Category: Uncategorized

Mosquitos: The Long-term effects of malaria eradication in India, a (relatively) recent paper by Cutler, Fung, Kremer, and Singhal at Harvard University finds that

Malaria eradication resulted in gains in literacy and primary school completion
of approximately 12 percentage points.  [from the abstract]

Big effects: it’s about half of all the education improvement over this time period.

I took ill in 2005 with the malaria strain caused by the parasite plasmodium falciparum, which “is associated with the most severe forms of malaria and accounts for most malaria fatalities” (p5).  I got out of the hospital two days before my dissertation defense: I think it might actually have helped me, but I’m willing to view that as an exception.

The BBC publishes renowned Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s views on Kenya’s post-election violence.  I think he goes too easy on the election rigging, but otherwise I agree with him.

For the sake of justice, healing and peace now and in the future I urge all progressive forces not to be so engrossed with the political wrongs of election tampering that they forget the crimes of hate and ethnic cleansing – crimes that have led to untimely deaths and the displacement of thousands.

The world does not need another Bosnia; Africa certainly does not need another Rwanda.

A friend passed this on to me, from the U.S. State Department site for Uganda:

American citizens visiting Uganda are advised not to accept food or drink offered from a stranger, even a child, because such food may contain narcotics used to incapacitate a victim and facilitate a robbery.  In 2006, there were a number of reports of such incidents in the city of Kampala.  Victims included the patrons of bars or entertainment centers.  Similar crimes occurred on passenger buses.  In 2006, an American citizen traveling by bus from Kenya to Uganda was incapacitated and robbed on the bus when the passenger accepted a sealed beverage from a fellow passenger.  Expatriates traveling by bus to the popular tourist destination of Bwindi Impenetrable National Forest in southwest Uganda were also robbed under similar circumstances.

Sounds a lot like someone I know.

We have words for referring to people from every country.  People from Mexico are Mexicans; people from France are French.  (Wikipedia calls these words “demonyms” or “gentilics,” but that hasn’t made it into standard dictionaries.)  We usually don’t use the same word to refer to them as they do: Mexicans call themselves mexicanos, but we use a word that seems easier for us to pronounce.What about people from Niger (here it is on the map)? They are not to be confused with people from Nigeria, who are Nigerians. People from Niger speak French and call themselves nigeriens (just like Nigerians except changing the final a to an e). But if you look in Merriam-Webster on-line,* the word given is Nigerois.  (Nigerois used to be listed in the CIA World Factbook, but it has been changed.) 

Nigerois is tricky because not only do we not refer to people as they refer to themselves, we went to the trouble of creating a word that sounds to an English speaker as if it were French.  (I asked a French friend, and she said nigerien is clearly right and that nigerois sounds like the name of a small town in rural France.)

Tricky English people with their made-up, French-sounding words!

* To its credit, Merriam-Webster lists both Nigerois and Nigerien.

Together with the terrible news in Pakistan from last week, Kenya seems to have had lots of election fraud and violence in its presidential election last Thursday.  Here are a few bits from a BBC article:

On the violence:

Scores of people have been killed across Kenya in violence blamed on the disputed presidential election.

A BBC reporter has seen 43 bodies with gunshot wounds in a mortuary in the opposition stronghold of Kisumu. A witness said police shot protesters.

There have been running battles in Nairobi slums. The local KTN television station says 124 have died nationwide.

And the fraud:

European Union election observers have raised doubts about the officially announced results.

The government has banned live broadcasts linked to the election.

Chief EU election observer Alexander Graf Lambsdorff told the BBC that his monitors had been barred from counting centres in the Central Province.

He also said that results from one constituency had been declared by the Electoral Commission of Kenya in Nairobi, which were different from those announced in the same constituency at local level.

He said the anomalies amounted to 20,000-25,000 votes in just one constituency.

Mr Kibaki’s national margin of victory was 230,000 votes.

Sad days.

I’m riding home from work with a wild driver in an SUV filled with potted plants. If this gets posted, it means I was neither killed in a car crash nor consumed by carnivorous plants.(If you don’t know why I’m riding home with strange drivers and strange plants, read this.)

Chris Blattman offers interesting advice for those interested in using a PhD to help the poor.  Worth reading.

I just saw, on EW.com, an interesting interview with Dave Eggers, who wrote What is the What – the fictionalized memoir of Valentino Achak Deng. He answers the questions of how much is fact and how much is fiction as well as discussing many other interesting aspects of the book.

Last year I posted about books dealing with Africa in the Economist’s list of Books of the Year.  Four dealt with Africa, and I have read two: both worthwhile.

Here are the Africa books in this year’s list: only two!

Through the Darkness: A Life in Zimbabwe. By Judith Garfield Todd. 472 pages

A harrowing tale of courage and betrayal by a white heroine of the liberation struggle against Ian Smith who has been punished (and stripped of her citizenship) with extraordinary vengefulness by Robert Mugabe for speaking out about the regime’s abuses of power.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It

By Paul Collier. Oxford University Press; 224 pages
Crammed with statistical nuggets and common sense, this book, by an economics professor at Oxford University, should be compulsory reading for anyone embroiled in the thankless business of trying to pull people out of the pit of poverty.

I read the latter and quite enjoyed it (here are my thoughts), although Bill Easterly makes a very good critique (too bad he never feels very constructive).

Last week’s This American Life podcast tells the story of John Nash Pickle, who ran a factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He went to India, hired 52 skilled and experienced workers with the promise that they would work in the USA for two years and eventually get green cards. When they arrived, he and his wife took their passports, provided them food for 27 men (rather than the 52 there were), forbade them from leaving the factory premises, paid them $2 an hour, and on and on.

This is terrible.  But what I find amazing is that many people – including some of the Indian guys – really believe that Mr Pickle believed that he was doing these Indian guys a giant favor, that he was saving them from starvation in India.  If this is true, then either Pickle is delusional or it is a demonstration of wild ignorance: this assumption that everyone in poor countries is starving. (It’s like in that Do they know it’s Christmas? song when they sing about Africa, where “nothing ever grows.”  Most people in Africa are subsistence farmers.  Hello?)  I fear that some form of this ignorance (thankfully not the extent that it brings people to human trafficking) is too common among us.

I highly recommend this podcast.