If you're looking for great enumerators in Eastern Congo?

Chris asking for directions to locals. Enumerators often

spend days getting from one village to the next.

We worked with an excellent group of almost 100 enumerators for about 18 months in South Kivu, Maniema, Tanganyika and Haut Katanga, DRC. These enumerators are:

• Well-trained: Raul and me did this ourselves for months in 2010 (see eg here);
• All-round: They know how to conducts surveys (ours was very complicated: here the design document), list-experiments, general assemblies, focus groups, etc. They also drive motorbikes and use PDAs and GPS devices. 
• Experienced: They worked in some of the world's harshest (especially transport and disease-wise) and insecure conditions -- often being away from larger villages for weeks;
• Trustworthy: After working 18 months closely together with them (often spending nights in a row in the field together), I know them well and trust them.

They are on the look out for new work. Given its Congo, even this extra-ordinary group of people has difficulties finding jobs! They come with our highest recommendation. Please find contact information here. Also feel free to take up contact with me for more information. These guys are really amazing.

Chris conducting a general assembly.

Mapendo conducting a survey.

 

Luc and Edison entering a new village in Maniema.

Venant driving on some lovely Congolese roads.

(FYI: this is actually quite an ok road. Often the

the guys walk with the motorbike next to them)

Power Boyz - Tchuna Baby.

I've clicked on the "repeat button" several times now. "Tchuna Baby" by the Power Boyz is quite a catchy song. I had a quick search for them online but can't find much about them so, given it's African and I think Portuguese, I go for "It's an Angolan band" and "It fits in the wider style of "Kuduro"". The latter is a type of music and dance originally born in Angola in the 1980s. It is characterized as uptempo, energetic, and danceable. European and American electronic music had begun appearing in the market, which attracted Angolan musicians and inspired them to incorporate their own musical styles. Young producers began adding heavy African percussion to these European and American beats, which resulted in what was then called Batida. In the early 90's, Angolan clubs started playing it and the youngsters started to create new dance moves to follow what the DJs were dropping. (thanks Wikipedia!). Well, check out some of those dance-moves here:

 

Crowdsourcing and Peter Diamandis.

This Thursday I fly to Berlin for a two-day workshop with fellow-authors, where we'll present (and discuss) chapters for a book Steven Livingston and Gregor Walter-Drop are putting together. The book deals with how new technology (phones, satellites, mapping, etc.) can be used and enable us to learn about and solve big problems. I'm writing a chapter based on our experiences with Voix des Kivus: our cellphone-based system that we implemented in Eastern Congo to learn about local level events (more here). In brief, the chapter will first discuss the benefits of crowd-sourcing, and will then introduce and discuss crowd-seeding. While crowd-sourcing sources-out tasks to an undefined public, crowd-seeding selects (part of) the crowd and does this randomly. The reason why is so that one obtains representative data -- often crucial when collecting information. The chapter, however, continues by discussing in more detail especially ethical issues that were raised while operating Voix des Kivus -- issues that should be kept in mind when launching such a system. See the following document that Macartan presented at the University of British Columbia earlier this year, for a brief discussion.

While working on the above I came across a TED-talk by Peter Diamandis -- a very impressive person (understatement). He is among others the the Founder and Chairman of the X Prize Foundation; an educational non-profit institute whose mission is to create radical break-throughs for the benefit of humanity. They do this by offering large (monetary) prizes to "the crowd". A fantastic application of crowd-sourcing. The TED talk is about his recent book  "Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think". I haven't read it yet, but the talk is promising and -- by using the argument of crowdsourcing -- he makes quite a case for optimism about our future:

The Old Days.

Was going through old songs by Dutch people, or those that are about the Netherlands (Jacques Brel's Amsterdam, etc.) and came across "Het Dorp" by Wim Sonneveld: Wim Sonneveld was a Dutch cabaret and singer who died in 1974. Together with Toon Hermans and Wim Kan, he is considered to be one of the 'Great Three' of Dutch cabaret. I didn't really know him except for that-guy-my-grandparents-probably-would-laugh-about. In other words, can't be funnny anymore today. Well, how wrong was I. Here is a brief 1965 sketch of him as Frater Venantius. It's fantastic (although unfortunately in Dutch only). One of the jokes: A nun meets a girl on the street who she remembers to be an old student of hers. She asks the girl "What do you do these days?". The girl replies "I am a prostitute". The nun replies "Oh no, my child. What are you saying!?" The girl responds "I am a prostitute". The nun says "Ah, luckily. I thought you said 'protestant'". This was in 1965. Lovely!

Foucault pendulum & Paris.

The day before yesterday I visited the Medieval Museum (Musee de Cluny) and the Pantheon. Given it's France with its rich medieval history, I had expected more from the first. Regarding the second: make sure to climb the building (impressive views over Paris), and also make sure to visit the tombs where famous Frenchmen are buried: "Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaisante".  Among those buried there are Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Marie Curie, and Jean Jaurès. The Pantheon also houses the Foucault pendulum -- a device to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. Created in 1851 it was the first proof of the rotation of the earth. Check out the Wikipedia page for an illustration.

Oh, and while in Paris, make sure to visit the Grande Mosquee de Paris. To be more precise, have (sweet) tea in the tea-house next door, smoke hookah and have some of their amazing pastries. A brilliant place in paris to read and work!

Tea and pastries!

The card you see in the picture above in the bottom left is my Carte Navigo. If you're in Paris for longer than a week and plan to use the metro a lot: get one. If I understood the lady at the desk correctly, though, you have to pretend not to be a tourist. :). Also, if possible, make sure to be in Paris during the "Fete de la musique". A great evening during which there is music at every street corner, and people are out and about: dancing, drinking, etc. I spent it at Montmatre and jumped at techno music right next to the Sacre Coeur cathedral. Fantastic!



Sacre Coeur

What I'm reading over the summer.

This summer -- in addition to a pile of articles on migration, development, experiments and so on that have accumulated over the months -- I hope to read the following books. Quite the list, but mainly easy reading (the first four I already read):

• Africa since 1800. Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore (good book)
• The Leopard. Tomasi Di Lampedusa (an ok read)
• The Road to Kalamata: A Congo Mercenary's Personal Memoir. Mike Roar (not recommended)
• A Thousand Sisters: My Journey into the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman. Lisa Shannon (painfully bad book. I'll write some remarks on this blog soon)
• Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty. Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson (review by Jarold Diamond here)
• Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (started this months ago, but am not getting through it. The first book I read by a Russian author...)
• Economic Gangsters. Raymond Fisman and Ted Miguel
• Winter’s Heart. Robert Jordan (book 9 of the The Wheel of Times-series. Be careful when starting: each book is 1,000+ pages and there are 26-something books in the series)
• Learn Swahili (I will speak Swahili one day)
• The Last Journal of David Livingstone. David Livingstone
• The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. James Scott (also started this ages ago and not finished yet)
• Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Robert Putnam
• Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand
• White Settlers in Tropical Africa. Lewis Gann Peter Duignan (bought in a small bookshop in Paris last week when I needed to read something on a terrace and didn't have my Kindle around)
• Madam Bovary. Gustave Flaubert
• Great Expectations. Charles Dickens (on my smartphone -- great in subways when my Kindle is not around. Am about 30% in: good fun.)
• The Good Earth. Pearl Buck.
• Murder on the Orient Express: A Hercule Poirot Mystery.

 Let's see how far I get. Any other recommendations, please let me know.

Château de Vincennes

Yesterday I visited Chateau de Vincennes - a gorgeous castle just outside of Paris. It's history goes back to Louis VII (12th century). In addition to the chapel (modelled on the Sainte-Chapelle of the Palais de la Cite in Paris), the site includes a keep: 52 meters high and the tallest medieval fortified structure of Europe. At the start of the Hundred Years' War John II initiated work on this keep, which was completed in 1370. It's a very impressive construction.

The keep of Chateau de Vincennes.

The keep includes several dungeons. On the walls of these dungeons graffiti made by the prisoners can still be seen:

Indeed quite a bit different than the graffiti we think of these days. It is maybe not that strange though. The prisoners that were detained in the keep were people of (used-to-be) high standing. Some famous ones include Nicolas Fouquet (Louis XIV’s disgraced finance minister), Denis Diderot (French author and philosopher) and Donatien Alphonse François (the famous Marquis de Sade).

Talking about grafitti; hereby a must-listen-to song by Simon and Garfunkel:

Camino de Santiago pilgrimage

A friend arrived this week in Santiago de Compostela after walking the Camino. She has, in addition to her name and contact-details, the following in her automatic email-reply:

         ———-O0ooo—

        ———–(——)—

      ————)–-/—-

  ————(_/-

        —-ooo0O—-

        —-(——)—-

        —–\-–(–

        ——\_)-

Nice! Walking the Camino is very impressive, and must be an incredible experience. I've been intrigued by it ever since I watched The Way -- a movie I watched in the plane because President Bartlett from the West Wing is the main character. It turned out to be a fantastic movie:

Mitterand Library, Paris.

This summer there are no plans to visit the Congo. I do hope to write some blog-posts. For example, at the moment I am having adventures in Paris. For some reason a few friends clustered in Paris these weeks. A train-ticket Rotterdam-Paris and a couch in a friends apartment, and now I'm here for two weeks.
During this period, while meeting with friends and drinking red wine, I am working. Last Saturday I finished a draft paper about our Voix des Kivus project in Congo, which I shared with Macartan and hopefully soon with the wider world. And today I finished data entry of a Congolese village: this is part of the data I collected recently (and is currently being collected) in South Kivu. There is one major reason why I am quite productive here in Paris: the Mitterand Library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. This is one of the largest and most modern libraries in the world and its construction was announced on 14 July 1988 by... former-French President François Mitterrand. The library was designed by the architectural firm of Dominique Perrault (thanks Wikipedia!). I have to say: they did an amazing job.

A picture I stole from the internet. Check the court-jungle. 

Last Friday I obtained a personal, electronic card that gives me access to the Research Area of the Mitterand Library: an enormous area, very quiet, and with lots of reading and work space. Show your Columbia University ID and also take some other form of ID with you (passport, driver's license), smile at the people that have to approve you (you never know with the French), and you have access.

 One of the halls. To the right the study halls. To the left view on the court-yard.

One of the study halls. The area where I'm now spending my days.

The Mitterand Library was inaugurated on 15 December 1996 and contains more than ten million volumes (this is the same for Columbia University). Location is also good: on the 14 and the C lines. Very important note: after visiting the Mitterand Library also visit "The Frog and British Library": a good, well-known bar next door.

Netherlands - Germany.

I am in France for two weeks; to meet up with friends but also to work (read: instead of sitting behind my laptop and looking at a screen 24/7 in city X, I now sit behind my laptop and look at a screen 24/7 in Paris). Yesterday we lost badly against Germany (they were really much better). The Netherlands is now unfortunately out of the European Cup. I still like this though: [June 20 update] We are now really out of the European Championship. Got this from my little brother. So proud on my fellow countrymen. :)

Congo, WGAPE, the Netherlands.

Finally a post. The last three weeks were quite the rollercoaster. Shortly after sending out a grant application with Raul, Massimo and Suresh (fingers crossed!), I was in Congo for a week (May 13-21). We - Macartan, Raul and I - presented the results of our evaluation in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi (report will come out publicly soon!). The 22nd I was back in New York, but left the next day again for California. WGAPE - a bi-annual get-together of researchers working on the political economy of Africa - took place at UC Berkeley on the 24th and 25th. In brief: fantastic! In less brief: WGAPE is a small, select group of economists, anthropologists and political scientists from West-coast universities (Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, etc.). This was the first time WGAPE also invited researchers from East-coast universities and I was one of the lucky ones. For two days very high quality research was presented. It's also a great place to get to know the big people in the field (Dan Posner, Ted Miguel, Jeremy Weinstein, etc.) but also fellow Ph.D. candidates -- also in more social contexts. After WGAPE I stayed an extra day in San Fransisco (Jenn: thanks for the couch!), did some sightseeing, and was back in NYC the 26th. The 27th and 28th, together with Pierce, we packed our apartment into boxes (why so many books?!) and the 30th we rented a truck and moved all of it into storage in Brooklyn. We're both gone for 3 months and want something different when back. The 31st I was in a plane again to Amsterdam via Berlin. Upon arrival in the Netherlands we left the next day again: both my little brothers ran a half-marathon and with the family we made it a weekend-away. I'm now back in Oudewater (the Netherlands) and, finally, things start to slow down.

Fig1. Dear UC Berkeley. I like you.
Please offer me a job end-2013.

Fig 2. Unloading the truck (Pierce and
truck under the left "LOADING")

June, July, August 2012
So, I'm in the Netherlands and will be here until end-August! What am I up to? One of the first things is to make the results of the Congo evaluation public. Yesterday evening I worked until 3am with Macartan and we're close to finishing the polishing of the report; so soon more! Then related to this evaluation a big thing for the summer will be: First, to do secondary analysis. The results that we find in the Congo, do they hold for certain sub-populations only? Does the development project work better in some (type of) regions than in others? Et cetera. Second, in addition to writing the academic version of the evaluation report, we have collected a lot of data during this evaluation and also a large number of ideas. So the plan is to write a set of academic papers - the first steps to be taken this summer. But first, upcoming week, I want to finish an academic paper about Voix des Kivus. The project finished more than a year ago, it has been presented at several occasions and thus it is now time to polish the paper and maybe send to a journal. Also related to VdK is a meeting in Berlin early July. Together with Macartan we're contributing a chapter to a book related to the rise and use of new technology. Very interesting (also more on this later).


Most important for this summer though is my disseration. My fifth year at Columbia University just finished and it is really time to write up some chapters. The (too many) ideas are there. The (too much) data is there. Now I have to write it. Some work for my dissertation that I am particularly excited about is based on data that is being collected since my last trip to Eastern Congo (Dec-Feb 2012). We started a set of field-experiments and village mapping earlier this year and my team in the field (South Kivu, Congo) has continued the work since. Upon my departure in February I had a first pile of hardcopies with me: data from 6 villages, around 1,200 surveys. Last trip (May 2012) I took another pile with me from Congo to New York - another 2,000 surveys). Because I will spend my time in the Netherlands this summer, I sent this data from New York to my parents place - the box arrived this morning. Thanks USPS. I'm very excited!

Fig3. What will this data tell me about migration and
cooperation in Congo? Can't wait to process and analyze it!

The Matrix Does Indeed Exist.

The Nebuchadnez(z)ar

How (not) to use the toilet.

Posted on the men's restroom toilet-door in the IRC office in Kinshasa (Congo):

Do not fish in the toilet?

Kinshasa, Congo

After around 18 hours in a plane, I arrived in Kinshasa last Monday. The flight was very comfortable: Raul and I had a direct flight from NYC to Johannesburg (around 14 hours) and from there to Kinshasa (another four hours). It is my very first time in Kinshasa. Yep, I know; although I have been working for several years on the Congo this is my first time in the country’s capital. It is not too strange though because my work is mainly in Eastern Congo; and Bukavu, for example, is located 1,800km away from Kinshasa!

Monday

Despite the stories I’ve heard from colleagues and friends about Kinshasa airport, Raul and I navigated the airport without any bribes or further annoyances. And the IRC car was even waiting for us when we got out of the airport. Then – after an obligatory IRC security briefing (we are under no circumstances allowed to walk on the street!) and a meeting with the Director of Governance regarding the days to come – we met Macartan in the hotel. He arrived several hours after us, flying in from Vancouver (via Montreal and Brussels). After a dinner with the Directors of the Tuungane program – the program we are evaluating – the three of us worked until late preparing the presentations for the next day.

Tuesday

At 8am we were picked up by an IRC car and that morning and afternoon Raul and I saw the master at work: Macartan gave two three-hour presentations: one at the IRC headquarters (with all the high-level IRC people present) and one at the UK Embassy (with all the high-level people from DFID present). One major thing that stands out from these presentations and the discussion that we had afterwards is that it is impressive to see how both the IRC and DFID want to learn from the evaluation for future programming.[1] After a walk along the Congo river (with a view on Brazzaville on the other side), we had dinner with DFID and IRC: very important (and good fun) to also get to know each other better socially. After all this and when back in the hotel the three of us talked about our dissertations (fantastic), and we were late in bed again.

Wednesday

The main reason to be here is to present the results of the Tuungane 1 evaluation (2006-2011). In upcoming years, however, we will also lead the evaluation of Tuungane 2 (2011-2014) – a program several times larger than its predecessor. So, at 8am the IRC car picked us up again and we spent the morning and afternoon in the IRC office discussing the Memorandum of Understanding, the research components of the Tuungane 2 program, etc. Now - before dinner with the IRC - we have a few hours to send out some emails (and for me to write this post).

Notes

• I don’t expect to upload many pictures. Not only did I forget my camera, I expect to spend most my time in hotels and offices – i.e. substantially less exciting then the field.
• Kinshasa is warm and humid. That is, around 2pm one really wants to take a shower.
• Talking about showers. The hotel we stay in has a hot shower! So, last Monday, I had a hot shower (i.e. actually hot water coming out of a wall) for the first time ever in Congo! Brilliant.

[1] I know I still do not say anything about the results of the evaluation. I'll wait until the evaluation report has been made public.

I’m Heading Back to the Congo

Yesterday I booked my flights. May 13: NYC -> Jo'burg -> Kinshasa. Then the IRC organizes internal flights, and May 21: Lubumbashi -> Jo'burg -> NYC. Indeed. Less than a week in Congo! Quite nuts. Why?

Our evaluation of the Tuungane 1 program – one of the world’s largest community-driven development (CDD) programs – is done. It's a very serious evaluation. It started in 2006 with a baseline survey (I only joined in 2008). The final survey employed almost 100 enumerators, worked in over 1,120 villages for around 1.5 years (Oct’10 to Feb’12), has a very solid (behavioral) measure to measure the impact of the development program, etc. Up to now the results have only been shared with a small group of people: DFID (the donor), the IRC and CARE (the implementers) and a set of academics working in this field of research (EGAP). As soon as we go public I’ll write more on this blog.

I travel with Macartan and Raul. The reason for the trip is to present the results to, first, DFID’s country team in Kinshasa. Then a few days later (in Lubumbashi) we present to the national and provincial teams of the implementing partners (IRC and CARE). After that Raul stays in the Congo to do fieldwork for his dissertation and Macartan continues to Nairobi to present again. I fly out on the 21st back to NYC.

I would have loved to stay longer. My team is working in South Kivu at this very moment (collecting data for my dissertation) and I really would like to meet them, check their work, etc. Moreover there is lots to do for Tuungane 2 – the second stage of Tuungane 1 and about three times as big. Unfortunately I can’t; on the 24-25th there is WGAPE at Berkeley. This is a twice-a-year-get-together of economists and political scientists from Berkeley, UCLA, etc. that work on the political economy of development of Africa. Via Macartan I was able to go there. I’m exited because there are some really amazing scholars there doing very interesting work. Luckily Raul will meet up with my team though in Bukavu.

Two more things:

1. Did you know that if you book your flight at Orbitz.com you'll be flying to the “Democratic People’s Republic Congo”
2. Food for thought: I often write too fast when using my phone and select “y” instead of the “t” so often my “you”s becomes “tou”s. Now the big question is: Where is the “h” coming from in Shakespeare’s “thou”? The “h” is not that closely located to the “y” on a phone's keyboard. Why would Shakespeare make those mistakes?

70th Annual MPSA Conference

Since Wednesday I'm in Chicago. My first time. Reason is the Annual MPSA Conference: a gathering of 1,000s of political scientists from all over the world. A great place to get to know, network and socialize with colleagues.

I present two papers: "Migrant Cooperation as a Signal": a paper based on a set of field-experiments done in the Congo last time I was there. "Crowdseeding in the Congo: Using New Technology to Understand Conflict": a paper with Macartan based on Voix des Kivus. More later!

First thoughts about Chicago (compared to NYC):

• the city is clean
• people are friendly
  

Back in New York City.

Since March 8 I'm back in NYC. In the weeks to come I expect to blog less because most days are spent behind a laptop. However, upcoming weeks are going to be interesting:

• Together with Massimo I'll be going to the gym at least three times a week for rowing. I lost almost 10 kilograms in the Congo last time, so the idea is to try to avoid adding too much in the months to come. And with several colleagues I'll squash as well once or twice a week;
• I received a small office at Columbia, but probably will still be working a lot in coffeeshops;
• April 12-15 the MPSA conference takes place in Chicago where I present two papers: 1. One on migration, and 2. one (together with Macartan) about our Voix des Kivus project. Both, unfortunately, still have to be written;
• By the end of this week Macartan, Raul and me have a deadline to hand in a revision of a paper we submitted to a prestigious journal. I'm currently running some extra simulations on Columbia University's supercomputer, we are replicating all our results (both the formal and statistical ones) one more time to be sure that everything is correct, etc.
• By the beginning of April our final report for the Tuungane evaluation has to be in. Yes, the evaluation of the 5 year Tuungane project - the project that is the reason for the existence of this blog. More (among others the results!) to come;
• Then in May I'm likely to be back in the Congo again - with Macartan and Raul. There are two reasons: 1. To present the findings of the evaluation to shareholders, and 2. To meet up with my research team that is currently still in the field to collect data for the dissertation.

Then by the end of May the semester is already over again. In upcoming months, though, it is write, write and write. I will be on the jobmarket in Fall 2013 so have 2.5 semesters to turn the ideas in my head and all all the piles of data into a dissertation.

Brooklyn

Last Tuesday together with colleagues Ali and Pierce we visited Neelan in Brooklyn to work in the coffeeshops there. It was fantastic. The sun shined. We visited the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. And at 11pm we ended our day of work with a whisky in a spacious bar sitting on a leather sofa next to a fireplace. It's good to be back.

Ali and Neelan. Neelan is carrying data from his fieldwork in India.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens.

Back from Congo: Congo Recap.

I'm back in New York City since last Thursday. A quick recap of my two months in the Congo:

Security

This time in Congo’s South Kivu province I was not under IRC's security umbrella. Given that I've already had my fair share of sleepless nights due to gunfire, have been chased by a mob with sticks and stones, and several other things happened that I don't write about because my mom reads these posts, this was the major concern. In the end it was unnecessary. We had no security incidents whatsoever. What came closest was the use of force from my side on two occasions:

When in Goma, Freddy and I took motorbikes to get to the harbor from where we would leave by boat to Bukavu. The motorbike had to stop for a truck that blocked the road. While waiting a local youth bumped into me rather unnecessarily because it was not crowded. I immediately checked my pockets and noticed that my moleskin notebook was missing. When he noticed I knew, he started running and after a short chase I had my notebook back. Ha! He better had stolen my wallet: the notebook had information from many interviews and was thus many times more valuable to me than my wallet.

When leaving Congo Neelan - as a proper academic - took the hotel room key with him. About two months later I had the same room as Neelan in the hotel. Due to a hole in the backpack I lost the key one day and had the following conversation with the hotel employee:

• Peter: “I lost my key. I'm sorry. Can I have the spare key.”
• Employee: “Because the other white guy took the key with him we don’t have a second key.”
• [Now several minutes of silence and me waiting for more from his side]
• Peter: “So what are you going to do?”
• Employee: “Well we don’t have a key”
• Peter: “I know. But all my stuff is inside and thus we have to solve this”
• [Several minutes of silence and me getting more and more annoyed.]
• Peter: “Ok. I’ll go to the bar next door to read a book and you solve the problem. You have two hours.”
• [On my way out also informed the boss of the hotel of the issue. Then after 2 hours:]
• Peter: “My door is still locked”
• Employee: “Yes. We don’t have the key”
• Peter: “I know. But how are you going to solve that”
• [Several minutes of a blank stare and me getting really annoyed.]
• Peter: “If you don’t open it, I will kick in the door myself.”
• Employee: “Haha. That’s not possible.”
• [A minute later the (oh-so-high quality) door was kicked open and I was in the room.]

Health

Also health-wise things went unexpectedly smooth. Overall I haven't been sick, with the exception of some diarrhea and throwing up the first two weeks when Neelan was still in Congo. Needless to say, I now blame Neelan for me being sick during that period. There is only one type of animal that bothered me twice: those insects that start digging in your foot and leave their eggs. I have had this before (here), and with a little bit of pocket-knive-surgery and disinfecting-with-whisky this was solved quickly (see the picture below).

Nice

Research

Needless to say this was the reason why I went through all the trouble of going to Congo again. And it was worth it! A lot of amazing data has been and is being collected: from lab-in-the-field experiments, village mapping, etc. Data that is central to my dissertation. There is another reason, however, why especially these last two months in the Congo were so important. Let me give an anecdote. Last semester I presented a draft paper at Columbia's comparative politics workshop. In brief, based on data collected for our Tuungane evaluation, the draft has a lot of regressions and empirical results regarding migration. People then correctly asked: “So what do the migrants say?” At that point I had spend over 1.5 years in the Congo, but I could not tell them that. I spent time in the field but never specifically focussed on my dissertation because the time spent in villages was to manage evaluation teams. Another problem was IRC's security rules that make it obligatory to be out of the villages in the early afternoon. Now after two months of sleeping in the villages and talking over and over again with migrants, I now do feel more comfortable answering this question.

Do note that I still have the feeling that there are a million things that I don't understand in the Congo - and this only seems to get worse the more I visit the country.

David Mitchell.

In line with the previous post hereby one more. David Mitchell's Soap Box. So funny. I wish I could argue/talk like this:



Please also watch his series "Peepshow" that he does together with Robert Webb. It is really good fun (link here).

And back in the Netherlands: a Happyplace.

I'm back in the Netherlands, and in addition to family, friends and "patatje oorlog" (i.e. sophisticated Dutch cuisine) this also means a good internet connection. This morning I spent time going over the many emails that were sent in the last 2 months by friends with a video or link to "something funny" on the internet. With a cup of coffee, that is a great way to start the day. One of the jewels I came across (ht Ali) is this website with unintentionally inappropriate test responses from children. Three examples:







Btw, I'm quite sure that children with such responses will go far in life. On a similar note, Ken Robinson is going as far as saying that our current education system is destroying creativity (please watch here).