The Last Rolls: Photos from Uganda, South Africa, and Mozambique

It is fashionable these days to point out that Africa is not a country. Since I've returned to the US, mentions of living in Ethiopia have earned me questions about Ebola (nope, that's in West Africa these days), that movie about the young doctor and the dictator (that's Uganda under Idi Amin), and--of course--how hot it must have been (also off, 70's year-round fortunately).

Of course, many Americans have less inaccurate conceptions of Ethiopia. These are often centered around the food (they really do eat spongy bread and raw meat) or around interactions with those of Ethiopian heritage in the US.

This thread isn't really meant to go anywhere except to say that, while Africa is not one country, living in Ethiopia did provide an opportunity and jumping-off point to explore other parts of Africa. When my contract expired in May, I took the opportunity to add three countries to the list see a few more places before the long flight home.

Roll 1: Uganda -- Kampala and Gorilla Safari
1) View toward central Kampala from the Gaddafi Mosque.

2) Idi Amin's torture chamber at the palace of the Buganda king (head of one of Uganda's ethnic groups). Amin would stack victims in the rooms to the right as they awaited their fate, then flood the hallway with water charged with electric current to prevent escape...

The Texture of Bureaucracy

This post is a follow-up to my "Expectations, Revisited" post, available here:

The animate machine of the self-sufficient bureaucracy works toward establishing that ‘shell of bondage’ of which Weber spoke

            Jürgen Habermas, A Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2

I was asked recently if I could provide a window on what it is like to work within the current government of Ethiopia, as this could be of some interest to various parties. Providing a direct account of my experience would violate the terms of my contract (as well as tax both my powers of memory and my ability to make the narrative at all interesting).

I was, however, recently reading one of the few English language books widely available in Addis (this is due to the limited size of the market, and not explicit censorship) and came across a passage that might be of interest.

The book is called Agony in the Grand Palace, and is written by Dr. Aberra Jembere, a mid-to-senior level bureaucrat in the government of Emperor Haile Selassie who was among those detained when the Marxist dictatorship regime of the Derg took power in 1974.

The passage describes Dr. Aberra’s participation in the government’s response to a 1973 famine which ultimately was among the destabilizing events that allowed the Derg to seize power. The description of the gears and workings of the Ethiopian government, and how decisions are made within it, still rings true to my ears today. This might be considered dispiriting, as the form of the later imperial government could perhaps be summarized as semi-constitutional feudalism.

It should be noted that Dr. Aberra, who clearly suffered greatly on behalf of his country under the Derg, presents this as his only comment on the 1973 famine—establishing that he fully carried out his personal bureaucratic duties is his point of focus, not trying to establish what went wrong, how severe the impact was, or how it could have gone better.

Without further delay, here is the somewhat lengthy account (with a few comments of my own at the end): 

Expectations, Revisited

A year ago I put down a set of expectations I held going into my time working in Ethiopia. These were based on the word of preceding international staff within my organization, as well as a two-hour jaunt around Addis on the day of my arrival (which, for an account of pre-formed expectations could also be known as “cheating”). I remember sitting in the deteriorating hotel room and reflecting on what I expected and wanted out of the coming year. A year later, though, what I put in writing at that time is not exactly a rich resource for reflection.

Below are five expectations I laid out:

1. I anticipated an obstructionist bureaucracy – Very much the case. Attempting to push a new idea into and through the Ethiopian civil administration seems to be like wading through a field of something semi-viscous (melted marshmallow, say, or salted caramel). I’ll have a little more on this in a brief encore post.
2. I expected to encounter a lot of social ambiguity, particularly friendly people whose real perspective may not be clear from the surface – This was bourn out as well. A minor example that comes to mind: if I heard my senior local coworker describe someone we’d be dealing with as a “good friend,” it meant they had repeatedly encountered each other before in a professional context, but they might not know the first thing about each other personally, and it was still possible they couldn’t stand each other.
3. I anticipated more cold and rain than most images of “Africa” would allow for – Right for the first three months. But after I got rainy season out of the way, I am not sure I have every lived anywhere with more comfortable and temperate year-round weather than Addis.
4. I envisioned a lack of certain goods and comforts whose absence might be the first time they seem so integral (my list included diet soda and fitted sheets) – True as well. Seafood turned out to be very high among what I spent time missing, a few trips to countries blessed with ocean access notwithstanding. Though, the marshmallow and caramel mentioned above would also be on this list.
5. I anticipated not seeing large parts of Addis due to its density – This was right as well. Although I under-estimated the concentration of places of “interest” (by which I mean mainly the upscale places to eat and shop, as well as traditional tourist sites) and my own lack of adventurousness as factors that would lead to the same outcome.

So I guess I got everything right. There was no need to even live through the year. Could’ve just asked a few people about it and gone home, huh?

Well, here’s a few things I didn’t anticipate:

1. What I perceive, but still don’t have full confidence to diagnose, as a general suspicion toward foreigners – I have heard some tie this deeply into the Ethiopian historical psyche, as leftover pride from having never been colonized. On a day-to-day basis, not only can you never escape the cries of “ferengi, ferengi,” but I perceived random acts of hospitality to be less likely than other places I’ve traveled. In addition to which, Ethiopians like their food, their music, their language, and even the youth seem as if they aren’t in a rush to adopt American culture.
2. The degree of antipathy toward democracy of the current Ethiopian government – see here, or here, or here, or here. It could be said on this count that maybe I didn’t do my research in advance, although the participation of so many seemingly reliable arbiters, from the Gates Foundation (backing my organization) or the World Bank to my own friends and peers at ATA, minimized any impulse to doubt. (It has been noted to me that by joining I of course contribute to this legitimization. And this is not to say that in the absence of the current Ethiopian government that I think the likely replacement would be better on this score, a question on which I really have no basis to judge).
3. Correlated to the above, the paucity of available news analysis, and the lingering sense that over the long-run things may not be as stable as they feel – two things you will never read about in the paper in Ethiopia are ethnic factionalism and the military, and yet if the political situation ever really gets, uh, interesting, there’s almost no doubt that it will be driven be on by one if not both of those forces.
4. The interpersonal dynamics of being an expat generally and in my work setting in particular – This includes the understandable but sometimes counter-intuitive thirst for comfort and luxury among those who choose to forgo the comforts of home, including myself (e.g., if what you really wanted was fine wine and nice chocolate, why are you in Ethiopia?), as well as the impact on the mindset of spending so much time with former management consultants.
5. As is obligatory to mention, the growing Chinese presence in Africa – They’re there, constructing buildings, roads, rail. Even non-Asian foreigners can regularly expect to have “China China” yelled their way on occasion (supposedly it is now seen as the generally word for foreigner in some more isolated spots). 

This superficial post, of course, will in no ways do justice to everything I may have learned and experienced in my time in Addis. I expect it would take years to be able to really say what the biggest impact (on me) of my experience was.

However, stay tuned for one more “serious” post, which I expect to be a reflection on my first fulfilled expectation—the shape and texture of Ethiopian bureaucracy (update: see here). This might also provide insight into why I am reflecting mainly on how the experience I had in Ethiopia changed me and not how it (even incrementally or imperfectly) changed anything in Ethiopia.

I also expect to be back with more pictures, to include gorilla tracking and Idi Amin’s torture chamber in Uganda, the Cape of Good hope and Nelson Mandela’s cell in Cape Town, and a week enjoying delicious seafood while relaxing on the beach in Mozambique.

Photo dump, part 6: Tigray and the Danakil Depression

Going to these two places over six days in late April/early May was probably the coolest trip of my time in Ethiopia. I am maintaining the minimalist commentary because I have to give my (employer-provided) computer back in under two hours, but if you make one trip to Ethiopia, this should be a part of it.

Roll 1: Tigray, northern Ethiopia. Includes the monumental 4th-8th century stellae at the ancient capital of Axum, churches of Axum including that said to hold the Ark of the Covenant, shots of the Arizona-like Tigray landscape, Debre Damo monastery which is reached by climbing a rope up a cliff (the founding saint apparently climbed up the tail of a snake), stone churches of the Gheralta cluster notable for their inaccessibility (the path basically becomes a rock-climbing expedition) and ancient paintings:

Photo dump, part 5: Kilimanjaro and Oman

In which I dispense with individual photo captions in the service of trying to get this blog caught up with life.

Roll 1: Kilimanjaro, February 2014 -- includes our six day trek up and down the Marangu route (known as the "Coca-cola route" for its relative ease and comfort. Starts with views of Uhuru peak; followed by views on and from Uhuru peak; a group shot with our cook, 2 guides, and 7 porters; and couple pictures on the way out of the park...

Photo dump, part 4: Tanzanian safari, Wenchi, and Gonder

In my continuing quest to share with you an inadequate representation of my life only several months after I've lived it, below I have photos from 3 trips I took between late December and early February. At this point, I'm leaving Ethiopia in less than a week--for further travels in fact--so I'm kind of racing the clock to get caught up to present.

The first set of photos below were actually taken by my mother, and capture our family safari to two camps in southern Tanzania (Ruaha and Selous).

Below is a giant baobab tree. Elephants like to engage in tusk-play with the baobab's trunk:

And we saw plenty of elephants:

At center-left: Lion. At right: increasingly partial zebra carcass.

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