editorial published on Tuesday

Hey got my piece published in the Herald Leader on Tuesday, check it out.  You'll have to go to search to find it.
 
Shams

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The Stoning of Soraya M.

This looks like a perfect Patterson outing. Trailer: http://www.thestoning.com/
When everyone gets back to town we should go.

3 weeks in, 8 to go

Bishkek is much more Russian than I expected. All the signs are in Russian; everything at the stores is from Russia; everyone on the street is speaking Russian; everyone in my office speaks Russian both for business and beside the water cooler (which heats for tea, but doesn't cool the water).

I finally felt like I wasn't in Russia this week. I went out last Sunday for a hike in Ala-Archa (Canyon of the Junipers) National Park. Then I had my first field visit (to examine fencing, winter storage, and toilet facilities in a couple of existing communities served by the microfinance bank) to the area around Lake Issyk-kul. I had done one toilet tour already, but just to a squatter community in the 'burbs of Bishkek. I'll get some pictures of the national park at the lake (which is a UNESCO "biosphere reserve") on my facebook page as soon as I find an internet cafe that can take a USB drive (facebook is blocked at the office).

Luckily, the rest of the country isn't quite as Russian as Bishkek. However, it does cause some communication difficulties. (I ask questions in Russian, they get answered in Kyrgyz, then translated back to me in English.) It's much more sparsely populated than either European Russia or the Caucasus. With the roads, it's easily half an hour to an hour between villages while in a 4WD vehicle. I can't imagine how far it is by shared taxi or scheduled mini-bus.

Fun cultural things: I think I can finally do the "amin" properly with slapping my neighbor at the end (never been known for coordination). I got to try both Kamiz and Tan (fermented mare's milk and fermented mare's milk mixed with cow's milk, respectively) while I was on my field visit. I've never eaten so much pasta or mutton in my life.

Things I've been doing research on: urine-diverting dry toilets, root cellar construction, brucellosis, early childhood nutrition, preservation temperatures for root crop storage, different types of sheep wool dips, the market for wild harvested walnuts, and the market for sea buckthorn berries. So if anyone has any tips, please, pass them along.

I hope everyone is well, and I look forward to seeing y'all in late August.

I got two more weeks!

I will miss this place, in a perverse sort of way. It is starting to feel normal. I changed my ticket from July 29 to July 10 and I'm glad I did. That will still give me about 8 weeks here and a substantive internship experience. I've got pics up on fb and I hope y'all have checked em out. I've observed first-hand how big an industry "aid" is. I've seen how an embassy works. I will have used two things that we learned in the etiquette dinner- usage of cutlery and next week I will be a "pusher/puller" at the end of the receiving line at the July 4 party. The AFRICOM general is in town right now, and they had a press conference at the amb. residence, but I didn't get to go. I didn't know about it, actually. The FCS office doesn't get too involved with the more traditional parts of an embassy- we don't send cables or deal with public affairs, but we do a lot of work with trying to get US business here and/or increase exports to the region. It's been challenging, especially in a business climate like Senegal's. But also fruitful, I think- we had a USA Week event at the beginning of June where we highlighted the US businesses in Senegal- Coke, UPS, Ernst and Young, Phillip Morris, and drew attention to them through the media and the ambassador's presence. We organize buyer delegation to go to trade shows in the US- right now we're getting ramped up for a cosmetics show in Vegas July 19-21 and a trucking show in Dallas in August. I've also done research on the private security industry in Senegal and written up a study, to help guide US businesses that may want to export to the region. And I've made a minimal number of copies and have only had to fetch tea a couple of times for my coworker. I guess it's only fair, seeing as I was her opponent in tennis when she took a spill and messed up her ACL. I make for a "unique" lunch gofer when I run over to Magic Cafe to pick up the "dejeuner du jour" for me and my coworkers. I no longer look up, or even flinch, when I'm walking along the side of the road- not on the sidewalk, mind you, because they don't exist outside of "le centre ville", but either in the sand or on the shoulder, always against traffic- and the taxis honk at me. I've figured out that haggling, although an enervating pain in the ass, is always easier and more successful if you do it with a smile. I was dragged on stage to bump-and-grind (I think the dance is called "mbala") a Senegalese woman in front of 150 people. Check it out here.
So that's a run-down, and still more to come. The July 4th party will be a good event, a chance to, in the words of Stempel "get a whiff of the diplomatic grape." Then back to the states to earn a little scrill before school. Hope everyone's getting on well in their respective corners of the globe and I look forward to our reunion in August.

Internship update

For some reason, my boss here decided I needed to be IATA Hazmat certified. So, I'm now certified to sign off on putting dangerous things into airplanes.

So... anybody doing anything tonight?

Anybody? Movie night? Poker at my place? Risk?

Bad Movie, Good Beer Night...

Does anyone still have plans to arrange a movie night? I have been overcome with an urge to watch "Forbidden Planet"...