The conference officially opened at 2 pm on the first day. I had to arrive early in the morning, however, to set up our booth and to attend some meetings.
And so early that morning, as I walked out of the taxi and into the lobby of the five-star hotel hosting the conference, a guy with a major international organization (and coincidentally, the same guy who made some calls to get me my visa back to India!) saw me and asked
"Theresa! What are you doing limping across the lobby dressed like that with your heel in your hand?"
Good question indeed. When we once asked a friend why he had only Rs. 40 (USD $1) in his pocket after traveling from Bhubaneswar to Chennai (about a 36-hour journey), he replied, "That's a complicated question. It has to do with how I was brought up and stuff."
For me, the same. I am basically incapable of arriving at functions in a put-together manner. Just a few weeks ago, I broke the strap on another shoe at my cousin's engagement party. I arrived at a friend's baby shower with blood on my face and a swollen cheek after tripping while running after a bus (yeah, I should leave that to Indian men.)
I had brought a couple of light summer dresses with me because I never get to wear them in India. They aren't skanky but they are knee-length and sleeveless and have a neckline that is a little lower than what good girls wear back there. One of them I once wore to an event I nicknamed "Expat Prom" in Chennai, but only after I was sure that a car would both pick me up and drop me off; the other I would wear, but only over jeans and with a dupatta covering my entire top half.
So I wore my favorite black summer dress, which is very cute, and yes, appropriate for a night out but, yes, also for work. And so as I shuffled out of the taxi into the five-star hotel, the strap on my two-inch heels broke.
My hotel was half an hour away and I was supposed to start assisting with a meeting in less than an hour. I simply could not attend barefoot to this conference: yeah, there are a lot of NGOs, but even we have standards. Best bet was to try and fix the shoe to get through the day.
Okay, no problem. When this happened at my cousin's engagement party, my dad and I headed to the nearest 7-11 (which was about two feet away) and bought some Krazzy glue (or the equivalent of, which had a funny name like "quick sticky stuff" but in Mandarin.) There was a little sizzling and a lot of glue and the shoe was fixed, for the next two hours at least, before they broke again and I had to wear my aunt's three-inch Nine West flaming red stilettos. Amazing shoes, I have to tell you, but I looked a little weird and definitely could not walk.
I had also broken the strap on a sandal when I was in Dharamsala with two friends on our way to the Miss Tibet pageant. (Yeah, a little weird.) That wasn't so bad -- I walked barefoot to the hotel hosting the pageant and then borrowed Scotch tape from the reception desk, and I was fine.
Back to me and the cocktail dress and the shoe and the five-star. I had no clue where to find Krazzy glue here in Dakar, unfortunately. So I headed to the reception, showed them the shoe, and gave my best "I'm a silly girl, heehee" smile. They smiled back with a laugh and handed over a glue stick. Hmm. Not going to work. No tape available. Finally, they gave me a stapler. That didn't work, either, but it looked like my best bet, so I limped back to the couch with the stapler and the shoe to think over a creative solution.
The gentleman from that international organization who helped me get my visa sat next to me. He said, "no, you're doing it entirely the wrong way" and proceeded to staple the strap to the upper layer of the shoe, and then staple the upper layer to the lower! Ah, brilliance!
I thanked him profusely and was quite embarrassed that he had now saved me in two situations which had absolutely nothing to do with my field of work.
I arrived at my meeting, sat down, and the strap broke again. Well, at least I was sitting down.
After the meeting, I hobbled up to the hotel shop and examined their very small shoe collection. I found an adorable pair of black kitten heels, which I usually don't really like, which matched my dress better than the destroyed pair. They were, well, about as much as my hotel room costs per day -- but that's my fault for having to shop at the hotel.
So I wore my kitten heels the rest of the day, and the next day, and my feet and my legs still hurt as a result, but I looked cute, and there are no straps on them to break, and I have a souvenir (a French word!) to bring back with me. Not bad at all.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Friday, November 6, 2009
dakar!
(I just figured out how to change the keyboard settings so that this French keyboard now speaks English. Yay!)
The conference is officially over. It's been an exhausting, but amazing, week.
I need to explain that I never thought I would blog so much about a conference, and that I feel a little silly that a few meetings and lectures would get me going this much. But then the TED conference is something of a life-changing event for the world, so much that people will pay thousands to travel and to attend. So perhaps it wouldn't be such a far reach that this conference would get me going.
My expectations for the conference were that it would be, well, a conference. It would be work. I've attended, and even spoken at, conferences in my previous job, and I knew that the sessions would be of variable quality, the food would be amazing, and that there would hopefully be an open bar.
But I had no expectation that I would walk away, frankly, a little inspired. It just hasn't been that way for me in the past. Don't get me wrong -- this was work, too. Non-stop networking can be exhausting, even for someone as social as me, because you have to present a professional side of you at all times, even when you're trying to relax over a beer. I love meeting people but I really needed some time alone after the first couple of days to just sit quietly with my thoughts.
But back to the inspiration. And so I discussed the recent criticisms of the Kiva platform (all the rage in America like a year or two ago) with a microfinance institution that's actually using it in with a VP of a large microfinance institution in Mongolia. I tossed around the pros and cons of particularly methodologies for impact evaluations with a few Europeans will be running large projects in Kenya. I discussed the challenges of weather index insurance with implementers in Peru and in Bangladesh. I listened to an experienced Scandinavian businessman discuss how he planned to modify his current product for this market. I sat with a regulator from Ghana to explain the open-source technology on my laptop (which is really something I think more NGOs should look into. I didn't think it could be done -- but it's been done, with minimal issues, at my current NGO.)
What's cool about coming in at this stage is that none of us have figured it out yet. The industry is just too new. As the businessman pointed out to me, we will work it all out in the next 5-10 years and soon it will be a process like any other. But for the time being, it's quite exciting to get things going.
It was great to feel somewhat useful, too. I by no means know a lot, but I was able to brief some total newcomers to the industry on some of the basics of the sector, particularly in the Indian context. I was able to suggest a few good articles to people -- the person using Kiva, for example, hadn't heard of these recent criticisms. I was able to link my bosses and others to people I knew in the sector whom they wished to meet. I'm a novice but not that much more so than everyone else.
And while I heard ideas and exchanged some of my own, I also got a better sense of, well, what I want to be when I grow up. You can be an implementer on the ground, live a tougher life, face the most difficult challenges, have the narrowest impact, but have the most control and ownership over your work. Things can move very fast since you decide the pace. You can work for a bilateral and be a little more removed, a lot more comfortable, but the trade-off is that you give up some control and ownership. And with a multilateral, you get to travel a ton and have the broadest reach, but the least control over it all and the democracy / bureaucracy of it all may slow things down.
At the moment, I am (sort of) moving from on the ground to a higher level -- not exactly multilateral, but I'm getting a taste of it. I shared a cab with a guy yesterday who is about my age, with my experience, and I asked him what he thought. He wants to work for a multilateral when he's much older and you have lots of meaningful experience upon which to draw, and then you can actually direct a program. I agree -- I think right now I need to stick closer to a lower level and figure out what's going on.
I appreciated seeing a variety of personalities in the industry. I am further convinced that to be successful at anything you have to be at least 50% totally crazy, because that is the case with almost everyone I met. It's awesome to meet people with crazy hair dressing in a totally funky, forward fashion at the age of 40 or so because they can -- and then when you speak, you realize, damn, they know a lot. Or to hear the circuitous, meandering and somewhat bizarre comments of someone just to find out that when you are with them one-on-one, they are actually a genius. It's not that I wish weirdness on people. It's just that, I, too, have a pretty ridiculous style sometimes (I promise to stop cutting my own hair) and a disastrous speaking ability, and so it's nice to know that those occur to others, people I admire, too.
The businessman I talked to was completely new to the sector and only came to investigate as a potential market segment. When I asked him his impressions of the conference as an sectoral outsider, he said that he was surprised by its "sincerity." I guess I'd have to go with that, too. It was sincere. The sector is too damn new for any of us to go around posturing like we know it all or that one organization is so much better than another one, as I've seen at other ones. The sector is still small enough that you can get all of us in a room to talk to each other.
The conference opened with the chairman noting that microinsurance is not necessarily the first priority for changing the world, and I agree. I don't think anybody has any pretense that figuring out how to make micro health insurance or weather insurance work will be a silver bullet that leads everyone out of poverty (which seems to be the expectation that everyone has had for microfinance, which seems a little unfair, to be frank. Having a savings account and a credit card hasn't immediately made me rich -- why should it do the same for everyone else?) But I see it having a chance, a good chance, if we figure out how to do it, of leaving people better off than they were without it.
I have a lot of friends who talk about "entrepreneurship." After a few or more years working for "the man," many of us do hope to find some sort of new challenge, where we get to test our own ideas. Most of my friends are private sector-minded in that way -- but if they only knew. The truly tough questions are out here -- not necessarily microinsurance but developing products that leave people better off with than without. As reminded during the closing plenary, "do no harm." If you are looking for a challenge, like that businessman was, this is it.
My former roommate and I are both "fellows" in this field -- quite an honor, actually, because we are given linkages and an ability to ask a lot of dumb questions to important people. She mentioned that in five years, she wants to be onto the next big thing in development. I didn't fully get what she meant at the time, because her schooling and her seven years of work experience are solely in insurance. But I get it now: our role is to get the sector to a point where it knows what the hell it's talking about, where the conference is more of an exposition than just discussion of ideas and large, successful players are bashing each other and the smaller ones ar criticizing the bigger ones for mission drift. And once we've done that, hopefully in the next few years, we should look out for the next big thing.
Hey, I'm not saying we, or I, will be successful. But I have the inspiration to try.
The conference is officially over. It's been an exhausting, but amazing, week.
I need to explain that I never thought I would blog so much about a conference, and that I feel a little silly that a few meetings and lectures would get me going this much. But then the TED conference is something of a life-changing event for the world, so much that people will pay thousands to travel and to attend. So perhaps it wouldn't be such a far reach that this conference would get me going.
My expectations for the conference were that it would be, well, a conference. It would be work. I've attended, and even spoken at, conferences in my previous job, and I knew that the sessions would be of variable quality, the food would be amazing, and that there would hopefully be an open bar.
But I had no expectation that I would walk away, frankly, a little inspired. It just hasn't been that way for me in the past. Don't get me wrong -- this was work, too. Non-stop networking can be exhausting, even for someone as social as me, because you have to present a professional side of you at all times, even when you're trying to relax over a beer. I love meeting people but I really needed some time alone after the first couple of days to just sit quietly with my thoughts.
But back to the inspiration. And so I discussed the recent criticisms of the Kiva platform (all the rage in America like a year or two ago) with a microfinance institution that's actually using it in with a VP of a large microfinance institution in Mongolia. I tossed around the pros and cons of particularly methodologies for impact evaluations with a few Europeans will be running large projects in Kenya. I discussed the challenges of weather index insurance with implementers in Peru and in Bangladesh. I listened to an experienced Scandinavian businessman discuss how he planned to modify his current product for this market. I sat with a regulator from Ghana to explain the open-source technology on my laptop (which is really something I think more NGOs should look into. I didn't think it could be done -- but it's been done, with minimal issues, at my current NGO.)
What's cool about coming in at this stage is that none of us have figured it out yet. The industry is just too new. As the businessman pointed out to me, we will work it all out in the next 5-10 years and soon it will be a process like any other. But for the time being, it's quite exciting to get things going.
It was great to feel somewhat useful, too. I by no means know a lot, but I was able to brief some total newcomers to the industry on some of the basics of the sector, particularly in the Indian context. I was able to suggest a few good articles to people -- the person using Kiva, for example, hadn't heard of these recent criticisms. I was able to link my bosses and others to people I knew in the sector whom they wished to meet. I'm a novice but not that much more so than everyone else.
And while I heard ideas and exchanged some of my own, I also got a better sense of, well, what I want to be when I grow up. You can be an implementer on the ground, live a tougher life, face the most difficult challenges, have the narrowest impact, but have the most control and ownership over your work. Things can move very fast since you decide the pace. You can work for a bilateral and be a little more removed, a lot more comfortable, but the trade-off is that you give up some control and ownership. And with a multilateral, you get to travel a ton and have the broadest reach, but the least control over it all and the democracy / bureaucracy of it all may slow things down.
At the moment, I am (sort of) moving from on the ground to a higher level -- not exactly multilateral, but I'm getting a taste of it. I shared a cab with a guy yesterday who is about my age, with my experience, and I asked him what he thought. He wants to work for a multilateral when he's much older and you have lots of meaningful experience upon which to draw, and then you can actually direct a program. I agree -- I think right now I need to stick closer to a lower level and figure out what's going on.
I appreciated seeing a variety of personalities in the industry. I am further convinced that to be successful at anything you have to be at least 50% totally crazy, because that is the case with almost everyone I met. It's awesome to meet people with crazy hair dressing in a totally funky, forward fashion at the age of 40 or so because they can -- and then when you speak, you realize, damn, they know a lot. Or to hear the circuitous, meandering and somewhat bizarre comments of someone just to find out that when you are with them one-on-one, they are actually a genius. It's not that I wish weirdness on people. It's just that, I, too, have a pretty ridiculous style sometimes (I promise to stop cutting my own hair) and a disastrous speaking ability, and so it's nice to know that those occur to others, people I admire, too.
The businessman I talked to was completely new to the sector and only came to investigate as a potential market segment. When I asked him his impressions of the conference as an sectoral outsider, he said that he was surprised by its "sincerity." I guess I'd have to go with that, too. It was sincere. The sector is too damn new for any of us to go around posturing like we know it all or that one organization is so much better than another one, as I've seen at other ones. The sector is still small enough that you can get all of us in a room to talk to each other.
The conference opened with the chairman noting that microinsurance is not necessarily the first priority for changing the world, and I agree. I don't think anybody has any pretense that figuring out how to make micro health insurance or weather insurance work will be a silver bullet that leads everyone out of poverty (which seems to be the expectation that everyone has had for microfinance, which seems a little unfair, to be frank. Having a savings account and a credit card hasn't immediately made me rich -- why should it do the same for everyone else?) But I see it having a chance, a good chance, if we figure out how to do it, of leaving people better off than they were without it.
I have a lot of friends who talk about "entrepreneurship." After a few or more years working for "the man," many of us do hope to find some sort of new challenge, where we get to test our own ideas. Most of my friends are private sector-minded in that way -- but if they only knew. The truly tough questions are out here -- not necessarily microinsurance but developing products that leave people better off with than without. As reminded during the closing plenary, "do no harm." If you are looking for a challenge, like that businessman was, this is it.
My former roommate and I are both "fellows" in this field -- quite an honor, actually, because we are given linkages and an ability to ask a lot of dumb questions to important people. She mentioned that in five years, she wants to be onto the next big thing in development. I didn't fully get what she meant at the time, because her schooling and her seven years of work experience are solely in insurance. But I get it now: our role is to get the sector to a point where it knows what the hell it's talking about, where the conference is more of an exposition than just discussion of ideas and large, successful players are bashing each other and the smaller ones ar criticizing the bigger ones for mission drift. And once we've done that, hopefully in the next few years, we should look out for the next big thing.
Hey, I'm not saying we, or I, will be successful. But I have the inspiration to try.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
conference!
In a previous post, I compared Dakar to Chennai. After a friend's response, I realized that I needed to clarify: I meant that comparison in the best possible way. Yes, I know I've complained a ton about Chennai: the humidity is killer and the auto-wallahs are frustrating to the point of being a deterrent from going outside. But, particularly after living in Delhi, I appreciate Chennai's humbleness: it moves at a slow pace, no one cares how you dress, and life is fairly chill. Add in that Chennai is by the water (okay, you have to leave the city to get to any nice parts of the beach, but still) and it ain't so bad.
If you just remove the five bazillion people from Chennai, give everyone space, tone down the humidity (but still leave a little bit), move the beach back into the city, throw in a ton of really good food and an even better live music scene, you have Dakar.
Basically, I've had an amazing week.
I've never flown to a foreign country for a conference before. However, I have flown to a foreign country for work; I've also attended conferences for work. In neither of those cases did I ever go out, like, every night and have an amazing time. First night here was a reception and a dinner on the beach; the past two nights and tonight have been drinks, great food (amazing cheese!), live music, and fantastically hilarious company. Totally unexpected, given that I don't know Dakar, I don't anyone from Dakar, and I don't speak a lick of French.
I didn't know that my fellow conference attendees would basically be as nutty as I am. I didn't know that, although we all take our jobs very seriously during the day, although we are all running around in suits and looking quite severe, we all would drink up the alcohol at the open bar receptions and then head out for the next big scene.
And so two nights about was dinner in an outdoor garden with Senegalese pop music and some gnocchi with a lot of cheese (yum). And yesterday was a kooky dinner reception replete with bad wine, local beer, and, of course, very few vegetarian options, followed by a really bad club where, of course, I was one of two people in the group who didn't speak French. (The group included a Mexican, a Swede, a Spaniard, 3 Frenchpersons (?), a Dutchman, and a Pole... and yes, they all speak fluent English in addition to French and their own native languages. Damn.) And today was a night of amazing music: first, hippie-like Senegalese blues at a place where a guy followed the music with slam in Wolof, and then a woman doing a sort of hip-hop / reggae thing that had the whole place on its feet.
As a bonus, I found out that three German guys from the conference are staying at my hotel. Which was great because they could get me home safe and sound at 2 am. And of course, they all switched to English when I joined them, solely for my benefit.
I'll follow up with more on all the amazing professional development and a few funny stories ("uh, I think my eye just exploded") but suffice it to say: I didn't expect to have this much fun in Dakar. I came here for work, not to play, and I have worked -- but damn, I didn't know that it could be this much fun.
If you just remove the five bazillion people from Chennai, give everyone space, tone down the humidity (but still leave a little bit), move the beach back into the city, throw in a ton of really good food and an even better live music scene, you have Dakar.
Basically, I've had an amazing week.
I've never flown to a foreign country for a conference before. However, I have flown to a foreign country for work; I've also attended conferences for work. In neither of those cases did I ever go out, like, every night and have an amazing time. First night here was a reception and a dinner on the beach; the past two nights and tonight have been drinks, great food (amazing cheese!), live music, and fantastically hilarious company. Totally unexpected, given that I don't know Dakar, I don't anyone from Dakar, and I don't speak a lick of French.
I didn't know that my fellow conference attendees would basically be as nutty as I am. I didn't know that, although we all take our jobs very seriously during the day, although we are all running around in suits and looking quite severe, we all would drink up the alcohol at the open bar receptions and then head out for the next big scene.
And so two nights about was dinner in an outdoor garden with Senegalese pop music and some gnocchi with a lot of cheese (yum). And yesterday was a kooky dinner reception replete with bad wine, local beer, and, of course, very few vegetarian options, followed by a really bad club where, of course, I was one of two people in the group who didn't speak French. (The group included a Mexican, a Swede, a Spaniard, 3 Frenchpersons (?), a Dutchman, and a Pole... and yes, they all speak fluent English in addition to French and their own native languages. Damn.) And today was a night of amazing music: first, hippie-like Senegalese blues at a place where a guy followed the music with slam in Wolof, and then a woman doing a sort of hip-hop / reggae thing that had the whole place on its feet.
As a bonus, I found out that three German guys from the conference are staying at my hotel. Which was great because they could get me home safe and sound at 2 am. And of course, they all switched to English when I joined them, solely for my benefit.
I'll follow up with more on all the amazing professional development and a few funny stories ("uh, I think my eye just exploded") but suffice it to say: I didn't expect to have this much fun in Dakar. I came here for work, not to play, and I have worked -- but damn, I didn't know that it could be this much fun.
Monday, November 2, 2009
day 2
I'm exhausted -- a combination of jet lag and a full day, starting at 9 am and lasting until I got back to the hotel, at 11 pm. I've taken a better room in the hotel (my colleague didn't like her room enough to up and move to another one. And hers was better than mine.) And it's nice to be back with my own thoughts again. I know conferences are supposed to be about networking, and finally I'm in a position where I know maybe a little, or at least, enough to not sound totally out of my element. And I'm not expected to know a lot: I'm a fellow, which means I'm here to learn, which means I have a special pass to have everyone be patient with me as I ask a lot of obvious questions.
Today was the "pre-conference" day: anyone who received a fellowship or another kind of grant was invited to a special session the day before the launch of the conference. It was really inspiring. The grants and the fellowship are both only in their first year, so that meant that everyone is just starting to get things going. I can't explain how cool it is to me to talk to someone who has launched a seemingly impossible -- and for that reason, innovation -- product in Peru or Kenya or Bangladesh, talking to him or her about the challenges in launching it, how it really is an iterative process, you start and you make a mistake and you start over again and you keep going until you figure out something. That this is uncharted territory is why I am so interested in this field: no one knows the correct answer yet.
I also very much enjoyed the "international" aspect of it all. Of the seven fellows who attended, I am the only American. That never happens. In India, I've met a range of foreigners but unfortunately Americans tend to dominate the crowd. I heard English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German all within the same hour. At dinner of ten, we had representation from Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Taiwan, India, and Mexico. I swapped visa horror stories with the guy next to me -- a Dutch man who spoke Tamil after spending a year-and-a-half in Madurai. Languages switched among English, Spanish, and French... with English dominating. So weird how that's the case. If you had to be more or less monolingual, how lucky am I that English was that one language.
These conferences are unbelievably expensive: registration fee, airfare, hotel, and time away from our daily jobs. When do they become worthwhile? On days like today, when I am reminded of why I want to be here, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there.
Today was the "pre-conference" day: anyone who received a fellowship or another kind of grant was invited to a special session the day before the launch of the conference. It was really inspiring. The grants and the fellowship are both only in their first year, so that meant that everyone is just starting to get things going. I can't explain how cool it is to me to talk to someone who has launched a seemingly impossible -- and for that reason, innovation -- product in Peru or Kenya or Bangladesh, talking to him or her about the challenges in launching it, how it really is an iterative process, you start and you make a mistake and you start over again and you keep going until you figure out something. That this is uncharted territory is why I am so interested in this field: no one knows the correct answer yet.
I also very much enjoyed the "international" aspect of it all. Of the seven fellows who attended, I am the only American. That never happens. In India, I've met a range of foreigners but unfortunately Americans tend to dominate the crowd. I heard English, French, Spanish, Dutch, and German all within the same hour. At dinner of ten, we had representation from Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Taiwan, India, and Mexico. I swapped visa horror stories with the guy next to me -- a Dutch man who spoke Tamil after spending a year-and-a-half in Madurai. Languages switched among English, Spanish, and French... with English dominating. So weird how that's the case. If you had to be more or less monolingual, how lucky am I that English was that one language.
These conferences are unbelievably expensive: registration fee, airfare, hotel, and time away from our daily jobs. When do they become worthwhile? On days like today, when I am reminded of why I want to be here, where I want to go, and what I need to do to get there.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
senegal!
It was a real b*tch to go from India to Senegal: a nine-hour flight from Delhi to Brussels departing at 3 in the morning (following... a Halloween party on the rooftop of a USAID employee following a day at the office, working Saturday should be banned) and then a four-layover in Brussels and then a six-hour flight to Dakar. Sure, the flight back to the States is worse -- but when I go back there, I don't try to be up and alert and at 'em the next day at 9 am. Let's see what shape I'm in tomorrow.
Mind you, on the flight from Delhi to Brussels, I sat next to a very large man who snored to high heaven. Even with earplugs, even with me blasting music or a movie soundtrack at the highest volume, I could still every one of his snores, like a lawnmower was right next to my ear. I pity his poor wife (though I think she's gotten used to it -- she just slept right on through.) The last straw was when he rearranged his legs so that his leg ended up in my space (you know, my space where i get to store things underneath the seat in front of me.) I actually said, "for the love of God!" and he woke up and moved himself. Other eventful moments on that flight were me dropping my glasses while trying to fall asleep and then crawling on my hands and knees, ass high in the air, trying to find where they might have gone to. (Into the backseat pocket of a hippie with a shaved head and two tufts, it turns out.)
I had a Belgian waffle at the Brussels airport. I also had deep sticker shock as my Starbucks tall caramel machiatto cost 5.10 Euros (about $7.50 USD.) I nearly cried.
On the flight from Brussels to Dakar, I was seated next to a guy scratching his balls for the entire first hour. Really, after two years in India, you'd think it wouldn't bother me anymore, but I finally just got up and moved to another seat. (And I just had to be like, eeeeew, you're going to eat with that hand without washing it first?)
Landing in Dakar, in comparison to Taipei, Los Angeles, or Delhi, is a piece of cake. The guy at immigration barely looked at my passport as he waved me through. My luggage appeared within two minutes. Customs took about thirty seconds. The only thing was that a fake driver appeared with my and my colleague's name and he tried to get us to bribe the customs officials with 10 Euros. That was a little strange. Eventually we found the legit driver and arrived at our hotel, safe and sound.
I first traveled to west Africa in 2006 on behalf of the US government. At the time, Russia was the closest I had come to visiting a "developing" country. So Mali threw me for a loop. I remember lots and lots of French, lots of sun, and lots of dust. Since then, I've gained a couple of years of life, albeit a pretty cush life, in a developing country. I was interested to see how I'd feel upon my return to west Africa (granted, Senegal isn't the same as Mali).
My first impression leaving the airport was, weirdly, that Dakar had that same chill Feel as Chennai. Imagine Chennai without the crowds and the oppressive humidity. (What's left? skeptics say! haha) Senegal's hot, it's dry, the streets have a variety of shops and people milling about, minding their own business, but it's not filled to the brim with people like in Chennai.
The conference will be held at Dakar's top hotel, which, even with the discount, costs, $270 USD a night. My fellowship coordinator booked us at a different hotel to save some money. Okay, fine. This place is... humble, to say the least. To save electricity -- a noble goal, for sure -- the lighting in the narrow hallways is kept off until it detects movement, which results in a really creepy feeling for it all. My room doesn't have any natural light; the one window overlooks the small inner courtyard where the cleaners rinse out their mops. I sink so low into the bed that I might as well sleep on the floor. Certainly not a $270 hotel, but not even close to being worth the $80/night that it is costing my fellowship.
Still, it's got its charms. It's in the middle of downtown Dakar, and just looking down the street you get a romantic feel for it all. Every room has free unlimited Internet, which is a real boon when you are depending on Skype to make all of your calls for the time being. But what really kicks ass is the amazing hotel restaurant, this Lebanese joint where my friend and I sat outside under a full moon, sipped Flag beer, and enjoyed an eight-course mezze platter dinner. We did our best but barely made a dent in it all: hummus, tabouleh, babaganoush, dolma, that amazing Lebanese cheese, fresh pita bread, and much more.
Sadly, I don't think I'll see much this week other than my own dumpy hotel and the incredibly fancy conference one... but I will enjoy staring out the window on the half hour ride in between.
Mind you, on the flight from Delhi to Brussels, I sat next to a very large man who snored to high heaven. Even with earplugs, even with me blasting music or a movie soundtrack at the highest volume, I could still every one of his snores, like a lawnmower was right next to my ear. I pity his poor wife (though I think she's gotten used to it -- she just slept right on through.) The last straw was when he rearranged his legs so that his leg ended up in my space (you know, my space where i get to store things underneath the seat in front of me.) I actually said, "for the love of God!" and he woke up and moved himself. Other eventful moments on that flight were me dropping my glasses while trying to fall asleep and then crawling on my hands and knees, ass high in the air, trying to find where they might have gone to. (Into the backseat pocket of a hippie with a shaved head and two tufts, it turns out.)
I had a Belgian waffle at the Brussels airport. I also had deep sticker shock as my Starbucks tall caramel machiatto cost 5.10 Euros (about $7.50 USD.) I nearly cried.
On the flight from Brussels to Dakar, I was seated next to a guy scratching his balls for the entire first hour. Really, after two years in India, you'd think it wouldn't bother me anymore, but I finally just got up and moved to another seat. (And I just had to be like, eeeeew, you're going to eat with that hand without washing it first?)
Landing in Dakar, in comparison to Taipei, Los Angeles, or Delhi, is a piece of cake. The guy at immigration barely looked at my passport as he waved me through. My luggage appeared within two minutes. Customs took about thirty seconds. The only thing was that a fake driver appeared with my and my colleague's name and he tried to get us to bribe the customs officials with 10 Euros. That was a little strange. Eventually we found the legit driver and arrived at our hotel, safe and sound.
I first traveled to west Africa in 2006 on behalf of the US government. At the time, Russia was the closest I had come to visiting a "developing" country. So Mali threw me for a loop. I remember lots and lots of French, lots of sun, and lots of dust. Since then, I've gained a couple of years of life, albeit a pretty cush life, in a developing country. I was interested to see how I'd feel upon my return to west Africa (granted, Senegal isn't the same as Mali).
My first impression leaving the airport was, weirdly, that Dakar had that same chill Feel as Chennai. Imagine Chennai without the crowds and the oppressive humidity. (What's left? skeptics say! haha) Senegal's hot, it's dry, the streets have a variety of shops and people milling about, minding their own business, but it's not filled to the brim with people like in Chennai.
The conference will be held at Dakar's top hotel, which, even with the discount, costs, $270 USD a night. My fellowship coordinator booked us at a different hotel to save some money. Okay, fine. This place is... humble, to say the least. To save electricity -- a noble goal, for sure -- the lighting in the narrow hallways is kept off until it detects movement, which results in a really creepy feeling for it all. My room doesn't have any natural light; the one window overlooks the small inner courtyard where the cleaners rinse out their mops. I sink so low into the bed that I might as well sleep on the floor. Certainly not a $270 hotel, but not even close to being worth the $80/night that it is costing my fellowship.
Still, it's got its charms. It's in the middle of downtown Dakar, and just looking down the street you get a romantic feel for it all. Every room has free unlimited Internet, which is a real boon when you are depending on Skype to make all of your calls for the time being. But what really kicks ass is the amazing hotel restaurant, this Lebanese joint where my friend and I sat outside under a full moon, sipped Flag beer, and enjoyed an eight-course mezze platter dinner. We did our best but barely made a dent in it all: hummus, tabouleh, babaganoush, dolma, that amazing Lebanese cheese, fresh pita bread, and much more.
Sadly, I don't think I'll see much this week other than my own dumpy hotel and the incredibly fancy conference one... but I will enjoy staring out the window on the half hour ride in between.
Monday, October 26, 2009
back again
I am in back in Delhi, after an amazing and equally exhausting two-and-a-half weeks.
I got my visa 15 min before the office closed this past Friday. I headed straight to the airport, caught the 8:30 flight to LA, arrived at home at 10:30, packed until half past midnight, called one of my oldest friends in LA who I hadn't had a chance to visit that week since I was chasing down my visa the whole time in SF, went to sleep, and woke up at 3:30 am for my 6 am flight to New York.
We arrived in New York at 2:30 pm. Transferred from JFK to EWR, which isn't really that complicated but just takes a lot longer than anyone thinks it should. Flight out of EWR delayed until 9 pm. Arrived in Delhi the next day at 9 pm India time.
Got out of immigration within 15 min -- faster than Taiwan or US immigration, what the heck? and grabbed my luggage and there was no line for the cabs, and got back to my apartment. Unloaded my stuff, and as I climbed the stairs and looked for the keys in my bag --
SH*T.
I left my purse in the car. Usually this would only be a minor disaster, with my Indian ATM card and PAN card (Indian equivalent of Social Security) and some cash, stamps, and business cards that look like I made them myself. But since I had just left the airport, my passport with my new, hard-won Indian visa was also in my purse. Since I had left the country in such a rush, I hadn't had a chance to make a photocopy of it before I left. The purse also contained the rest of my "US life," which, I thought at the time, was smart to put into a single bag for convenient access next time I return home: my American cell phone and all of my US cards and cash are in that pouch. In summary, any form of identification or money was gone.
Thankfully, my boyfriend had called me in the car after I landed so I had my cell in my hand, and my wonderful roommate was at home to let me in.
I called the taxi company, which is a fairly well-known and reliable private one in India (as opposed to the government pre-paid one, which you can trust but I would have written off my purse in the bureaucracy of it all.) They told me that the airport counter wasn't tied into their systems and why didn't I have the license plate number? Because I left the taxi voucher... in my purse. Dammit. They told me that the best they could do was lodge a complaint and I would get a phone call from an investigator in 24 hours. (Note: whenever anyone tells you in India that you will receive a call about anything in the future, assume you have been written off. It's been 24 hours, and I haven't received a phone call.)
I determined that my best bet was just to go back to the airport and beg, beg. The problem is that the taxi counter is right outside of baggage claim, and once you leave baggage claim, there are uniformed soldiers with very visible large guns whose express job is to keep you the hell out of there. At Hyderabad, I once had to backtrack into the baggage claim area and did so by batting my eyelashes heavily at the guards and playing up the lost foreigner card. Well, I had better get to batting.
What's great about living in India is that people are a little more willing to bend the rules, such as security guards in a case like this. What's a little more unsettling about living in India is that they are also more willing to bend the rules the other way. I could go back to the airport, the guards could let me in, but I could get to the airport counter and very likely find whoever was there totally unwilling to help me. They could direct me to the back of the line, they could tell me that they couldn't look it up in their systems, they could pretend not to understand my English, they could ask the guards to remove me.
In America, there would be a lost and found procedure; here, I would be lucky, even with such a professional company, if I ever got back my passport. You see, I really couldn't blame the driver if he decided to take it all. That purse, while it didn't contain much by American standards, maybe $200, held probably more than he earned in a month, not to mention the credit cards (nobody asks for a signature these days on anything.)
And Indians don't waste anything. I once threw out a pair of Rs. 250/- (USD $5) slippers since the thong (ooh, I feel so scandalous using that word) had broken on it. I later found that the maid found them when taking out my trash, fixed them, and took them for herself. Sobering for me. Anyway, while I would think that the rest of my purse was full of crap -- what would anyone do with a cheap American prepaid phone in India? -- you can guarantee that everything in it could be sold on the street. The driver had a lot of reason to sell it... and as a foreigner, even one who has been ripped off, I have to acknowledge that in some ways, it would only be fair: I have been given a windfall in life by nature of my place of birth, and sometimes someone else deserves one, too.
The driver was well aware that I was a clueless foreigner who probably wouldn't know the first thing about how to get her stuff back. Even if I identified the car, there was no way I could prove that I left my purse in the car or that he was the one who took it.
As it was 10:30 at night, I called the same taxi company to take me to the airport. Roommate handed me Rs. 1,000/- and sent me off.
Five minutes later, a car arrived. I thought it was my car to take me back to the airport, but it was the driver of the car that had taken me from the airport just an hour ago. He was holding my purse. Everything was in it. I thanked him profusely, over and over again, handed him a very large tip (still worth far less than what was in my wallet) and thought the whole thing over.
That was my welcome back to India. Kind of like The Big Lebowski, a bit dramatic but in the end nothing happened. Except that I went to bed that night thinking just what a cool, good person that driver was, that maybe I should rethink some of my assumptions, and that for some reason, all of this made a little more sense to me than the past two weeks "abroad" had.
I got my visa 15 min before the office closed this past Friday. I headed straight to the airport, caught the 8:30 flight to LA, arrived at home at 10:30, packed until half past midnight, called one of my oldest friends in LA who I hadn't had a chance to visit that week since I was chasing down my visa the whole time in SF, went to sleep, and woke up at 3:30 am for my 6 am flight to New York.
We arrived in New York at 2:30 pm. Transferred from JFK to EWR, which isn't really that complicated but just takes a lot longer than anyone thinks it should. Flight out of EWR delayed until 9 pm. Arrived in Delhi the next day at 9 pm India time.
Got out of immigration within 15 min -- faster than Taiwan or US immigration, what the heck? and grabbed my luggage and there was no line for the cabs, and got back to my apartment. Unloaded my stuff, and as I climbed the stairs and looked for the keys in my bag --
SH*T.
I left my purse in the car. Usually this would only be a minor disaster, with my Indian ATM card and PAN card (Indian equivalent of Social Security) and some cash, stamps, and business cards that look like I made them myself. But since I had just left the airport, my passport with my new, hard-won Indian visa was also in my purse. Since I had left the country in such a rush, I hadn't had a chance to make a photocopy of it before I left. The purse also contained the rest of my "US life," which, I thought at the time, was smart to put into a single bag for convenient access next time I return home: my American cell phone and all of my US cards and cash are in that pouch. In summary, any form of identification or money was gone.
Thankfully, my boyfriend had called me in the car after I landed so I had my cell in my hand, and my wonderful roommate was at home to let me in.
I called the taxi company, which is a fairly well-known and reliable private one in India (as opposed to the government pre-paid one, which you can trust but I would have written off my purse in the bureaucracy of it all.) They told me that the airport counter wasn't tied into their systems and why didn't I have the license plate number? Because I left the taxi voucher... in my purse. Dammit. They told me that the best they could do was lodge a complaint and I would get a phone call from an investigator in 24 hours. (Note: whenever anyone tells you in India that you will receive a call about anything in the future, assume you have been written off. It's been 24 hours, and I haven't received a phone call.)
I determined that my best bet was just to go back to the airport and beg, beg. The problem is that the taxi counter is right outside of baggage claim, and once you leave baggage claim, there are uniformed soldiers with very visible large guns whose express job is to keep you the hell out of there. At Hyderabad, I once had to backtrack into the baggage claim area and did so by batting my eyelashes heavily at the guards and playing up the lost foreigner card. Well, I had better get to batting.
What's great about living in India is that people are a little more willing to bend the rules, such as security guards in a case like this. What's a little more unsettling about living in India is that they are also more willing to bend the rules the other way. I could go back to the airport, the guards could let me in, but I could get to the airport counter and very likely find whoever was there totally unwilling to help me. They could direct me to the back of the line, they could tell me that they couldn't look it up in their systems, they could pretend not to understand my English, they could ask the guards to remove me.
In America, there would be a lost and found procedure; here, I would be lucky, even with such a professional company, if I ever got back my passport. You see, I really couldn't blame the driver if he decided to take it all. That purse, while it didn't contain much by American standards, maybe $200, held probably more than he earned in a month, not to mention the credit cards (nobody asks for a signature these days on anything.)
And Indians don't waste anything. I once threw out a pair of Rs. 250/- (USD $5) slippers since the thong (ooh, I feel so scandalous using that word) had broken on it. I later found that the maid found them when taking out my trash, fixed them, and took them for herself. Sobering for me. Anyway, while I would think that the rest of my purse was full of crap -- what would anyone do with a cheap American prepaid phone in India? -- you can guarantee that everything in it could be sold on the street. The driver had a lot of reason to sell it... and as a foreigner, even one who has been ripped off, I have to acknowledge that in some ways, it would only be fair: I have been given a windfall in life by nature of my place of birth, and sometimes someone else deserves one, too.
The driver was well aware that I was a clueless foreigner who probably wouldn't know the first thing about how to get her stuff back. Even if I identified the car, there was no way I could prove that I left my purse in the car or that he was the one who took it.
As it was 10:30 at night, I called the same taxi company to take me to the airport. Roommate handed me Rs. 1,000/- and sent me off.
Five minutes later, a car arrived. I thought it was my car to take me back to the airport, but it was the driver of the car that had taken me from the airport just an hour ago. He was holding my purse. Everything was in it. I thanked him profusely, over and over again, handed him a very large tip (still worth far less than what was in my wallet) and thought the whole thing over.
That was my welcome back to India. Kind of like The Big Lebowski, a bit dramatic but in the end nothing happened. Except that I went to bed that night thinking just what a cool, good person that driver was, that maybe I should rethink some of my assumptions, and that for some reason, all of this made a little more sense to me than the past two weeks "abroad" had.
Friday, October 23, 2009
visa was got
Visa arrived late this afternoon. Sorry for panicking, all. Lesson learned: don't just assume you can get a visa on the same day, no matter if you and most people you know have all done it before.
Will write more later, when it isn't so late. Back to Delhi now...
Will write more later, when it isn't so late. Back to Delhi now...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
