Adventures in Onionism

Not a big deal? Not a big deal?! I was given the impression by some people that this report for the Bank would not be a big deal. They were incorrect. So I woke up with final comments waiting for me from one of my bosses on the paper I was hoping to submit to the World Bank this morning. So I start working on it at home. Then the power goes out, so I pack up real quick and bike to the office and turn on the generator. After a couple hours, I finish. I save two copies of the paper, and go to attach it to an e-mail to the Bank. But when I open the file again, every single table in the paper has been corrupted and is now just a long list of numbers. I can't recover it, so I start over. Then the generator runs out of gas. Quick, my laptop has a thirty second battery life. There's no gas in the cans in the hallway. I'll go buy some. Shit, I have no money. I'll get some from the safe. Shit, I don't have the keys to get to the safe. So I sprint home, get mon...

It's Thursday the 21st, and I still haven't left town yet. I know it's crazy that I'm complaining that I'm not getting a month-plus Christmas vacation, but Cal has made me soft--if there's not enough time to walk to Oregon or try and snowshoe the entire John Muir Trail, it shouldn't even count as vacation. I am the only EC that hasn't left town yet, the office has been completely emptied (the research team broke up with the NGO we used to partner with, and the NGO moved out, long story), I just sent off another (hopefully the final) draft of my report on scholarship programs for the World Bank to the profs in the States, I've locked all the doors, and now I wait. Hopefully they'll get back to me in a few hours, say the report is marvelous and ready to submit, and I can leave tomorrow for ... for wherever I decide to go from now until the 29th when Marcus comes and we climb Kili. Writing this report has been pretty tough, so I'll likely just...

This weekend I expanded my garden--it's now got a 30 meter perimeter chicken-wire fence, I transplanted the lettuce, tomatoes, peas, and cucumbers that survived the murderous onslaught of my fertilizer, and I planted more tomatoes, peppers, corn, carrots, and watermelon. The termites came out of the wood-work (ha! that's the lamest pun ever) on Sunday, but hopefully my scary-to-handle-especially-having-read-most-of- Silent-Spring insecticide will work. On Sunday I finally did something other than eating a tall stack of french toast and readin g books all day (although I did that too). I was worried I wouldn't be in shape for Kili in a few weeks, so I decided I needed some exercise, and I finally walked all the way from my house to Lake Victoria. I discovered a new route in Uganda that's much shorter than any in Kenya, so I walked across the border (about 3 km from my house), then basically headed due south from there straight to the lake at the village o...

I spent the weekend working in the garden. Apparently the area I made two weeks ago was just a seedbed and I needed somewhere five or six times that big to transplant all the stuff to. That is, until my premature-fertilization-while-it-was-way-too-hot-and-dry kicked in and killed a ton of stuff. Oh well. I got a bunch more seeds, so if the rains keep going for another month like people think they will, I should be OK. Of course I'm not going to still be here to enjoy the vegetables of my labor, but that's OK. I finished Martin Meredith's "The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence" on Sunday. Perhaps I should describe what it's about in more detail, but I think we'll be OK if you just go back and read the title again. I think it accomplishes its goal of being readable (it's 688 pages long and I read it in a week and a half) but I'm not sure what I really think of it. At times I questioned the author's bias. Footnotes or more s...

Tuesday is Independence Day (actually Republic Day, which is different) so I feel like I should have left town and made it a four-day weekend. I haven't been to Naivasha or Nakuru yet, and they're between here and Nairobi so it's any easy straight shot on one bus and I could see flamingos and rhinos, I haven't been to Mt. Elgon, maybe there's something cool to do in Eldoret, and I haven't even been to Jinja or Kampala yet either. So I should totally go somewhere. But I don't want to. Ugggh. I hate this feeling. But maybe I shouldn't actually be going and seeing touristy stuff, and just working on my garden while chatting with our guard Hezborn and walking around in the shambas behind the house and playing Frisbee and hoop-and-stick with kids in the office parking lot is plenty. I sure think so. Anyways, I have a few questions. Should I go to the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January, or is it just going to be a bunch of annoying Dutch anarchists...

What have I been up to for the past week and half? Mostly eating turkey sandwiches. I finally let Jimmy the parking-lot dog finish it off on Saturday. After killing a turkey I decided to plant a vegetable garden. Here's Hezborn, one of the guards at our house, standing in front of the garden he helped me plant. So far ants have only destroyed 1/8 of the rows, and the fence is still keeping the chickens out, so we're doing OK. Here's my patheticly wussy hands after a couple hours with a hoe, and my feet after months of Chacos. Yes, most of that is clearly just dirt, but it's impressive even when I'm clean. After struggling through life without a toaster for a week (the old one tried to kill us so we threw it away) I went to Kisumu to get a new one. I also bought fun stuff like real Heinz ketchup (as opposed to the cocktail sauce-esque stuff they normally have here), fake Nutella, soy sauce, and some books. I am totally mad that I didn't look for powdered sugar...

That title is actually an extremely obscure Vanilla Ice reference. Kudos to anyone that may have caught it, as unlikely as that is. Anyway, yesterday was the fourth Thursday in November. I am thankful for the fact that in addition to being able to quote Kanye West and name at least ten players from this year's NFL draft from memory (Mario Williams, Reggie Bush, Vince Young, AJ Hawk, Jay Cutler, Matt Leinart, Santonio Holmes, Bobby Carpenter, Nick Mangold, Marvin Philips, Lendale White), I am also able to quote Karl Popper, program computers, do statistics, and pretend to know what I'm talking about when it comes to Plato's analogy of the cave. However, it always bugs me that I don't know shit when it comes to fixing cars, building a house, or farming. So yesterday I bought a turkey, cut its head off, pulled out all its feathers, ripped out its intestines, and threw it in an oven for several hours. I don't think the details of the story are fabulously interesting, so...

A grad school friend and former EC in Busia sent me an article about flooding that made a hippo kill six people in town here. I'm pretty sure that it didn't actually happen, because there's no water here and no flooding. Especially if no one actually died, it's cool to see Busia in the news. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061118/ap_on_re_af/un_east_africa_floods_2 I also got an interesting e-mail from a stranger today: Dear Mr. Garret Christensen My name is Murteza Khodamoradi an MA economics student, University of Tehran ( Iran ). While studying the book Advanced Macroeconomics by David Romer, I came across with some difficulty to answer its end-of-chapter problems. Since there is no access to its solution manuals here in Iran , so I thought to mail for you and ask for its solution manuals in file text format or sending me a downloadable link to my email if possible. Since I'm in rush to access it please answer this mail as soon as possible. In trying to access i...

First off, it looks like I'll be here a little longer than expected. Ted really wants to get to 80% tracking, and there's no way that's happening by the end of the year as we'd hoped, so I'll probably be here until the mid/end February to see tracking out until the end. This also means that I finally mentioned my stay-dropped-out-of-school, stay-here-longer, then-hike-the-CDT plans to Ted, and his response was "wow, that sounds amazing." Woo-ha. Grad school has sucked so much for me that it is extremely cool to have a prof as supportive as Ted. Also, my sister Emily deserves a shout-out for once dating one of Ted's co-authors and now allowing me to mooch off her vast network of cool friends. It's not set in stone yet, as I have to run things by the grad chair, but all looks to be in order. Everyone pray for a low snow-year in Colorado so I can start northbound May 1. Crap, I totally just jinxed myself. So are you all sure that you don't ...

Four different people sent me links to newspaper articles about the death of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman today. I think he's the only person I've ever sent fan-mail to in my life, so I guess it makes sense, even though I now just respect him and no longer worship him like I used to (and like I still appear to if you google my name).

That's right, I'm a white man in Africa, so what could be more relevant than a discussion of the consistency and frequency of my bowel movements? Actually, I'll spare you the details since there aren't any funny stories about shitting myself in public places or witnessing miracle-diarrhea that manages to travel out your butt and down your pant leg without actually hitting your pants. I just think I have giardiasis. It's not a big deal, and I've got some old flagyl I scored a while back, and I'm in way more pain from the two canker sores in my mouth. I'm just disappointed in my genetics that I'm not one of the lucky people that get to carry giardia lamblia around in their gut without getting symptomatic. Also having the herpes strain that urban legend says causes canker sores sucks too. Anyway, I went to Sipi Falls in Uganda over the weekend. The three huge waterfalls are a beautiful sight, but the place is kind of touristy. The road up from th...

I'm trying to get some work done so that my data analysts will actually have work to do tomorrow while I go to the field, but my computer is taking forever so it's driving me nuts, so here are some pictures. kids taking roosters to town along the ridge of the Cherangani hills looking west at dusk from the ridge near Nyarkulyan flowers along the route the start of the marathon That's it for now. Things are good. I'm enjoying my 24 , I'm reading Moby Dick which is great (I finished The Kite Runner , which was good but made me realize I really just wanted to read a history of Afghanistan or better yet, visit Afghanistan) and I treated my mosquitoe net this morning, so all is well.

My buddy/Pacific Crest Trail legend Scott Williamson was in The New York Times yesterday. He's always jokingly told me he wanted to be in People magazine because Brian Robinson got in when he did the Triple Crown (AT, PCT, CDT) all in one year in 2001, but the Times is pretty cool. I was in the Times once. I'm the crazy bearded man at the end of the article. Seriously. I have pictures of me with the kids to prove it. Makes me pretty excited about my 2007 CDT plans. Oh, and if this entry shows up twice, it's because I'm impatient.

Dear Mr. Christensen, Thank you for taking the time to e-mail Cingular Wireless regarding yourrequest for a suspension of service without the monthly reoccurring charges for your service. I am happy to help you with your inquiry and I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.I have discussed this matter with my direct supervisor, and he has authorized me to waive four months of monthly service fees from your account beginning on September 5, 2006. Unfortunately the option of suspending your service at no cost is no longer an option for our customers. This waiver of the fees that has been placed on your account is considered a one time courtesy waiver and as such, future suspensions would result in the charge remaining on your account. The credit remaining on your account is $99.23. You will note that if you view yourbalance online, the balance of $99.23 will appear in parenthesis; this is to indicate that the balance is a credit. Please allow 72 hours for this credit balanc...

a flower a lizard after the night fog rolled in the hillside descending into the Tamkal valley covered in huts and shamba a Turkana man in broad-rimmed hat and toga, carrying ubiquitous cattle stick and tiny stool, also Turkana girl with toga and necklaces

Who has the worst customer service, Cingular or Sprint?   I think most people would say Sprint wins hands down, but Cingular is giving Sprint a run for its money in my mind right now.   Apparently they're convinced that unless you're active duty military you can't suspend your service and billing.   Sure you can suspend your service, but monthly billing still applies.   Excuse me, but WHAT KIND OF F___ING MORON DISABLES THEIR PHONE IF THEY'RE STILL GOING TO GET BILLED FOR IT?   Never mind the whole common sense issue, they straight up told me over the phone when I set up the suspension that I wouldn't be billed while the service was suspended and now they're denying it.   Dillholes, all of them.   OK, enough of that.   I ran the Nairobi marathon on Sunday the 29th.   I took the 9-hour night bus to Nairobi on Friday, then waited in line for 4 hours on Saturday to get my race number and all-they-had-left-was-XL t-shirt.   Then the rac...

The highlight of my day today was when I wrote a nested foreach loop in Stata on some cleaning code. (Once the data entry firm gives us the data I write code that flags possible logical/skip pattern mistakes, then the data analysts check the hard copies against the soft copy on the stuff I flagged.) It was wicked awesome. Yesterday at lunch I had some errands to do in town so I rode my bike in. Instead of my usual trying to get bodas to race me, I ended up in next to a bike with a kid with his brother on the back.  They asked me for some money, and the kid wasn't shy at all and was way good at English, so we had a funny conversation about whether he had asked me for money just because I was white, how he had managed to get the sugar cane in his hand if he didn't have any money, and what he needed the 10 shillings for.  He said he wanted to buy a parrot. Then I went shopping at the market and got unnecessarily ticked off that the store actually has bulk-buying penalti...

Friday was Kenyatta Day, and Tuesday was Eid, so I skipped work Monday and made it a five day weekend. I left Busia Friday morning, matatu'd to Kitale then Kapcherop and started hiking in the afternoon. I looked into getting a guide in both Kitale and Kapcherop, but that was basically only to assuage paranoid concerns and since I didn't really want one, I headed out. It was mostly walking on small dirt roads, but no cars, few people, and great scenery. It reminded me of the Nimitz trail on top of the coastal ridge in Berkeley (well, the Belgum trail, more specifically) except in Africa, at 7,500 feet, with monkeys and grass thatched huts all over the place. I met a cool South Sudanese refugee; he told me about 11 of his 12 siblings dying in the civil war in Sudan, and we ragged on George Bush together as he showed me a cross-country shortcut. Just around dark I walked into the village of Kapsait and asked for a place to set up my tent. A dude told me to go up the hill to the Ni...

the local moving company kids carrying stuff home a poinsettia, or something a school with a hill behind it (not a very insightful caption, sorry)

Apparently someone managed to pop the hood of my locked car in Marcus' ghetto neighborhood in Berkeley and steal the ignition module wiring connector.  Thankfully the replacement is only $35.  Since I'm pretty sure those 35 bones are coming from Marcus' pocket, from my point of view the cool story I get is definitely worth the price. Friday is Jomo Kenyatta Day (the anniversary of his imprisonment during Kenya's struggle for independence) and Tuesday is the end of Ramadan, so I think I'm taking off to do a trek in the Cherangani Hills.  It seems like it's a lot of walking on dirt roads from village to village, except not as flat as around here.  Plus this region is where all the marathoners are from, so you pass right by one of the shoe company training centers.  Should be good stuff. Anyway, what should I do when I'm done with this job in January?  I could go right back to grad school, retake the classes I need, and retake the labor field exam August 2007....

king (queen, I suppose) of the chicken coop clouds routinely look this cool before a big rain this is the latest bug I've found in my room a baby blue monkey drinking water from a leaky tank a big blue monkey

It took a little gesticulating because my guide's English was not that great, but I think he seemed to think that black and white colobus monkeys do have abnormally bright blue testicles. That means I went to the Kakamega forest again. I couldn't decide whether to go to the forest or down to some islands on Lake Victoria, so I went with whichever matatu (minivan/bus that technically seats 14 but often carries 20-plus) came first on Friday after work. I camped at a guest house in the forest Saturday night. This place had so many monkeys it was ridiculous. I saw blue monkeys which I didn't see last week, but I didn't see any more red-tailed monkeys. The blue monkeys were not very shy so I got better pictures (coming soon). I went to church in Misikhu again and got invited over to this guy Anthony's house. He lives out in the sticks near Ndivisi. He boda'd (gave me a lift on his bike) me and it still took about an hour to get there. Plus he didn't ha...

Boring stuff first: I've spent the last few days doing the intensive sample selection for my project.  In normal people words that means I randomly selected 1/5 of the pupils we hadn't been able to track yet, and now we really go after these ones, so statistically we can track about 80% of the pupils even though we really only survey about 60% of the original sample. In slightly more interesting news, I ate some termites.  They're not blech, just dry and blah. That was Sunday, and I had chocolate fondue on Saturday.  Mixing the two might've been interesting. Saturday I biked most of the way from my house to the Lake Victoria; Tuesday (the not very popular Moi Day holiday) I ran most of the way.   Both attempts failed, but mostly because I started in the afternoon and got interrupted by monsoons.  Sunday I went to Kakamega Forest National Reserve, which is the last East African vestige of the rain forest that used to stretch uninterrupted across the continen...

I 've been having a lot of fun the past few days. First off, here's that cricket I mentioned. Here it is alive. Here it is dead. Also, to get all the pictures of dead stuff out of the way, here are a bunch of dead fish that served as bait, a dead mouse, and a dead lizard. Oh, and speaking of dead stuff, here's the guy that told me you die if you swallow the sugar cane fibers. Friday (Sept. 29) most of my team took the day off sine they were working consecutive Saturdays, but I went out with Blasto and Esther. We went to a secondary school, and while they were each interviewing respondents I read the school library's HIV/AIDS literature for kicks. Here's what I found. In addition to the Sugar Daddies thing being a "wow, this is not the rich white people world I'm used to" moment, it also saddened me that the literature had absolutely no mention of condoms. Then we went to a primary school out in the sticks. The roads are getting worse...