Misinformation
Once again I woke up in the middle of the night, sure it was morning. Ended up in an email exchange with Jeff about my day at KPMG and that guy who works for Michael – Norwegian, with a PhD in Political Science, who is working on a project for DFID. When Michael had introduced me to him, the Norwegian made a face and some sarcastic comment about people who throw big money at poverty. I pressed him on it, asking him what he meant and what alternatives he preferred.
He told me that somewhere people were solving poverty with an infusion of $10 per person rather than the millions Jeff advocated spending. It sounded like nonsense to me and I asked if he’d ever seen any of the Millennium Villages – or any of the data from the villages. No, he hadn’t. I mentioned what I’d seen – transmission of malaria reduced by 80% or so (I might be wrong on the exact number) in the villages; achievement of universal primary education, etc.
The Norwegian’s big thing was bed net production: he said some guy he knew had just come to him to say that the company he ran, producing bed nets for commercial sale, was struggling because they couldn’t compete with free bed nets – and they were going to layoff 80 people. I didn’t want to go too far challenging him without more facts at my disposal. So that was one of the things I asked Jeff and Sonia when I wrote to them. Turns out, of course, that Sumitomo licenses its technology and the best bed nets are being produced in Africa – in Arusha and in Ethiopia, employing many local people. If the guy wasn’t able to compete it was most likely because he was using old technology that made the bed nets much less effective. And even if bed nets are given to end users for free, someone is paying for them – development organizations. The organizations are the customers.
After I woke up the second time, I had a too-big breakfast and had to wait to digest my food before I went running, by which time it was after 11 am. And hotter. The hotel directed me to a gymkana club, just in back of the Movenpick Hotel. I found it and they welcomed me to run around their “track” – a half grass/half dirt path around the cricket field, where there was to be a cricket match later in the afternoon. Two guys were putting up the advertising signs and measuring out the lines – having never seen a cricket match, I don’t know what exactly they were measuring. The nice thing about the club was that there were plenty of bathrooms as well as food and drink available, and I could leave my water bottle at a little snack area and run without carrying it. The bad thing was that the track was just relentless – slightly more than a quarter mile loop with no shade. Lots of large birds, however. Wild peacocks, Two large black and white birds on long legs (have to look up what they were – and the endless crows you see everywhere here. Actually when I was in the shopping area getting my Sim card on Friday, I saw a crow literally knocking on a shop door with his beak. They are very aggressive. At the hotel you see them swoop down the second they spot anything on the ground, grab the fallen french fry and fly off with it.
