Dolce Cafe

One of the coffeeshops in my hometown.  My dad calls the decoration style "Cookeville Chic".

Flying safe

Friday night, just before I was supposed to fly home to TN for vacation with my family, I had a dream about my plane crashing.  Not a good omen.  Although what I was really more concerned about was that there would be a lot more airport security since the underwear bomber incident, and flying would be even more of a hassle than usual.

But, I am happy (?) to report, absolutely nothing was different security-wise (that I could tell), flying from Baltimore to Nashville.  Also my plane did not crash.  Guess I'll have to rule "Psychic" out of my possible career alternatives, in case I ever get tired of aid work.

Busy busy... or should I say, "tres, tres occupee"?

So I guess it's been a really long time since I posted anything.  But don't worry, that doesn't mean you've been missing out on hearing about all the fun and excitement and adventures in my life.  It means that my fun and excitement and adventures have been very limited because I've been so busy studying French.  Six hours a day, five days a week, it's just me and my French tutor (a woman from Cameroon who is a great teacher and who I'm very happy with).  And then I go home and do homework for another two or three hours.  (Except lately, because I'm feeling burned out - did I mention I only got Christmas day off for holiday vacation? - so I haven't been doing much studying after class, but paradoxically it seems to be paying off because after a whole weekend of not doing any French at all, I was absolutely on fire in class today.)

Anyway, so I think I've made my point.  My life revolves around French.

Cholera Epidemic Follows Drought in Kenya

Cholera Epidemic Follows Drought in Kenya

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: December 5, 2009

With 119 deaths, Kenyan health officials are calling it “one of the worst outbreaks in a decade.”

At a loss for words

Today after French class I decided to walk a few blocks up to the Whole Foods to buy some nice yuppie groceries which aren't available at the Safeway by my apartment, which caters mainly to lower-income families.  So I bought my groceries and was headed back down to the metro to go home when I passed an old homeless man looking through a trashcan for food to eat.

I have to admit that I've gotten fairly used to seeing homeless people around, and I probably don't often think too much about them.  But this man was old and looking through the trash.  And I had a six-inch sandwich from Subway in my backpack - I'd gotten the footlong at lunchtime, planning to eat the second half for dinner.  So, after hesitating for a moment, worrying that it might be condescending or insulting to give him leftovers, I went over and offered him my sandwich.

And he, holding a styrofoam container of mystery food that he'd just dug out of the trashcan, looked at me and peeked in the top of my paper bag full of yuppie groceries from Whole Foods, and said absolutely sincerely, "Are you sure? You have enough? I don't want to take your dinner."

I could have cried.

Instead I told him it was just my leftovers from lunch and he was very welcome to it.  So he took it, and thanked me and tried to kiss my hand.

And then I walked away with my bag full of groceries, asking myself what kind of a world this is where an old man is grateful to be given someone's half-eaten sandwich.

Things are moving fast

This past week I spent a fun two days in Communications and Field Equipment training, which basically meant learning how to use satellite phones and radios (also some computer stuff, digital cameras, etc, but I already knew how to do that stuff), and then we had to practice by going out in public and very suspiciously taking pictures of random things and talking cryptically on our radios.  We definitely got some weird looks, but I figure we were being too obvious and ridiculous for anyone to really be suspicious of us.

And that was it for all my random fun trainings, at least for now.  Next week I start studying French full-time.  Six hours a day in class, I think one-on-one, just me and a tutor.  It's going to be painful, but hopefully my French will get better really fast.

That's supposed to last for six weeks, or however long it takes until I can pass the French test.  EXCEPT, yesterday at work (yes, I was at work the day after Thanksgiving - I haven't earned very many vacation days yet, and I'm trying to save them up) my supervisor told me that they want to put me on the Somalia Task Force out in Nairobi (which sounds super cool, except that I won't get to go on any field trips to Somalia because it's too dangerous), and they want to get me out there as soon as possible, so they're talking about waiving my language and whatever other requirements so I can leave really soon.  So I might be leaving much sooner than I had expected, maybe in just a month or so.

I'm really excited about going to Nairobi eventually, but in a month?  Wow.  I was counting on being here til at least March (which would be one year since I came back from Peace Corps).  And I've been so happy in DC these last eight months, with all my friends, and my cute little apartment, and my cool job (okay, the Somalia task force sounds more interesting than what I'm doing now, but even so)... So I'm a little stressed, not sure if I'm excited about this or not, but I'm sure it'll all work out fine however it works out, so I'm going to try to just keep on with what I'm doing until I find out for sure what's happening.  (My supervisor said she'd let me know about the expedited moving thing within a week or two).

So we'll see.

Driving training, part 2

The rest of the week of driving training was just as good and fun as the first day, if not better.  Still can't tell you all about it, except that: I got to learn to drive stick shift!

I've only ever tried to learn to drive stick shift one time before, shortly after I got my license when I was sixteen.  My grandma tried to teach me out in the pastures on their farm on this ancient, broken-down truck (the gas pedal didn't even have the flat pedal-part attached to it anymore, it was just this metal stick/wire thing coming out of the floorboard, hard to find with your foot and even harder to put the right amount of pressure on).  Even experienced drivers had trouble driving that truck, so sixteen-year-old me couldn't even get it into first gear - it just stalled every time, and (did I mention the brakes were pretty much shot?) then we would start rolling backwards towards the pond, and my grandma would be yelling at me to get the truck started again and get it moving so we wouldn't fall into the pond...

So I came out of that experience thinking that driving stick shift was really, really hard.  And then I just never had another chance to try to learn until now.  It wasn't on the schedule for our driving training, but the instructors took pity on me when they found out I couldn't drive stick at all and gave me personalized instruction for an hour (along with one other student who also didn't know how to do it, which made me feel a little better).  And it turns out driving stick is super easy if it's with a car that actually works right.  (At least, it's super easy if you're on a closed course with no pressure from traffic and it doesn't really matter if you happen to crash into anything.  But I think I'd be fine driving in a normal setting as well.)

Anyway, so yay for driving training!  Now I am just wishing I got the opportunity to drive more often, but I guess I will get plenty of that in Nairobi - driving on the left side of the road, no less - that should be interesting.

Former Gates Foundation exec Raj Shah to head USAID

Article in the Seattle Times about the probable new Administrator for USAID.  Now if we could just get a director for OFDA too...

Driving training

So I have survived my first day of driving training, and I would love to tell you all about it, but pretty much the first thing the instructor told us this morning was that what we're learning this week is sensitive information, and so we shouldn't go blabbing about it or leave our books lying around where someone might see them.  Because we don't want the bad guys to know how we're trained to react if we're attacked, so that they can attack us better.

My first thought when he said that, though, was: if the bad guys are coming all the way to Virginia to get information on me or to attack me, I am in big trouble, and I don't think this course is going to be enough to keep me safe.

But instead of telling you what I've been up to, I will just say this:  Bad Guys, I am learning all kinds of crazy stuff you do not want to have to deal with.  So don't mess with me!

Catching up

I just checked, and it looks like it's been a month since I last posted anything.  Oops.  I guess that means my life has gotten into a routine.  Work is going well - I've had some interesting training, and my supervisor seems to be warming up to me.  This week I'm going to Richmond, VA for the best training of all - Security Driving, which I think means we'll be learning stuff like how to get away from an ambush.  And we get to learn how to ram other cars.  So if I don't get myself killed, it should be a lot of fun.

Just about everyone else who started at USAID at the same time as me is starting language training next week, so I'm going to have a possibly lonely month working at the Ronald Reagan Building.  But I chose to put off my language training because there's some interesting stuff going on in November (Annual Program Reviews - doesn't that sound exciting? No? Well I guess that proves I am a dorky bureaucrat.), so hopefully it will be worth it.  And then in December I'll start learning to speak French properly, inshallah.

Working hard

Yesterday, after spending eight hours straight staring at my computer, researching climate change, I came home, ate dinner, and promptly fell asleep on my couch... at 6 pm.  I guess I must have been a little tired.

And then I woke up this morning and heard on NPR that there was an earthquake off Indonesia, which caused a tsunami on Samoa.  Which motivated me to get back to work, so that someday, hopefully soon, I will get to be one of the people on the relief team responding to disasters like that.

And then I spent another eight hours staring at the computer, researching climate change.

Finished training

I officially finished training on Thursday, which means now I get to do some actual work.  First up: researching how climate change is likely to cause displacement and conflict.  Should be interesting, but I have to say, reading climate change articles is awfully depressing.  It goes so quickly from "Here's what is likely to happen with a 1 degree Celsius increase in average temperatures" to "We're all doomed!"

Also, I should clarify: my official mandated training is over (10 weeks of it, in case you haven't been counting), but that doesn't mean that I'm actually done with training.  Now I just get to choose which trainings I want/think I need to take.  So this next week I have a one-and-a-half day training (if they let me into the class, I'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one) on how to use field communications equipment like satellite phones.  And next week I have a training to learn how to respond to disasters as part of a deployed team (DART - Disaster Assistance Response Team).

So I'm still going to be really busy; actually I'm not quite sure how I'm going to find time to get the climate change project done.  Might have to do some super early mornings (because I hate late nights).

Death by powerpoint

Okay, I've had it.  I've tried really hard, but I just can't take it anymore.  Hour after hour, day after day, of looking at powerpoints and having people talk at me...  it's physically hurting me now.  The CIA should look into powerpoint lecturing for their interrogation program.  Or not, since I'm anti-torture.

Anyway, it's been nine weeks now since I started my job, which means nine weeks of training, mostly by powerpoint.  One week to go.  And then I'll get to do some actual work for a few weeks, inshallah.  I hope I don't discover that my brain has been completely lobotomized by staring at all these powerpoints the last few weeks and that I'm now completely useless.

But on a positive note, I also had some really good meetings yesterday.  One was about flooding in Senegal, so I was the local-knowledge "expert" (which of course I'm not really, but I did have a few thoughts to contribute, which made me feel good).  The other was trying to figure out what I'm actually going to be doing in Kenya, which was just as unclear after the meeting as before, but at least I know now that I'm confused because everyone else is too, and not because I'm missing out on some important piece of information.  And everyone was very nice and trying to be helpful, which reinforced my feeling that USAID is going to be a good place for me to work.  Even if they are giving me a lobotomy by powerpoint.

More Hong Kong photos

Hong Kong photo

A picture from my July trip to Hong Kong, for your viewing pleasure.

Exciting/scary

For the past two days I've been in a training course on conflict assessment and programming (in which we learn how to assess what's driving the conflict, the key actors, overall context, and mitigating factors, and then to design programs to mitigate the conflict).  Throughout the training we used the current situation in Sri Lanka as a case study, determining what the conflict is really about, what opportunities may exist right now, and what sort of programs we would like to implement there.  I really enjoy doing case studies, so this was a lot of fun for me, but the best part was I realized that soon, when I go overseas to work in the Mission, I could be doing work just like this.  But it won't be a case study, it will be for real, and whatever programs I design could actually be implemented!

Very exciting, but also a lot of responsibility...

Swearing In

My training class, along with Alonso Fulgham, USAID's Acting Administrator, and a couple of other important people, just after our swearing-in ceremony, on the very first day.

Training

So far all my time at work has been taken up with training - the first five weeks were "orientation", which was a lot of information from Human Resources about how the Foreign Service works and there were lots of forms to fill out, and then there were lots of sessions to give us a general introduction to the agency, with information about what the different bureaus do, etc. At the end of the five weeks we had a graduation ceremony, which is where they told us what country we've each been assigned to.

Since then, for the past three weeks, I've been in training provided by my bureau (Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance) to learn how to do my job. We've learned how to assess the democracy and governance situation in a country, how to evaluate the impact of programs, and lots of other stuff. The classes have almost all been really interesting, but I have to admit that after eight weeks now of sitting and watching powerpoints all day, I'm having a hard time paying attention.

But for the next two days at least, there will be a change of pace: we're moving on from democracy and governance to conflict management & mitigation, which I think I'll find a bit more interesting (not that D&G wasn't, but it's just not my main interest), and it's also going to be at a different location, which I'm hoping will be cheerier than our cold, dreary basement room.

Also they've said they're going to feed us breakfast, lunch, and a snack for the next two days, which seems so fancy after the past eight weeks of not even being provided coffee or water cooler water. (I've been spending $1.80 a day in the cafeteria on coffee, but I figure it's not so bad since I bring my own lunch and I've been biking to work. Although I can definitely make myself feel guilty by thinking about what my host family could do with an extra $1.80 a day). Anyway, all you taxpayers out there worried about government wastefulness, I haven't seen it at USAID - I mean really, not even water coolers?

Anyway, back to my point about training: two more weeks of training to go, and then, theoretically at least, I will move on to doing some actual job-related work. Inshallah. But I really only have a few weeks in October where that might happen, and then I have a couple weeks of disaster assistance training, and then I'll start full-time language training.

Busy busy busy. But I'm loving it (okay, maybe not all the powerpoints, but in general). And I'm so impressed with how smart and knowledgeable about their jobs everyone at USAID is, it makes me feel like I've really picked a good place to work.

Conflict in Uganda

Recently there's been conflict in Uganda between the Ugandan government and followers of a traditional ruler of the Baganda people.

Guess I won't be bored in my job...

Drought, famine in northern Kenya

I've started trying to read up a bit about Kenya and the whole east and central Africa region in preparation for my assignment out there, and it sounds like things are getting pretty bad out there now. There's a drought, and people are dying.