On "Public Intellectuals," the power of the internet, and the Bolivian quinoa boom

This blog has been almost entirely about my time in Addis, but today I feel compelled to post about another topic that has long been near and dear to my heart, "public intellectuals."

A recent Nick Kristof column has led to renewed discussion of whether this is a disappearing role in today's fragmented academy. At least a couple responses to Kristof's column assert--much more succinctly--what it took me 30,000 words to say in my senior thesis: namely that there is way to tell this story that centers as much on the media channels available and how they serve consumers of intellectual ideas as it does on the vocational pressures of the academy. And in that story, the disappearance of public intellectuals isn't nearly as clear cut.

So, here's development economist Chris Blattman making the case for the era of web-based public intellectuals. And here's the Chronicle of Higher Education making the case for TED specifically as a launching platform for a new breed of "academic celebrities" (who they seem to find equally un-academic as the old breed).

I can also add, for those with a lot of free time, that I have now made my senior thesis available online. Note however that this was not prompted by the dialogue mentioned above, but rather by a paper I stumbled across on the socio-economic impact of the Quinoa boom on Bolivian farmers--the tie here being that in the far reaches of the internet, even the most esoteric treatments of obscure subjects have someone out there interested in them.

And if you want to know why I'm suddenly reading up on the Bolivian Quinoa boom, an indication of the answer can be found here.

Photo dump, part 3 (Dubai and the Seychelles)

These photos actually predate the previous set. They capture my September layover in Dubai and my October trip to the Seychelles, a paradisaical chain of islands northeast of Madagascar.

What might link these two places together is that, unlike Ethiopia, they are not the cheapest in the world. Dubai is a land of seven star hotels and world's largest malls, and food and accommodation in the Seychelles are priced in Euros for European honeymooners.

My 18-hour layover in Dubai included a trip up the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building:

Here are some views from the top:

Photo dump, part 2 (Harrar & Djibouti)

This past November, for two consecutive weekends, I flew northeast of Addis. The first weekend was to Harrar, an ancient, walled Muslim city known for its coffee and chat. The second weekend was to Djibouti, the world's hottest and funniest named country.

Below are some photos from these weekends.

I. Harrar

The inside of Harrar's walled city can be claustrophobic and difficult to capture. Most of the point of visiting is to soak in the atmosphere rather than any specific sites. We started our guided visit (there's no other easy way to find your way around) in a bustling marketplace:

The French poet Rimbaud spent a decade as a trader in Harrer, after he hung up his poetry gloves. He probably didn't live in this house, but it is nonetheless presented as "Rimbaud's house":

It was a hot day, perfect for a nice cold Coke:

Or for feeding birds of prey by throwing morsels of raw meat into the air:

A day in the life (Photo dump, part 1 of several)

Awhile ago (okay, probably six months) I took a set of photos that I thought could serve as a bit of a "day in the life" story. Consider this the first in a recurring series of what I've been up to. After these, the next few sets will mostly be travel shots.

And yes, I know there's usually Facebook for this sort of thing, but it's blocked from the only place here I can get good enough internet to upload these--the office after hours.

On this particular Saturday, I woke up and surveyed the view of lush rainy season Addis Ababa (and my drying pants) from my bedroom window...

I surveyed my spacious, sparsely furnished, and garishly-painted shared apartment...

And took a look back at our (totally unrepresentative for Addis) little apartment building before leaving for a (luckily also unrepresentative) Saturday morning in the office...

On the way, I saw the neighborhood trash collection going down...

And passsed by our local fruit stand...

On a quiet Saturday, you could feel like you were in a village in the back alleys of our neighborhood...

Link dump

In response to several request (3 or 4 at least!), I’m going to be throwing some new content up onto this blog.

Given the gap since I last wrote, I think what makes the most sense here is a series of “content dumps.” So below are interesting pieces or links from the past few months on a few different themes.

Stay tuned as well for my “photo dump” and “thought dump.”

In the “readable” category:

• On aid: The Gates Foundation annual letter on busting aid myths and Jeff Sachs on The Case for Aid
• On (conditionally not inherently) ineffective aid: The Boring Development Manifesto and Development Bloat
• On planning: The Gulf Between Planning and Reality  and Traffic Forecast Follies and Ricardo Hausman on the Atlas of Economic Complexity
• On the next big thing: The benefits of direct cash transfers vs. Why cash transfers are not the next big thing
• On trends in agriculture: The “Boring Development” Blog on hybrid maize as a prototypical example of “boring” (and highly impactful) development; The New Yorker on the Climate Corp bringing “big data” to American agriculture; The Guardian on Tef’s rise as a fashionable grain and the difficulties Ethiopia may see in attempting to profit                                                                                         

In local news:

•  “The Reporter” on current trends and worries observed within the government: military terminology in governance, “Too many reform initiatives, too little change”, “Quietly slipping export.” Plus Ethiopian film wins award at Sundance.
• “Addis Fortune” also has this interesting, if vague, piece critiquing the government for not better modernizing agricultural commodity markets. And Fortune’s “gossip” column on debates over aid to Ethiopia in the US Congress

Interesting, academic, and not necessarily worth reading:

• The mechanisms of persistent implementation failure on why it’s not appropriate to expect developing countries to become perfect implementers overnight
• A theory of good intentions as a behavioral exploration of why donors (individual, but also implicitly institutional) might not concentrate on the projects that would actually be most beneficial
• Development, Structure, and Transformation: Some Evidence of Comparative Economic Growth with its implication that Ethiopia’s lack of a port may be a historical and permanent setback
• A talk on Ethiopia as success story for pursuing a strategy of broad-based rural development (rather than a focus on urbanization)
• The International Food Policy Research Institute on Agricultural Commercialization, Rural Transformation and Poverty Reduction: What have We Learned about How to Achieve This. Apparently what’s needed is “state-led programs and investments to support smallholder productivity growth” and “state-led creation of an enabling environment to encourage private investment” across the agricultural value chain.

Flashy TED talks:

• Melinda Gates on “What non-profits can learn from Coca-Cola”
• The founder of Acumen Fund on ideas and businesses that make a difference

Nepal, contd.

I'm taking a brief break from my normal non-posting activity to pass along a description from Zev and Eliza of the second half of our Nepal trip (in which I get to be their engagement photographer!)

How I spent my vacation

So the last six weeks have been relatively eventful I guess. Among the things to catch you up on (my great mass of loyal readers you) are:

·         My weekend in Delhi -- a pleasant garden city, decades ahead and with a pulsing underground scene (all of this in comparison to Addis).

o   I relived Delhi memories including:

o   Indulging in my favorite regional Indian foods – particularly Goan and Bengali

o   Remembering the convenience of 1) metro travel and 2) autorickshaws

o   Re-noticing the amazing orderliness of the official quarter of central Delhi – block by orderly block of (decently) well-kept bungalows and impressive gardens

o   Observing (and taking advantage of) the remarkable degree to which the high-end lifestyle continues to develop in Delhi: new international brands for the country (Starbucks, Louis Philippe), a hip dj party in the middle of a rundown neighborhood—where women are afraid to be seen outside in their (moderate) club garb, a country house pool party where twenty-somethings are waited on by old servants bearing kebabs

o   Appreciating the kindness of Sonum as my guide for the weekend

·         Two weeks of trekking, hanging out, and eating well in Nepal, for which I can rely on the descriptive powers of my companions Zev and Eliza:

o   Kathmandu

o   (Further posts to come)

·         (A little less than) twenty-four hours in Dubai, an interesting setting in its own right, as well as a strange in-transit counterpoint between Kathmandu and Addis.

o   My excellent layover adventure included:

o   A morning swim in a four star hotel

o   A trip up the world’s tallest building where sand clouds obscure the horizon

o   Stocking up on much-needed electronics as well as delicate Parisian fare at perhaps fanciest mall I’ve ever been in

o   Zipping on the metro back up to the “old town”—mainly from the 1950’s, the museum in the restored fort touting modern Dubai’s ties to nomadic desert culture and values

o   A public boat taxi across the creek for a few dirhams

o   Strolling through the charmless “gold souk” in which an absurd flow of precious metals pass through rows of modern shops that each individually could be at home in a strip mall

o   A trip back to the airport with a Pakastani cab driver who thought my travel beard and American-ness meant I’d been in Afghanistan

o   My delight at finding bourbon in Dubai duty free

o   Enjoying a last meal in Dubai of a Big Mac extra value meal in the departure area

o   Getting a glimpse at global labor flows on my discount flight back to Addis, which was 95% women (Ethiopian domestic servants returning home) as compared to my flight in which was 90% male Nepalis heading to become construction workers

·         Another trip out of country (to be fair, I did work for a week in between :-)), this time for a long weekend in the Seychelles:

This one was less eventful per se, except to say that I enjoyed being in a beach paradise so perfect that Bacardi has used a Seychellois beach in its ads as an on-screen stand-in for the stereotypical pristine Caribbean paradise of sand and sun. (Also very good creole food – particularly the octopus curry)

·         The news of first the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi and later an explosion in Addis in which two Somalis in a neighborhood near my own seem to have accidentally blown themselves up while constructing a bomb.

o   A few thoughts:

o   Most public safety news that I hear in Addis comes primarily through rumors – particularly as I can’t follow the real (i.e. Amharic) local news sources – but the accidental bomb blast notice came from the US Embassy as well

o   This follows on the heals on a report a couple months ago where a Sudanese news source claimed bombs had been disarmed in the Addis airport, as well as talk of crackdowns by public safety forces on the occasion of Eid-al-Fitr around the same time (Google it)

o   Meanwhile in DC though a crazy man was shooting up a naval complex and a crazy woman was running down police officers in her car -- to some degree these are risks that we run to live anywhere

So that’s been the last six weeks, more or less. Same old same old I guess.

For Nepal photos, Zev and Eliza should be able to provide. For the wonders of Dubai and the Seychelles, stay tuned and I’ll try to throw something your way.

Max

Quick Update (On the Lack of Updates)

Hi all,

I have been delinquent about posting new material in past weeks: I've settled into Addis so that I don't have too much new to say about it, and I also haven't gotten out of Addis in the past month. I was hoping to make it out this weekend--to Mekele, a regional capital in the northern desert highlands--but my reason to fly in for work on Friday got cancelled.

Updates for the coming month will continue to be infrequent, but for different reasons: I'll be leaving this Thursday night for a quick weekend in Delhi followed by two weeks in Nepal. The crew from http://zevandeliza.com/ (for APT people that would be Zev and Eliza) and I will be celebrating Indra Jatra in Kathmandu and trekking the Langtang Valley. I have not extensively prepared for this, so I really hope my 3 months living at 7,000 feet will have prepared me well.

(Sidenote: I'm really hoping to get myself jogging again before I leave here, so that I can come back to the US with a little bit of altitude-driven endurance. But to that I have to get over my mild distaste for being an object of amusement of locals when I'm jogging in the park near my house. You'd think in a country with a substantial running tradition, it wouldn't be that surprising to see someone out running, even a ferengi).

So check back in October -- hopefully I'll have some tranquil Himalayan photos to post if nothing else. And before I sign off for now, here's another update on work my team at the ATA has been doing. (The weird formatting in that link is not my fault).

Peace,
Max

Hard to Find

One fact of life in the upper income bracket of a poor country—for an expat or a local—is that you’ll likely have domestic help, and that it will be provided by a person of a much lower socioeconomic status.

When I joined my shared apartment we had a maid coming one and a half days a week to sweep, scrub, and do laundry by hand. She spoke and wrote serviceable English, and for the most part she reliably delivered a quality service. For this we paid her a total of just under $75 a month, split across the four of us in the apartment.

Periodically, debates appear on Addis’s online expat forums of what the “right amount” is to pay your maid. Typical viewpoints from each side:

• How would you like to be paid only (small amount) per month?
• (Same small amount) is already more than a policeman makes here

Overall, the expats I know all pay their maids well over the going rate among locals (which could be as low as $30/month for the same services described above or more). And it’s relatively uncontroversial that maids who speak good English, can cook foreign dishes, are good with children, etc. can expect to be paid more.

Ultimately, what I’m building up to here is that our maid asked for a substantial raise, and rather than discuss or negotiate with her, our consensus as flatmates was to sack her and find a new maid.

We paid the requisite severance—custom apparently is to prorate this based on how many months the maid has worked for you—and the new maid we took on was out of work after being much beloved by colleagues who had moved on from their old house to places with already established maid situations.

The former maid gave us the impression that her ask for more money originated in part because she had more lucrative clients on other days of the week, such that it was no longer worth it for her to clean our house at the previous rate. The new maid on the other hand was happy to work three days a week at the rate we’d previously been paying for two days.

This rate, by the way, adds up to less in a month than I was paying individually in DC for one morning of cleaning, and that’s even before I split the rate across the four of us. (Not that the US doesn’t have its own economic inequality issues).

I rarely ever saw the old maid, or see the new maid, because each usually arrives after I’ve left for the office. From my limited encounters, both are fairly young traditionally Ethiopian women, expressing themselves quietly and wearing white shawls.

One more story: I recently heard of an expat in Addis who, upon leaving the country, was forced to let go her maid of two years. This woman also had “guards” at her house (basically someone who sits in a shed and guards the compound gate) who she liked well enough to leave some electronics for as well as arrange new jobs. The maid got no such deal—just a customary severance payment and a letter of reference. On the woman’s second to last day in the country, the maid helped herself to several hundred dollars worth of electronics and clothes on her way out.

All of which is to say, the benefit of cheap domestic labor can certainly be great, but it puts one in situations calling for complex economic and moral decision-making. And—at least for someone like myself who likes to hold life to as little complexity as possible—this makes it a double-edged sword.

Favorite Addis Restaurants

Not unlike yuppie culture elsewhere, the question of where to eat ends up being a central preoccupation of ferengi life in Addis. I figured listing some of my favorite spots so far can provide some color on my life here—for better or worse—while minimizing any need to get serious. I’m not calling these the “best restaurants in Addis,” they’re just those which I’ve been to and to which I’m most likely to want to go back.

(By the way, I am a fan of eating Ethiopian fairly regularly—I’d say half my lunches and a smaller proportion of my dinners—but the list below is mostly the non-Ethiopian places, which tend to be more distinguishable.)

·         Sangam Restaurant – This Indian place about a five minute walk from my house seems like it must be tied in some way to the nearby presence of the Indian ambassador’s residence. It offers pretty good tandoori chicken, saag paneer, and chana masala; as well as the naans, chai tea, and dingy white tablecloth ambience of a classic outside-India Indian place. The clientele is a mix of NRI’s, white ferengis, and locals – including at one point a delegation from one of the Ethiopian regional states we saw dining here.

·         Bunni Restaurant – A small, leisurely brunch place, Bunni sits in a sixth-floor spot near the Greek Embassy that offers excellent views of the city below and the hills in the distance. The décor (dark wood floors, comfy armchairs, glossy magazines) and the menu (fresh juices, pressed sandwiches, pancakes and omelets) both speak to a relaxed international style less widespread here than it might be within a more developed expat scene. A good place to work away a weekend day.

·         Da Ting Restaurant – The most “authentically Chinese” place my little group has found so far in Addis, this place has it down to the chintzy imitation-temple façade, the clouded fish tank of seafood offerings, the China Central Television programming of costume epics, and the private room of intoxicated (Chinese) businessmen. Excellent offerings of spicy Sichuan soup, among other dishes.

·         Juventus Club – A legacy of the colonial past that Addis had only for the briefest of moment, Juventus offers home-cooked Italian within a down-on-its-luck private club setting that seems to automatically equate to charm. There’s still a member’s only room where old Italian men play cards. My first time in the confines, I watched an afternoon soccer match on the grounds between two local sides. My second time I had pretty decent pesto spaghetti.

·         Yeshi Bunna – One outpost of this chain offering Ethiopian basics is near my office and a favorite lunch place for the foreign staff (not so much for locals, as it’s slightly more expensive than the alternatives). Not something that would be recognized as “chain” or “fast” food by those who think we know what those terms mean, it’s packed with knee-level stools, arrayed around tables of traditional wood, has the Ethiopian origin legend of coffee posted on its wall (this involves a shepherd named Kaldi, the hyperactivity of whose sheep lead him to the small, red bean they’ve been eating), and offers a good representation of typical Ethiopian dishes.

·         Bata Cultural Restaurant – Representative of a genre of restaurant in which the array of Ethiopian regional costumes and dances are presented not just for foreign but also local enjoyment, Bata has the advantage of an impressive entrance courtyard that has led some to believe its primary revenue comes from wedding photos. It also has a creepy stuffed lion set in rocky a bar area diorama alongside oversized liquor bottles that it would seem tough not to mention. The range of classic Ethiopian dishes is available, and the performers—a seemingly unsupportable number based on business volume the one time I was there—will pull audience-members in to attempt Ethiopian moves. (The style is heavy on shoulder gyration, and each of the two times of gone to cultural restaurants, one of the more Addis-seasoned ferengis  proved to have a hidden talent for this.)

·         Dodi Restaurant – The second chain on my list, the Dodi I know as a restaurant of pleasant courtyard tables and a spacious, if overly florescent, interior is apparently an outpost of a Sudanese chain with at least five locations in that country and one more in Egypt. The draw of Dodi is good juices (which aren’t actually hard to come by here), reliable Middle Eastern offerings like falafel and hummus, and delicious fried chicken that should single-handedly be enough to promote the need for more widespread poultry production in the country. Sits across from the office of the EU.

·         Rainbow Korean Restaurant – This place, too, offers excellent spicy soup, along with delicious meat (e.g. pan-fried pork belly), and the free pickled appetizers common to all worthwhile Korean spots. It has a pleasant courtyard interior ringed by three small indoor and outdoor dining areas, with large windows and white tablecloths. It also has, as became apparent on our last visit, a karaoke machine available free of charge.

Honorable Mention:

·         Sichu Burger – Run as a social enterprise, and set in large and fashionably appointed warehouse near the animal market, this place has what many call the best burger in Addis.

·         Mexican Family Restaurant – This outpost of Americanized Mexican food, undoubtedly set up by return diaspora, is a good place for the occasional lunch meeting. Sitting just outside the compound of the World Food Program, I think it has become their de facto dining option of choice.

·         Café Parisienne – I prefer this local chain to the more well-known Starbucks clone, Kaldi’s Coffee. Parisienne has red awnings, clean interiors, and a little more of a grand promenade café feel.

Not yet tried:

·         Kitfo houses – I have yet to go for this Ethiopian traditional dish of seasoned raw (or half or fully cooked) meat.

·         European fine dining – At least a few places, particularly Le Mandoline and Le Grande Reve, apparently represent pretty decent takes on standard European fare at quite-high-for-Addis prices. (Mandoline apparently is French enough to follow the closed-for-August tradition, which here happens to also correspond to the rainy season).

·         International hotels – The Hilton, Radission, and Sheraton offer international meals at international prices. The latter two, at least, come well-recommended.