Thursday, 02 March 2006

Carl's New Home Away From Home

Here's the casino in Kampala, Uganda's capitol city:

Looks just like the Bellagio, eh?

Posted by flow Frazao on March 2, 2006 at 07:59 PM in Africa | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wednesday, 01 March 2006

Kiva Updates From Uganda

In case you're not tuned in to the political situation of Uganda, they just had an election a few days ago. There was a lot of angst about it since it was the first free election in 20-some years.

That combined with the terrible drought that's been going on for the past two years and the intermittent (at best) electricity situation had us pretty worried about our people in East Africa. About three weeks ago we received the following email from our Ugandan partner Moses:

Hello Matt,
This is to inform you that our work is not going to be possible for very long time because of luck of electric power.
The Goverment has announced that due to the low water level in the lake, the power generation has gone very low. For this reason power will be switched off at 6am to 7pm every day.
This has now made all offices to buy their own generators.
For Kiva office, we are in dilema.
Moses.

Since most of our current businesses are operating in Uganda, Matt decided to send Moses money to buy a new generator. That way Kiva users would still be able to recieve updates as to the progress of their businesses.

Then, just before the election we got this letter from Moses:

Hi Matt,
This is to inform you that we have not bought the generator yet because of the total confusion here in Uganda due to the forth coming presidential elections.
There is rampant killings during the campaigns and threteaning violence.
This has caused almost all the business communities to run across to Kenya to wait for us to go through the elections.
Most of all the shops are closed and the prices of commodities have been hiked very much.
We are voting on Thursday this week. We hope to buy the generator after the elections.
Thanks,
Moses.

Hello Matt,
This is some few hints of the recent presidential election in Uganda.
President Yower Museveni was declared the winner with 59.96% and the runner up from the FDC party got 39 percent.
Generally right now the FDC party is going to court for they complaint of mass rigging and intimidation of their voters.
Number of FDC voters were put in jail before the election and some were killed by gunmen who are believed to be the supporters of President Yower Museven.
Before thinking of taking the court action, the FDC big shots wanted the re counting of the ballot pappers but the Goverment has refused to allow the re count to be done.
Two days before the election day, soldiers were deployed all over Uganda even deep in the villages to frustrate the campaigns of the opposition.
Generally, the opposition parties feel that the election wasen't free and fair.
The elected president will be sworn in as the new elected president of the Republic Of Uganda in May 2006.
This will all happen if the court does not nulify the election results.
For me as a person, Im very safe and I have not been affected in any way both during the time of campaign and even after the election.
I have received the most recent report that all our beneficiaries of Kiva were not affected in any way. Im rejoicing together with my family.
Im now working very hard for Kiva because we want to catch up with the time that was wasted during the fear of the campaign violence.
I want to thank all of you who prayed for us and all the people of Uganda.
Matt, this is the brief content that I can give you concerning our presidential election.
Every blessings,
Moses.

Posted by flow Frazao on March 1, 2006 at 08:02 PM in Africa, Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, 03 February 2006

TCOB In Africa

Not much time to get into detail, but here's a preliminary list of things we'll be doing in East Africa:

• Conducting Impact Studies for VEF to determine how grant recipients lives have changed following a VEF grant.
• Finding existing microfinancing organizations to partner with Kiva.
• Evaluating the VEF database interface to see why Country Officers in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda aren't putting information into the DB. I'll be training them on proper use of the interface and hopefully will be able to put together a solution for whatever problem it is that they're encountering.
• Explore the potential for a partnership between VEF and Kiva. Basically, VEF gives grants to the poorest of the poor, and the hope is that many of them have "graduated" to the point where they might be good candidates for Kiva loans.
• Take a look at what, if any, information sharing/collective learning occurs between entrepreneurs.

I know there's more I'm forgetting, and I'm sure we'll come up with more stuff next week, but that's a little sumpin sumpin for now.

Posted by flow Frazao on February 3, 2006 at 03:34 PM in Africa, Kiva/VEF | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Saturday, 28 January 2006

San Francisco - America's Vaccination Destination

After waking up at 5AM and sitting on a plane for 8 hours, we hopped on the subway and headed into the middle of the city for the San Francisco Dept. of Public Health. As I mentioned earlier, the price of vaccinations here are about half the cost compared to Connecticut. And it's a damn good thing, because between Fiona and I we wound up dropping almost $1200 on shots yesterday.

The bad news, of course, was that it cost a shitload of money. The good news is that I have a much better chance of not dying of the following diseases:

• Meningococcal Disease - This one is some scary shit. The juice was precious at $110, but after I read this I was all sweaty and pretty much stopped worrying about money:
  

  Meningococcal disease is an acute bacterial disease characterized by sudden onset with fever; intense headache; nausea and often vomiting; stiff neck; and, frequently, a petechial rash with pink macules. Formerly, the case-fatality ratio exceeded 50%, but early diagnosis, modern therapy, and supportive measures have lowered the case-fatality ratio to about 10%.



• Polio - Maybe I'm naive or something, but I was under the impression this had been taken care of. I seem to remember hearing how through the "miracle of modern medicine" mankind had wiped out Polio. Apparently, this is not the case. Polio, it seems, has reached epic proportions in Africa. And that's fucked up because the shot only cost $44 and you know that includes the standard 500% markup on all pharmaceuticals sold in America.
• Tetanus/Diptheria - At the bargain basement price of $28, how could I say no?
• Hepatitis A & B - These vaccinations are actually administered over the course of six months. Luckily, Fiona talked me into starting the tract back when we were in Bangkok, so I got my third and final booster yesterday.
• Typhoid - This one comes in oral form, so I didn't need a shot for it, which was fine with me. Three in each arm was enough, thanks.
• Yellow Fever - This is the big bad mama jama of exotic tropical diseases. The one where they won't let you in to the country if you don't have the International Certificate of Vaccination for Yellow Fever.
• Rabies - I got the first of three rabies exposure shots yesterday, and at the price of $182 per shot I'd be lying if I said I didn't hesitate. I was on the fence - I mean, when's the last time you got bit by an animal - until the nurse started explaining the options. If you get bit after you've been vaccinated, then the treatment is two booster shots which are widely available even in third world countries. However, if you haven't been vaccinated then you need to get a different kind of injection made from human product which is not widely available and would require evacuation to South Africa. And what kind of psycho would inject himself with blood from THAT population? You'd probably be better of with the rabies.

Luckily, Fiona had already been vaccinated against most of the aforementioned stuff so we saved some money there. Apparently it's a "good idea" to get shots before you go to Southeast Asia. Not being one for "good ideas" I had to stock up yesterday. Fiona, on the other hand, had a different issue to deal with.

Five years ago she was in India and she started playing around with a monkey. To make a long story short, the thing bit her and (having had the pre-exposure) she went to a clinic to get the widely available booster. The Indian doctor was not, um, well-informed, so he gave her the wrong fucking shot. Not only did Fiona get a shot of human product in India which was neither effective, nor, shall we say, the best idea, but apparently the doctor also had trouble opening the vial and wound up shattering the glass before he drew it into the syringe.

Basically, Fiona allowed some Indian quack to inject her full of broken glass and third-world country juice. Which was pretty funny considering the grilling she gave the nurse in San Francisco about "how do you know the meningococcal vaccine is safe".

The effect of this episode was Fiona sitting in the Department of Public Health with a gaggle of nurses around trying to decide whether or not my wife has rabies. After a call to the guy who's currently rewriting the CDC guidelines for rabies, they decided that she should get the two booster shots ($182 each) just to be on the safe side.

And that's pretty much that. Right now my shoulders are sore as hell, but I'm told that will pass after a few days. Of course, for those of you out there who like to have things to worry about there's also a .001% chance I could die of Yellow Fever by next Thursday.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 28, 2006 at 12:58 PM in Africa, Little Stories, Me, Travel | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Thursday, 26 January 2006

The World's First Solar Hearing Aid

Here's an excellent example of African ingenuity. Godisa Technologies, a Botswana-based company, has invented the world's only Solar Powered Hearing Aid. In the developing world, getting access to a power point for recharging or a store that sells those tiny hearing aid batteries is not always feasible, so why not just use the sun?

In 1992 the Solar Aid Workshop was started in collaboration with the Botswana Technology Centre to manufacture solar rechargeable hearing aids that could be used by hearing-impaired people living in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Recently Solar Aid changed its name to Godisa in line with the broadening of its product base. Godisa means to do something that is helping others to grow. Its objective is to develop practical technologies for developing countries and to create employment and training opportunities for hearing disabled people.

We manufacture three hearing aids; these use regular zinc air or rechargeable batteries. We've developed a solar power battery recharger and the first No. 13 and low-cost No. 675 rechargable button-cell batteries. The latter can be charged up to 300 times over its two-year lifespan and sells for less than US$1.50.

We meet our mission of lowering the cost of hearing aids and maintenance for everyone.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 26, 2006 at 09:55 PM in Africa, Cool Stuff, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Tuesday, 03 January 2006

Tanzania hits 30 percent target of women representation in parliament

Here's a bit of good news about one of the countries Fiona and I will be working in:

Tanzania has become the third country within the South African Development Community (SADC) to have attained the target of having women taking up at least 30 percent of the country's parliamentary seats.

The registration of parliamentary swear-in's showed that 97 women had been sworn in by the parliament which met on December 30 in Dodoma in central Tanzania.

The number of women as against the total of 319 members of parliament stands a 30.4 percent of women representation in the parliament, just in accordance with the 1997 SADC declaration that required signatory countries to attain 30 percent of women representation in decision-making posts by the end of 2005.

Posted by flow Frazao on January 3, 2006 at 11:04 AM in Africa, Microfinancing | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack