A Wonderfullyrich World

So I know, I'm spoiled, but where do American get this coffee?  I was "raised" on coffee over the last year an a half in Eastern Africa as except for the smell of coffee in the morning, I used to hate coffee, preferring instead hot chocolate.  I thought it was bitter disgusting water, and couldn't conceive of how people enjoyed it so much.  And the smell teased me, hinting at a complex and sweet taste that made me try coffee occasionally in spite of my past memory.  

Maybe it's a bit of a fib to say that I was raised on coffee while I was in Eastern Africa, as I was a coffee lover before that.  I was converted based on Clover coffee makers.   It was the first coffee that I could taste the same smells I'd been teased by all my life.  It was extraordinary and it set me on the path of enjoying coffee rather then just drinking little bits for the caffeine.  But except for Clover coffee, I never really found great coffee here in the US.

Now don't get me wrong, East African's don't really drink coffee.  It's more of a Muzungu act.  They drink tea more often and "Fanta" in luei of that. (Used the same way the South uses "Coke" to indicate a soda/pop.)  So it's hard sometimes to imagine why a culture that doesn't really like it, prepares it and exports it to other cultures.  Then you remember the long history of colonialism and coffee that I won't get into.  It still begs the question of why I like East African coffee as compared to what you get from your local supermarket, or cafeteria, or etc.  (No I have not had a Starbucks yet, I'm still in price shock so 3-4 dollars for coffee seems idiotic).  

I can't answer it yet, either because I'm to jet lagged to think clearly or because this coffee just hasn't woken me up yet.  There is just something about freshly ground Burundian drip coffee that is the epitome of coffee love for me.  Mbale (Uganda) comes a close second, but this fair trade organic crap that I've tasted here is just that bitter water I used to hate.  No offense to the fair trade or organic nature of it, but it is really just diluted horribleness.  Maybe I will have to break down and have a Starbucks, if for no other reason then I can get a true espresso which at least might ease my taste buds.  So I admit to being another one of those odd coffee snobs.  Call me the Italian or Frenchmen who act appalled when you hand him a cup of joe.  

Oh might I mention, light switches are supposed to go on the outside of the room to which you are lighting (in the least nature place).  Cars on the road are supposed to run me down on the left side of the street, and what is this stopping business?  What do you mean there's a sign?  Is the sign carrying an AK-47 and blowing a whistle at you?  Then why are you stopping for it?  Oh you mean there are rules that I'm supposed to follow like staying inside the painted lines?  I see, wait no I don't get it.  You mean I'm supposed to follow the street lights and enter a roundabout without the guiding assistance of the previously mentioned cop with the AK & whistle?  That's just weird!

I'm supposed to be cut off in a queue by mothers with children on there backs and everyone else who ignore my and everyone seldom protests about cutting in line.  Sirens are supposed to indicate the occasional ambulance stuck in "The Jam" or some big wig who decides it's time to come in from Entebbe.  I keep being confused because there are so many sirens that fill the night sky.  Who are all these Ministers, and where's the armed guards? And what is this idea of having a bus that has a schedule?  No bus in Kampala ever leaves within 5 mins of when it was "scheduled."  Of course for the same amount it cost me to get from Chicago to South Bend, I could take two passengers and travel (for 18 hours) from Kampala to Bujambura.  It's all baffling.

Oh and one more thing, when did the Midwest become Antarctica?  The sun is totally in the wrong place and I swear it feels like it's a the same angle I remember when i was there.  I keep thinking that's why it's so damned cold, I mean I brought my long underwear and wool socks, but this is ridiculous.  It's 10 degrees outside (C not F), which is a good 10 degrees south of normal!  EEEK! And don't tell me it's a warm Fall, you are on a different planet!  I guess I'll have to keep drinking this wacky ass coffee to keep warm. (Until I think this is normal an am equally annoyed by Kampala weather.)

Needless to say I'm wandering around a little dazed, slightly confused, occasionally impressed, and slightly horrified.  I'm not sure if this is really home.  I remember it, but it's amazingly foreign to me right now. 

I've still got the last of my burundian water posts to put up, and it's more or less finished, but needs some rethinking due to problems with the filter and original line of thought. In the meantime I was asked by Tripbase.com to give some advice, due to my notorious traveling, to write a piece of travel advice on "your first trip."  I wrote up what struck me, and with Angela's proofing and a notion or two, I sent it off.  I found it was an amazingly useful exercise for me right now as traveling has become such a part of my existence, as well as the existence of most of the bazungu–literally meaning white people, but also used for upper class locals–that to consider what I would tell someone in the weeks before they get on a plane to someplace wholly different put things in perspective.  I have to admit, my thoughts where inspired by those around me and what I've read before and are no doubt a bit of a reinvention of the wheel.  Still good advice, but perhaps somewhat repetitive. (Although, it does take around 3 times to remember something…)

In anycase, go check it out.  They split it up into Part 3: Traveling on your Own, and Part 5: What experts have said.  Feel free to critique me and pester me with better info. 

Previously I talked about what I was doing in Burundi talking about CAWST and the stages of clean water. I want to back up a bit and talk about Burundi for a bit in order to give you a context for the CAWST water filter project in Burundi and why it has to be cheap, ubiquitous, and darn simple.  Burundi is a very harsh economic and very different cultural existence to the biological and physic trick that originates in the west.  The context is extremely useful to know because although it doesn't change the biology or the physics, it does change how you introduce it and get buy-in.  This is all based on my experience so I'm sure some of it's debatable.

First off many things are going on in Burundi.  Eastern Africa (i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Burundi is dominated by a trade language of English and Swahilli (with English becoming more dominant), but Burundi is a Francophone country and speaks mostly French as a trade language. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) speaks French, but the DRC has it's own very large problems (being a very, very large country).  Technically Rwanda only started teaching English last year, so it to still speaks French, but you should get my drift.  Swahilli isn't used much are associated with some bad historical connections, so they aren't generally trusted.  

Burundi, is a landlock country.  Think of it as an island, as the same principles apply.  It requires at least one country to get to a shipping hub, but more likely three (Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, as Tanzania has less industry then does Kenya).  Effectively this means (and is also true for Rwanda) that to get a Connex box (large metal container) of goods, half the cost is to get it to Kenya, then the other half to transport it through multiple customs/bribe barriers.  It's tough to get material in, and the country is very small so resources are a problem.  This translates into very little processed goods being created and very little general manufacturing capability.  (As a reminder Processed goods are where the money is, if i.e. get raw materials from somewhere at 1 dollar, process it, and sell it for 40 dollars.)

A civil war was recently fought here.  It was an ethnic war, one that we all know about in Rwanda, but which also happened twice in Burundi (once in the 70's and once in the 90's).  Add this to the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the population along with it's demographics is very young and dies young.  

Corruption, civil strife, and demographics basically make this a relatively unstable environment.  Things are improving, fast and dramatically even.  (One random example 2 years ago chocolate was available at nearly 9 dollars a bar, now it's 2.5 dollars a bar.)  These elections, although they aren't nearly perfect seem likely not to end in outright civil uprising and a military coup de ta.

Land is (like Rwanda) both over allocated and under-utilized. Although many of the diaspora are returning due to the improved stability, the land isn't there for them.  For that matter try sub dividing a plot of land 5 times, then another 4 times, and etc, one round for each set of children (even assuming a high mortality).  It doesn't really go far enough, ever.  Consider that they also use the same techniques that have been used for many many generations, but that health has improved (in spite of various epidemics).  Modern techniques of industrial farming, organic farming, permaculture, whatever really doesn't exist here on a useful level.

All this adds up to the picture without the subject.  The citizens of Burundi, up country (i.e. not in Bujumbura), are very poor.  Many transact less then 80,000 Burundian Francs per year (a current value of 66 USD) and mostly live off of (non-transacted) subsistence farming in a clan/family where they survive as a group.  Kurundi is the dominate language even though French is generally taught in schools as well.  Schools in general are expensive as school fees are proportionally high.  Medical for children is free, but adults who go in for a doctors visit pay 10,000 to 40,000 for a visit (and get drugs).  

The bottom line is that it's a tough environment that needs a lot of work in it's infrastructure, with psychology, in spurring economically,  in improving the quality of medical care while lowering it's cost, in reducing the birth rate, etc.  The basics of food, water, shelter, and health (mental and physical) are key, but as it's all intertwined it's hard to see a start point.  Perhaps though, you can see why I initially thought the BioSand filter is too expensive and too complicated to work.  I think it might be the best option for the area, but I feel it needs to adapt to local goods to be cheaper and easier to build.  

Next I talk about what I'm trying to do on that front.
 

Three years ago I wrote an blog based on my research around water and making it clean. Coming up in the next several days are a few follow ups on that idea, followed by my first solo attempt at building a cheap filter.
 
If you've been keeping up with me, I'm in Eastern Africa these days.  Mostly spending my time in Uganda, but right now my brother is back in Burundi for the elections, so joined him as a technical consultant working on SMS stuff.  I have gotten side tracked by water as a CAWST is training people to build a BioSand Filter in 3 locations in Burundi (associated with the Quaker church).  Prior to coming down to Burundi I also met a fascinating guy in Uganda who's an electrical engineer and programmer who's house has, a house water catchment system, 5 level filters, multiple solar panels that run a whole house inverter, two internet connections, a boat with it's own set of solar outfitting, and out paces my hard drive storage capability (a feat I rarely see while traveling here).  

Needless to say I've learned a bit from three years ago.  I have a few thoughts to add about water and making it clean, with the added slant of think about low cost, simple, very user-friendly, locally built, technologies for the developing world which (hopefully) can be income generating.  

I'll mention a bit about the tech I witnessed during the BioFilter training, then talk about some of the other problems and solutions I've found and considered, an then talk a bit about the reason I'm an "appropriate technology" fiend now.  

The Center for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology (CWAST) is a Canadian NGO that focus on the impacts of water on life.  There hallmark is a device called a BioSand Filter, which was created by a Canadian Doctor in the 1990s.  Since it was developed, it's gone through 10 revisions and it's a open patent and they use CreativeCommons for documentation.  It's now a 120 pound concrete pedestal that uses a combination of biological predation, natural death, mechanical trapping, and adsorption to *Filter* water.  I was skeptical when I first heard about it because I was used to a paradim of screening and adsorption via things like Reverse Osmosis, or Carbon based filtration, or clay filtration, etc.  This is what you'll see in most modern filtration and purification (the difference being that filters don't remove viral and small bacterial particulates).  A BioSand filter has no such items, as the pedestal is more or less filled with two types of larger rocks at the bottom, a bunch of sand above, and a diffuser plate above the standing water (to aerate the water).  I was asking myself how this can produce clean water when things like Cryptosporidium, viruses, and cysts can be near .5 microns which even things like Reverse Osmosis don't always stop.  The answer is that it plays the small and large waterborne pathogens against each other.   The "Bio" portion of the filter is a biologically active layer that allows, nay encourages, these pathogens to eat each other.  Like in the ocean, where light doesn't penetrate below a certain depth and things grow differently, the sand naturally layers into a non-biological layer where (with time) the carcases create that smaller and smaller space that physically filters more of the pathogens out and which leaves you with water that is extremely clear and more importantly more or less drinkable.  

Now one of the big things I didn't cover in my previous blog post was the notion of the stages from dirty to clean water.  Think about as if you were camping or not in an urban environment.  To treat the water, you first need to get water that's not apparently coming out of a mine or industrial plant (maybe get the sticks and big stuff out of it), transport it, then you need to remove a majority of the particles (inorganic, organic, metals, and pathogens), but it's not clean as some of the real small stuff can cause problems yet so then you need to disinfect the water before you find a clean place to store it.  One useful set of technical terms for this is: Source Protection, Sedimentation, Filtration, Disinfection, and Storage.   

What a CAWST BioStand Filter does is specifically to Sediment and Filtrate the water.  It's not disinfecting the water, although it will remove between 85% and 100% of Bacteria, Viruses, Protozoa, Helminths, Turbidity (Dirt), and Iron.  Not perfect, but an order of magnitude improvement over drinking it straight from a bore hole, river, lake, or tap out here and it's not overly expensive (developmentally speaking).  It means you aren't going to get nearly as sick (diarrhea reduces to 10% of previous levels).  

That's just the tech.  They also do a training on sanitation, including things like germ theory, how to use soap, the important of latrines/toilets, etc.  This is both Source Protection (i.e. feces draining into the water supply) and Storage (A clean jerry can stays clean with clean hands, etc).  There are methods of disinfecting the water cheaply (Solar Disinfection using natural UV in a P.E.T. bottle, or wrapping bottles in black and leaving them to heat to disinfection levels over hours, or boiling, or if you can get it Chlorine).  
I didn't attend the entire training, as (big surprise) I was more interested in the tech.  I did however spend a fair amount of time over the last several days reviewing the water info I previously understood and added to it.  My point of view has dramatically changed.  I am still a clean water nut, but now I want to find an use water tech that is cheap, ubiquitous, and darn simple.  

Tomorrow I talk about why that last bit is extremely important to me these days.

I have to say the Netherlands screwed the cup, but that's not the blowing I was thinking about.  It's about 2:30am as I start writing this, and here is what I know.  At least 23 people probably closer to 50 people have died in what looks like 2 probably 3 bomb blasts of an unknown origin.  We were a friend of Katka's watching the world cup on a projector and enjoying pizza from a home made pizza oven.  

Literally right after the game, as I was writing my comments on the game ending, someone indicated there was a bomb blast in Kabalagala, just mins away from where we were. The taxi that we prearranged was stuck in the industrial area going cross town to get to us because of it.  We diverted to another cab and took the long way round, but had to go past the Rugby club (and we hoped we could).  By that time we knew of two blasts and that one was in Kyondo at the Rugby club and another in Kabalagala.  As we past the Rugby club, we saw a large crowd of people on one side of the road, and plenty of armed men both police and military, some interviewing people others looking at the crowd.  Thankfully we were able to move right along and get home.  

Arriving, we booted up and I can say that facebook is slammed right now. It took a while to dig up the Somali connection, as I've been in Burundi for the last month and haven't heard about the threats from Harakat al-Shabaab Mujahideen on both Uganda and Burundi based on the troops they have in Somalia. The reports varied all over the place and the third attack in Ntinda surfaced and still remains vague.  Later via the AP, CNN, and the local paper call the Daily Monitor I managed to piece together one bomb hit a restaurant called the Ethiopian Village in Kabalagala was attacked leaving 13 people dead, the Rugby club had 10 dead, and including the vague Ntinda attack the wounded/dead totals near 100.

I noted in a comment on Facebook, that I was confused about the targets.  Even with the alleged al-Shabaab connection, I'm not sure I understand why they choose there targets.  I don't really have enough to speculate, but I wondered about a relation between the Ethiopian restaurant and the rivalry between Somalia and their neighbor.  I saw pictures of the Rugby club, which lead me to believe they were after the international crowd and an easy target, but again this is speculation.  

I suspect that being in Burundi could be safer then being in Uganda for a time, but I'm worried about Burundi because of it's involvement in Somalia too.  Andrew & people are still there, but frankly I'm no longer worried about internationals in Burundi relating to the election (unless they are plain stupid).  The grenades and alike that are going on there are related to internal politics and they don't want international incidents like what we are seeing here in Uganda.  (Just to underline what International attention brings you.)  I am now worried that the bombers will be dumb and try and work on Burundi during this already high security time in Burundi.  Not an easy target, but not an overly hard one either.

I'm very curious to see if we will get sensible reactions out of the International countries who lost citizens tonight, and I'm very very curious how Uganda's government will react.  I'd like to see something smart about trying to fix the food, drought, general security issues that has driven Somali's to both become pirates and be inclined towards terrorist with money.  I fear I'm likely to see something about pulling out (in 6 months), or a retaliation, or strange security precautions taken in and around Uganda which seem unlikely to do much to hinder the motivated.  

In that vein, I'm somewhat curious if this was a one time shot, or if more bombs seem likely.  Obviously the city is going to be flooded with police and troops, but are more already in the pipe line?  

I have to admit that, although I thought what Alex and I saw at the embassy briefing in Burundi was a bit silly when you start mentioning wine and speed scrabble, the whole bit about not going to clubs, bars, or public places might be sensible for a while.  There are to many residences to hit simltaniously, and bombers want crowds.

I'm a cheap date, all I want is a $12.50 phone, okay so I can't eat it and it might not be as tasty as a Burundi Royale with Cheese, but it might help calm things a bit here in Burundi.  We've got 75 more phones to purchase for the Burundi election monitoring HROC is doing.  Donate via AGLI/FPT, and designate the donation "HROC Burundi Phones."  AGLI as part of FPT is a 501(c)3 US supporting partner of HROC Burundi.

Quick update on affairs here in the land of the great lakes (African Great Lakes that is), Burundi is nearing it's next election.  HROC is preparing to finish it's training of it's 120 observers/citizen reporters/Peace & Democracy group members and hopefully we are going to distribute cellphones next week.  The catch is that we could use some more cellphones.  We have a goal of 75 cellphones worth in donations, and we'd like to get it distributed by next week.  Although if we don't get it in time for the Presidental election, there's still 4 more elections in the coming months to go.  (Yes months, not days, or weeks but months.  It's a long run of elections).  

Although we are distributing the cellphones, HROC still owns them and will be getting them back from the people.  I've spent way to much time inventorying some oddball and wacky phones that have been donated.  For the time it took, the dwindling percentage of phones due to wrong frequencies, the not unlockable phones, the bad batteries, and the ones missing chargers, as well as the hassle of a bunch of phones that aren't translated into french (or kurundi), and the cost of unlocking those not already unlocked, we probably should have just bought the cheap phones Leo is providing.  At 15,000 Burundian Francs or about 12.5 dollars, it's hard to argue that spending 4-5,000 on unlocking plus the ones with missing batterys, bad batteries, and the time it takes to organize it, plus trying to teach new-to-phone users how to use a Sony phone that predates the Sony-Ericsson merge, a nokia sliding phone that took me an hour to find the sim slot on, some a random NEC, etc, etc, etc… you get my point.  

Anyway, for two Mickey D meals, you could buy HROC a phone that will help us keep informed of what's happening on election day, help us keep our citizen reporters them informed, and help them coordinate in their own communities (as I partially explained in my previous post).  Please donate a phone or two if you can spare a few dollars for keeping this far flung country a bit more peaceful.  

Assuming we get enough phones, during the next two months they Citizen Reporters will be able to call the other 120 people for free, text them for free, text in to "Bureau HROC" our SMS information center, and generally become more engaged in the wider world.  Via another portion of the budget we've already got the funding to place all the phones on a group plan which facilitates this (for 11,000 Burundian Francs per month per person! You try pricing a plan like that anywhere else in the world. Of course most burundian's don't have nearly 1/3 of that as disposable income per month.) This is an immediate project, but that has a long term vision of being used to help tie multiple communites in this war torn country together with each other.  We have a few other programs in mind that involve cellphones, trama healing, income generation, and general community building.  The more phones the better. Leveraging twitter like chatting within more distant communities to help dispell rumors and improve relationships, as well as slowly (due to the learning curve) introducing new options like information menus, health updates, gather useful statistical and market information, etc we hope to help bridge the gap in the few communites that HROC is able to work with.  

It's a small difference to make, but it's one that HROC (and FWA) are good at making in the people they reach.  More updates soon. 

You can also donate to AGLI (and tell your friends) via the HROC Mobile Peace Building Facebook Cause

Without going nuts and writing a dissertation like I normally seem to get into, I'm going to try and talk about one of the projects what I've been doing for the last several days. As I mentioned, I've got several going on while I'm here in Burundi, the primary of which is implementing a mobile phone communication system for the 120 HROC  election monitors. We have just spent the last two days training trainers how to train the “citizen reporters” to use phones (of various types), how to text the “Bureau HROC” (FrontlineSMS on a laptop) with an update, how to use a private twitter like rebroadcast to a small community group using the Bureau HROC number, when to use what and what the reason for each might be like, and going over again how to use there existing training the Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) that HROC incorporates to help defuse the small scale situations that lead to the large scale riots, attacks, and problems.

Overall it was a successful training, but I felt ill prepared for this. Thankfully Andrew was around, and I also had two Jessica's here to help. One Jessica Heinzelman is doing her MA at Fletcher on mobile tech in such situations as we are doing (mostly incorporating the Ushahidi platform) and just happened to be willing to come from her several months in Keyna to help us out for a week. Jessica Brown is here in Burundi for 3 months with HROC as part of her MA in Conflict Resolution. Andrew of course is invaluable for a variety of reason, but briefly the ones that come to mind include the fact that he speaks french and a bit of kurundi, he is very familiar with the HROC program and it's people, he help write the grant for this election monitoring, and he knows how to deal with me. This is in addition to Florence who's one of the prime movers at HROC and was learning and helping teach.

This confluence of people helped us bounce ideas and form a training that wasn't perfect in the least, but at least conveyed the concepts. I've taught people how to use technology for 10+ years, and I am fairly good at making K.I.S.S. decisions, but none of us has done this. According to Jessica H. few people have integrated such a system of election monitors that leverage previous training in community peace building, election monitoring, and mobile technology.

For most of you, sending a text might be relatively simple, but I don't expect it to be easy for rural Burundian's who desperately want a cellphone (even if they have to walk an hour to get it charged), but haven't the $12.5 USD to purchase a phone and the regular (and more expensive) ability to purchase airtime. Consider the first time you were introduced to a cell phone, now add the idea that we need them to send a text which has one piece formatted properly ( an @ symbol followed by a word at the preface of their message) to a specific number. It seems easy, but it's easy to assume it's simple if you've learned it, but it takes patience and time to teach people to use it. It's easy to make mistakes too, as it can't be “@ word” or “subject @word” or “@word+errant character”. You might also remember that mosts of these people speak some level of French, but mostly they work in Kurundi and donated phones don't work in such a language. (Some local mobiles have been regionalized into kurundi). The great thing is that they are eager students.

We'll get the 60 cellphones we have out to people and they'll ask people in there village and the trainers how to use them. And they won't want to give them back… but we'll see what happens. We are actually thinking, and even planning on using this in the future to keep in contact with communities and help them talk amongst themselves. To use a non-quaker term, we are looking at it being a force multiplier for peace.

So, what's next? Well I have to get the system to work as optimally as possible in these extremely aggravating mobile phone conditions. SMS'es irregularly take mins, hours, or in some cases weeks to get delivered, the power generally goes out at least once per day here during the dry season, and even inter network calls don't go through sometimes. (Oh and the local provider Leo formerly Ucom formerly Telecel-burundi gave us blank stares and the silent treatment when we asked if we can purchase a Short Code, ARRGGH!) You'd think this idea of immediate feedback via mobile won't work, but it's Burundi and they are used to aggravation and take it in stride (a trait the industrialized world could learn from). This on top of FronlineSMS being a quirky and the least obnoxious localized SMS platform of the choices. (Column sorting doesn't work!) It's not going to be like the Keynan election a few years ago, but it'll be a step forward.

I digress, I'm also working on getting the parts to make a more redundant power situation for the office (via Solar or Mains, but including batteries), we are moving ahead to build a simpler design on the CAWST Bio-Filter using local materials (clay pots) so locals can build and create filters for under $12, working with FWA on there wireless and on the new medical records system they want to build, building a clay oven for the house where HROC office/guest housing is, to finish fixing a 3 or 4 computers (did I mention my 6 month old Asus eee netbook inexplicably died on me, I think the heat of Eastern Africa killed the processor, random BSOD and can't install ubuntu now. Bad computer, no Donut!!).  I'm also teaching HROC how to use FrontlineSMS to broadcast, setup new groups, and harvest information and most importantly writing the training manual for the above mentioned non-phone-using-Burundians first experience with a cellphone (with plenty of input and guidance from Burundian's).

So many projects so little of me, my money, and my time…

I'm in Burundi again nearly a year after I  first arrived on the African continent.  I'll be here for about a month (till late June), working on a bunch of different things.  Primarily I'm here to help Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) as a technical consultant for the Frontline SMS implementation they are using for Election Monitoring, as well as helping the Friends Women's Association with a variety of technical things. I'm also here because Andrew is in Burundi, 9 months later, in his capacity as an evaluator for the US Institute for Peace grant and other general follow up he's doing (in association with his MA at Notre Dame's Kroc Insitute for Peace Studies).  I haven't seen him for over a year (or some family/friends in the states for more then two years).  Beyond this I've gotten tied into a few other random projects, such as some work with the BioSand Filter that CAWST makes and which they are training several communities here in Burundi to make, as well as tending "my flock" of computers, doing some web stuff for other peeps, working on a solar setup to deal with the constant power outages, and sundries other stuff.

I've got bunches of thoughts going on (mostly on water), but many of you asked if I'm headed back to the US soon.  I'd have to say that, assuming things remain okay, I'm not likely to head back anytime soon.  To many interesting things going on in Eastern Africa, much to work on, to little money to make it to the US and return to E. Africa.  I could make it one-way, but I think I'd go more crazy at home then I would working on things here.

Hopefully I'll get more updates soon.

In my previous blog I talked about the effectiveness of the RILA on lobbying congress and how it illustrates the methods that FCNL and others teach about changing the face of our legal/policy reality.  Something that bothers me about this though, which I did not mention in the blog, is the fairly obvious reality that my analysis leads to.

If your Congressional staffers and there employers are effected by such cognitive bias devices as the Framing effect then is our government actually making rational, considered, and sane policy and legal choices about our lives?  Are we making similarly misguided choices in our own day to day lives and in our political existence?

If you reading history about the founding of America, you’ll realize that, like today it was politically fueled and perhaps from the perspective of the enactors at the time, equally absurd.  Much of what they created is argued about and rightfully so as we can never understand fully what all the enactors of our Constitution were thinking, but I have always gotten the sense that some of them were aiming to make a more rational government.  One that decided things based on facts and realities rather then beliefs and traditions.  It’s not the only one, as the US Constitution was modeled on others through out history.

Yet as I implied above, the one notion that we’ve only recently begun to more fully understand is that nature of human decision making.  In many respects this understanding has been most fully driven by advertisers and marketing types, as to persuade humans it’s best to understand humans, and over the decades or centuries, human psychology has exponentiation increased in our ability to pursuance others to act/believe/perceive in a certain way.  To our detriment, you can see the impact of marketing and it’s persuasion in American (and other countries now) consumeristic tendencies.  Using our cognitive biases against us marketing can change the probability of a purchase, so it has influence.  Influence is power, as the old saying goes.

In this way you can see how lobbying on the part of organizations (for a political belief, economic motive, ethic group, etc) can have a modifier effect on the outcome of policy decisions.  They change by probability and add those increments up.  You should also be able to see how time becomes a factor in this, specifically in monetary terms.  The more time you can metaphorically purchase of the decision makers (via lobbyist and marketing), the more the issue is cognitively processed the more likely it is to be acted upon.  So money equals an open ear, which equals influence, which equals power.

I don’t believe that the US system of government is rational and fair in a way that represents the people of the United States, at least insofar as I don’t believe the government is actually following the popular views.  Of course the populous is just as influenced by the same tactics as lobbying on a mass scale (hence a billion dollar presidential campaign) so can we achieve a government that is making decisions without bias?

I believe such as system is possible. Although we are irrational beings that believe we are rational, we do have the capacity to make some rational decisions.  We also have the ability to modify our environment, otherwise know as make tools.  Can you envision a set of tools (language is a tool don’t forget) which, if you begin to understand your own biases, can help you to mitigate your own irrational decisions an help you make more rational ones?  Can we devise such as system that governs us?

Yes, and the models that have shown the most promise are scientific ones.  Although irrational humans are the drivers behind science, the results of scientific discovery are a day to day practical reality. As you may already understand, science is about the immovability of the laws that govern nature itself.  Simply said, the laws don’t fluctuate, so if you test a million billion times, they should never change.  What this means is understanding based on testing is possible, and more importantly that building tools based on this immutability is possible.  Indeed our bodies, the food, the chairs, everything is hinged upon the notion that the number of atoms in a carbon molecule never just ups and changes.

So even though what we understand may change based on the way we perceive things, the things themselves a reliable enough to be trusted.  In this way we can externalize some of our decision making factors.  Conceive of thoughts that are based on tools and realities that are not biased in the same way our brains are.  They are repeatable and reliable because nature is repeatable and reliable (or we wouldn’t exist).

A question you might ask is that “We are a result of evolution, which developed an imperfect machine, but one which is capable of surviving. Why would we want to tamper with that?” In fact I don’t propose that.  I propose a notion that mimics that evolutionary capability in our laws.  Although our legal/political structure mimics this somewhat, I am suggesting we make it more efficient by making it a system based on models that have provide the most usable realities in our existence.  We use our ability to make tools, to make use more viable and cosmologically sustainable.

I don’t suggest my system is perfect, but here’s my suggestion. (Mitigated somewhat by the need to be somewhat politically feasible.)

Rather then having a political system that elects people who create laws/execute laws/judge laws, I suggest we modify this to elect people who create goals which itself creates a body which studies and try to achieve those goals. I would also include a body that assess the impact of these laws as objectively as possible.  The study and try body would be given a goal, say reduce Automotive fatalities by 50%. They would devise various methods of implementing this, test them in the working reality that we live in.  (i.e. Colorado would try one thing, California another).  The notions would be check, refined, synthesized. Then checked, refined, and synthesized until you have achieved the goal.

The assessment body would then aggregate the data and perhaps could help the goal making body find and define what areas are most worthy of resource allocation and improvement in understanding via setting a goal.

Some would argue that you can’t test a law on the public, as you are endangering peoples lives, but the reality is that government already does this.  It does not however have a dedicated system of refinement, rather it’s based on the will of the regulators, congress, judges, lobbyists and people.

Perhaps there are better implementations of a government which embodies the notion of a rational tool that has the goal of keeping humanity sustained and I challenge you to devise it.

Two blogs in one week after such a dry spell, it’s crazy I know, but I’m feeling in the mood to write these days.

I wanted to highlight  a few things based on my experience at FCNL, in DC/Congress, and in my understanding of human nature from this excerpt of this article in the NY Times about Bank Debit Fees being limited. (Underline emphasis added by me.)

The Senate approved a series of amendments unfavorable to the banking industry over the last week, but this one was widely regarded as the most surprising. Meddling in dealings between businesses generally is anathema to Republicans and a relatively low priority for Democrats.

And this was not an easy vote. Lobbyists for the wounded but formidable banking industry made clear to some senators that this decision would affect future campaign donations, according to people who participated in those conversations.

But retailers mounted an unusually effective yearlong campaign to frame the issue as a chance for Congress to help small business. A leading trade group for chain retailers worked with small-business groups to make sure that every time a senator held a town hall meeting back home, a local business owner showed up to ask about card fees.

The industry also rode the support of Senator Richard J. Durbin, the Democratic whip, who wrote the amendment and pushed the sponsor of the banking overhaul bill, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, to allow a vote on the Senate floor.

The winning margin was provided by several conservative Republicans. Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, told SunTrust, the largest bank in his state, that this time he planned to vote against the bank and with Coca-Cola and Home Depot, two other Georgia companies that had lobbied him fiercely.

“This was really a decision between helping out small business or helping out large banks,” said John Emling, a lobbyist for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. “No one wanted to pick between friends and they had friends on both sides, but because of the momentum, we just felt that if Durbin pushed folks to the vote we would win.”

Part of what this article is describing is what FCNL and other similar lobbying organizations try to teach there members and try to affect regularly.  The Retails Industry Leaders Association, change the forum of debate by “framing the issue.” It’s a buzz phrase that you hear regularly in D.C. and one my old boss Jim Cason loves, and he’s right.  In addition to using multi-path communication and persuasion based on their advantages (which I’ll talk about later), the RILA changed what staffers and there senators were comparing.  Whether or not it succeeds in the House, it’s an ideal chance to talk about framing and the other parts of effective lobbying.

Rather then looking at the Bank industry’s impact on the economy and how it’s fair to them (given it cost something to maintain the debit card system), the RILA put in terms of the retailer’s much larger effect  on the Senators voting constituent.  Small businesses employ over half US population, so it’s a very, very large base.  The fees at issue may directly impact the profits of the banks, but with the bail-out and sentiment in general being very low for banks, this is a perfect opportunity for retailers to point out that these fees have a far larger proportional impact on people then does the bank’s dividends and it’s employment base.

A point of psychology to remember, and one that makes the framing that I just did in the previous paragraph so important, is that humans make irrational decision because of the way our brain perceives and processes information.  It’s call cognitive bias, and in particular we are biased in the way we compare things.  This is referred to as the Framing effect, and it means when you receive information, you compare it and make decisions based on perceived loss and gain, but that we rate a loss higher then we do gains.  Although the options might be equal from a purely quantitative or qualitative point of view, we will choose differently based on the description of both options. In this way, although congress is indeed swayed by rational arguments in a one page fact sheet, the staffers and the Senators will be swayed by a “superior” framing of an issue.   In this particular case your perception of loss on the part of the banks should be smaller then the perceived loss of the larger group of retailers, even though we are talking about the same money in both cases. The shining glass monuments of banks can deal with it but the struggling mom and pop shop on the corner can’t.  I may feel this way but it’s perception not fact when I speak in those connotatively driven terms.

Another point of psychology worth remembering that psychologically speaking, we forget things regularly. Your brain is designed to forget things as much as it’s designed to remember them, and it’s a mechanism that works to your advantage, as you forget the things you don’t need (a smaller database is easier to search then a larger one).  If you are not reminded of something within your forgetting interval then it’s generally gone (with a few major exceptions).  You can more effectively be reminded of something by getting it from multiple sources, i.e. a letter from one person, a conversation with another, maybe a cute toy that you associate with it, an odd jingle that goes with it, etc.  In this way, if the staffer and his Senator hear about an item from multiple-paths on a radio news show, by his staffer, as a letter to the editor, in the town hall meetings he attends, a object or toy that keys to the issue (debit card), during lobby visits he sits in on, from his fellow Senators, etc. they are more likely to take action or feel action can be taken.  This is particularly true in the case of Congress in general, as over the last 10+ years the amount of communication has increased 10 fold while the staffing to organize and deal with such communication has remained at the same level as 30 years ago.  They have a lot to forget and a finite amount of brain space to put it in.

The RILA took advantage of this and used a multi-path communication campaign aimed at the senators.  The retailers leveraged there mass and distribution of people throughout the country to make this Senatorially unpopular issue into one that senators took note of, and after a year long campagain the Senators felt it had momentum.  This is particularly significant as it indicates they were looking at it not from a strictly rational point of view, but rather were responding to the sentiments of the retailers and there fellow senators in a more emotional way.  Incrementally, they began to believe this was an issue that was important and therefore it became important.

In spite of this daunting task of engaging congress and changing laws/policies, one of the things I took away from D.C. before I left was a belief that you can change an issue as an individual.  The big “but” to this is, it can take years of your life to make it happen.  I’ve seen it at FCNL, I’ve read about it, and we’ve just seen it again.  You literally have to make your own luck, which is exactly what happen here.  By using the large base of people at there disposal, the retailers lobbying organization kept lobing different shiny things at the monkeys until they all picked up there nugget.