Parallel Processing

In Canadian culture, customers are usually processed serially.  When you go to a store and ask an employee for help or when you make a purchase, it’s usually one at a time and first come, first serve.  Not in Tanzania.  In the middle of a negotiation, it is okay for the seller to turn to another customer and start dealing with them at the same time.  In fact, it’s okay to deal with 3 or 4 people at the same time!  But I must admit, I was a little taken aback the first time that this happened to me in a work environment.  While in the middle of discussing an important problem, my coworker turned to somebody walking by and started a completely different conversation.  I was kind of shocked and stood there awkwardly…trying to figure out what I might have done to upset my colleague and instigate this kind of behaviour. Noticing my puzzled look, she laughed and kindly explained how things go in Tanzania.  It’s totally acceptable for you to put somebody on hold and it’s okay for somebody to put you on hold too!

I love my job

I find the intricate details of the world fascinating.  I like reading stories of how humanity has investigated these details and learned to harness the power of nature.  Theories of how the ancients might have birthed mathematics.  Sometimes I enjoy just pondering the miracle of mathematics.  It’s nothing short of a miracle that mathematics makes contact with reality – that it can be used to accurately define rules which the universe obeys.  I like the stories of humankind creatively devising experiments to validate their conjectures.  And how the journey has led to the creation of amazing technological tools, which have transformed our interactions with the world and even our interactions with each other.  But I know the stereotypes about the Information Technology field.  Countless times I’ve seen first interest and then consciousness itself drain from people’s faces when they’ve unwittingly asked me what I do. That’s probably why I shy away from talking about it…even though I absolutely love my job. However, a number of friends have asked me for some sort of description of what I’m doing in Africa.  Perhaps the fact that I’m applying my training to international development will make the story a little more interesting.  So I’ll keep the technological part to a minimum, and I’ll go in stages…leaving you with plenty of exit points as I drill into the details.

    

Okay. The big picture. If there’s only two concepts you remember from this entry, I’d hope that they are “malaria prevention” and “long lasting insecticide-treated nets (LLIN)”.  Those are the end and the means of the Tanzania National Voucher Scheme (TNVS), which I am involved in.

TNVS, as the name suggests, implements a voucher system.  When a pregnant woman or infant (the ones at highest risk of contracting malaria) visit a health clinic, the health worker issues them a voucher.  This voucher can be taken to a retailer to obtain a LLIN at a subsidized cost (funding by USAID and DFID).  The price paid by the beneficiary is very affordable, and I think it’s more of a token amount just so that they have some skin in the game. 

Besides malaria prevention, the program also aims to jumpstart the market for mosquito nets.  This includes creating both an awareness of and the demand for mosquito nets.  In addition to driving down net prices through economies of scale, there is a second strategy.  Initially, the program partnered with a single net manufacturer.  However, we are currently working on introducing a second supplier into the program. The hope is that providing the beneficiary with a choice in net type will create a little competition between the manufacturers.  This will motivate manufacturers to make better nets at lower costs.  Don’t worry, LLINs must be inspected and certified which ensures no sacrifice in quality.  The desire to drive down net prices stems from a desire to make nets more affordable to low income families after the voucher system is removed.  The hope is that the LLIN market will remain even after TNVS shuts down.  If it all works according to plan…net manufacturers will be creating more jobs and income, retailers will also have an increased income from selling nets, and the general public will have an opportunity to better protect themselves against malaria. 

Okay, now for some of the challenges.  I’ll give just two examples of the types of projects I have been working on.  The first one is automated reporting.  The second is market actor profiling.  Grab a coffee!!

TNVS is a nation-wide program with around 5,000 clinics and 6,000 retailers redeeming  just over 370,000 vouchers every month.  MEDA TZ handles the logistics of the entire program.  MEDA TZ only has about 25 employees in the office (there is also another 10 field officers with drivers scattered throughout Tanzania conducting training).  It’s a great opportunity for technology to help ease the workload! 

In order for a program like TNVS to thrive, it’s important to know which locations are succeeding and which ones are failing.  This feedback is extremely useful to learn from success and nurse weaknesses.  It’s kind of like a strategy game.  MEDA TZ keeps a pulse on the health of the program through weekly reports.  Weekly reports guide field officers to the locations which require attention.  

Performance indicators in the weekly report include figures like the number of issued vouchers, the number of redeemed vouchers, and the percentage of issued vouchers which were redeemed.  Manually gathering and summarizing this information for all the clinics and retailers can easily take a half day of work. Every week.  Similarly, the payment report, which tallies the number of nets distributed and the money owed to the net supplier, will take a half day to compile.  It’s done every other week.  To put it in perspective, one employee (I think it was supposed to be me) can spend well over a week of every month compiling reports.  My first project was to automate the process so that the reports could be generated by a button click and save a lot of time and manual work.  

But IT skills can do much more than just improve the efficiency of report generation.  

The paper voucher system suffers from a problem.  The problem is its limited visibility of what’s actually taking place in the field.  For instance, we are unaware when a clinic runs out of voucher stock and stops issuing vouchers to patients.  We are unaware when a retailer stops redeeming vouchers because they have run out of nets.  Furthermore, we can’t detect if a clinic worker and retailer are colluding together to steal nets – they could get together and make up fictitious beneficiaries to issue vouchers to and redeem vouchers from…and then keep the nets for themselves.  The voucher system needs a way to extend its sense organs into market actor transactions.

This was the motivation behind the eVoucher system.  It is an sms based tracking system which documents market transactions.  Clinic workers must use a cellphone (everyone’s got one!) to text MEDA’s shortcode when issuing a voucher.  Retailers do the same to inform MEDA of a voucher redemption.  A retailer will only be restocked with nets for voucher redemptions which were reported.  A voucher redemption will only be successfully reported if its issuance was also reported.  Basically, the system works…and we have information about the time and location of every issuance and redemption.  Information which allows us to profile clinic/retailer behaviour.  This is known as data mining, and it’s another project that I’ve been involved in.  I create algorithms which try to determine when a retailer is out of net stock.  I also create algorithms which try to determine when a retailer or clinic is engaging in fraud.

Okay okay, I’m beginning to realize how incredibly long this story is.  I’m curious how many people made it to the end.  Anyway, I hope I’ve given you a taste of my work and satisfied some of the curiosities floating around.  Let it be known that it’s not ONLY exploratory adventures for me.  I work hard too!

Diwali

Yesterday, Marie (my colleague, housemate, and honorary little sister) and I traveled to the city centre, home of Dar’s skyscrapers.  Diwali, the festival of lights, has enticed us downtown with the promise of fireworks.  We were on an adventure to find “the courtyard beside the Indian temple”.  And although we have become quite talented at using creative landmarks to find our way through Dar’s unlabeled streets, there are still other challenges which can confront us on our journey.  For instance, this evening one of the streets we need to travel is unlit…pitch black unlit.  But seeing that the darkness only lasts 100 feet, we decide to brave the abyss.  A mistake.  About 50 feet into the blackness, my left foot disappears into the pavement.  Of course it has to be the unlit street which is missing a storm sewer cover. My entire left leg was swallowed by the sewer.  My right leg and both hands hit pavement.  "Pole!" Marie hands me a sock and wetnap to help clean the dirty water off…then we continue on our way.  But…not even a minute later, my right knee connects with a metal post sticking out of the sidewalk. If my knee wasn’t bleeding before, it definitely was now.  What are the chances?!  The whole situation was actually quite comical.   But at the time I required a moment to regain composure. However, it takes more than a death trap street to defeat me…so we make our way to the light and find a restaurant washroom where I can clean up more properly.  Shortly after, we hear the explosions starting and my excitement instantly comes back.  I see flashes of colour in the distance. And as we get closer I notice something strange about these fireworks.  Not all of them are going vertical.  Some are going horizontal! Others are hitting trees and ricocheting. Nope, there is no governing body running this event.  Chaos rules here.  Anybody and everybody is lighting off explosives.  Luckily there is a cement wall which protects a street of spectators from the launch area.  The wall is topped with kids trying to get the best view.  I see some youth struggling to pull their friends up, and we all become instant friends when I lift them to the top of the wall.  They motion for me to join them in their front row seats, and I oblige.  They speak to me in broken English, and I speak to them in broken Swahili.  I’m sitting next to a boy named Michael, and I tell him I have a brother with the same name.  He seems quite pleased with this and says something very quickly that I don’t understand.  Luckily I’m saved by a huge explosion above that rains light down over us.  Both our eyes widen as we make sounds of amazement.  Then we laugh, both grinning ear to ear.  Even though we can’t fully communicate with words, both of us understand the other’s excitement and we share the experience in awe together.

Chickens, Children, and The Call to Prayer

Chickens, children, and the call to prayer.  These are the reasons I can't sleep. Nope, it's not because of deep philosophical matters. Just the practical. The call to prayer is trumpeted from Islamic mosques five times a day.  There is a mosque just down the street from my apartment which has provided me with a piercing education that one of these calls happens at dawn. Every morning. Recently, however, I have stopped waking up to the call and continue sleeping.  My neighbours next door have children, children who wake up fairly early on Saturday mornings.  I believe their favourite past time is to yell.  Their favourite word is "Askari."  It is not unusual for them to yell this one word for a half hour straight.  Other times they mix it up and yell out a song. Thankfully, with the heat of summer approaching, the kids have been retreating to the indoors.  There is no happy news about the final noise offender - the chicken.  Two weeks ago this rooster wandered into my neighbourhood.  I guess he decided to call it home, because he never left.  Every morning at 4:30am he will make his way under my window, and let out a loud cock-a-doodle-doo. He is a defective rooster because he forgets to stop cock-a-doodle-dooing. He continues all day long.  So if anybody knows a discrete way to get rid of a rooster...

Bondwa

The wind whistles past my ears.  I close my eyes, lean into it, and let out a gleeful yell…with arms outstretched…on the edge of the world.  Bondwa peak, Uluguru mountains.  We have conquered this tiny point on the map.  After a 5 hour ascent, I enjoy my prize – a gorgeous view of Morogoro.  A group of local youth seem just as pleased with our accomplishment…also letting out yells and laughter. They yell, “Muzungo, muzungo!” and take turns getting pictures with us.  My group and I spend one hour in the heavens, but then we must make our way back down to camp before dark. We travel back through the rainforest, stopping a couple times to yell at monkeys and to admire the gigantic Eucalyptus trees.  As we reach our tents halfway down the mountain, the twinkling lights of Morgoro city begin pop.  A brisk wind passes through. I welcome this old familiar friend - it’s the first time I’ve felt cold in Tanzania. I take the moment in...and then grab a sweater. We eat dinner by a crackling fire, under the starlight…all the while Morogoro shimmers in the distance.  The sound of our chatter and laughter carries through the valleys and into the night. In the morning, I awake to find myself inside of a cloud. Disappointingly, they aren’t made of cotton.  After eating breakfast and packing up camp, we continue down the mountain through the inclined farmlands of the Luguru tribe. In this matriarchal society, the women own the land…and the men must marry rich. As we pass through, local children making motor noises speed past us, running barefoot on the edge of the cliff. Across the valley I see a family working the field together and hear the faint sound of their singing. I can’t help but notice how far I am from home, and how enchanting it is.  (click on the thumbnails to enlarge!)

Unrest

Here's what's happening in Dar these days:

http://www.assistnews.net/ansarticle.asp?URL=Stories/2012/s12100088.htm

http://allafrica.com/stories/201210180223.html?aa_source=useful-column

Chaza Mwamba

Chaza mwamba (oyster rock) is the name of a charming villa that some friends and I rented this weekend. We escaped Dar early Friday afternoon to embark on the 2 hour journey to South Beach…stopping in a remote village along the way to barter for vegetables, eggs, and other food. The weekend had an adventurous feeling to it.  Exciting with a dash of cozy…like a relaxed weekend retreat or the way summer camp used to feel. Being only just acquainted with the group, the trip was a great way to make some good friends.  Upon arrival, we enjoyed cooking and eating together in the fading sunlight. When the light was gone, we explored the estate by playing sardines…then sat together singing songs to the tune of a guitar…and ended the night swimming in the ocean under a brilliant sky of sparkling stars.  This was only the first six hours! I awoke Saturday and enjoyed my first exercise since arriving in Tanzania, a morning jog along the beach and a swim to cool off.  The rest of the day included a whole lot of relaxing on a secluded white sand beach. Buuut…you know me…I can’t help but explore a little. In the late afternoon, a few of us swam out to a reef exposed by low tide. It was actually quite an impressive rock and it's what inspired the name of our residence. We had hoped to find some interesting tide pools, instead we found ourselves in front row seats to a show of thunderous waves crashing over the rock’s edge. I tempted fate and chanced moving closer to enjoy the showering waves as they exploded on the reef. It was quite exhilarating for some time, but a particularly powerful wave eventually sent me airborne across the reef. In slow motion I watched my body turn horizontal and my left flip flop vanish. The world tumbled as I tried using arms and legs to protect my vitals from jagged edges.  Coming to halt some meters back, I notice a fair amount of blood but no protruding bones…phew! So I limped back to the villa with only my right flip flop. Charlie and Dustin cleaned my wounds with Konyagi, while I drank the rest in memory of my fallen comrade, the left flip flop.  The final damage is some rather deep cuts on my hands and feet…oh and on my right ass cheek (that one was less funny during today’s bumpy bjaji ride to work). But it wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying some more beach time before bed.  Sleep wasn’t easy that night, but both Konyagi and the gentle sound of waves do their part in sending me drifting off.  Awakening before dawn, I hobble a few hundred meters down the beach to snap some photos of the stunning sunrise. And then I caught a glimpse of blue in the sand.  Could it be?  No, it couldn't. It was! Coming closer I found my prodigal flip flop washed up on shore. I happily slipped it on and continued on my way.  And that is the beautiful reunion story between this man and his flip flop.  All in all, a great weekend with some great friends.  Oops, I forgot to talk about the body surfing.  We also did some crazy fun body surfing in the ocean!  But now I must sign off. Miss you all!  Enjoy some pictures...click on the thumbnail to enlarge!