hospital, cradling his unconscious sister in his arms. “Me sistah noh well. We need hep.” he said in Krio, the local language of Sierra Leone, and placed her on the small exam table that we had in triage- the area under the landing in the Ola During Children’s Hospital in Freetown. Her head flopped back like that of a rag doll. After confirming she had a pulse, I scooped her up in my arms, carefully supporting her head, and weaved through the crowd blocking the route to the ER. As I burst through the doors, I scanned the room for an empty bed while calling for a doctor’s help. As I lay her down and grabbed a pulse oximeter from a nearby nurse, I noticed her breathing becoming increasingly shallow. I took her vitals but she barely had a pulse. And then she stopped breathing. The doctor barked at me to get a resuscitator. Holding the bag, I pumped oxygen into her lungs and the doctor pressed down on her chest. Perhaps my eyes were trying to fool my brain, but I could have sworn that I saw her take one last breath. But instead of her pulse rising, a white substance came oozing out of her nose and mouth. Another attempt to revive her yielded similar results. The doctor shook his head sadly and called time of death before moving on to the next patient, a little boy who was convulsing as a result of untreated (and what would be fatal) malaria.

I was left standing next to the girl, my hands shaking, willing myself not to burst into tears.   

In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to go home, lay in my bed, put my head in my pillow and cry. I wanted to buy the next ticket back to New York and to never look back, to forget everything I had learned, to erase the face of that little girl from my mind and to block out the sadness that was overwhelming me. I wanted to undo everything-to rewind to that day when I was nine and had so proudly and confidently announced that I was to become the Secretary-General of the United Nations. I wanted to take back the summer of 2002 in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the teaching job in Rwanda, the memories of the orphanage in Vietnam. I wanted to unlearn everything I knew about development and the economics of growth that persisted in reminding me that change would be slow. I wanted to purge myself of all the dinner conversations with the heads of UN agencies in Sierra Leone and with NGO workers I had befriended. I wanted to free my mind of the debates I had entangled myself in about the very merits of the sector that seemed to have long ago sucked me in.

Instead I turned away from the bed and away from the girl and slowly walked out of the ER, past the nurses hurrying about with syringes and bandages and oxygen tubes, through the throng of hysterical parents, down the concrete ramp and back to the cramped and ill equipped triage to resume my duties. Eventually the girl’s parents came; the sobbing mother had the colorful cloth with her that I knew would act as a shroud and indeed later, the father emerged with a little bundle.

Returning to New York and suddenly being surrounded by running water, reliable electricity, paved roads, fire trucks and the expectation that, bar some freak accident, we’d survive to celebrate our 40th birthdays, was jarring. I had a hard time in the dark, from which the forms of the youngest victims of the decrepit healthcare system emerged and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with absolute silence when the heartbroken wails of parents echoed in my brain. Colorful curtains forced images of the makeshift coffins from the deep recesses of my mind straight into my vision and intruding my thoughts and sensibilities.

But sitting in class at New York University, where I went at the time, and wandering around Washington Square Park seemed foreign and empty. My classmates were thrilled to be at NYU, titillated to take advantage of the sudden freedom that college offered and anxious for classes. I wouldn’t describe myself as jaded nor would I assert that somehow college wasn’t new and exciting for me too; it was. But the life I had left behind in Sierra Leone wouldn’t let me return to the life that I had lived in New York. Even more than my previous exposures to the developing world, Sierra Leone left me with the unwavering feeling that I would never be able to rest easy while idle.

The metrics of development aren’t merely statistics- I know what an under-5 mortality of 192 feels like. 

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COINs & Nigeria (Part I)

COINs & Nigeria

May, 2013

When I tell people that I started my trip this summer in Nigeria, I’m met with a mix of reactions. Some people express jealousy at my having had the opportunity but most people express disbelief and concern that I was given permission and took the opportunity to visit the strife ridden country. And given the news coming out of Nigeria, I can understand this. Today’s Google news hits for the search term ‘Nigeria,’ barring sports and Big Brother news, turns up the following dismal headlines: “Nigerian army says kills 150 insurgents, loses 16 troops,” Archbishop Ignatius Kattey freed by Nigerian kidnappers,” and “Nigeria's Boko Haram unrest: Scores killed in Borno state.”

This May, three states within Nigeria, Borno Yobe and Adamawa, were declared to be in a state of emergency by President Goodluck Jonathon and in June, were added to the United State’s ‘Do Not Travel’ list, around when I left Nigeria. Two years ago, almost to the day I left South Africa to come home, the United Nations building in Abuja, where I spent most of my time, was bombed, killing at least 21 people. In March 2012, 12 public schools were set ablaze during the night, robbing 10,000 students of their education. Almost weekly since 2011, bombs go off in churches, schools or police stations in northeastern Nigeria.

The perpetrators of these attacks are a group known as Boko Haram, whose insurgency has killed an estimated 3,600 people since 2009 when their militant activities began after operating peacefully for a number of years prior. Little is known for sure about Boko Haram, their intentions and their membership. They are infamous for their persistent and bloody attacks in northern Nigeria and claim to be fighting against corrupt, false and irredeemable Muslims who they accuse of having corrupted the country. They claim to be fighting for a “pure” sharia law run northern Nigeria. The attack on the United Nations was an outlier on the group’s normal hit list, which focuses on soft targets like schools, churches and police stations. A public outcry forced the President Goodluck to launch an offensive against the group that has been characterized by a lack of access to the media resulting in a near media blackout, by military reports of “successes” and by brutal and counterproductive raids of Boko Haram camps and villages. Extrajudicial executions have bred fear among ordinary people living in Boko Haram strongholds and have pushed people to support the organization even as they continue to carry out bloody attacks.

The ‘war’ waged by and against Boko Haram is sadly not the only outbreak of conflict that Nigeria has seen recently. Plateau state has seen outbreaks of bloody clashes since democracy in 1999, riots have broken out in the urban centers of Kaduna and Kano, for decades there was conflict in Bauchi and, the oil-rich Niger Delta has been the stage for ongoing conflict for years. And of course, nobody can forget Nigerian-Biafran War. ‘Experts’ in the media often reduce these conflicts down to religious battles between the Muslim and Christian populations that reside side-by-side in Nigeria. A closer examination, however, reveals intense and high-stakes fights for control over different parts of the government. Violence can often be traced to one group seizing control of an element of the government over other groups in the ethnically diverse country. Given the system of patronage, control over the government means control over much of the resources.

Conflict happens for a reason. Only desperate people commit acts of heinous violence or protect the perpetrators, like what we are seeing in the news coming from Nigeria. Poverty, a sense of terrible injustice and great inequality can lead to the despair that will make people turn to organizations like Boko Haram. What the USA should have learned about efficient and humane counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, the Nigerian government should learn now in Nigeria. It isn’t about going into destitute villages and rooting out insurgents at the expense of the “hearts and minds” of the local population. Violence, no matter how swift and effective, will, at best, do nothing (to a certain extent, there’s always someone to replace that insurgent you’ve just killed) and, at worst, exacerbate an already tragic and violent situation, as we are seeing now. Instead, answers need to come by looking at what is driving the violence. I do not believe that anywhere near the majority of people who provide cover for Boko Haram want what Boko Haram claims to be fighting for. We need to begin addressing the real issues that are fueling conflict – ranging from corrupt government policies, high levels of inequality, rampant poverty and a lack of hope among the people.

An insurgency is, by definition, “an organized rebellion aimed at overthrowing a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict.” Counterinsurgency (COIN) is then the type of nonconventional warfare that aims to combat an insurgency. Traditionally, COIN comes in two flavors: enemy-centric and population-centric. Briefly, enemy-centric COIN is only a shade different from convention warfare and focuses on combating the enemy and worrying about the ‘other stuff’ later. Population-centric COIN focuses on control over the population and environment involved. Modern COIN often falls somewhere in between, employing a little of both with an emphasis on “reading the insurgency.” What defines COIN against conventional warfare is not just the type of enemy but also the type of response. An insurgency is (usually) not looking to expel an organized army or invade a distant country for resources. It seeks to overthrow and replace an existing government by subverting existing institutions and turning the population over to their side. Counterinsurgency, therefore, needs to eradicate this enemy while maintaining control over the population. One of the major challenges of counterinsurgency is differentiating between the enemy and the population and knowing who to target with what kinds of offensive tactics.

Counterinsurgency, like insurgency, also isn’t a new. It has a colonial past, dating back to the 1ate 1840’s and the French in North Africa. But my interest doesn’t lie in its past so much as it does in its post colonial future and what is considered by some to be the “counter-insurgency era”.

Counterinsurgencies today are taking place all over the world – though many governments refuse to use the word because of its connotation and linkages to a long, arduous, “boots on the ground” battle. Afghanistan and Iraq aside, we are witnessing insurgencies in places like Syria, Mali, Somalia, the Philippines and most recently in Egypt. I would also argue that what we are seeing in northern Nigeria is in fact an insurgency and therefore what needs to happen there, and what is not happening there now, is a counterinsurgency technique.

While well read, I am not fluent in counterinsurgency and I don’t know exactly what a counterinsurgency should look like in Nigeria. But I feel confident in saying that what is going on now and the tactics employed by the Nigerian army are not in line with what should be going on. Working with, not against, the population, building up reliable and efficient institutions, working to alleviate poverty and other underlying causes of discontent and finally, ending the senseless violence against the population would be one place to start. The Nigerian government needs to rethink its strategy against Boko Haram quickly before we see an escalation and spread of the violence.

This isn’t an easy task. But its also the only sustainable solution to a conflict that has already taken too many lives. I want to go back to Nigeria, soon. I want to be able to visit the north without an armed guard. And I don’t think the current trajectory will enable that.

This is arguably one of the more political, if not even controversial, pieces I have posted on my blog. I implore you, if you’re reading this and you disagree to write a comment challenging me. If you prefer privacy, email me. This is a topic that I feel strongly about and I welcome a conversation about it.

As mentioned, this is also Part I of this topic. I look forward to some (more) feedback before I proceed to begin to draft Part II, which will be much more focused on COIN in Nigeria specifically.

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