Friday, October 23, 2009

Dear Old Dartmouth Set a Watch

LEST THE OLD TRADITIONS FAIL!

...

Around the world they keep for her,
Their old undying faith. 08!




Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Kigali - Afternoon

Rene and I met up with the rest of the shopping team. The others had had more success than use, finding shower rods and curtains.

Gabby pointed out the place where he’d bought the power strips before. We crossed the street. Amber and I stood outside while Rene and Gabby went inside.

For a few minutes we waited and tried to talk to some children. Of course, they really only wanted “Agafaranga”, which means “give me money”. Around the Health Center, the children still wave and yell “Muzungu” at us, but they also yell “Muzungu Karuhu”, which means “European by skin only”, indicating that we will not give them money. These kids did not yet know that we weren’t tourists. “Oya,” I said in broken Kinyarwanda, “Yitqua muzungu karuhu.” (“No, my name is European by skin only.”

Amber turned to me, “I need to go meet my friend. I guess I’ll just take a moto-taxi.”

“Uh, there’s a couple over there,” I pointed across the street, distracted by the children and not expecting what came next.

“Ok, later,” she said. She walked across the street, into the crowd, and she was gone.

My jaw dropped. She’s just going to hop on a moto-taxi and be gone? Woah. Amber is setting up CCHIPs’ mental health program. She’s also lived in East Africa on and off for the last decade. So getting on the back of a moto-taxi in Kigali, saying “Serena Hotel” and hoping to make it there is no big thing to her.

Impressed but now alone with the street children eyeing me, I crossed the street. Elie knows basically everyone in Rwanda, and he stood with a handful of friends that he had run into. I climbed into Gertie and waited with Consolate.

A few minutes later Gabby and Rene returned with the extension cords.

“I only got two because I’m not sure of the quality,” Rene reported.

We rejoined Zack, Ro, and Jean D’Arc after their lunch meeting. They had another meeting scheduled for now o’clock at Global Fund.

For Team Mutuelle, Elie had scheduled a meeting at Gitega health center in Kigali. I put on The Strokes as we wound through Kigali. We only got lost twice on the way.

The Health Center was on a normal city block, with a screen fence and a covered open-air waiting area pushed up to the sidewalk. There were a number of people waiting to be seen, but Elie led us down a hallway and into the Mutuelle office.

We sat down with the Section Head and began to ask questions…

  • “What’s the population of the catchment area?”

About 35,000.

  • “What’s the Mutuelle enrollment %?”

We are actually over-enrolled, at about 120%, we have people coming to us from other catchment areas because we are very conveniently located.

  • “How much financial support do you receive for indigents?”

We receive support for about 15% of our population.

  • “How far of a walk is it for most people to the Health Center?”

Most people take moto-taxis. They are not expensive.

  • “What sensitization strategies do you use?”
We conduct a census of all the households of the catchment area. Because people live close together, it only takes the community health workers about week for each village (~500-1000 people). We also hand out flyers to inform people that they have to enroll.

  • “Wait, you are confident people can read the flyers? What is the literacy rate in the catchment area?”

The literacy rate is high enough that at least one person per household will be able to read.

  • “How prevalent are traditional healers?”

There are not too many of those in the City of Kigali.

I took in what the Mutuelle Section Head was telling us. So this is what it’s like to have all of the demographic variables line up in favor of actually getting people to use the health center. The Gitega health center is urban, has relatively high income, has a high literacy rate, has stronger cultural attitudes toward formal healthcare, and it is readily accessible via low-cost transportation.

I was frustrated. It’s so easy here! But, there is a reason we work at Shingiro and not Gitega. There is an extraordinary need at Shingiro, because of the demographic factors on the ground.

Still, the census idea had merit. And the meeting helped me think about the demographic challenges we face at Shingiro. And what we can do to address them.


When we returned to the Global Fund office, Zack, Jean D’Arc, Rene, and Ro were still in their meeting. We settled in to wait in Gertie out front. I threw on George Clinton’s Greatest Hits. Somehow I wasn’t finding “We Got the Funk”, so I settled into “Atomic Dog”.

Soon teenage street vendors came up to the car, apparently attracted by the music. Among the items I was offered were ladies shoes, a belt, and blue jeans.

The team came out of their meeting, and, after an excruciatingly long, hot day, we set off for the hotel.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

When I Woke Up This Morning...



Continuing re: Kigali trip tomorrow

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Kigali - Morning

My memory of the first visit to Kigali is a blur. Maybe it was the heat. Or the non-stop action. Or the sudden drop in altitude. Whatever it was, only the most jarring moments remain to my mind with any clarity.


I woke at 5:30 on Friday morning in Musanze. My buzzing cell phone alarm crashed into my dream – What? Why? Oya. I made some toast and coffee, and plopped myself in front of my laptop. After catching up on rugby news , sports, and current events for a while, I started to pack.

With Ro, our fearless leader and CEO of WWHPS-CCHPs, in the country there were a number of meetings to hold in Kigali. The plan was to go and meet all day Friday, stay overnight, and finish meetings and shopping on Saturday.

I didn’t pack much. Along with my laptop and a notebook, I threw a button down, clean boxers and socks, and a toothbrush into my bag.

By 7:30 we were all packed up and loaded into Gertie. The morning was cool and dark as we left Musanze but our excitement prevented any of us from trying to sleep on the way.

The trip began uneventfully. Like most rides in the Land Cruiser, the back section was dominated by Kinyarwanda speakers, so I zoned out to “Live at Folsom Prison”, which periodically skipped as we bumped down the pot-holed road to Kigali.


The day began to warm as we climbed along the ridge of the hills that precede the drop into Kigali. “Bob Marley, Greatest Reggae Hits Vol. 2” now played. Old Gertie, the team’s Land Cruiser, began to shake violently, not quite to the music. Thinking we had a flat, Zack pulled off onto the shoulder. The tire was fine.

We rumbled away again and Gertie shook harder. “It only shakes when we’re going uphill,” said Zack, “This is the last part right here.”

The road rose gradually but determinedly, up and up the great hill. We had climbed along the east side of the mountains for most of the trip, but now we crossed the ridge-back to the west side.

We reached a small town and stopped in front of a school. This time we all piled out.

The sun beamed down brightly on the white Land Cruiser, and I thought about what it might be like to get trapped at the top of the great hill. The thought did not animate a fear of danger so much as a fear of time wasted. Sitting on top of the hill, baking while our appointments in Kigali went unmet.

Ro thought the spark plugs might be dirty. Gabby popped the hood. Ro, Zack, Elie, Rene, Gabby and I crowded around the engine. Though I know nothing about cars, there’s something deep within most men that drags us to the exposed engine of any car. I can nod, grunt, and shake my head with the best of them. The actual mechanics and engineers of the group – Elie, Rene, and Gabby – conferred, but concluded there was nothing they could do.

We piled back in and Gertie started up again, shaking but moving on.


Rwanda is remarkably densely populated. It holds 10 million people packed into an area smaller than Massachusetts. Moreover, the biggest and arguably only city, Kigali, has only 800,000 inhabitants. The rest of the country is covered in small farms. As we descended into Kigali, the demarcation of city and countryside never came. The city limits overlap with the countryside such that billboards and corner stores seem to rise up out of the fields of banana and maize.

Kigali is at once bustling, chaotic but also small. It holds so much activity is pressed into a tiny space. Wherever you are, you feel trapped on the side of a hill, slowed by the incline, the heat, and the crush of just under a million people. Most people live in homes ranging from modern condos to mud-brick constructions, though like any city Kigali has its fair share of the homeless and beggars. But in Kigali more of the beggars than I’ve ever seen have missing or deformed limbs. The limbs are clearly not deformed, but damaged – a beaten wrist or an ankle forced back upon itself. The wound is healed, but not healthy. The beggar is always functional enough – smiling sometimes even. But often they move with great strain. The injury is not genetic, but for those carrying the wound the original form will not be recovered.

We stopped first at the Millenium Village Project offices, where Zack and I got out. Affiliated with Columbia, it also houses staff members from Columbia’s Access Project. We work closely with Access in Musanze. We met with Teddy about our proposed filing system for Shingiro.

Currently, the health centers do not maintain comprehensive patient histories. This leads to misdiagnoses and other problems stemming from a lack of communication. For example, patients are sometimes treated the same way for the same disease multiple times. At one community meeting in Mugali, a woman explained that her son was not treated for intestinal parasites because the pharmacy was out of the drugs prescribed for him. When she returned after the drug had been restocked, the health center did not have a way to verify the boy needed the drug, so he had to be retested. A filing system would cut down on such wastes of patient time and health center resources.

Teddy gave us a number of helpful suggestions and we had a good time with the reclining pleather desk chairs and the air-conditioning. I snapped off a picture of a map on the wall, finally wrapping my head around Musanze District geography:



...


Zack and I hoofed it up a hill to meet the rest of team at Bourbon Café. We climbed up the hill and into the office tower, probably 6 stories tall. Bourbon Café sits in the office tower’s indoor atrium. This courtyard mall serves as a kind of Muzungu haven in Kigali. There is one grocery store and a few small shops. Bourbon sits in the back-left corner of the atrium.



Jean D'arc and Consolate at Bourbon Cafe.


The walk up the hill in 85 degree heat left both Zack and I sweaty messes. Zack suggested I order the “Moca-Mania-Cowa-Chino”. When the waitress brought it out, I was confronted with a chocolate-coffee smoothie topped with whipped cream. It was the most impressive artifact of American cultural transfer I’ve yet seen Rwanda. It’s the kind of very American drink my brother always orders at Starbucks or Dunkies – over the top, with so much sugar that if you put your straw on the bottom of the glass you end up chewing on grains of sugar crystals. At 3,500 francs (~$7), it did not disappoint.


...


Zack, Jean D’arc, and Ro had a lunch meeting with Josh Ruksin, a Columbia professor and the head of Access.

While they went off to their lunch, Elie, Gabby, Rene, Amber, Consolate, and I went to ours. On the way to Africa Bite (pronounced ‘bee-tay’), Elie pointed to a collection of short buildings at the point between the hill we were going down and the hill we were about to climb up, “There is Cadillac, the nightclub.”

“What is it like? They dance there?” I asked naïvely.

“Oh yes. Hehe, the last time I was there was in 1988. A lot of dancing.”

Zack, Rene, and I had talked about the possibility that we would go to a nightclub while in Kigali. Cadillac was on the list that Rene provided, along with Planet, B-Club, Black and White. Rene had gone through them:

“Cadillac is popular, a lot people. Planet is good also – those are the two more popular clubs. B-Club is VIP. You have to dress to impress. It’s expensive, if you go in jeans you don’t go in. So it’s less popular. And there is Black and White. It’s OK, it used to be more popular a few years ago.”

Africa Bite turned out to be a pleasant little restaurant. We piled our plates with a buffet of African dishes: curried lamb; igasafria, a hot pot of bananas, potatoes and tomatoes; ugali, maize or cassava flour mixed with hot water into little balls; sweet potatoes; mashed bananas; rice and beans; and a naan-like bread. There were also two sauces, a tangy yogurt sauce and pili-pili. Pili-pili is a mashed chili paste, hotter than almost anything else I’ve been able to eat, including my beloved Sriracha.

We ate in the restaurant’s garden, enjoying the breeze.


...


After lunch, we passed Cadillac once more on the way to shopping. Across the street, I noticed a strange billboard – a man beckoned to two young women, one of whom drew away while her friend pushed her toward the man.

“What does that say?” I asked Rene and Consolate.

“It says to not have a sugar daddy,” offered Rene.

“A sugar daddy?” I asked, “It’s an advertisement against prostitution?”
“Sort of, basically,” said Consolate.

“No, not prostitution,” said Rene, “young people here are very poor, so sometimes the young women will go around with much older guys and let them buy them things.”

I thought on it: “Same as it ever was.”

We drove to what seemed to be the commercial center of Kigali. The streets are narrow and feel more so because they are packed with people – moving, hawking, being. Everywhere there are children and beggars, teenagers selling blue jeans, belts, and high-heeled shoes. Internationals stood out in the mostly-Rwandan crowd: stocky Germans wearing wire-framed glasses, short sleeved button down shirts, and crew cuts; spiky haired Chinese dressed in baggy jean shorts and t-shirts with cut off sleeves, and of course, the gawking, pointing, squinting American tourists.

Given my lack of local savvy, inability to speak Kinyarwanda, and skin color that screams ‘SUCKER’, I was more a liability than a help in the effort to purchase supplies. Determined to look more Jason Bourne than Clark Griswold, I threw on my ‘informed-American’ swagger and followed Rene into an electronics store. Every inch of the store was covered in electronics for sale. The aisles were filled with merchandise, small washing machines jammed alongside coffee makers and vacuum cleaners. Along the back wall was a long counter and above it light switches and bulbs.

A Chinese customer stood in front of the counter. He was negotiating with the clerk in Kinyarwanda. Say what you will about their efforts to establish an economic sphere of influence in Africa, at least the Chinese really dig in. Along with a scattering of Indians, the Chinese are the only non-Africans that I’ve encountered that speak Kinyarwanda. The power adapter/strip combo Rene was looking at was no good – “they say it will be 12,000 but we got these for 8,000 a few weeks ago, let’s try another place.”

The next store we entered was not an electronics store. It had a main aisle running through the middle of the store, with perpendicular rows of shelves that nearly reached the ceiling. Each row was maybe 3-4 feet across. The store was not well lit. Rene ask the attendant where they kept the power strips. He led us to the end of the main aisle, and down the left half of the second to last row. The power strips were at the end of the shelf. Rene decided that this power strip was not right either as another group of shoppers entered the row.

There is no word for “please” or “excuse me” in Kinyarwanda. I’ve always thought of pleasantries as a bit disingenuous, but in their absence I’ve come to realize how essential they are to American culture. It is jarring when an English-speaking Rwandan forgets to culturally translate his or her thoughts. I’ve been on the receiving end of comments like “You will do the analysis for me,” instead of “you are so good at the analysis, and I don’t know how to do it, would you mind doing it for me?” Or “Give me the internet card,” instead of “can I use the internet card when you are finished using it?”

The convention also applies to crowds. Rwandans literally push each other and place hands on each other to get where they want to go. As I led Rene and the attendant out of the row, I was confronted with a cultural translation problem. The people that had moved into the row took up the whole of the 4 feet across. In the US, people move out of each other’s ways in such situations, almost unconsciously and rarely with acknowledgement. Here there was no indication that the Rwandans noticed me or planned to get out of my way. Unable to bring myself to dragging the other shoppers out of my way, I sort of shimmied around the group. I squeezed myself against the shelf and used my back and butt to carve space for the rest of me to birth my way out of the row.

In the light of day outside the shop I gulped the fresh air. “One more place to try,” said Rene. We crossed the street. This time, I tried waiting outside, hoping not to earn us the Muzungu price. Rene came out, shaking his head, “She wants 10,000 – that still seems high.”

...


To be continued…

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Friday, October 9, 2009

Sunday, October 4, 2009

The Economics of Squishing




On Tuesday morning we woke up early and headed to Shingiro. We attend the Shingiro staff meeting on Tuesdays, which starts at 7:30. After waking up at 7, I coughed down a breakfast of banana bread and a cup of coffee. Outside Elie, Amber, and Shingiro nurses Pascaline, Louisa, and Mary wait in the Land Cruiser. Ro sat up front. Zack got in to drive, and Consolate got in the back with us.


As we left the project house, there were seven of us in the back seat. This did not bode well for my comfort. Already I was confined to a small area of personal space and I knew that we would be picking up Jean D’Arc and Rene on the way. This would push me over the edge from ‘morning cranky’ to ‘full-blown-squashed-and-resentful’.


We picked up Jean D’Arc and then Rene. “Rene should sit up front with me” said Ro, “because, Elie – aren’t we picking up two more people?”


“Hehehe, maybe two, I think three though,” chortled Elie. This would push the number of us in back seat to 10 or 11.


I began to think about the economics of the squishing decision. Given a scarce resource – a ride to Shingiro – there should be some logic behind how it is distributed to the pool of potential users.


Scenario 1: Perfect World

Assumptions:

  1. Riders have homogeneous preferences between cost and comfort
  2. Riders are added until the trade-off between cost and comfort are equal (due to homogeneous preferences, this could be either for each person or total utility)
  3. Once in the Land Cruiser, an individual cannot get out (once the decision is made to get in, social norms mean you can’t get out, but your original preferences stay intact)


Implications:

The alternatives to piling into the CCHIPs’ Land Cruiser are 1. taking a moto-taxi or 2. walking. A moto-taxi costs RWF 200. For simplicity, I will assume the cost of walking is equal to taking a moto-taxi, RWF 200.


As more riders enter the Land Cruiser, personal space is not impeded until there are 6 people in the back. At this point, the squishing and squeezing begins. Once 10 people are in the back of the Land Cruiser, all personal space is gone, the back is full, and on average most people would say that additional riders make the alternative – paying for a moto-taxi – a better option.


Thus, potential riders should stop wanting to get into the CCHIPs van at the same time that each of the current riders would prefer no one else get in – once there are already 10 people in the Land Cruiser. Lovely. Unfortunately, that’s not the way the story goes. Real world preferences are not homogenous. In this case, being a pampered American, I was far less willing than everyone else to squeeze.


We arrived at the turn-off of the main road for the bumpy, dirt road to Shingiro. Two more Shingiro nurses piled in. At this point we had 10 in the back of the Land Cruiser. Though everyone else seemed ok, I was definitely not happy.


Scenario 2: Social Utility Maximization under Heterogeneous Preferences

Assumptions:

  1. Riders have heterogeneous preferences between cost and comfort
  2. Riders are added until the marginal social benefit of an additional rider is negative (group utility is maximized)
  3. Once in the Land Cruiser, an individual cannot get out

Implications:

In this scenario, my preferences are crankier than the group’s. My frustration builds much faster than everyone else. In fact, at 8 people I’m already indifferent to the unpleasantness of riding in the crowded Land Cruiser vs paying for a Moto-taxi. For me, each additional person adds a growing amount of pain and discomfort, which I translate into an increasing willingness to pay for the alternative. Conversely, the group only adds a set amount of pain for each person added.



The group seemed content with 10 people in the Land Cruiser, so I was willing to stay quiet. I’m a guest here, a volunteer. Because one of the assumptions is that I can’t get out, I was locked into my original, correct decision to ride the Land Cruiser.


However, as we cruised up the bumpy, rocky road to Shingiro, Zack stopped not once, not twice, but three more times to pick up more riders. This wasn’t just unpleasant for me – everyone seemed sort of cranky when we arrived.


Scenario 3: Personal Utility Maximization under Heterogeneous Preferences

Assumptions:

  1. Riders have heterogeneous preferences between cost and comfort
  2. Riders are added until the personal utility of an additional rider is negative
  3. Once in the Land Cruiser, an individual cannot get out


Implications:

Here, even though everyone already riding in the back of the Land Cruiser is done adding people, the driver and potential additional riders hold the power to make the decision.


Because the additional riders (the "squishers") have a different preferences than the group – they are more willing to sacrifice on comfort – the utility of the group is not maximized (i.e. – on the whole the group is annoyed).

In fact, at 13 riders, the group average cost of riding (in discomfort) is RWF 350 vs the alternative RWF 200 for the moto taxi. Thus, the total loss is:

(RWF 350 - RWF 200) x 13 = RWF 1950

The driver, who also holds the power to make the decision, is not faced with the choice. He knows he can bank on the gratitude of the additional riders he picks up. Good manners and fairness mean that the resentment of the group will be muted or unexpressed. Unless one of them has a blog and a long memory.


Scenario 4: Reality

In reality, the Rwandans are pretty happy jamming as many people into a vehicle as possible. Without me, the “group preference” line above wouldn't cross the Moto-taxi line at RWF 200 until 14 or 16 people are in the back of the Land Cruiser.


In fact, at 13 people, my personal discomfort cost RWF 2100 (discomfort) - RWF 200 (alternative) = RWF 1900. That means that the other people, on average, only were about RWF 5 uncomfortable.


Sadly, while I was close to establishing that Zack is a jerk through economics, all I really proved is that I need to suck it up.


But, as this video proves, it was a little crazy.






Friday, October 2, 2009

Friday Night No-Lights

After my first week, I was ready for a break. I had been introduced to the health center, to the nurses, and began to get a sense of the work that I would be doing. Even so, there was little I could actually accomplish besides reading old government reports and messing around in Excel. When Friday afternoon rolled around, I was pleased as punch.

Government policy mandates that all organizations, including NGOs, must allocate office time to “sport”. Friday afternoon is when our team participates in sport. On my first Friday, we played soccer with the staff from Ruhengeri Hospital.

I threw on my new Warrior Kung Fu’s (for a light touch), a Dartmouth rugby t-shirt, green mesh shorts, and high socks.
“You look like a moron” said Zack, as we arrived at the field.
“True,” I obliged, “but I’m a celebrity here – I say what’s cool.”
“Keep telling yourself that…”

The soccer field lies near the center of Musanze - it’s more a stadium than a field. The complex is surrounded by roads on all sides, which makes it feel almost urban. The complex contains a full sized soccer field, a track running around it, and stands on one side. On the other side of the field is a large open, grassy space, presumably for practicing, and a small basketball court, at the end of, set back from, and perpendicular to the soccer field.

As we walked down into the stadium, I looked around. Two teams faced off in a scrimmage on the field, with about 20 spectators along the near sideline, away from the stands. Another thirty people kicked around soccer balls on the open field and others milled about. In total, the complex felt full, but not crowded. The rest of the CCHIPs staff waved to the group on the basketball court, the Ruhengeri Hospital staff.

The hospital staff looked to be mostly in their late 20s and 30s, all male, with varying degrees of athleticism. I stepped onto the court, shaking hands and exchanging “we-don’t-speak-the-same-language" smiles. I was pumped to go, though on the basketball court were about 20 people.

The overcrowding was resolved by making three teams. My team was the first to sit – figures. While we waited, one of the Ruhengeri Hospital staff led us in drills. Are you kidding me? I thought. Here we had the CCHIPs staff, all of us more or less adults between 23 and 45, kicking a soccer ball back and forth and running laps. It was surreal, like a middle school gym class.

After a short wait, we were on. It was me, Consolate, Monique, and our coach, who I nicknamed Earnest, versus Zack, Jean D’Arc, Gabby, and Rene.

Long ago, when I was 8, I played in my first ‘travel soccer’ game. Back then we played six against six and the fields were small – speed wasn’t a factor, just a light touch and a good sense of direction. I was very good. As time went on, the field got bigger, speed mattered, and my skill set slipped out of relevance for competitive soccer. Fair enough – eventually rugby became a more than adequate substitute.

But on the basketball court, four on four, I was back in my element. I dribbled around Jean D’arc, around Gabby, and passed off to Earnest. No problem – light, easy, fun.

The game continued, back and forth, with no one scoring for five minutes. It was time to shuffle the teams again. Those that didn’t really want to play, like Jean D’Arc, turned in for good at this point, and two permanent teams coalesced.

As we began to play, the game picked up tempo and ferocity.

The goals were the base of the basketball hoops. The hoops sit on a box frame, with two poles lined up with the court. The goal was small, but so was the court. I took a shot and the ball sailed between the posts. “No goal,” said Rene. What!? “You have to hit the post, not shoot through them.”

It actually made sense, given the size of the field and lack of goalies, but I had to ask, “Why haven’t I been told this yet?”

Over the next 10 minutes, as my team continued to put pressure on the other while they tried to bring the ball out of their end, I shot the ball through the posts two or three times. Damnit, I guess I just need to keep shooting, I’ll get the hang of it.

As my frustration grew, the momentum also shifted. Despite Consolate’s heroic efforts, Zack’s team effectively exploited our “guys on offense, girls on defense” strategy. They pinged two quick goals.

I quickly realized something key – on such a tiny field with unorganized teams, we’re not playing soccer, we’re playing basketball with our feet. Soccer is all about setting up the perfect shot. You hold the ball and move it slowly down the field. Territory matters because the field is large. Possession is important because the opposition can quickly kick the ball away from shooting range. But on a basketball court, shooting at poles, the key was just to rip off as many shots as possible. You could set up shots quickly, and every shot was low probability, including the ‘perfect shot’.

With that thought in mind, I began to push the ball down the court every chance I got.

Finally I scored my first goal. “Mmmmm, that tastes goooood!” I yelled at Zack as I ran by, “I’m gonna get me some more of that.”

After a few more minutes, some of the guys from Ruhengeri Hospital had had enough, and I invited a couple of the local kids to step on. They were probably 14 or 15, but built like soccer players and wearing cleats. Though the cleats made them slip around a bit, they were quick and talented additions to the team.

Quickly we began to lay it on, scoring a couple goals. The kids on the sideline laughed whenever I would compliment one of my local additions on a nice play.

Zack grew more and more frustrated as members of his team disappeared. By the end of the game it was 7 on 3, and – among other feats of bravery, strength, and skill – I had scored a header from midcourt (mostly due to the lack of numbers on the opposition).

Finally, it was too dark to go on and we called it a night. My shirt was wet with perspiration, my brain flush with exercise- and winning-induced endorphins. I shook hands with everyone whole-heartedly.

I looked around the stadium in the twilight. I was happy and felt accomplished. Though the air was thin in the altitude and my body weak from nearly two weeks since seeing the inside of a gym, I had a great time and impressed the locals with my Muzungu talent.

Sport is great – in a two hour period I rode a narrative arc that I will hopefully replicate in my work and life over four months. (Though I expect my competitors will be malnutrition, poor access to healthcare, and poverty instead of friends and colleagues.)