Post Incident

Okay, so I'll just say that I'm feeling better. Maseru has been calm this week. The "stay-away" was allayed by the Deputy Prime Minister saying he would schedule a meeting to discuss the transportation issues. But, if he takes too long to make the meeting, chaos will reign down again.

I'm pretty busy, which is great because I think it's helped me focus elsewhere. Actually, I feel like I was being a bit over dramatic in my last post, but it is what it is, so I guess I shouldn't judge myself too much.

Work: I ran a training yesterday for research consultants who will be helping to do patient and employee satisfaction surveys. I got to the office to set up at 7 a.m. and by 7:10 a.m. the power cut. It was pouring outside, so no sun to warm or light the office. When the researchers arrived, all I could do was apologize for the darkness, but they were all like "What can you do? We just have to get used to this." We were lucky yesterday, though, because the power came back at 9:30 a.m. Today, however, as I was in the hospital doing some data collection and overseeing the researchers, the power was out the whole time. The hospital has a generator, so it wasn't a big deal there. However, what I think I haven't written yet is that when the power cuts, the robots cut, too. (Robots = traffic lights) So that's always fun driving through the busiest intersection in Maseru with no traffic cop and no working robots. Walking through those intersections isn't much different when there's no power, since no one here acknowledges pedestrians anyway. Actually, it's easier to cross the street sometimes because the cars are all stopped trying to figure out who's next to drive through.

The stores still are open in the dark. At PEP, a CVS-type store, they all wear headlamps when there's no power. It's actually kind of funny, but brilliant.

Work: Data collection occurs over the next four work days, which means that data entry, cleaning and analysis will follow. I'm going to try to get it down on a daily basis, since our final report is due on June 30. It's not creeping up, it's almost here!

I also have lots of training to do at the two hospitals where I work in the districts. Some is software stuff, to train a statistician on data analysis and reporting. Some is more continuous quality improvement and monitoring stuff, creating indicators, data collection tools, etc. Some is leadership and management training for district health directors. And some is in terms of capacity building for all record-keeping by all departments in order to inform hospital management teams.

Honestly, this will not get done in the next 8 weeks. A few weeks ago, I was really stressed out about leaving a half-started program. But that's the way development work goes. I still don't feel good about leaving, but since there's really no other option, I have to start thinking about good hand-over at this point. (I can't believe I'm already writing about hand-over. This is flying by!)

Culture: I learned something new about Basotho. They call it PDS. Pull-Down Syndrome. Apparently, it's common for people to try and pull others down because they don't like to see others succeed. They would rather see their peers fail, so that no one is doing better than them. Obviously, this is a cultural stereotype, but I find it very interesting that it actually has a term. PDS.

Well, the power just cut again, so this post is going up later...