Talking Global Public Service

Wrapping things up in Kigali

Thursday, Hope and I continued our research in Kigali at the national level. At 9am we met, Mr. Musabeyezu the coordinator to the technical committee of the mutual health insurance program. He confirmed much of what we learned and also gave us his perspective from national level. For me, the last weeks have been a crash course in Rwanda’s education and health systems (among other things). For this reason, I found his explanation of the program’s structure and devolution of funds to tie together what we had seen at the district and sub-district level. Mr. Musabeyezu also reported that as of 2007, 70% of Rwandan’s had registered for the program. As an American, I was astonished by this rate and having talked to health centers in Muhanga and Gicumbi, I have a better sense of what this means for the future of Rwanda.

Gicumbi

I’ve been away from the internet for the last three days but I have continued to log in Gicumbi, a district in Northern Rwanda near Uganda. Below are some highlights:

January 14, 2008

Well, Hope and I are back in the field after a weekend of transcribing and hanging out with her family. We got a bit of a late start Monday morning but managed to drive to Gicumbi and to start on interviews in the afternoon. We met with Rose who is in charge of the mutual health insurance scheme for the district and has been with the program since 1999. Rose told Hope that last night she had had a dream about a small white woman being given away in a traditional marriage. I hope this means that we are in the right place at the right time not that in a few days I will be leaving in Gicumbi married woman. We also learned from Rose that the idea for the health insurance scheme came from small communities in the district who pooled funds to rent cars as ambulances. Later these communities were also the most likely to purchase health insurance. We are hoping to follow this up further in the next few days by trying to get in touch with members of these communities.

Kigali Memorial Centre

Friday morning I was picked up by a Hope’s cousin, Eric, who is visiting his family but currently works for the UNDP and lives in NYC. While Hope got her hair braided, we went to the Kigali Memorial Centre. It was a museum/memorial with a main section that explained how genocide arose, a section that discusses and compares the Rwandan genocide with other genocides and the third which focused on children that were lost. There were also rooms of photographs, clothes and skulls.  I am not sure how to even begin writing about it. At home we speak a lot about the holocaust, I felt that I had read about genocide quite a lot but there is something about being here, in a country where this pain so fresh –where everyone I pass on the street has a story to tell.  The reminders are everywhere in newspaper articles and op-eds, as we drive by communities listening to testimonies, when we see prisoners in pink. It is frightening that this place that feels normal and actually feels much calmer and more organized than I found Kenya when I was there for 7 months in 2001-02. I know for certain if it can happen here it can happen anywhere. Understanding how is another story.

A day in the sub-district of Cyeza

We met the Executive Secretary of Cyeza at his office early this morning (Thursday). We had to drive 8km on back roads in order to reach it and then after picking him up, we drove on to Cyeza Primary   School to visit the Education Fund Day that was occurring there. When we arrived, school children in blue and yellow uniforms assembled outside preparing to sing. In one of the classrooms, a few teachers sat at a desk collecting money for the fund from the adults who came to contribute. It was 9am and already 29 people had come. They expected 300 altogether and at the conclusion they would announce the amounts of money different cells had collected, discuss with the children the importance of contributing, report back on how money had been spent in the past year and discuss future plans. The children would also provide entertainment.

In Muhanga

Hope and I traveled to the district of Muhanga on the 8th to begin our local level and program specific component of our research. Along the way we have been tailoring our plan so that it fits the real people/groups that we have managed to secure appointments with thus changing the content of the initial forms and interview guides that we had created. Luckily we were able to stop by Hope’s office at the commission to print a revised versions before we had our morning meeting with the Vice Mayor of Muhanga, Abed Kizito Ruzigana.

Our first day of Research

I arrived in Kigali at 1:30 yesterday. Hope and Richard, her husband, picked me up and brought me to Agasaro, a guest house near their home. Later, after I regrouped, they picked me up. Together we go some food and then I went to their home and met their family. It was a special treat after lonely airport days.

This morning Hope came to the hotel and we prepared for our meeting with Minister Musoni. We then traveled to his office to meet with him. It was such a pleasure to speak with him and we felt quite lucky since he had to take time from his holiday. I think both Hope and I learned a lot about how the Rwandan government has sought to engage citizens in the rebuilding and running of the government. He described at length how this developed and how citizens continue to be engaged. I was especially excited about how the government has sought to create an environment that spurs innovation and encourages leadership. (This is a picture of Hope, Minister Musoni and myself).

This afternoon after eating Chinese food with Hope and Richard they spent a few hours waiting for me to exchange money. We are now back in the hotel and will be preparing for tomorrows journey to Muhanga where we will interview district authorities and the tax payers association committee.

Traveling to Rwanda via Ireland

I am sitting in Shannon, Ireland at the sole airport restaurant/pub. It is eight in the morning and I can count at least five men and one woman drinking Guinness while I nurse my coffee. My trip to Rwanda involves 50+ hours of air travel beginning in Michigan. Thus far there have been delays on every lag. I also received quite the scare when I awoke in the airplane when it seemed something had suddenly hit our aircraft. There was also a bright light. The whole plane got silent and the stewardesses scurried around. We then clutched our seats for 15 minutes as the plane rocked back and forth and the landing gear went up and down. When we landed, the passengers broke into applause. Apparently our plane had been hit by lightening. There was a dark burned spot both on the nose and on the wing next to where I had been sitting. Eight in the morning and I have already been hit by lightening!
    I should arrive on Sunday afternoon (fingers crossed) and Hope will pick me up from the airport. Apparently she has found an affordable place to stay not far from where she lives. On Monday, we will meet at 10am with the Minister of Local Governance, Mr. Protais Musoni in order to kick start our research. He has been instrumental in the decentralization of the  Rwandan government and has thus far been quite useful in helping us identify relevant programs, districts and contacts. He is a very busy man and we are fortunate to have been able to secure meetings with him both at the beginning and the end of our research. In December Hope also managed to set an appointment with Mr. Inyarubuga Hertilda from the Ministry of Health. On Tuesday, we will travel to the district of Muhanga to meet with the Mayor Mr.Nyangezi and the director of health affairs, Mr. Uwimana. We also plan to meet with members of the Tax Payer's Association. We will return to Kigali for the second leg of our research on the 11th of January.
Ok, off for another cup a coffee and a walk around the airport to stretch my legs!

Citizen Engagement and Revenue Generation in Rwanda

Hope Tumukunde, Amna Khwar and I have been charged with working with the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs (UNDESA) in order to fulfill NYU Wagner's capstone requirement. Working with Mr. Jacinto De Vera, since September we have been looking at citizen engagement in revenue generation in post-conflict countries. In other words, how citizens engage and contribute to public services in times of extreme adversity. Although the term revenue generation, often indicates taxation, we have expanded the term to include in-kind and/or monetary contributes that benefit the public good. Since we found little pre-existing research or documentation on this topic, we quickly realized that a case study my significantly add to the current body of literature. Luckily because my teammate, Hope Tumukunde, has connections with Rwandan government employees and officials, we were able to identify innovative programs in communities where citizens have worked together to contribute. Realizing that little had been written on these programs in this dimension, we acted quickly by devising a plan and applying for funds so that we could study them in person.

Tomorrow, I leave for Rwanda where I will meet Hope.  For two weeks we will study two of the programs we identified. Traveling to the districts of Ntagatare and Muhanga, we will interview local officials and participants on the evolution of a national health insurance scheme and tax payer's association in Muhanga. I hope to record this experience to some extent on this blog. Look for future entries on initial research plans and updates on how the interviews are proceeding!

Moral Obligation Vs Is the action we take is what counts?

A lot of the people who have contributed towards the blog seem to be caught in a dilemma of their moral obligation on what to do, what action to take and  whether it is moral to stand aside and watch poor people die in either Latin America South East Asia or Africa or jump in and do something following Singer’s interesting analogies .I just want to speak to that and say that a lot of people from the  global South are also caught in similar moral dilemmas .At times I also muse on whether we are sometimes a apart of the problem or the solution. I will give a personal example to illustrate…

 Prior to coming to the US  I worked for a US based multinational   pharmaceutical back in Kenya and though we were in an HIV/AIDS antiretroviral drugs program saving the lives of people by providing them with the necessary medication at not for profit prices ,we also greatly benefited from American foreign policy that dictated through  its PEPFAR program at that time that all the drugs that were to be supplied under USAID program and other American programs had to be branded drugs made by US multinational pharmaceuticals- such as the one I worked for . Now that is where the moral dilemma comes in, do I continue working or do I quit? I evidently did not like the policy because very few people could still afford the drugs despite the price reductions. Interestingly enough I later came to learn after taking my economics class was just a way of price discrimination. At the end of the day coming from a middle class family in Kenya I have my undergraduate loans to pay and I had to stay on work and pay them because immediately you get a job in Kenya the Government puts you on the Loan recovery program through your employer. So we too face the same complex debates.

The way aid is currently managed in the development world makes it in certain cases part of the problem and not the solution for the countries mired in poverty, The answer however for the moral obligation to do development work lies in what actions are you planning to take as a person or within the institutions that we will choose to eventually work for. What is the route that you will follow to address the problems that are faced by poor people in the developing world ?A lot of times  development workers/NGOS seem to be hacking at the leaves furiously while that helps but eventually I think addressing the root causes of the problems is more helpful tactic in the long run . Gladly the politics class is full of intelligent folk and someone brought to the classes attention the recent turn of events that led to a prominent American NGO CARE turning down 45 Million dollars worth of federal funding so that they could secure food aid policies that would lead to better outcomes for the poor people whom they serve in the developing world.
I found this move to walk away from federal funding a bold move  given the stance that most NGO s have taken in the recent past in terms of their own survival . CARE opted out on the stance that
US food aid is structured in such as away that depresses food prices in local markets and creates more dependency, thus leaving the farmers form those areas poorer.  Furthermore the policy also dictates that the transportation of the ‘food aid’ is done by American flagged ships therefore there has never been any economic surplus for the people involved.

 

This is the kind of break in cycles in terms of thinking about development is what I presume our educations should give us and it takes time to achieve this. It might not be that Helene Gayle only the CEO of Care thought it out alone ,but several people have been having similar thoughts over along period of time and it is the engagement that led to the eventual decision. But to make the decision and sacrifice your Buggati as in the case of Singer’s rather interesting analogy is what we need to do .I believe that It can make the all the difference .In the case of emergencies the food aid organizations can you still provide food aid by tapping into local resources in the country like WFP does but in the long run having policies that work can make all the difference and that is where our moral obligation I think lies.

 

I think that my moral obligation lies in participating in a way that can make a difference .having a new brand of development that is both sustainable and feasible even if it means that it is at the cost of your own job. My approach is challenge policies especially US and other world policies that are crucial to development and more importantly those that impact development negatively .It takes a lot but it seems to be the only way. Otherwise been caught in the quagmire of moral dilemma will just leave us forever stuck in a moment!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the Bus

Mass transportation in Ghana consists, mainly, of tro-tros. In Bolivia they are called trufis but it’s the same basic deal – a minivan that runs a given route and is a relatively cheap way of getting around. In Ghana I haven’t yet seen it, but I suspect there are some tro-tros originally configured for driving on the left side of the road but which have been “customized” and had their steering wheels moved to the left side of the vehicle to take into account the fact that people here drive... well, they really do drive all over the road, but that’s a different story. Lanes of traffic are set up for people to drive on the right.

Which leads to a brief digression questioning why this is the case. Ghana, the Gold Coast, whatever, use to be a colony of the British. English is an official language and they’ve probably taken on some other trappings of the former British Empire that I’m not aware of but, for some reason they have decided to drive on the correct, er, right side of the road. I wonder if it’s some sort of subtle thumbing of the collective nose at the English. That sort of behavior could also possibly explain the popularity of Guinness here.

So, tro-tros and mass transportation. I’m a big fan of mass transportation. It’s probably a part of my tree-hugger nature but if I can’t get around on my own power, walking or biking that is, I like to take the bus, the tro-tro, the trufi, light rail, subway… whatever’s available.

Of course there are some downsides to such modes of transport. In tro-tros you don’t always get underway right away. Many times the driver will leave only once the vehicle is relatively full, meaning up to 20 people. In partnership with this inconvenience comes the possibility that the person/people sitting next to you have not bathed for a while or have had a hard day of work so odors are sometimes a bit strong. No doubt I’ve contributed to this unpleasantness at times but, more often than not, I’m not aware of my own, um, fragrance(?).

There is also the problem, at times, with having non-human passengers. Normally this doesn’t bother me much but sitting next to a goat is not always the nicest way to get from point A to point B. I haven’t had to deal with this issue too often here but in Bolivia it was a lot worse. And sometimes the animals got a really bad deal out of the experience. A number of times I’ve seen a sheep’s legs tied together so it wouldn’t run off and then have the poor critter thrown on top of the vehicle. Wasn’t even given any goggles to protect against the wind.

Finally, at least on my list of downsides, is the possibility of people taking advantage of the close quarters to explore the insides of your pockets. This has, thus far, happened to me one time, that I’m aware of, in Accra. While it is incredibly frustrating it wasn’t too big of a deal since I only lost some money but was left with my keys. If I hadn’t been so irritated by his obvious ploy of pulling my wallet out of my pocket and tossing it on the seat… I would have had no idea who it was that got me. But whatever, the money is gone and I’m a bit wiser.

Despite these shortcomings, mass transportation is a great way to get to meet people. It puts you on equal footing with everyone since they too are uncomfortably jammed 4 to a bench on seating intended for 3 while dealing with the other inconveniences already mentioned. There is also a bit of solidarity built up as we berate the driver for his lack of skill, whether it is justified or not.

The other day I sat on a tro-tro for about 5 minutes – not really that bad of a wait - until we were suppose to get under way. Apparently the starter on the vehicle was not functioning so the driver was forced to find some willing souls to help him pop-start the vehicle. Unfortunately either the vehicle was on its last legs or the driver was just not good at performing this rather simple task since, after 4 or 5 tries and the assistance of a slight downhill on the last attempt, the tro-tro was still idle and abandoned by all its riders.

Children on tro-tros are normally a useful way to get to know or strike up conversations with fellow passengers. Children, many times, have no problem with staring at the strange looking person on the vehicle and, if I can get a kid to laugh or smile, it is normally a sign to the rest of the passengers that I am not completely evil. A few funny faces or hiding behind my own hands is normally enough to elicit the smile or giggle and, from there, a conversation is easily begun.

This can backfire though. A number of times I have ended up with a child in my lap for longer than I care and, if it is a baby, diapers are not always clean. Other times I have had children offered to me in jest… I think. This can also lead to questions about the number of children I have, and, due to my somewhat compulsive need for honesty, explanations of why I only like other people’s children or that me reproducing would be like diving into the shallow end of the gene pool. Yeah, that last one is normally greeted with vacant stares, even in the U.S., so I fall back to the vague, “maybe some time in the future,” response and then change the subject.

Mass transportation is also a good place to get information. Asking the person sitting next to me how to get to a particular location can sometimes elicit a vehicle wide debate and discussion regarding the merits of various routes. Sometimes I also find myself with a guide who happens to be heading in that general direction too. Conversations can also provide some honest input as to prices I should be willing to pay for various products or services. I am not good at bargaining so getting this assistance, or at least input, as to a ballpark area of what I should pay is very helpful.

But, then again, Homer Simpson said that public transportation is for jerks and lesbians. I can live with that.