Go Trevor

Trevor Manuel gave a speech at the launch of the JPAL lab in Cape Town awhile ago. The Jameel Poverty Action Lab (JPAL) is a partner organisation to Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), where I'm working. His speech gives some insight into what JPAL will be doing in South Africa. Trevor also has some harsh words to say about things that aren't going right in SA yet. Schools, health, government bureaucracy...

Here's the shocker:

In terms of math and literacy scores, "South Africa scores in the bottom quartile of performers on the African continent even though we spend almost 6 per cent of our not insubstantial GDP on education."

A good quote to sum up what Trevor has to say about South African service delivery is: "We do not have the balance between centralisation and decentralisation right to meet efficiency and effectiveness objectives."

Click here to have a look at the speech. I'm Looking forward to seeing the evidence that JPAL provides for us to base better policies on.

Life at work

I've gone through a busy patch in the last month, mostly with IPA work things but also some traveling/intrepid exploring. I don't think I'll have much free time right up until the time I leave for the land of milk and honey for Christmas. I fly to South Africa on 11 December, stoked! Here's a note on what I've been doing.

The number of things that I need to keep my eyes on at work has grown from just the Marketing Survey (which I don't think I've blogged about much). I'm still busy with the Marketing Survey now, but only in doing some data organising and report writing. We won't be running any large scale data collection in market places until January next year. My PI (Principle Investigator/Boss) Lorenzo tells me that I'll be launching the next Marketing Survey as I step off the plane on 3rd Jan, or at least around then. Linked to the Marketing Survey, I've also been managing some monthly price data collection via phone calls to agriculatural markets.

The biggest thing taking up my time right now is the Cocoa Project. Over the last 3 months I've been traveling to Kailahun plenty to set the project up and to monitor how it's going. I just arrived back from a trip to Segbwema this afternoon. In the cocoa project we are working with 84 small scale Sierra Leonean cocoa traders. We're grading the quality of their cocoa, and measuring the impact on the quality when we provide a random sample of the traders with an incentive for high quality. The status quo in the cocoa market in Kailahun is a flat commission rate, so we're interested to see what happens when we introduce an added premium for quality. The other thing we're pilotting at the moment is an "observability" project. We want to see what will happen to the quality of cocoa produced by cocoa farmers if they are better able to observe and certify the quality of their cocoa, by us training someone in the village to grade and certify it with a specially designed test. The cocoa project is preyy cool. I'm gaining some expertise in what a well fermented and well dried cocoa bean looks like, and what they taste like.

Putting out the cocoa beans to dry outside one of our cocoa traders' stores in Kailahun Town. This guy is using his feet to shuffle the cocoa beans. Kailahun Town was the rebel soldier capital during the war.

The next big thing taking my time at the office is the roads project. This roads project is a strange one, because it is largely undefined. The main purpose for the Marketing Survey was to help in the evaluation of some roads, along with a bunch of other surveys. There is no neat and defined "roads project" though. Getting a good, rigorous evalution of the impact of feeder roads (small, rural roads) is probably one of the holy grails of development research. Randomised control trials with roads are difficult though, because persuading a government to randomise the allocation of road construction is tough (and doesn't happen). Instead, we use regression discontinuities and randomised phase-ins, but getting road construction workers to work on time and political interests to agree and stick to a plan is still difficult. I've been working with IFAD ("I" for international, "D" for development, I'll let you figure the rest out) to try and set up one of these projects with them. And, I'm going to be driving around a bunch of the country with a sweet wide-angle GPS video camera to film the roads built by the EU. We'll be using the video data to get some quantitative measures for the quality of the roads built (and not built) by the EU.

One of the rough patches on the highway between Kenema and Kailahun Town. Fatoma and I were on bikes, but we still had to walk this section. This is one of the roads that we travel on for cocoa, and is also one of the roads being rehabilitaed by IFAD.

This blog post is far too long for me to start on my intrepid exploration. Next time.

Oh Bokke

So I managed to watch the rugby today. South Africa vs Australia. What a gut wrencher.

I didn't make the live match, which was at 5am, but it wasn't too difficult to avoid hearing the score until the replay, which was at 10:30 this morning. In fact, I had to go on a mission to find a place that would show me the game at all. Sierra Leone is not a rugby loving nation, and it's difficult to find it on TV. I usually rely on some South African miners organising the games to be viewed in a bar down my road. But, today this bar was closed. I think my South African miners had been more dedicated than me and watched the game live.

I didn't let this deter me though. One thing in my advantage is that SuperSport of the mighty South African DsTV is the sports channel of choice here. All I needed to do was find a place with SuperSport, and a generator for electricity. This wasn't impossible, and I roamed the streets looking for the local hangouts for watching the European leagues' soccer. The guys here watch the Premier League and Champions League religiously. It gets crazy when Man-U play Barcelona. Each time a goal is almost scored the streets roar with sound of guys beating the walls of corrugated iron "SuperSport Cinemas."

I went to the SuperSport cinema near our office in Aberdeen. It was closed, because there was no soccer on. I asked where a guy could watch some rugby if he wanted to. They said that I should go to Aberdeen New Market and ask for Dennis. So I walked down there and asked some guys sitting on the street. They knew exactly who I was looking for, and they pointed me down an alley where I found Dennis, the master of a SuperSport Cinema. It usually costs Le1000 per person to watch a game, but since I wanted to have exclusive access to the rugby, and because Dennis would have to open up just for me, I paid him a grand Le5000, about $1.



I watched the game in a tin house, with soccer posters all around the walls, and with some guys and kids who were very interested in this strange game. Man, that game was a nail-biter. Couldn't believe we couldn't just get some points on the board! Oh well, not this World Cup for us then. I hope that New Zealand smashes Australia next week. I'll probably be in Segbwema, where finding a SuperSport Cinema will be tricky, but not impossible...

Getting Around

I went to the Kailahun District last week to supervise the launch of the cocoa survey. It takes roughly 3/4 of a day of to get there from Freetown. The route goes like this:

Freetown to Kenema in a share taxi:
This section really isn't too too bad; tar all the way with only minor potholes. The standard seating arrangement in a sedan taxi is 4 in the back seat and 2 passengers in the front seat. 6 passengers total. If you're unlucky enough to be in a hatchback, then it's another 4 passengers in the second back seat, which makes 12 passengers total. Luggage, space is not a big priority, so bags, chickens and children are put on laps. You can get a full seat to yourself if you pay double though. On this recent trip I did that on the way back. I got the whole front seat to myself, and it was glorious. The driver also thanked me because with only one passenger in the front seat he had to make fewer payments at the police check points that liberally dot the road.
Cost: Le 32,000 ($7)
Distance: About 400km
Time: 4-5hrs, God willing. Cars break down quickly and get fixed slowly.

View from the front seat of a taxi.

Kenema to Kailahun Town by okada:
The tar road ends here. At this stage we transfer to motorbike taxis. Car taxis are around, but they take roughly 3 times longer than bikes to navigate the roads. A real time suck if the bike takes 3 hours as it is. There are some really bad patches. Broken down trucks and minibus taxis can be seen quite reliably in certain bad sections of the road. Stuck in the thick red mud.
Cost: Le 70,000 ($16)
Distance: 128km
Time: About 3-4hrs

 

Motorbike taxis, also known as okadas, are by far the most popular form of transport in these parts of the country. Operating an okada I think might be the main form of entrepreneurship for young men. Okadas are generally a little more expensive than taxis, so to make the prices more reasonable the number of passengers is increased. 2 passengers sitting behind the driver is the norm up country, but 3 is not uncommon.

 

At IPA we indulge and pay double to get the whole back half of the seat to ourselves. We also carry our own helmets around. Helmets are rare, and can range from a half decent helmet lacking chin straps to a busted in construction helmet. I've also seen horse riding hats and boxing headgear.

This last picture is of a good looking car in Segbwema, one of the towns on the way to Kailahun Town. I don't think it's a taxi (it's a "musical machine"), and I don't think it's moved for awhile, but its been a brave car driving around on those roads. This car might have been a mail van in Belgium in its previous, quiet life.

 

Cocoa Project

I went on a trip to Kailahun last week. It's in the far Eastern corner of Sierra Leoen, sandwiched between Liberia and Guinea. I was there doing some pilotting for a potential Cocoa project. We want to increase the incentive for cocoa traders to trade in high quality cocoa. It's still early days for the project though. On this trip, my main mission was to find out how to grade cocoa beans. The beans taste pretty good when they're fermented and dried properly. Like really really dark, slightly fruity chocolate.

Here are two cocoa pods that a guy called Adu-Jina in one of the villages gave to me.

The cocoa pod on the left is called "Ghana" cocoa. Also known as amazonian cocoa I think. The smaller one on the right is local Sierra Leonean cocoa. The Ghana cocoa pods produce more cocoa, and run all year round. The local cocoa is smaller, seasonal, but they say that it's more pungent.

I slept in a small town called Segbwema. Two of the cocoa traders we might work with are based there. There's a bombed out Guinean tank there by the central street junction. Kailahun was the rebel hot spot during the war. There's a great coffee shop next to the tank run by "Number 1." He sells nescafe, ataya tea and local Sierra Leonean coffee. All black and strong.

Some coffee on the tank with Fatoma.

I like that the guys hang their laundry out to dry on the tank. There's also a "For Sale" notice painted on one of its sides.

6 Bougies

Take a look at the piece I wrote on the 6 Bougie cloth I found in the Waterloo market. I posted it on my Salone Sundays page. The story behind African wax cloth is pretty mind-blowing. Globalisation is real, and we should tell the UCT Politics department.

The man with the 6 Bougies

Leone Stars vs. Egypt

A bunch of us went to watch the Leone Stars play Egypt on Saturday. The game was actioned packed, and Sierra Leone actually dominated. Egypt hadn't sent down a full strength team (apparently it was the u23s!?), but I give the boys in Green, White and Blue a lot of credit. The final score was 2 - 1 to the home side. The scene afterwards was absolutely mental. People were dancing on the roofs of taxis while they were parading down the roads. I was thanked at least 10 times by random guys celebrating on the street for wearing a Sierra Leonean soccer jersey on my way back home that day. These kind of victories do an amazing thing for a country. There is so much patriotism, exuberance and unity around events like these.

On the side, don't you think that "Leone Star" rings a bell with the "Lone Star State??" Liberia like to call themselves that too. So do some other places...

Nice Painting

I saw this painting in Ghana, and I just thought it was classy. Actually, insightful. The scene is steriotypical of the everyday interaction between the white (or in this picure, just Western) expat and African society. These girls may as well be one of the girls who sits in my office in Freetown, and they may as well be walking to the market on a standard Saturday in Freetown. I like the guy in the white suit falling over the lady in the yellow shirt. I also like the way that the white girl is swinging her hips; with confidence. I rate that she's been in the peace corps, and that she's walked on streets like these before.

Back Home in Salone

I'm back in Salone. And it actually felt good to step out of the plane and welcome the thick hot air. I even had a slight home coming feeling. I do slightly shudder to think how excited I'll get when I get to catch a glimpse of Cape Town outside the plane window...

I arrived back almost 2 weeks ago now, and I've written a bunch on the Salone Sundays page. If you haven't seen my Salone Sundays page yet, find the link on the side of this page, or click here.

I also just wanted to put this picture up. I saw it on my first day back in town. I've heard about the Flaming Bible Church before, but it was good to get some photographic evidence. Legendary name! I should try it some time. Although I think it might be a church you have to wear a suit to...

Accra, Casablanca, Paris

I'm in Accra at the moment, the capital of Ghana. I just took the GRE exam, the one you need to do for graduate studies in the US. The last month has been a mad one at the office. Now after the exam on top, I'm pooped.

I haven't been writing much lately. Instead, I've been coding. Often by candlelight. I've been working on Stata, the popular statistical software programme, cleaning the data that our enumerators collected earlier this year. Roughly 40,000 lines of code later, enough of the data is clean for my PIs (Principle Investigators) to start using it. And I'm off on a holiday...

... to FRANCE!! Early tomorrow morning I'm leaving Accra and flying to Paris via Casablanca (where it was once said by some guy: "we'll always have Paris"). And then, in Paris, I'm meeting my sister LAURA, who I haven't seen in 18 months. We're going cycling down the Loire valley and then up through Brittany and Normandy. At least, that's the plan, we'll see how we feel at the time :)

Now I need to contemplate whether it's worth getting one hour of sleep before heading off to the airport. The answer is, YES.

Watching wooden fishing boats and bigger boats

This evening's view of the sea from our porch

At about dusk this evening, three wooden fishing boats disappeared into darker side of the sea on the horizon. This happens routinely. Although, the really little wooden dugout canoes don't go completely out of site. We have a good view of these fishermen's commute from our porch. We also get the big container ships cruising past every now and then, like big floating buildings. Overshadowing the fishermen in their wooden boats. The Grimaldi lines ship features often. Freetown has one of the deepest natural harbours in the world apparently, but there isn't a whole lot of action happening at the docks. The action that does happen, is dominated by Lebanese importers. The Lebanese have a strangely powerful place in West Africa's trade economy.

Here's a view of one of the ships that pass by. The dugouts have a rough time with the wake of these ships when they pass by right next to them, although the guys paddling those things are amazing. I tried one awhile ago, and it's like paddling a round bottomed bath tub. Made of wet wood. But the guys in those things manage fishing in the rollers quite well, using their leaf-shaped wooden paddles. I'd really like to go fishing with one of those guys sometime, although the dugouts usually take a one man crew in Freetown. Two max. Maybe if I make a good friend with one of them I could manage a short trip. I tried doing that on the Turtle Islands once. I woke up at 4am and everything, but then the guy that I had talked to the night before decided that that morning wasn't the right time to go out to sea... He had a dugout way bigger than the ones in Freetown, I think it was a five man. Made from a cotton tree apparently.

For now, I'm just playing around on Stata, cleaning data.

The beginnings of the Stata ".do file" that I need to write. The one that is going to solve the world's problems and clean the data that we collected in the Marketing Survey.

Mt. Bintumani

Here are some photos from the Mt Bintmani trip that happened over the Easter weekend. The team was: Caleb, Libby, Tom, Jacob and myself. To give the journey some context, we started walking at a brisk 5:30 on Friday evening. The late start came after a 6 hour car ride over the 100km "road" to the nearest village to the mountain, near Sinekoro, and then after a long haggle with the chief and some other guys wanting us to pay them our respects.
The walk started in deep dark jungle, and then rose up onto grassy plains. Accompanied by a guide and 3 porters (because it's rude not to hire guys to carry your bags. And because we are awfully colonial)

Big cotton tree at camp one. The night before we had unknowingly slept 10 minutes away from camp one. We pitched camp on the path when the forest became too dark to know where we were at 9:30ish.

Our guide, Ali, with the peak of Mt Bintumani in the background. Ali called me John, and he liked that I was from South Africa. Think he liked my beard too. He had big respect for the hard South African men that had been around and defended their village during the war. A common sentiment in Sierra Leone. Go Ex Co. There is some serious irony in those guys earning a good name for white South Africans in West Africa.

Tom, Grant, Jacob, Caleb and Libby at the beacon on the peak.

The beautiful view at the end of the camp two's stream. The site where we shared bread and whiskey on Easter Sunday morning. Have a look at the "Salone Sundays" page to read more about that one: http://grantbridgman.blogspot.com/p/salone.html

I had to throw this picture in. The butterfly's on this mountain were mind-blowing. My favourite was a little white one that had loose ribbon like tassels on the ends of its wings.

Our one porter, Abdul.

           

The last ascent before the peak. Very cloudy, but not cold. The flora around here had some similarities to the mountain tops in the Western Cape. I even saw some proteas! Was really happy about that. 

When we made it to our car at the bottom of the mountain, we couldn't get it to start. So we had to spend an extra night in the village. Here's John looking after us by our fire. While we camped, Caleb missioned back to Kabala and brought back a new battery via motorbike taxi.  

We asked for dinner at the village. Here is John's sister cleaning the rice. The groundnuts are nearby ready to be beaten into groundnut stew. 

Some awesome kids.

Jacket shopping - down town Freetown

Because it gets so cold in Freetown, I went to go check some trendy jackets out. It happened to be quite hot when I was shopping though. It felt like slipping into a little personal sauna. I didn't end up buying one, although the hooded one had me sorely tempted.

On a more serious note though, there is actually some high fashion on the streets of Freetown. I found a T.M. Lewin shirt in a stack of cloths on the bonnet of a car the other day. I didn't even know that T.M. Lewin was a fancy brand until my more educated friend Dan told me it was. He also rated that it was genuine second hand. There is also loads of trendy 90s fashion wear on the streets around here. Go figure. At least it's not all from China.

Survey out of the field

The Marketing Survey that I'm working on left the field this week. This is sweet news because it means that our team of enumerators have completed interviews in all of the 155 markets that needed visiting. And that the raw data is safely tucked away on this VERY laptop and several other top secret places.
Down side is that I won't be able to get my Stata on for a little while yet though. We'll only be cleaning the data once the other small freight train of work passes over.

Off to Mount Bintumani

This weekend I'm heading off to Mount Bintumani. It's in the Koinadugu district, in the northern part of the country. Apparently it's the highest mountain in West Africa, at 1,948 metres. There's loads of jungle around there, so I'm hoping to see some chimps... this place is far away from everywhere, I'm looking forward to the journey. I'll be back on Tuesday.

So I'll be out of town this Sunday, but will be posting up the conquests of the weekend soon after.

"Salone Sundays" Page

I've just got the Salone Sundays page started (check out the list of pages on the right). I'm going to try keep some up to date ramblings on that page. Have a look. Today's entry was about the weekend's exploits on Tokeh beach, which includes partying it up with some "East Side" locals and moving as little as possible while floating in the warm and paradisical side of the Atlantic.

I'm going to try get some more useful information up on here soon, like what I'm actually doing here in Sierra Leone, but we'll see how long that takes...

Getting going on the internets

I've been in Sierra Leone for almost 3 months now, promising to send out emails and updates... so I decided to get a blog going instead. This country has been quite inspiring so far, so I'm looking forward to getting some things written down, officially, on the internets. Welcome beautiful people.