Really 21 flights in a month?

This morning I arrived at Schiphol Airport. I am on transit to a conference in Berlin, and after that the Congo. This the first flight in a rather (completely) nuts flight schedule this month:

New York City -> Amsterdam -> Berlin -> Amsterdam -> Nairobi -> Kigali -> Kamembe/Bukavu -> [Goma ->] Kindu -> [Punia -> Kibombe ->] Bukavu -> [Kalemie -> Moba ->] Lubumbashi -> Kalemie [-> Moba] -> Bukavu/Kamembe -> Kigali -> Nairobi -> Amsterdam -> New York City.

In square brackets are flights where the plane lands for just for several hours, and the flights in between Kamembe/Bukavu and Bukavu/Kamembe are made within the DRC. Exactly. Let's see how many of these 21 flights I will actually be on.

Btw, the sun was shining when I picked up my visa at the DRC Mission at the UN yesterday so I went for a walk downtown. Not far from the UN an artist (I don't know who) had placed statutes in a park - very nice effect.

Figure: The UN General Assembly building in the back.

Figure: The UN General Assembly building in the back.

Evolutionary Games and Spatial Chaos (Nowak & May. 1992).

For my dissertation I recently have been reading a lot from the evolutionary biology literature. These guys have done much very interesting work on cooperation.

Martin Nowak and Robert May wrote an interesting paper in 1992. What they did is to play the famous Prisoners’ Dilemma spatially. Yep, indeed interesting, because my dissertation is about migration and cooperation. In brief, they put the players on a lattice; assign different starting conditions (different payoffs, different number of cooperators and defectors in society, etc.), run the computer software and see what happens from one generation to the next when the players interact with each other. What they get is chaotically changing spatial patterns!

The figures below are not Persian rugs, but illustrate the presence of cooperators and defectors in a society for one generation, and the change from one generation to the next. Blue is a cooperator that was also a cooperator the preceding generation, Red is a defector that was also a defector, Yellow is a defector that was a cooperator, and Green is a defector that was a defector.

Figures 1 and 2 are societies on a 200x200 lattice after 200 generations that started with 10% cooperators, 90% defectors. The difference in starting conditions is the advantage for defectors over cooperators.

Fig 1.

Fig 2.

Figure 3 and 4 are societies on a 99x99 lattice that started with a single defector at the center. The difference is that the snapshot of society is taken at different points in time. Nowak and May show that one gets an almost infinite sequence of different patterns. Also, because the rules of the game are symmetrical, the symmetry is maintained.

Fig 3. After 219 generations.

Fig 4. After 221 generations.

Reference:
Martin A. Nowak. Robert M. May. Evolutionary Games and Spatial Chaos. Nature. Vol. 359. 29 October 1992.

The Eastern Congo First Letter Mystery.

I've been working for over two years on Eastern Congo now, visited the area three times (a fourth time starts in three weeks), and all-together lived there for more than a year. Throughout this time something has been bothering me:

Why do so many (place)names start with the letter "K"?

Let me illustrate this. The work that we do in the DRC, next to the Voix des Kivus project, is an evaluation of a large CDR development project (more here). The project (and the evaluation) takes place in four provinces in Eastern Congo (Sud Kivu, Haut Katanga, Maniema and Tanganyika) and are highlighted below:

Fig. 1: Map.

For the CDR project and the evaluation our implementing partners (the IRC and CARE International) together with local governments constructed a large database with information on over 8,000 so-called LLUs in these four provinces. The term "LLU" we invented and is a "Lowest Level Unit". Some villages consist out of "sousvillages", some "sousvillages" consist out of "quartiers", some "quartiers" consist out of "avenues", etc. An LLU is the lowest of these natural units present.

Let's have a look at what the data says regarding first letters of these units. Ready? Hereby a straightforward pie-chart:

Fig. 2: The first letters K + L + M is more than half of all villages.

Indeed: wooh! Each letter in the alphabet probably doesn't have a 1/26th chance of being selected, but just the three letters K + L + M take up well over 50% of all the first letters! This seems nuts. And this seems to be the case across the four different provinces (the K is number 11):

Fig. 3: And it seems kind of similar for all four provinces.

To emphasize this point, within the four provinces we work in particular territories. Here is the list:

• Haut Katanga: Kipushi, Kasenga, Mitwaba and Kambove
• Tanganyika: Kalemie, Kongolo and Kabalo
• Maniema: Kailo, Kabambare, Pangi and Kibombo
• Sud Kivu: Uvira, Walungu, Kalehe, Mwenga

You see my point, or better the lines underneath the letters K? 2/3rd of all the territories start with a "K"! This is substantially more than (a likely prior of) 1/26; 2/3 is the same as 17 one-third over 26! So, what's going? I don't know the distribution in other countries, but this doesn't seem to be very normal. Two thoughts (please suggest other ones!):

1. The Belgian Colonialist. Shame on me that I don't know this, but did the Congolese have a written language when the Belgians arrived (or probably the Arabs is more appropriate knowing they were in the east much earlier)? And (if so) the same one? Maybe the local languages had many sounds that sound like a "k", so when the Belgians visited far-away villages and documented their names they heard and thus wrote down "k"s. Or, Another reason would be that the "K" on the typewriter got stuck back then.
2. The Language Origin. In Swahili one of the uses for the prefix "ki" is to indicate that the stem that follows is a language (Kifaransa is for example french, Kirega is the language of the Rega tribe, etc.). I know that "ki" is not the same as a "k", and that Swahili is not the same as the local languages spoken in Eastern Congo, but could it be that the natural units started of as mainly language units?

But I don't know. And am curious. Any anthropologist an idea?

Buying flowers for one's thesis.

We’re growing up.

The phone just rang: my flight to New York has been cancelled for the second time. Thank you Aerlingus! Last December I had to leave Congo two weeks earlier than expected for security reasons. So, completely unplanned, I have been in the Netherlands for more than a month. Not only gave this time to enjoy the exquisite Dutch cuisine, it was possible to meet up with friends. And something struck me: we’re getting older.

In Oudewater - the town where my parents live - people I went to primary school with are now taking over the bakeries and grocery stores, are the town's constructionbuilders, etc. In London I met a friend with whom I did my MPhil in Tilburg: he is done, works at the LSE, and I have to call him "dr". Another with whom I was on exchange in South Africa got married over the summer. Another friend whom I know since primary school bought a house and he was talking about children. And this is only a sample. It seems we are settling down: we finish studying, get jobs, get married, and become 'real people'. I am not ready for that!

Life is too much fun at the moment: to study and learn whatever I want and have the possibilities to travel where and whenever I want. The idea of being stuck in one city, to have a proper job, etc. sounds horrible. But why? My friends seem to be completely happy. Is it New York City? The city and its people never seem to settle down. Or is it the PhD? It seems most of my collegues have the same. Or is it just that a particular type of people start a PhD? Anyhow, after being away for almost nine months I can't wait to go back to New York.

Now I'm flying this Friday. Aer Lingus: You hear me? This Friday!

I visited some friends in Ireland. Beautiful country!

Some months ago when in the DR Congo I wrote why I didn't like crows: see "Crows in the Congo" here. On crows; Wired Science just posted something very interesting here:

With the simple act of using twigs to poke a rubber spider, New Caledonian crows may have become the first birds to join an exclusive cognitive class.

Check out the video:

Asus Eee PC 1015. Notepad++, Dropbox, and iDrive.

My laptop is still in Eastern Congo. I left it in Bukavu with my counterpart. Thus a new one was bought when I arrived in the Netherlands (I can't do a day without), and I installed all the necessary documents and programs yesterday. The laptop is an Asus Eee PC 1015, which I upgraded to 2gb working memory. I had the same one in Eastern Congo over the last seven months and was very happy with it:

• It survived. In very hard conditions. Jumping up and down in 4x4s. Dust; so much dust! And I used it very intensively: over the last seven months I maybe turned it off ten times maximum.
• It is powerful. Without problems it ran all my computer programs and simulations.
• It's cheap. I just bought this new one for less than 300 euro (the 2gb RAM is an extra 50).
• Its battery. One battery last for around ten hours. I also have a second battery. So longer periods without electricity are no problem.
• It's small and light. 10 inch and around 1kg. Great for when one travels a lot. And belief me, you get used to the small keyboard.

My new friend for upcoming months.

Yesterday, after receiving the laptop, I spent most of my day installing programs and downloading my documents unto the laptop and emails into Outlook. I am using the following programs:

• Stata SE: An expensive, but an easy to use and powerful computer program for statistical analysis. Very necessary to analyse data, but also to build, clean and edit databases. Luckily I can get it via Columbia for free.
• MS Office: A necessary evil. Luckily, again for free via Columbia.
• Skype: I have to stay in contact with mom and dad, friends, and very important for work.
• R and packages: A completely free program that can do almost anything you want it to do: statistical analysis, building maps, solving equations, etc. All done in the R language - a language that I am still not very comfortable with after using the program for a year. However, a crucial, fantastic, and very powerful program. Download the program and packages here.
• ArcGIS: Way too expensive program for making maps. But used by everybody in the GIS world. Luckily, again for free via Columbia.
• TeXnicCenter, MikTex and packages: This is my default program for word processing. It's fantastic. You have to learn the language LaTeX but it's not difficult, and the software is for free, it is much faster than Word if many equations are used, the output documents look so much better, and you can do much more with this program than, for example, with MS Word. See here for a video on how to install.
• Pendragon: A computer program we use to create surveys so that they can be put on PDAs and used in the field.
• CutePDF: A free PDF converter. See here.

TeXnicCenter. Great free software.

Three computer programs I want to discuss in particular:

• Notepad++: For Stata and R I often write so-called do-files. These are documents with code that tell the program exactly what to do. I use Notepad++ to write these do-files. It's great. First, others have written free so-called 'language-packs' (here) so that different commands get different coloring. Secondly, from within the program it is possible to immediately run script (how to get this working look here). Also, this program is completely free and since yesterday I know they have an awesome shop.
• Dropbox: This is likely the most amazing program ever. If you don't have it get it (here)! In brief, Dropbox is a folder on your laptop and on the internet. It is great for two reasons. First, if you work together with others it is possible to share (part) of your Dropbox-folder. For example, in my Dropbox-folder I have a folder called "Congo" that I share with Macartan and Raul. If I change something in this folder it is automatically changed in the same folder on Macartan and Raul's computer. Fantastic! Secondly, Dropbox is great when you use different laptops or when you often have a new laptop. All my documents are in Dropbox (around 40gb). Just before leaving the Congo and giving my counterpart my old laptop I "unlinked" the Dropbox-folder and I deleted it. Yesterday I installed Dropbox on my new laptop and I linked it to my Dropbox-folder. It immediately started downloading my 40gb+ of files. It's great! You get 2gb for free and for a 100$ per year you get 50gb.
• iDrive: My program that back-ups files. Every 3am - automatically - iDrive makes a complete scan of my computer and back-ups all the documents that changed during the day before and saves this new version online. Thus, if I have a document X that I worked on for over 10 days I thus have 10 different versions of that document online. "I should never have deleted that chapter. Where is it?" will thus never happen. See here to download it (5gb for free and 100gb [500gb] for 5$ [15$] per month.)

Notepad++. Again, completely free.

Back in the Netherlands.

After a busride from the border of Eastern Congo to Kigali (Rwanda) to Kampala (Uganda) to Nairobi (Kenya), and a flight from Nairobi to Istanbul to Amsterdam, I am back in the Netherlands.

Mom, dad and both brothers picking me up at Schiphol. Mom...

and dad.

First impressions back in the Netherlands:

• It is not necessary to copy&paste an email before sending it (being afraid that the internet breaks down while sending). Fantastic!
• While on the road: "Where are all the 4x4s?" , "There are no holes in the road?", "Where is the CODAN?", and "What!? People stay on their side of the road?".
• KLM does not mean "Kilo, Lima, Mike" and stop thinking like that.
• A working shower! Even better: with warm water! And I can keep my mouth open. Ha!
• When leaving the house I feel empty without a backup phone, GPS device, satellite phone, pocket knife, etc.
• Here when things are written on walls it is graffiti, not information about vaccinations that took place.

• More serious. There is so much abundance. I know that it is now the year's worst moment (Christmas and New Year), but still. Breakfast, then coffee with a slice of apple pie, then it's time for lunch, after that it tea with chocolate, etc.
• So many serious things are going on in the world. What are the Dutch people busy with? The yearly top-2000 best songs, what to wear during New Year, etc. The scariest thing, though, is that in a matter of days I'll be used to all of the above again.

Back home. My town (Oudewater) covered in snow. Gorgeous!

Upcoming months

January 24th: flight back to New York. Then about two months after that I hope to be back in Africa.

So now until the 24th it is holiday?

Not really. The evaluation continues. Raul and me have daily contact with the teams in the field,

Raul (in Spain), Macartan (in Ireland) and me

did two all-nighters in row; so the work continues.

I do hope to finally get some time for my dissertation. Scary! The second semester of my fourth year is about to start. Maybe I should start writing something.

Training in Bukavu.

In total the evaluation consist out of four steps (A to D) and takes place in four provinces (Maniema, Sud Kivu, Haut Katanga and Tanganyika). Step A, B and C teams have been trained and in the field for over two months now. Yesterday we finished the training of the step D teams for Maniema and Sud Kivu.

For two weeks Raul and me trained 30 people of which in the end 24 were selected. How to conduct focus groups and general assemblies. How to audit a development project. How to conduct a myriad of different surveys. How to take GPS locations and use a PDA. Etc. It was much fun. The students are intelligent and very participatory; by default 1/3rd of the room had their hands raised.

Teaching 30 people.

A great group of students.

And many simulations to understand the survey's questions.

Step A, B and C teams visited during the training.
A, B, C and D: one big Tuungane evaluation team!

The Congo River.

In the previous post (or actually the previous 4 posts) something was missing. Something big. From October 28 to October 8 I was in Kindu; the capital of Maniema and a city build next to... the Congo River. Over the last years I have read so many books about this River. Books such as Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Crichton's Congo, Hochchild's King Leopold's Ghost, Butcher's (horribly bad) Blood River, Naipaul's A Bend in the River, Roberts' A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State, etc. had created an image in my mind of the Congo River - or "La Fleuve" ("The Source" as they call it in Kindu) as this big, mystical river. A river that in reality could never surpass the expectations I had of it. How wrong was I:

I flew with a MONUSCO plane from Bukavu to Kindu: only about a two
hour flight. After about an hour the rainforest started. I thought I knew what
to expect. When I finally saw a big river running like a snake through
the forest, I felt... nothing. Dissappointing! Was this what I read about.
Was this the magical Congo River?! But we kept on flying. After thirty more
minutes a new river could be seen snaking through the rainforest far
away. As we neared the River I got a chill on my back: This was the Congo River!
So beautiful and so big. On the picture: A first glimpse of "La Fleuve".

There is a reason why the people call the River "La Fleuve". First, Kindu
is completely isolated; a city hidden in the rainforest. Everything is either
flown in from Bukavu, or (mainly) brought from Kinsangani via the River: a
5-day trip in a piroque to get from Kindu to Kisangani (back to Kindu
takes longer as it is against the River's current). Second, people wash their
food, themselves, their clothes, etc. in the River. People use it as a big toilet
and use it as drinking water. On the picture: Close to Kindu there are not
too many crocodilles and hippos so children play in the River.

On the picture: As soon as the River stops. The rainforest starts.

The mode of transportation on the River is the
piroque. These are boats cut out from a tree (yes in
one piece) and can be as long as fifteen meter. They are
really impressive. On this picture: We often had to cross the
River with our motorbikes to reach a new village. Thus:
motorbikes in the piroque.

The Congo River is the deepest river in the world with depths in
excess of 230 meter and the second largest river in the world by
volume of water discharged (yes, Wikipedia). It is a river you do

not want to see angry. On the picture: This was shortly before a storm.
For one hour: strong winds, heavy rain and waves that made me think
I was in the Netherlands looking at the North Sea. One hour later
the sun was shining again as if nothing happened. So impressive!

Back. 1/4

Back. A very appropriate word. After weeks hereby another blogpost. After weeks I am also back from the field. The last month I spent my time throughout Sud Kivu: in piroques, on motorbikes, and many hours of walking. From end October I did the same in Congo's province Maniema. The first part of the evaluation has started and the teams are deployed. I arrived back in Bukavu a few days ago. A break? Definitely not. Tomorrow Raul and I start the training of the Sud Kivu and Maniema teams for the second part of the evaluation. Needless to say, there is so much to tell - I have had so many great experiences over the last weeks. Hereby four brief posts with several pictures to give at last some idea.

October 18. With the Sud Kivu team to the first village. In South Kivu

there are three teams of two for the first part of the evaluation. On this

picture: Because it is the first village we went all together: one car and

two motorbikes.

Most of the times villages are not reachable by road.
On the picture: walking for two hours to reach the
village. The views are gorgeous though.

One of the things the evaluation teams do in a village is to conduct a
large meeting with the villagers to inform them about Project RAPID. We
require that at least 25% of the villagers are present. On the picture:
One of the team members conducting a general assembly.

On the picture: And the views! Amazing!

Because the teams work often for 2 days in a village
at arrival we ask whether there is a place where we
could sleep in the village. This is never a problem. On
this picture: In this village in Sud Kivu's territoire
Kalehe we were especially lucky. Not only was there
a hospital with beds (and no patients) where we could
sleep. In the evening the village offered us rice and a
living chicken. The chicken tasted great.

Back. 2/4

Heading towards another village. On the picture: the
provincial supervisor for Sud Kivu on the motorbike.
The road you see is a really really good road. Most
roads - if existant at all - are not doable by 4x4s and
often also not by motorbikes. The teams often walk
hours to reach a village.

Several of the villages that have to be visisted are on
islands. On the picture: our transport to the village.
These boats are piroques: boats often cut out of a tree.

On the picture: heading to the next village. The team together in a
piroque.

The first few villages still need a lot of oversight. Thus, every evening
- even after a long day of work in the field - more work. On the
picture: debriefing of a trip to a village in Sud Kivu's terroire Kalehe.

On the picture: the tough life!

Back. 3/4

With the team in Sud Kivu's territoire of Walungu where we stayed in
in a paroish with nuns (who make amazing liquor from fruit). Important
when using motorbikes is maintenance. On the picture: At 6am in the
morning, before leaving to the next village, the team cleaning and
verifying the motorbikes.

Much time of the teams is spend on obtaining information: socio-

economic indicators, information on displacement and conflict, etc. On
the picture: interview with randomly selected villager.

Every evening the data collected that day has to be checked and

entered into PDAs. On the picture: Late in the evening by candelight

working with the teams.

The teams, including me, sleep most of the time in the villages where we
work: most of the time in the house of the chief or in another house or
building in the village. On the picture: Beds are a rarity and most of the
times we sleep on the ground.

Congo is a beautiful country. Plagued by povery and conflict, but
gorgeous. On the picture: The view when waking up early in the
morning. Try to beat that!

Back. 4/4

From October 28 to November 8 I was in Maniema to launch the
evaluation there. In Sud Kivu, Haut Katanga and Tanganyika we work with
the IRC. In Maniema we work with CARE International. On the picture:
briefing the CARE staff about the evaluation and introducing the
evaluation team (not on the picture).

The teams make very long days. During the day they introduce project
RAPID: conduct interviews, do general assemblies, focus groups, etc.
In the evening they verify the collected data and enter it into PDAs.
On the picture: In one of the village chef's house (where we all slept in
the evening on the ground) the team is filling out the PDAs.

In Maniema the security rules are substantially less
strict. It is, for example, allowed for me to drive a
motorbike and thus I made many many kilometers. Such
a sense of freedom. On the picture: My Yamaha bike,
sun going down and the Congo river. Truly amazing!

All decent buildings in Kindu (the capital of Maniema) are still from the
Belgian period. The building ares thus decades old but have not been
maintained. People do live there. On the picture: "La Roche" a former
Belgian dancing club.

On my flight back to Goma (where I would stay one evening to take the
boat to Bukavu the next day) I also landed in Punia and Kasongo. On
the picture: the awesome aiport of Punia. In the middle of the rainforest.

The evaluation has started.

After months of preparation here in the Congo, and over one and a half year in New York City with some several-month long trips to the Congo, the evaluation started! Raul had the honor to start with his Haut Katanga team yesterday. I leave tomorrow morning for the field with my Sud Kivu team. It is a very special feeling. After so much work, ups and downs, it is really going to start!

The last two weeks were nuts regarding work. Therefore the absence of posts. Given the absence of internet and for large part phonecoverage in the days and weeks to come, don't expect many posts. If you want to get in contact:

• Phone with Zain-coverage: +243998399330
• Phone with Vodacom-coverage: +243810930927
• Satelite phone (always on from 8-820am and 6-620pm): +8821643340723

All alone in Bukavu.

After living together, working together, and sharing lots of ups and downs together for almost three months, Raul left me last week. I am all alone in Bukavu. In the months to come Raul will be responsible for the evaluation in the provinces Haut Katanga and Tanganyika; me for the provinces Maniema and Sud Kivu.

Before leaving however, the Sud Kivu and Maniema team that we trained the week before invited us for a goodbye-Raul drink. We had (yet again) a great evening together, which ended with them giving us two wooden carvings. The first is a hunter that carries a prey; the second a hunter that carries a wounded collegue. The first symbolizes how we have a job to do, the second how we will have to work together in the months to come.

Getting the work done, ...

by working together and helping each other.

Motorbike training.

For the evaluation we were planning to buy 16 motorbikes - those nice big 125CC Yamaha DTs. First, this would make logistics easier in the field; 4x4s can't get to most of our villages, and try to find a mode of transport different than walking when you are in the middle of nowhere. Second, after some engineering on the motorbike it would be possible to charge the GPS devices, PDA, laptops, etc. Anyhow, this sounded great in New York.

Once here our implementing partners told us it would be difficult to find more than eight people that would be both good for the evaluation and can drive a motorbike. So, we bought only eight motorbikes and during the training we assigned people to position taking into account whether they could or could not drive a motorbike. Knowing this is the Congo we were very explicit during the training. In one-to-one conversation we asked them "Can you drive a motobike?" and asked them explicitely about their level of experience, whether they had a driver's permit, etc. After the training we had our eight drivers. At least, that's what we thought.

Yesterday, just to be sure, I asked the IRC whether we could borrow a motorbike for several hours to check the guys for their driving abilities... You're ready? Of course within five minutes the first person was lying in a ditch next to the road with the motor on top of him. With the exception of two of them, none of the eight could decently drive a motorbike. So yesterday we arranged two motorbikes and two instructors for several days and thus today and the days to come it is... motorbike training.

This time the Sud Kivu supervisor not falling.

Two motorbikes, and

a lot of tests.