devil in the grove

An enraging and gripping book about an under-remembered chapter in the history of 20th-century white supremacy and civil rights. Been thinking about white supremacy a lot recently, thanks in part to Ta-Nehisi Coates's string of wonderful pieces on the subject. This book fit right into that groove. Gilbert King is an excellent reporter and storyteller and his characters are larger than life, perfect avatars for this country's hideous history of white violence against blacks and blacks' constant struggle to assert their humanity in the face of overwhelming prejudice.

Reading this book and thinking about Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, and other recent murder victims -- and about the infinite other forms that racism takes every day in America -- reminds me of that Faulkner quote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." 

thinking about retirement

One of the ideas that's seized my imagination in the past two weeks is waste management and recycling. The case for opening a solid waste management center in Khorog is really strong on paper. There's a lot of trash there right now that isn't effectively collected, and what is collected is either burned or goes to a landfill that's already full. With a modest investment (something like $5.5 million) you could set up trash cans and dumpsters, buy a couple of trucks, build a new landfill, and build a small sorting facility that splits glass, plastic and metal out from the rest of the trash. There's a huge market for bulk recycled materials in China, which is right over the border to the east. Everybody wins, like with run-of-the-river hydropower.

Doing some research on that led me to the US recycling industry and made me curious what it'd take to do, for example, household-level material processing. Why couldn't people have a little machine in their house, like a trash compactor, that cuts up their plastic and metal and crushes their glass? Or if household level is too small to be cost-effective, what about smaller plants, like the one described above, for places in the States where no one has bothered to set up a processing facility yet but which don't justify the larger-scale plants that seem to be the norm there? What's the business case there? I'm reminded of a guy who came by our office last year to talk about his company, Blue Lotus, which sets up liquid natural gas plants next to food processing factories and uses the food scrap to make the biogas.

Stuff like that is really appealing to me (I mean, who wouldn't that appeal to?), much more so than a lot of the NGO stuff that's my current bread and butter. Grass is always greener, of course, but it makes me reeeeally curious about career opportunities on the other side.

Thinking about business also made me think about my own investments, such as they are. I've got a 401k through work, to which I contribute alongside my employer, but it's limited and I'm a bit dubious about how much they're charging us. Need to find out about that. But in any event, I think I'd like to set up a Roth IRA or some other kind of index fund investment, stick some money in it, and switch my contributions to that from my 401k. I like the idea of paying taxes now in order to avoid paying them later. Using those compound interest calculators, starting with $3000, contributing $400/month (which is what I currently put into my 401k), assuming a 9% annual return (the 25-year average of the S&P 500 for the 25 years leading up to 2011 was 9.28%) over 35 years gives me $1.2 million when I hit 62. More to the point, annual interest on that is $102K. What the hell am I waiting for?

Back to work.

pacquiao-bradley

Benefit of being overseas: Pacquiao-Bradley is not on PPV, it's on the 24-hour boxing/MMA channel in the hotel room. I don't always watch boxing, but when I do, it's a fight this big. Just ended, Bradley thinks he won, I don't think he won. Neither do the judges. Unanimous for Manny. Revenge.

Yesterday ended up being nice. I did a little work in the morning and then met BS for lunch at Segafreddo -- the restaurant takes its name from the coffee brand -- and had pasta (!!!) and a salad and a beer. And two cappuccinos. Then we went across the street to TsUM, the main mall here. I was vaguely looking to buy a suzani, the traditional Tajik embroidered decorative blanket. Aaaand I found one. Here's a few pics of the mall, and my new suzani at the end. (Click to embiggen.)

Beate also lent me her movie hard drive, so I watched "The Usual Suspects" for the first time since high school last night. That movie is almost 20 years old, kind of hard to believe.

Today I'm going to write the bulk of my trip report and continue to work on the proposal. Will take a break to watch "True Detective" at some point and then at 7 NK is coming by and we're going to walk over to some place nearby for dinner and a beer. Then it'll be pack, nap, wake, plane.

The weekend has not been as bad as I feared. Turns out things get easier when you start to develop relationships with people and can actually break up the hotel room time with sustained interactions with others. Couple of other notes on the trip:

1. I am going to get a Kindle. They're just too practical. It sucked finishing one book and then having with me just one other, which I don't like all that much.
2. I get too much screen time. My attention span is shorter than it was, I'm sure of it, and there are loads of productive things I could be doing but don't because it's easier to channel flip or read articles online. Don't get me wrong, there are some great things on TV and some amazing writing shooting through the intertubes, but enough is enough. I resolve to spend less time watching TV and less time online at home when I get back to the States.
3. Here are a few things I'm excited for when I get back: "Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier"; the cherry blossoms; reading some books, including Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, The Nature of Things, by Lucretius, The Gifts of the State and Other Stories, by a collection of Afghan writers, and so many others; milkshakes; seeing C; seeing all my friends who I haven't seen in WEEKS.

That's all for now, better be a little productive. Unfortunately that means more screen time. C'est la vie. 

t-minus the weekend

The admin ladies don't like my beard. A couple of days ago I walked out of the elevator into the AKDN lobby and the CEO's assistant (V) was chatting with the women who sit at the front desk. V pointed at one of them and said, "She doesn't like your beard," and they all giggled. Being reminded that, much as you talk about other people when they're not there, other people talk about you when you're not there, is an odd mixture of embarrassing and thrilling.

This afternoon I had a long chat with my colleague BS about HR among the teams out here. Some serious gaps in gender sensitivity and general management capacity, along with the traditional (for us) deficits in donor relations. These latter are caused by the feeling that we are extraordinarily special and donors should be pleased that we deign to take their money. Won't get into too much detail but it was good to talk about, not least because I think we can help them with some of it. I think she found it a bit of a relief to just unload, which is rarely a bad thing.

Now I enter the long weekend of boredom in the hotel. It's supposed to rain all weekend, which doesn't help. Otherwise I might have tried to line up a day trip out to somewhere or other. I do have some work to do and will see about eating at least a couple of meals with other people, but for the most part I'm going to be counting down the hours until 3:45 AM on Monday, when a car will take me to the airport.

dream

Last night I had a dream, in which my colleague IS, J and I were standing at the lip of a huge canyon. Picture the Grand Canyon, but with yellower stone and formations like a combination of Bryce Canyon and Arches National Park. We realized that, because of some special circumstance we were in, we could jump off the lip and crash through the formations without hurting ourselves or experiencing any pain. So that's what we did. It was incredibly exhilarating, bouncing off rocks and laughing, breathlessly, and then jumping down to another level. We never reached the bottom.

tired

Tired.

A couple of hours from now I'm going to have a check-in call with the powers that be in DC. What I'd like to do is vegetate in front of the TV until then but I don't think that's an option. Too many emails to write and things to read. No rest for the weary. I am earning my comp days on this trip.

pushing through

Tuesday is drawing to a close. I just got back from the gym, where I got in a good workout. I've been thinking about workout planning for the spring and summer. I'm very close to dunking a basketball: a good day and one well-timed lob and I'm pretty sure I could get one down. So jumping will continue to be the focal point, but now that it's nice out I'd like to get back to sprinting. There are races in late May, June, and July, and I'm going to run the 100m (and maybe 200m) in at least one of them, just to see. Figuring out an ambitious but doable workout scheme is a fun diversion.

Today was one decent meeting after another. I say decent, I guess what I mean is that each meeting seemed worthwhile and productive, therefore not bad, but not overwhelmingly positive or exciting.

AKF USA's webmail was out all weekend and through my day yesterday. One of my colleagues in DC, bless her, called the IT people yesterday after I went to bed and everything was working this morning. I took a few minutes between meetings and then a few hours after I got back to my room to go through everything and I feel at least somewhat up to date, which is great.

Not terribly much else to report, it's 9 PM and I haven't yet eaten dinner, so I'm going to cut things off there.

 

a walk

It's cool out and I felt well enough a bit earlier to venture out of the hotel. I asked a woman at the front desk where I might find a pharmacy and a place to buy DVDs that aren't dubbed into Russian. She, very sweetly, said, "Sir, it would be my pleasure to accompany you but I am on my shift." I hadn't asked her to accompany me! She told me she worked during the week at a nonprofit supported by Counterpart and USAID that works with women, and that the hotel job she does to make some extra money and to practice English. The best stores are apparently in a mall called Tsum or something like that, but it's closed on Sundays. Her weekday office is there, though, and she suggested that I come by so she could take me to the DVD store. In the meantime, she wrote a note in Russian saying I was looking for subtitled, rather than dubbed, movies and I was on my way.

Rudaki had remarkably few cars on it, but still, as I was approaching the park a black Land Cruiser smashed into a silver Mercedes, which spun around and went crashing through the low stone wall that lines the island running down the middle of the avenue. I was about 50 meters away. This, needless to say, was loud and drew a crowd. But the cops yelled at anyone who got close and seemed to get things sorted pretty quickly. No one was hurt, the Mercedes driver hopped out right away. Still, a pretty spectacular accident.

Right by the intersection where the accident happened I found a "chemsit's" and was able to pick up a thermometer (which doesn't work, haha) and some nail clippers for $2 total. I bought an ice cream bar - vanilla with dark chocolate candy coating - a bit further down the road and went into a couple of DVD/video game stores that I knew were next to Salaam Namaste, the Indian place that's becoming my go-to for lunch during the week. I'd been in one of them before to change money. Didn't have to use the note that my helpful friend at the hotel front desk wrote out because the selection in the stores was atrocious. It was funny, though, the DVDs were clearly pirated. Most had multiple movies on them, organized primarily by star. Obviously there were pictures, but it was fun to look at the transliterations, too. Helped me figure out one of the Cyrillic letters I hadn't been able to remember: "ж." It's "zh." So the Brad Pitt DVD had "Meet Joe Black," "Troy," "Inglorious Bastards," and two or three other movies on it. There were Jason Statham, John Travolta, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, and Julia Roberts collections, among others. But not a whole lot that drew my interest. Oh well. Ah, one funny thing: The Johnny Depp collection said "джони деп: секс симбол," which is just a transliteration of "Johnny Depp: Sex Symbol." The picture on the front was him as Jack Sparrow.

Needless to say, I kept my money in my pocket.

On the way back I ran into my old friend Noor, who recently found out that he'd gotten into the master's program at Hopkins SAIS. I'd written a recommendation letter for him last year, so was very excited to hear about his success when he wrote me a couple of weeks ago. I also wrote him a letter for a scholarship application that'll enable him to go to DC for the program, if he gets it. It was nice to see him, his face lit up when he made eye contact with me and got past the beard, and he gave me a big hug. If I have to stay through next weekend I'll probably meet up with him for a drink or something. The next few days are going to be too busy.

Anyway, it was overcast and cool, a nice day for a walk, and it felt good to get fresh air and move around a bit. I'm still a bit out of it but I think I'll be better by tomorrow. I should do some work before bed tonight, but we'll see how I feel.

the first week

Feels like time has passed more quickly this week than on typical trips. That's partly because work has been really busy and productive: days filled with meetings and nights filled with writing and talking with people back in DC. I'm pretty tired as I write this so I'm going to keep it short, but I'll put up a few words tomorrow about the highlights.

***NEXT DAY***

So it turns out I was getting sick last night and that's why the above is a bit incoherent and stupid-sounding. I woke up with a pounding headache this morning and had a hard time eating breakfast, and it's definitely not from the two light beers I had last night with M from Geneva. Come to think of it, I started feeling woozy before I went to bed. I feel a bit better now, well enough to make eye contact with the computer screen, of course. Must have been something I ate last night, although other than feeling a bit sensitive this morning I didn't have any GI problems. It's not dehydration, as I've been drinking plenty of water.

Anyway, it's been a pretty eventful week, as my babble from last night indicates. The highlight was probably Friday morning, when I joined a high-level meeting at the Ismaili Center that started with a tour of the place. It is a spectacularly good place to introduce someone to the Network: beautiful, and grand in a way that really stands out from the tacky, cheap-looking architecture that's the norm here for important buildings. "Look what we can build, look how committed we are to this place." Meanwhile the world's largest chaikhona (tea house) is going in across the street and it is a deliriously ugly building.

A colleague (friend? she's invited me over for a group dinner so perhaps I can say friend at this point) from AID invited me out last night, to a new night spot here called the Cotton Club, but I didn't make it due to the aforementioned wooziness. Still, it was nice to get out of my room and hang out with M a bit without talking about work at all. And it was nice to be invited, gives me hope for next weekend not being pure pain just waiting to get out of here. M and I ended up talking over coffee this morning, as well, as I tried to will away my headache.

In other news, Kentucky and UConn are playing in the NCAA tournament final, a fact which depresses me slightly. I'm going to try to get out today, maybe see if I can find a couple of movies to watch that are subtitled, rather than dubbed. And I'll have to do some work, as well, writing up a meeting note and starting to put together the framework that the pieces of the proposal that I'm expecting to come in this week will hang on.

That's it for now, I guess. Still a bit out of it.

the first day

Well, first full day, anyway. Slept pretty well last night, all things considered. No trouble falling back asleep after the middle-of-the-night bathroom break. Count it as a win.

Today was meetings from 8:45 until 5:30, with a break for lunch, then work from 6 until just now (~10:30) with a break for dinner. I was supposed to talk with R but he got sidetracked and then asked an hour ago when I was planning to be done. I said, in effect, as soon as possible and that I hadn't yet eaten dinner. He stopped after that. Not sure if because I made it clear that I was tired or because he got distracted. It's hard to be polite with him sometimes.

Despite their length, the meetings today were actually really productive. The folks around the table had never sat down together before to discuss what's going to be a fairly complicated piece of the project - starting up a mobile money system in very rural areas - and there was a lot to discuss. Mark, who's in from Geneva to help facilitate this piece, did a very good job keeping things on track and moving along. We finished exactly at 5:30, as planned. More to go over tomorrow and there will be lots of questions as we get into the nitty-gritty details, but today focused things well.

I am the kind of person who does better on a tight time schedule. I dislike stringing work out and am much more productive when things are compressed with lots of intermediate steps. Actually, that last bit suggests a maybe-obvious but heretofore-unthought-of-by-me strategy for improving my working habits: Lots of very rigid intermediate deadlines. Food for thought.

Also, I'm reading some more Borges, a collection called "The Maker" that consists mostly of very, very short stories - a page or page-and-a-half on average, I'd say. Here's an example, called "Argumentum Ornithologicum":

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one can have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer--not-nine, not-eight, not-seven, not-six, not-five, etc.--is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.

 Love that.

Time for some benadryl, some more Borges, and sleep. Hoping to talk to C tomorrow morning.