Liberal Arts Graduates teaching Cameroonian farmers how to farm?

An Op-Ed piece in yesterday’s NY Times by the former country director of Cameroon brings into question the usefulness of sending recent college graduates overseas to help people that probably don’t need any of their help.

Robert Strauss writes:

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

ONE Vote ‘08

If eliminating poverty around the world is a factor in your decision for whom to vote for President, the ONE Campaign has all of the candidates on record. Each candidate discusses how they would confront disease and poverty.

Crap becoming less crappy

Books on writing piss me off. I’ve said it before that “…there are many people that take advantage of aspiring writers. Aspiring writers are vulnerable and, unlike actual writers, they have money to spend on books, online courses, and websites.” I would like to add this little nugget…

Reading books on writing takes away from time that you could actually be writing, which is how a writer becomes better – writing begets writing. A brick layer doesn’t get better reading books.

The difficult thing is finding the motivation to continually write. And by motivation I mean an audience or a deadline. I was lucky to have both early on when I contributed my “Travelin’ Light” column to the Key West City paper. Without this opportunity, which started at $0/column and eventually got up to a grand total of $15/column, I’m not sure if I would still be writing today.

A column or a blog are both great ways to get not sucky at writing.

Yesterday, I stumbled upon a thread I commented on a few months ago about what qualities I value in a personal travel blog. Here they are:

People are always way more interesting than place.

Today is always more interesting than 500 years ago.

Objectiveness is overrated.

Making an ass out of yourself in a foreign country while doing your darnedest to be culturally sensitive is priceless.

The more you write the better you get. And the better you get the more likely the one time a literary agent stumbles across your blog he’ll decide to email you, “This is a great idea. Ever think about writing a book?”

And then you realize all of those crappy posts about sitting on airplanes, trains, and standing in line in immigration were worth it.

Keep blogging! Crap becomes less crappy over time. In this way, crap is kinda like wine.

Don’t mess with us Boy Scouts

Boy Scout foils attack on Maldives president

No word as to what the Scout’s rank was, but, just so you know, I’m an Eagle Scout, which is basically the equivalent of a black belt, so you might not wanna mess with me. And if you do, you better Be Prepared, sucker.

In case you still need proof…

To suck or not to suck? : The quaint place of travel writing nestled in the under appreciated world of literature

Rolf Potts wrote a book review of “Smile when you’re lying: Confessions of a rogue travel writer” on WorldHum. The review has led to one of the longer comment threads I’ve seen on WorldHum and largely explores if travel writing sucks. Most agree that there is good travel writing out there, but what runs in many mags and papers is pretty soulless stuff written on comped trips to sell ads.

I don’t necessarily agree with this view. I think that it all has its purpose and if you’re criticizing the Sunday Paper’s Travel section, you’re either an uppity traveler or reader. If you scan the comments, you’ll see a little nugget of mine I would like to share here…

Some people write instruction manuals to crock pots. Some people write award-winning novels. One is useful. One is entertaining. Both are needed.

To translate…

Some people write travel service pieces for Sunday papers. Some people write stories about faraway places. One is useful. One is entertaining. Both are needed.

With that being said, I can’t tolerate much travel writing. It’s not from a lack of trying. I’m all for stories that take place elsewhere. But stuff that verses on the art, psychology, or spirituality of travel, I just can’t chug my way through. I’ve got several Paul Theroux books, including the Great Railway Bazaar, which is supposed to be one of the greatest travel narratives of all time, and I haven’t read a single one of them from cover to cover. The only full-length travel narratives I’ve ever been able to make it all the way through are Bill Bryson’s books and, basically, I would read anything that man wrote including a book about the entire universe.

I require a beginning, a middle, and an end – you know, a story.

So if you are interested in travel writing you should check out the review and the comments. Also, you should checkout this essay by Thomas Swick.

A thousand words…

Wal-Mart Greeter Guangzhou, China

The competition to sell the world’s poor laptops continues

I first wrote about the $100 Laptop project in November of 2006. It turns out the non-profit that introduced the project is getting serious, if not below-the-belt, competition from INTEL. There are billions of poor people out there that can’t afford a laptop and those staggering numbers could lead to big profit. What started as a warm and fuzzy project is turning into a bitter business battle. You can read about some of the ugliness in the Wall Street Journal.

My 11/06 post on the $100 Laptop –

Imagine walking into a village. Africa, Central America, it doesn’t matter just as long as it’s remote.

You probably got there by following some pot-holed dirt road. You saw a car, but it was broken down and holes were rusted in the side. There are no power lines in sight. Tonight’s dinner runs amok clucking or mooing.

You approach a building made of corrugated metal and spare 2×4’s. You hear kids chattering about as kids do. It must be a school. You peak in the window. And this is where things get real creapy…

Every kid pecks away at a laptop.

Yves Behar is designing a $100 laptop for countries to buy by the millions to give to school children. The goal - “One Laptop per Child.” Read about the project in Wired magazine.

What would this mean?

Worst case - Cultures are squashed as the children of the world become addicted to online poker.

Best case - World Peace as the children of the world obtain online degrees as pharmaceutical assistants from the University of Phoenix.

I think this is an awesome idea and I hope it comes about. It would be interesting to see how it influences cultures and international politics.

Read a commentary about the project in the Christian Science Monitor.

Something I learned the hard way…

When you buy a house and it is accessed by the county for $8,000 more than you paid for it, your response should not be, “Sweet we got a great deal!” But instead, “Crap, our taxes are going to go way up.”

Now, in order to make up for what we owe from 2007 and to continue to pay in 2008, we owe an additional monthly amount nearly equal to the monthly salary of a hardworking Chinese flip-flop maker.

The Maple Mammary recount

The people have spoken. Their outrage has been voiced. They couldn’t believe that Mrs. Butterworth’s Boobs was relegated to the 5th slot on the most viewed pages of WAIW? in 2007. They were mad as hell and they weren’t going to take it anymore, so I recounted.

Mrs. Butterworth’s Boobs received the second-most visitors on any single day in 2007 (409). The most visitors in a single day were on The Adventure Begins post (598).

Whatever it’s worth, I’m naming the Mrs. B’s Boobs post the WAIW? Reader’s Choice Post of the year.

My brother, and soon-to-be Mrs. Malaria Boy

My brother, Kyle, is getting married in March. He seems real happy. If you don’t believe me check out his wedding’s website (at which they’ve yet to link to WAIW? - the nerve).

I’m happy for him, but in the interest of keeping him even-keeled, I thought I would bring him back down to earth with two columns I wrote that feature him. I’ll post one now and one later on in the week.

(Jenn, I think you know what you are getting by now, but please read carefully. Don’t let the PhD fool you.)

Have Malaria, Will Travel
By Kelsey Timmerman

We are on drugs and invincible…so we think.

“Dude, know what’s cool?” My brother Kyle is sitting in a metal school chair thumbing through our Honduras guidebook. I am swinging in a hammock. Between our bungalow and the vast unmapped jungle flows the Rio Mocoron.

“What?”

“It’s likely that we’re being bit by malaria carrying mosquitoes as we speak.”

Kyle and I both stare down at our arms and torsos half expecting to see a super hero-like glow radiating. We think that we are faster than a speeding infected mosquito! Our immune systems more powerful than locomotives! That we are able to leap wide, mosquito-spawning rivers in a single bound!

But we can’t.

“Dude. You know what’s not cool - Chagas’ disease.” Kyle paraphrases from the guidebook, “The triatomine bug bites you while you’re sleeping and then defecates in the wound. 10-40 years later you come down with chronic symptoms including heart problems, enlarged esophagus, and, enlarged bowels. There is no prevention. The disease, if full blown, takes an average of nine years off your life.”

“Whoa. Let me see.” Kyle hands me the book and I look at the list of exotic diseases trying to find a worse one yet. “Dengue fever, aka bone break fever - it’s from a mosquito. First you get a fever, three to five days later you break out in a rash and your body is wracked with unbearable pain, hence the lovely nickname. No pill for this one either. Cross your fingers.”

After days filled with jungle hikes and soccer games by the river with the local children, our legs and feet are dotted with various insect bites and blemished with open, seeping wounds. We worry about the diseases we cannot take measures to prevent, but we don’t worry about malaria.

Kyle will return to Purdue University in Indiana and while he is studying for his preliminary exams for his doctorate in Exercise Physiology, Ma and Pa parasite who settled down in one of Kyle’s red blood cells, despite his strict regimen of anti-malarial pills, will be getting busy making their little parasitic families. As their family grows and they become great-great…grandparents, the cell will become overcrowded and explode, forcing their family to separate and find new homes. Light fevers, fatigue, and headaches will come and go and Kyle will write them off to his long hours of stressful studying, completely unaware of the malaria Bar Mitzvahs, weddings, and general merrymaking. Exams over, he will hop on a plane to France where he is to attend a conference in, of all things, Immunology in Monaco. After three failed spinal taps, a fever of 106, shivers, aches, vomiting, and three days in a hospital in Nice where doctors, having eliminated a number of horrible deadly diseases, inform him, “Good News, you’ve got malaria,” Kyle will finally make it the conference on its last day with the help of his caring advisor Mike Flynn.

Kyle, a true man of the world, will be the first person to contract malaria in Honduras, ignore the signs in Indiana, and be hospitalized with it in France.

Back in the days when two men traveling in Honduras were known as explorers, not tourists, the remedy for malaria was gin mixed with sugar, carbonated water, and quinine. Today, we pop our little white pills and run off to play in the jungle.

It’s amazing how much confidence a pill can give a fella.

Each year, nearly a million people across the world die from malaria. In some hard-hit areas of Africa, nearly two people die from malaria every minute. The disease is treatable and largely preventable, but many do not have access to the proper medicines. Kyle is lucky.

Heading out on a trip somewhere tropical? Visit the CDC’s website (cdc.gov) to learn about areas where malaria is a concern. Malaria varies by region and different prophylactic medications are recommended depending on where you are going. Some are taken daily and some weekly. Once you have the info, visit your doctor to get some drugs.

But remember that Kyle took drugs and look what happened to him. He’s walking around campus talking to anyone who will listen, “What, you’ve never had a tropical disease before? Oh, I have. It was no big deal. My brother dragged me out to the Honduran jungle. A mosquito carrying a very rare type of malaria was heading right for him. I pushed him out of the way and took the bite. Some would say I am a hero. I think I’m just a regular guy…”

Whether he is trying to place guilt or brag, I’m not sure, but Kyle is quick to remind me of the score:

Exotic Tropical Disease Scoreboard: Kyle- 1 Kelsey- 0