Noises

I swear I just heard a lion attack an elephant.

It's hard to imagine a lion being so brave. But first I heard the angriest lion roar I've ever heard. Then a loud elephant trumpet. I had never heard that before.

Maybe they were teaming up against a poacher.

I could never get used to these noises.

Antici..........pation

As anxious as I am about wrapping up the study successfully in the next 6 work days, I'm even more anxious to get home to Seattle. Of course the biggest factor is that I've now been separated from my wife for 3.5 months. Other factors that make me miss home are friends, food, my dog, and being tired of the extra work it takes to navigate the culture in a foreign country. But I'm also realizing how much I really like the city where we live.

This September makes three years since we hauled our junk across the country to start anew on the west coast. I don't think Jess or I immediately fell in love with the city. The weather turned bad quickly--that November there was rain something like 28 of 31 days--and it takes time to make friends and find things to do. We've slowly grown more fond of the Emerald City as we've integrated ourselves.

Now, reading Seattle blogs, looking at pictures, perusing concert schedules, and just hearing what my friends are up to makes me realize what a great place it is to live. The restaurants, bars, museums, parks and different communities offer a lot to Seattle residents. From a different continent, many Pacific Northwest quirks that have at times grated my nerves seem more like adorable cliches performed mostly by genuine people. The mustachioed hipster cyclists who peg their skinny jeans; eco-obsessive young parents; queer scenesters; the connoisseur class. From my perspective now these people blend together in a cute, happy bubble of good will, enlightenment and acceptance. That's a place where I want to live.

I think I love you, Seattle. Be home soon.

Food in South Africa: Meaty Edition

I haven't had many requests for specific blog posts from my brilliant and beautiful audience, but I did get one early in my trip and have since neglected it. Erin wants to know more about the food here. Well, here is a little digest of some of the things I've digested. Since I don't take my camera everywhere I've had to rely on Wikipedia for illustrations. Today's post is meat-centric and I hope you will find it meat-tastic.

The braii
One of the first things to learn about food is that people here have braiis, not barbecues. However, if you come to the braii with the same attitude you bring to a barbecue you should be fine. Wood is burned to create hot embers, which can then be shoveled into a small pit or even just in a pile on the ground. The grilling rack is placed on top. Hot embers can be added as needed. I think every braii I've attended has included at least a couple kinds of meat (beef, chicken, venison or boerewors), pap, and "soup" or chakalaka, a spicy sauce of tomatoes, onions, peppers, chili, and other veggies. I'm not sure any particular food is as essential as the fire, alcohol, and talking. The braii I attended last night even included family squabbling, which I really consider an indispensable feature of American BBQs.
MMM...doesn't that look appetizing?

Potjiekos (sounds similar to `POY-key')
This is an Afrikaner dish. Place your huge cast-iron pot on the fire, heat some oil, and cook your meat. Add...well, everything. I ate this once and I think we had rabbit, chicken, pumpkin, corn... I don't remember the rest. This is one of those everything-in-the-pot meals that just tastes heavenly and helps soak up all the beer you were drinking while standing around the fire for 4 hours.
Good things are happening inside this pot. I mean potjie.

Biltong
Really, it's just jerky. But it's possible it's made from an animal you have never seen, nevermind eaten. I've had kudu biltong but you can also get ostrich, chicken, fish, and apparently even shark. Another difference is you will come across biltong in South Africa in places you'll never see American jerky. The biltong, feta and butternut squash pizza at Upper Deck in Kampesrus is actually delicious!
Here's a common biltong display in airports, tourism centres, and other shops.


Mopane Worms
This one I haven't tried yet. My housemate, Susan, generously purchased a plastic bag full of these guys so she could prepare them for me to try. We haven't gotten around to it yet, and somehow I've forgotten to mention it. Wikipedia says they are considered a delicacy in some places and they have a meaty taste. All I know is they look spiky and crunchy and not at all pleasant to chew. But what do I know?


Bonus: Absolutely stupid video about a braii. I think the fact they're using charcoal is lame. You'll recognize the satire on male behavior around the grill but you'll also get to hear some SA accents and jargon.

Caster Semenya, continued

The New York Times puts it better than I did.

Lions on the loose

As I've mentioned, my house sits on a farm within Wits Rural Facility, a large gated area where many scientists, doctors and students stay while working at the hospital, Wits, or Kruger Park. We are surrounded by private game reserves that have some noisy lions that have kept me awake at night.

Two nights ago I woke up to actual roaring (rather than the sort of lion humming noises I'm used to) that sounded extremely close to my bedroom. Then Friday morning I received an SMS:

2 lions seen at Caravilla this am so don't walk around and if you have staff give them lifts.

Caravilla is the other side of WRF, maybe 1km away from my house. Susan and I nervously laughed about whether the lions knew the shortcut to our house from Caravilla, then we went on our way to work. As we rolled down the hill toward the gate we were shocked to see three lions, two white and a third tawny. These specific lions are mentioned here.

After a bit of stuttering---"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god" from me, "Li-li-lions!" from Susan---I was able to reach for my camera and indiscriminately click away. They kept walking down the road, and after a moment of hesitation I decided we should follow. As we got closer all three walked into the bush to the side of the road. Two were further ahead and disappeared quickly, but one wasn't scared and eyed us as we pulled up next to her.

I was only able to get two photos where you can see her. The second one shows the side mirror so you can see how close we were.




And the close-up...


Once this lioness blended into the bush we sped down the road to alert the guards.

I saw a male lion in Kruger Park a couple months ago, but he was very distant and didn't move. Looking at these three walking down the road was awesome in the original sense of the word. They have such obvious power. I wish I had video of them walking. It was the most thrilling and scary moment of my time in South Africa.

The people sent to capture the lions found a waterbuck the lions had killed and dragged it to the road to bait them. The plan worked and all three are back in captivity. Hopefully the holes in the fence have been patched...

Sex vs. gender in the news

Really interesting controversy about an 18-year old South African track star whose gender is being questioned. Why biological sex is different from gender is something you learn in anthropology and sociology courses but is generally not discussed in ordinary conversations. Human variation is too broad for the distinct categories we use in everyday life, like man or woman, straight or gay, black or white.

Is this person a woman? Yes, I think so, because she identifies as a woman, regardless of what sort of plumbing she has. Is she categorically, biologically female? I don't know. But it's important to recognize that everyone she competes against has different levels of estrogen and testosterone, different secondary sex characteristics, and maybe even different primary sex characteristics. Maybe this woman is at the masculine end of the spectrum of female variation. But where is the line drawn? When a case like this comes up, it complicates our common sense understanding of sex and gender.

UPDATE: From the BBC, a blog post about the athlete and the reaction here and the ANC's response here.

Where the antelope play

I see impala just about every day. Yesterday I finally captured some for you in this terribly grainy video:

They are known as "McDonalds" because of the not-so-golden arches on their rears that look just like the M.

There's also a huge male waterbuck that seems to have taken residence behind my house. I couldn't get a picture of him before he ran off, but he looks a lot like this:

Seminar

Today I'm giving a seminar about the project. Let's see if this nifty document uploader thingy will work...

Agincourt Seminar 2009-08-13

Cool! It worked, although I couldn't edit the HTML to default to slide mode, so you can choose that from the menu: More -> View Mode -> Slide Mode. Use the full screen toggle button at the top right of the window if it is too small.

This presentation is for Wits' Health Systems Development Unit (HSDU) in Acornhoek. I created this presentation using LaTeX class Beamer with my current favorite theme, Copenhagen. I attached the questionnaire at the end in case any audience members ask to see it after my talk. During the slide with the photo I will talk about the field operations including field workers, villages and households.

Diplomacy in action

So maybe there wasn't public dancing upon my arrival in South Africa. But no one made me move heavy stones, either.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Race and Sport in South Africa

This profile of Matthew Booth, a center-half for the SA national team and its only white player, has some interesting aspects. Booth describes black schools playing soccer on "dirt and scrubland," I saw exactly that last Friday. The guys I was talking to asked if American school teams play in stadiums. Not exactly, but compared to the dirt field they were using, many of our school facilities do seem like stadiums.

For news about Africa in general I recommend the BBC page: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/default.stm.

Work

I haven't written about the project in a long time so for the sake of bloggy posterity, here's the deal.

At the end of June I projected a large shortfall in the number of interviews that could be completed by the end of August, so I made two suggestions to the PI. First we should offer to pay the field teams for leave not taken. This would prevent a situation where two entire days each month are lost to time off. Of course individuals can still take a day if they want but the idea was maximize time in the field. Second, I finagled four new fieldworkers to add to the original 12. New fieldworkers means more transportation was needed, so we added a rental car in addition to the two large vans we already had. All this was quite an investment but done within budget and the new folks started mid-June. That's going fine.

With 16 fieldworkers we started pulling in a lot more interviews per day and it looks like we can make the deadline. But not so fast... did my projections count the number of days correctly? Turns out, not quite, because of the way payment works here. Allow me to explain.

People get paid once per month in these parts. People in very rural areas (like my field teams) don't have banks in their villages. That means that come pay day, everyone goes to Hazyview or Thulamahashe or Bushbuckridge or another local city to withdraw some money. Month-end pay day is traditionally the day you take off work so you can go to the city. It's just the way it is here. Everyone expects that they won't have to work the last Friday of the month.

Now, I tried to communicate with the teams that they will be paid for every day through August 31, and if they have leave leftover at the end they will be paid for it. But this concept was very hard to make clear, in part because their contracts stipulate that the two days off are (1) a floating day to be taken when needed and (2) you guessed it- month-end. So there was quite a bit of confusion coming into last Friday. Turned out that everyone wanted the day off. No one wanted to earn an entire day's pay as a bonus to put off their trip to the city until Saturday.

I guess it's easier to empathize with this decision when you imagine that you are only paid once a month, you earn very little money, and you probably have a lot of family asking for a piece of your paycheck. Add to that the fact that after weeks without money you really just need to blow off a little steam and I think it's not hard to understand why the teams didn't want to work.

The down side of course is that I am left 250 interviews short for last week and the deficit is not closing as fast as it should be. We have now completed about 7,000 out of 12,776 9 weeks into a 13-week project. So we're adding an extra four days to the field operations to give us a fifth week. We should average 1200 per week, except there's a holiday on August 9 and of course people will probably want to leave on the last Friday in August, so... we'll see.

And there's a little peek at some of the work I do.

Observation of the moment

Rain is really loud when you have a metal roof.

Circumcision as cultural practice

Procrastination, it turns out, pushes its way into your fun activities like blogging just as much it does reading for class or writing a thank you note.

Today I saw the end of an Initiation School in Acornhoek. According to Shangaan tradition, boys around the age of ten must go out in the bush for 3 months. During that time they can be visited by their fathers but not their mothers. I saw a group coming out of the bush a few weeks ago, rough blankets over their shoulders, looking exhausted. I imagine they sleep and eat outdoors. During this process they become men, ritualized through circumcision near the end of the journey. This practice is somewhat controversial. I heard on the radio the other day that 50 boys have died in the Eastern Cape due to botched circumcisions this year. Some of the traditional leaders don't keep up with the medical journals, I take it. So the boys get circumcised -- no anasthesia -- and then they are official men. They come home in a parade along the road waving long sticks and beating drums. Their mothers welcome them and there is, of course, food, drink and dancing long into the night. What i witnessed today was the beginning of that celebration.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that I witnessed this parade while waiting to get my car washed (R30 for interior and exterior, or less than $4) and talking to a local guy sitting next to me. We were talking about cultural rituals like circumcision and he asked how it was done in the U.S. I informed him that not everyone was circumcised (he disagreed with that idea) but that those that were had it done when they were babies, usually one week old. This horrified the guy. "How do they even hold the flesh?" he asked. "I don't know," I replied truthfully. The guy had quite a visceral reaction to the idea of circumcising a baby.

Bringing the science (with lots of links)

My dissertation advisor, Sam Clark, is the person who got me involved in this project and got me to Africa. He has a long relationship to this institution where my study is being conducted. Last week he visited for a few weeks for meetings and he and I got to talk about my dissertation.

Sam and I had spoken briefly about this idea before I left and I found it exciting. The idea is sort of at an intersection of demography, sociology, and health. When Sam arrived here we talked more about it and how it could work. Below are my notes from the meeting, summarizing three papers I would write and put together as a dissertation.

*************************************
Background: Agincourt in the observed period provides a complex setting for evaluating transition theories. Longitudinal data allow causal analysis. We expect that the complex changes in economy/development, health care provision, epidemiology, social inequality and government policies will make it a difficult test case for transitions theories and could contribute to revisions of classical theoretical frameworks.

1. Describe demographic transition in Agincourt 1993-2008. Compare causes, timing, and effects of Agincourt transitions to classic DTT. Are trends in age-specific fertility and mortality rates statistically identifiable?
   
   
2. Describe changing epidemiology of Agincourt 1993-2008. Evaluate usefulness of epi. transition theory in this setting where it appears noncommunicable diseases are gaining traction at same time there is are epidemics of communicable diseases like HIV and TB. Relate all-cause mortality levels and trends to cause-specific profiles of mortality.
   
   
3. Create a migration typology using model-based clustering as the method for identifying which HHs will migrate in which ways. Show clusters by SES rank. SES index can be improved, probably through principal components analysis, to more closely identify livelihood strategies common to SES categories. Do identified clusters predict HH composition? Migration history? SES? Geographic location?
   

Yesterday a friend and I drove to the grocery store only to find it closed at 3:00 on Sunday, so on the journey back we travelled out of our way to go to a pizza place. The pizza place was closed too, but across the street was this friendly neighborhood rhinoceros. He was in a fenced enclosure chewing on grass like just any other domesticated animal. We joked that his owner would come out with a leash when it was time to go in.

I'm sure the rhino isn't that domesticated, but I'm not sure how to explain what he was doing there. I also can't imagine he gets enough calories from the little dried grass on the ground this winter. Here's the evidence...




Plus a picture showing the mountains in the background.




Also on this trip I saw many waterbuck, antelope, warthogs, hornbills and baboons. Finding those animals has become routine so I don't write about it much.

Some thoughts

These are some of the things I find myself pondering while I stay in South Africa.

• Is it possible to get sick from breathing too much dust and dirt? What about long-term exposure? You can't walk near a road for more than a couple minutes without inhaling at least one dusty cloud. My hair changed from clean and smooth to chunky and sticky from standing outside for 5 minutes.
  
• Why does it seem like every older lady walks with the same hobbling limp? Is it related to the way they sweep the ground or retrieve water--bent at the hips at a perfect 90 degree angle?
• When did the local language start using English words? Numbers, months, and certain words are spoken in English. Today I overheard a conversation about someone's education that was 95% Shangaan with "graduate" and "registration" thrown in.
• How long will it take to eliminate racism (or get close to eliminating racism) in this country compared to the U.S.? We desegregated schools and workplaces, made voting a positive right, and other measures beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. This was followed by decades of institutional racism (housing market, school funding, etc.), affirmative action, race riots and many other events and processes that leave us wherever it is we are today. South Africa only ended apartheid in 1994. The majority of the population here lived as de jure second class citizens for most of their lives. It seems that amazing progress has been made, but when will South Africa become more equal?
• How long will it take to fully develop this country (already the most developed in sub-Saharan Africa)? In some ways it seems so close but in other ways it seems that it will never come.
  
• When will Nando's bring peri peri chicken to Seattle? Or do I have to visit DC to get it?
  

More pictures from the shuttle

Not lion food yet

My two plus-or-minus one readers may have noticed a three-week absence during my long-awaited visit to the U.S. My focus was not on this blog, which really doesn't take much effort but seemed onerous during vacation and the weeks before and after.


The beach vacation was bittersweet. It was cloudy, grey, and raining four of the six days, but beautiful Friday and Saturday. I loved being with Jess and her family, but I hated to leave again. Two more months sans wife seemed daunting as I went back to the airport for another 30 hours of travel.

I procrastinated on booking a shuttle to return from Joberg and paid the price. After arriving Sunday night and sleeping at a hotel that seemed far nicer than the $75 it cost me, I awoke to an email that my attempted booking was impossible. I spent the next few hours arranging a different shuttle that ended up costing 5 times as much as the one I wanted.

We drove back through Lydenburg and the Blyde Canyon, a more scenic route than the direction through Nelspruit I took to get to the airport. The pictures are obviously through the window of a speeding van but you can get a sense of the landscape.


After the scenic drive and upon arriving at the beautiful farm where I'm staying I felt much more upbeat about the next two months.

They all look so small...

...but in real life they look large! Especially that crocodile.

Kruger Park

 
 
 
 

Babboons and hippos

plus bonus crocodile.

Kruger Park animals

Cheetahs, zebras, giraffe and wildebeast

A Plum Island bacchanalia fast approaches

Africa is nice and all, but I am greatly anticipating my vacation in a small Massachusetts beach town. Here are a few reasons.

• I think I've had around 12 alcoholic drinks in the past month, and most of them were some mediocre South African lager. At this point the idea of Sam Adams and Guinness make my mouth water.
  
• Today for the first time in a month I drank a cup of coffee that wasn't instant. It was heaven. And this wasn't particularly good coffee. When I get some Dunkin' Donuts I might just jump off a roof believing I can fly.
  
• People I work with are from different parts of Africa and Europe. I haven't heard an American accent in weeks. Even the Boston accent will be music to my ears.
• Burgers and shellfish are non-existent here. GIMME THAT LOBSTER ROLL!
• Driving on the naturally right side of the road legally, rather than finding myself approaching an oncoming cop car flashing his headlights at me to move the hell out of his lane, will be quite a trip.
  

I definitely miss a few things about my life in the USA.

The most dangerous thing in South Africa

Most dangerous for a healthy 28-year old male like me, anyway.

In the hours of darkness

Last night I went to sleep early but was disturbed four times. First our house alarm was set off by some mysterious force. As far as I know the only way to set it off is to press one of the panic buttons that are placed in each room. My housemate and I were asleep so I'm not sure how that happened.

The next three times I woke up were due to a loud animal in the neighboring reserve. I think it was a lion. (EDIT: Confirmed--It was a lion, and it was very close. Maybe 1km from here.) It's sort of terrifying to wake up to the noise of an unknown but obviously large animal. Each time I opened my eyes I had a fleeting sense of panic. That feeling passes as I remember that the big five are trapped inside an even bigger fence and I'm inside a locked house, and I feel warm and secure in my bed. But as my brain starts working again, I start to process the strangeness of listening to an animal that, for me, only existed on TV. Sleeping in this bed suddenly feels foreign. My distance from home feels more real. It is a feeling that either doesn't exist or that I ignore during the day.

Saturday morning I'm planning to visit Kruger National Park for the first time. The gate is within 20 km from home. I'll go tell the neighbors to keep it down after 10pm. Readers of this blog will probably be seeing many more animal photos beginning Sunday. Maybe even an amazing video?

Two years

Today is our two-year anniversary. This brings home the hard part about this trip---wishing I were together with Jessica. Luckily I get to visit the week before July 4 so we can see each other and have some fun.

Also on this day is the anniversary of the 1976 Soweto uprising in which 566 children were killed. Youth Day is a national holiday so I was able to sleep late. There was a big memorial gathering in Johannesburg with an address by new President Jacob Zuma.

And as if you needed any other reasons to mark today's date, June 16, 1904 is "Bloomsday," the day described in Joyce's Ulysses.

Have a nice day.

Back in South Africa...

This week the Confederation Cup is happening here as sort of a warm-up for the World Cup in 2010. What is the Confederation Cup? I haven't mentioned soccer yet on this blog, but it is very big here. People are excited and honored to host the World Cup next year. It will the first World Cup on African soil, and South Africans are proud it will be in their backyard.

There are eight teams in this year's Confed Cup, including South Africa, USA, Iraq and Brazil. This week Team USA plays both the 2006 World Cup champion Italy and the perennial powerhouse Brazil. South Africa's first game is this afternoon versus Iraq.

I won't be able to go to any games, although I think it would be great fun. Maybe I can find a TV to watch them.

A note to authoritarian regimes

This is what you get when election results over the voting period produce an R-squared of .998.



More here and here. Tweets here.


UPDATE: It seems that the plot of vote-share over official election announcements is not very convincing. However, the official results apparently show landslide victories for Ahmadenijad in every province and urban and rural regions. This is very unlikely. More reasons to suspect fraud here.

Skills

The past few days my routine has been to meet with the field teams in the morning and then work on my own stuff during the day. It's necessary because this week is finals week at UW and I have some assignments due. I am working in the data entry room, where my two Data Typists are entering the first week's completed questionnaires. That works out nicely because I can see problems on the questionnaires (i.e. Field Worker mistakes) plus any bugs in our data entry system in real time.

I came here with little experience using Microsoft SQL Server and no experience using CSPro, the US Census software that we have adapted for our project. I'm a bit proud of myself right now because I've been able to change our system from the server, revising the data entry front end for the DTs and manipulating data when needed.

Essentially I've been called upon to do things I wasn't very confident about, and it has turned out well (so far). I think this sort of practical experience could be really useful when I start up my own projects that include a data collection phase.

\end boastful post

Vocabulary lesson, or how not to spell Shangaan words

Just in case you ever meet a someone from this area, you should memorize this easy and friendly exchange:

"Avuxeni"
"Aii-ay. Khunjam?"
"Fukwile. Min jahne?"
"I kona."

I'm sure I have not spelled these words correctly. The basic translation:

"Good morning."
"Aii-ay (don't know what this means, you just say it). How are you?"
"I'm happy. How is it?"
"Fine."

Plus a bonus word I learned due to our current weather.

"Shaburi" means it will rain.

Unrelated to Africa...

NPR Picture Show has some cool photos of the Michigan Central Station. I got to see this place from the outside during PAA in Detroit.

It was really remarkable to see a big building sitting on a hill by the riverside, but looking straight through it to Canada on the other side of the water. The architecture in Detroit is really interesting, as it was built with all that auto money back in the 1920s. Now there just aren't enough people living there to sustain that city.

Why I am uncomfortable with "ethnic tourism"

Today while in Hoedspruit I stopped at the tourism center for lunch. This place has a good deli but it is depressingly cheesy. The buildings are sided by faux wood poles and topped by faux straw thatch roofs. The complex has many shops, some of which purport to sell "African" goods, and others, like a jewelry store, that have no direct connection to a place or time, just to tourists' wallets.

When I pulled in I could see some sort of entertainment happening on a patio. It turned out to be 8-10 black men and women dressed in "traditional" African clothing, playing handdrums, singing and dancing. Upon slightly closer inspection it became clear their clothes were not really the animal furs they were meant to imitate, but some cheap faux material. The drums could have come from any music shop. I couldn't tell for sure if the songs were traditional, but I had a strong impression they were not.

I reflected on my aversion to these things. The scene reminded me of the Mayan tourism center Jess and I saw in Mexico and the huge tepees on the sides of roads in some states. My reactions are always mixed. I am embarrassed by the (usually white) audience eating it up. I think of who hires the dancers and, in this case, if that person makes applicants remove their shirts to judge their musculature before offering a job. I wonder how the dancers feel about their jobs and how closely they identify with any local or ethnic traditions. After all, this dance could be done anywhere in Africa to the pleasure of tourists. It was almost like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The finale may as well have included a big black cauldron for a cannibal bit. (I exaggerate...)

But isn't it true that these people are just making a living? That maybe they are not being exploited, but are exploiting the tourists, selling a silly caricature to people who want their preconceptions confirmed? If you can do a song and dance to make some money and live your life, what is wrong with that? To cast the performers as victims of modernity would be to ignore their agency--all the legitimate reasons they have to do what they do.

The reason I'm uncomfortable with these displays is that the entire scene seems to dehumanize the performers and devalue whatever authentic ethnic culture may exist. But I also recognize the "hey, it's a living" aspect.

\end sociology 101 essay

And the picture at the right is kind of pretty but I posted it because it is totally typical of what I've seen here. The place is somewhat poor and sure, traditions and history matter> But a romanticized savage place frozen in time is simply not to be found here.

A poor photo of an elephant

Today I drove to Hoedspruit, about 25km north, for groceries and to get out of the house a bit. The road to Hoedspruit is bordered by private game reserves the entire way. Along that road is where I saw 5 or 6 giraffes on my way to Acornhoek from the airport. Today on my way home I saw some cars pulled over and knew they must be looking at an animal. I slowed down and looked over to see a pack of elephants at a watering hole. By the time I pulled over and got a picture, only one was left, and she/he quickly turned and left. Here is the evidence.

EDIT: Make that a herd or a parade of elephants, not a pack. These distinctions are important, as I believe there is a Jeopardy! category related to this issue.

Happy Birthday!

To my brother Michael (27) and my my brother from another mother, Evan (28).

What the heck am I doing?

Since my blog has gone viral (thanks Mom) and millions of people stream to this site to read my eloquent words, a few have asked what I'm doing and why. Here's a quick overview.

Parts of the developing world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, have very poor systems of vital registration (birth certificates, death certificates, and the government records created by those). Governments, NGOs and other planners need good estimates of vital rates to figure out how to spend limited resources. For example, where will you build the next school? What sort of public health intervention would give you the most bang for the buck and where should you put it? So in the absence of death registration they have turned to national censuses and representative surveys to give them an idea of mortality rates. Examples include the Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) that are run throughout the world and many national censuses, including the one run by StatsSA. In these questionnaires they ask people dates of birth and death for their parents, siblings, children, and other household members. This is called an indirect method of mortality estimation because you do not observe deaths per se, you observe living people's memories of deaths. The answers people give are then more likely to have errors than a database of death certificates would have. And you can get biased results because the chances of dying for any individual are likely correlated to their family members' chances of dying, especially during an AIDS epidemic. It is possible your survey could miss entire households who have died or their survivors have moved somewhere else. So there are some sources of error and bias in these standard questions.

Furthermore, demographers (like me) use these data to estimate mortality rates with special techniques that have been developed in the past 30 years. How well do these techniques work? We are not exactly sure.

So we are conducting a survey using the same types of questions to households located in a demographic surveillance site called Agincourt. (Is your mother alive? When was she born? When did she die? etc.) The Agincourt DSS has tracked the migration, fertility and mortality of a bounded population since 1993. They have unusually high-quality data. We use their data as the "gold standard" of mortality estimates in this place. We will compare our results to their results and see just how much error or bias could be expected from a census or survey in this region.

As for my part in all this? I'm the project site manager for the project. As you probably read below, I am here to coordinate the data collection that is actually carried out by my teams of field workers. The questions are asked in Shangaan, so I am not of any use as far as interviewing. I do provide them with the maps, questionnaires, etc. that they need and I coordinate all the logistical issues that must be coordinated if our study is to have any scientific validity.

This work is related to my dissertation research, so I hope that this data collection will be useful as I try to get a PhD in the next few years. It's also a really interesting professional and personal experience.

I think I can say I would love living around here, actually, if not for the fact that my lovely wife, annoying but sweet dog and all my family were back in the states. So, come for a visit and I'll show you around this place. You have until September 5 to get here. Just don't all come at once, since I can't host the entire Internet in my half of a rented house.

Scenery, plus an outhouse

First day in the field

Today was the long-awaited first day in the field. Here is my friend Erroll, looking quite cheerful while getting ready to ask people about their dead family members.

We had some annoying problems coordinating the transportation for my two teams, so we got into the field around 11 instead of 8 and I drove hundreds of kilometers on dusty, bumpy dirt roads. Here are a few more photos from the day.







































































The thatch-roof hut neighbors my field office. It is probably pretty typical of the houses in this rural area. The rough-looking interior of a house is my field office. And the bull---well, let's just say I had my fair share of dealing with bovines and their leavings today.

Language

There are 11 official languages in South Africa. The local people here in Limpopo province are called Tsonga and they speak Shangaan. I am beginning to learn a few things and I hope to keep building my vocabulary. Avuxeni [ah-vu- SHEN-ee] means good morning, and that is about as far as I have gotten. I expect the fieldworkers will have more respect for me if I am showing effort at communicating in their language. They all read, write and speak English, and many of them speak several additional languages. My unilingualism is tres gauche.

Afrikaans is the language spoken by the Afrikaners and most Coloureds. How quickly a little post about language becomes heavy with the history of apartheid. Coloureds are mixed race people who, as I understand it, did not qualify as "white" under South African law but had more privileges than blacks. From what I've been told, the white minority government's attempt to force all schools to become Afrikaans-only in 1976 led to the Soweto protests, which led to this photo and to the world learning how brutal the white SA regime really was, and eventually the end of apartheid.

The photographer is named Sam Nzimi and he lives within the Agincourt study area. I will be here on 16 June this year for National Youth Day so I'll be interested to see what happens. There is a lot to learn about the history of this place, and it is fascinating. Learn more about the history of the Tsonga here.