More African notes

Writing today from my guesthouse kitchen table. There's a brownish
tablecloth on it, which is good, cause I've already managed to spill my
coffee on it twice. It's a little bit more brown than when I got here.
I think my body temperature is gradually adjusting, especially with the
breeze coming in through the night windows. It carries the smell of
smoke and exhaust that seems to permeate the entire city. It's the
smell of development, I guess, but it does stink, and you only partially
get used to it. While I'm writing, I'm working my way through my iTunes
collection to make sure that I have actually listened to all of the
songs that I own; I'm up to the M's, working backward. Later, that will
be replaced by the intermittent whine of mosquitoes trying to make my
life miserable. Imagine me waking up bleary-eyed in my boxers at 1am,
stumbling around my scattered luggage, trying to smash its tiny little
insect brains against the wall, and you'll have a good picture of my
nights. In contrast, during the day my Migayi-like ability to snatch
them from mid-air would baffle anyone who has ever watched me play
organized sports. Perhaps my coaches didn't motivate me enough.

Today's basically the last day before I head out to Mukinge, where I'll
be for the next two years. I rode the matatu (the public bus/vans that
run around throughout the cities) into town today. Like most African
cities, life seems to exist along the roadsides, and today I was struck
by the sight of women breaking rocks by hand to make gravel, next to
another group making license plates (you have to buy them yourself
here). Lack of opportunity makes a type of prison for you; watching
those women perform prisoner tasks on the side of the road brought that
home.

leaving Thursday

That's right, just got here and I'm already leaving! To Mukinge from Lusaka, that is. Thanks to all who were worried about my guitar; British Air managed to locate it and forwarded it on, so we're back in tune and rocking the African night. Gotta drown out those birds.

I had my interview for my Zambian medical license today, during which they quizzed me on my knowledge of Chinese medicine and wanted to know the proper nerve block for chronic pancreatitis. Apparently medicine in Zambia is trickier than I thought. They gave me my letter despite my ignorance, thankfully.

The plane ride out is on Thursday. I had the opportunity to visit an orphanage here in town, where I met a kid named David. He had gotten to the orphanage after his parents died. He went to live with his uncle, and during a trip to town lost his uncle's bicycle (it was stolen). His uncle got mad, so he tied him to his bed and set the house on fire. He ended up with second degree burns on his hands and face. He's in the orphanage now getting his medical care taken care of.

Poverty sucks. So do people like that uncle. Keep praying for the country here.

greetings from Africa!

Hello to all!

I made it fine, although I'm missing a guitar everything else made it
smoothly. Check out the blog: www.mattcotham.blogspot.com for the
blow-by-blow. It's warm but not too bad, the rainy season has just
begun so there's been some fun lightning storms, and I am now a fully
licensed Zambian driver, although this wrong-side of the road bit is a
little dodgy. And I'm already picking up British colloquialisms....

Love to all,
Matt

p.s. my new phone number will be 099-187121, just in case someone's got
the hankering to call (or text me!)

zambian diaries

Africa is hot! I woke up this morning after some heat-fevered dream
that I was competing against another teacher to win some kind of class;
the details are a bit fuzzy, but he was making fun of my use of cologne
while I got the class to say that I smelled better anyway. The class
was voting that they liked me better. I can't even blame these dreams
on the Larium yet. Figuring I was done getting sleep for the night. I
flipped open my laptop and looked at the time, 1:40, and wiped off the
sweat while comtemplating what to do to fill 4 hours until it was even a
reasonable time to get up. My roommates get up to take a bath around
2am (that's some dedication to cleanliness!) and then go back to bed,
and mostly I spend the time listening to the UFO bird going strong
outside. I was reading City of Falling Angels on the plane (funny what
you'll read when your choices are P for Peril, the latest Tom Clancy
knock-off, and Maeve Binchy in the airport bookstore) talking about the
lack of ambient noise in Venice; the average decibel level there is
around 10 less than the average city. I wonder what it is here in
Africa, but it's got to be lower than that, cause that bird sounds like
it is sitting on my windowsill and making a sound straight out of Close
Encounters; a two tone, off pitch, low whistle. Just enough noise to
remind me there's a whole part of the world that I usually forget about
in the city. And keep me entertained in the middle of the night. I'm
contemplating the nature of African birds that sing during the night,
when strangely about 3am it starts to get real light, which mystifies me
for a while until I realize that I hadn't reset my computer clock and it
was really 5am, not 3. The bath made slightly more sense at that point
(although not much) and my sleeping ego felt less bruised, since I had
actually managed 5 hours instead of merely 3.

That's pretty much the highlights so far. Things will continue to be
pretty slow until I get out to the hospital, which won't happen until
next week, if then. I have to interview with the Zambian medical board
on Tues, then will likely fly out on Wednesday after doing my shopping
if they give me the thumbs up. I'm guessing I need to shop for around a
month's worth of groceries, which will be tricky, since I usually shop
for about 2 days worth at home. Somehow I doubt you can buy a month's
supply of cilantro and french bread, but I'll give it a try. In the
meantime I keep myself entertained by spending a fair amount of time
changing into what I hope will be a cooler set of clothes, only to
realize that it didn't make that much difference and all I've really
accomplished was getting another shirt sweaty. I'll get the hang of
this fairly soon, I would guess.

More to come soon, but I'm still in the process of setting up my email
and phone service, etc.

Getting in touch

Hey --
wanted to make sure you all knew how to get in touch with me overseas. Most of the stuff is already on the blog -- if you click on my profile, there's a link to email me, my address should be on the page, and there's a handy postage calculator on the side if you want to send me something.

I'm told that email is REAL slow over there, to the point that if you start a email to me, it's better not to reply but start a new message, simply because of the space required. But don't let that stop you from cluttering up my inbox.

Likewise, comments on the blog are automatically emailed to me, so you can just comment on something and I'll get it. Of course, everyone else can read it, too, so no awkward secrets over cyberspace, please....

The Final Countdown

Ah, southern Thanksgiving -- feel sorry for all you who don't get your choice of carrot cake, pumpkin pie, pecan pie, pumpkin tart, or key lime pie for your Thanksgivings. And that's after the sweet potatoes, which are pretty much dessert themselves with the pecan/rice krispie topping. If you've had them before, you know what I mean.

Some of you will be glad to know that the robe is making a strong push to rescue itself from being sidelined and reincorporated into the luggage. It's gonna be a tight race to the finish, however. Honestly, everything seems to be fitting fairly well, although I'm sure I'm still leaving behind some stuff I wish I could take and taking some stuff I'll never use.

What I'm reading now, cont....

Perhaps I should pick a new heading, since I read a fair amount....WIRN, perhaps?

Currently, thanks to sheaves of reading material from fellow Yalies, I am enjoying a small debate on what is good developmental theory. Apparently, the Nobel Prize delegates discovered this guy before I did (hey, med school wasn't the best for my liberal arts education) because he won in 1998. I fully agree with their choices, however, because his observations are profoundly obvious, usually the sign of a great thinker in my book (cf, gravity, etc). His basic premise is that development should be increasing the freedoms of the people that are going through it; freedom becomes both the desired end of development as well as the means through which development occurs. This would be freedoms in the broadest sense -- from want, fear, premature death (shades of FDR here), oppression, and the list goes on.

Although I would argue as a Christian that what we do with those freedoms has more bearing on being human that the freedoms themselves, and I would also state that many people have made poor choices with their freedom -- I fundamentally agree with Sen that as a developmental theory, this makes the most sense to me. Moreover, it provides a useful framework within which to hang my work in Africa: helping to ensure one of those freedoms. Unfortunately, as I think Sachs would point out, you need a synergy of multiple freedoms being addressed simultaneously, with poverty at the base of many of them, for development to become forward moving and sustainable.

All that to say, I need to read faster so that I have less to pack.

Almost there....

Howdy to all of you!

I thought I'd update everyone on where I'm at....no, still not in
Africa, but getting closer. I finished the written part of the ER
boards on Tuesday, which was the last big hurdle to get out of the way
before I leave, and despite eye strain and a bit of a headache, I'm no
worse for wear. Thanks out loud to all of you who were praying for me.
I have to admit one of my worries going overseas is losing some of my
professional 'edge', so it was good to try to consolidate some of that
info. We'll see if anything sticks. So now it's trying to get all my
stuff loaded into bags to take over with me without going over the
airline limits. It's gonna be tight, yet one more round of purging to
go (my mom's quilt and the bathrobe didn't make the cut, but dominoes is
still in...for now).

It's been a busy month since I left Denver, traveling around to North
Carolina, Houston and Chicago to see some of you and your beautiful
kids. I am chomping at the bit these days to get out there, but I don't
officially leave until Nov 21st, so if you're around and we haven't
already made plans to get together, your last chance is rapidly
approaching. It's been great to see all the support out there and
people who are genuinely interested in helping the people of Zambia. If
you don't know what's going on with the world's efforts to help with
diseases like HIV and malaria, drop me a line and we'll chat. If you
still want to know how to get involved and help, we should also talk
before I leave. Unfortunately, I did get turned down by the Gates
foundation in my attempt to get some malaria research funded through the
hospital, so I'm going to wait to get on the field before I draw up any
further plans right now.

I appreciate your continued prayers and support. My biggest concerns
right now are about transitioning to a new culture and new friends,
never very easy for us introverts. Keep me in your prayers for that.

Good to see and hear from all of you! I'll write again from the other
side of the world!

Matt

p.s. If you haven't checked it out already, you should see the blog:
mattcotham.blogspot.com. I update it much more frequently that I send
out emails and it's got useful info about the millenium goals and zambia
in general. I even put a RSS feed on it so if you have a homepage like
yahoo or MSN or google or something like that you can get it delivered
to your computer when it's updated....

Two posts in one day

I must have a lot to say today....

In case you were wondering about the project red link on the side of the blog (or if you weren't but are now) this article from my hometown paper helps fill in a few details. It actually goes through how much each of the companies involved is donating as well.

My personal favorite is the totally customizable Chuck Taylor All-stars....

malaria updates

Finished the boards! Woo hoo!

I dropped my subscription to the Journal but for some reason they still send me their emails. This article is ostensibly about advances in medical treatment, but also points out that the biggest impediment to stopping malaria (a disease which kills 2 million a year and infects close to 500 million by WHO statistics) is not the medical side of things, but the political will. The only question is will we muster it.

2 days, 2 weeks, 2 much fun

Ah, the light at the end of the tunnel. It seems that I may get to finally hit the road after nearly 5 months of waiting since graduation. It's been a bit hard to sustain momentum for that long. But the grind is nearly over, the departure date looms closer, and I'll nearly be done with the boards on Tuesday, which will be the last major hurdle to overcome before I can leave. And if Kinky Friedman wins, it will definitely be a sign to get out of the country.

I'm looking for good ideas for Xmas gifts to take over with me -- any suggestions are appreciated, otherwise it may be stuffed jackalopes or Texas football jerseys. Not sure that's exactly what those canadian ex-pats are looking for, however...

Massive Change

Thought some of you might be interested in this --http://www.massivechange.com We went to go see the exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art (well, actually, we went to see the museum and found that they had removed everything in the museum so that we could see nothing else but this exhibit.)

I have some fundamental issues with the underlying assumptions that buttress these people -- namely, the idea that technology will solve the world's problems. As I mentioned to Leslie at the time, everytime I see something like this I remember the Biosphere which my dad's company built. You remember how we were going to study how to build space stations and couldn't even make the thing airtight in Arizona, with everything available to us here on earth. Anyway, when the docent goes blithering on about how the internet will spread to rural Africa when these $500 computers get distributed, when that represents 8-9 months of income and no technical support/repair exists, I go a little crazy.

That being said, there's some cool ideas.