Alex Bartik's Semi-coherent Thoughts

Flying

alexbartik — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:07:45 +0000

I just got into Kampala last night (flying from Malawi) after over 3 hours of sitting on the tarmac in the Lilongwe airport (I actually still don’t really know what the problem was because I fell asleep immediately on sitting down and woke up two and a half hours later to find that we were still sitting on the tarmac in Lilongwe. I missed all the announcements while sleeping. Consequently the cause of the delay remains a mystery to me).

Last night’s experience was still better than my last experience flying when the landing was sold hard and abrupt that the pilot apologized for the landing and said it was “not the usual way that we do things.”

Picture of the Week (or last 7 months)

alexbartik — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:47:44 +0000

Downtown Zomba, Malawi

The last 6 months

alexbartik — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:40:31 +0000

So, I haven’t posted for 7 months so I figure I should give an update on what I’ve been doing.

I’m still working for Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a US-based non profit that evaluates anti-poverty programs (more on what I do here). I was based in the Philippines where I was working on the pilot of a project on Spillovers to Informative Advertising. Once that pilot was done, I moved to a different project where IPA is evaluating the impact of Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA’s) on rural households in Malawi and Uganda. IPA is conducting this evaluation in 4 countries: Mali, Ghana, Uganda and Malawi.

Basically, VSLA’s are community owned banks (think the Savings and Loan in “It’s a Wonderful Life”), where members meet every week and each person has to save a certain amount of money this week. Eventually, members can borrow from the group. All interest income stays within the group and is distributed to members based on how much they have saved. VSLA’s are an example of savings led microfinance that is becoming increasingly popular and IPA is working on one of the first rigorous evaluations of its impacts.

I work on just the Uganda and Malawi portions of the evaluations, so I’ve been shuttling back and forth between Uganda and Malawi. I was in Uganda for the month of September. Since then I’ve been in Malawi (with a trip back home for the holidays). On Sunday I fly to Uganda for a couple months and then at the start of May I come back to Malawi.

And I return

alexbartik — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:42:58 +0000

So, it turns out blogging consistently is a lot harder than expected.

Although those clever little ideas I think up during the day that I think would make great blog posts don’t seem so clever when I write them down. Additionally, as my dad once told me “The Internet is Forever” and consequently I’m very hesitant to put anything up that I haven’t thought about a lot and proof read several times. Finally, I’ve been in Malawi and Uganda for most of the past six months, and my internet access has not been nearly as good as it was in the Philippines. From now on I’m going to post more. Really. I promise.

Printers

alexbartik — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:44:22 +0000

Ever since I began working for IPA, printers have been my arch enemy. No matter where I go or what project I’m working on I always end up struggling with a non-compliant printer to get my work done.

The problems range from an inability to find replacement ink cartidges (which are considerably harder to find in the developing world and if you can find them at all are very expensive), to poorly functioning printer cartridge knockoffs, to malfunctioning printer hardware.

These problems of course always crop up just when I need a functioning printer the most. For example, right now we’re helping people open a committment savings product (like the one discussed in this paper) in poor neighborhoods in Cagayan de Oro.

As part of this program, we take pictures of people with digital cameras and then print out little id pictures to help them open the accounts (its expensive and time consuming for people to get id pictures taken). However, this step requires a printer and said printer needs to work.

Sadly, this morning I found that my printer would not print anything in color properly – even though I bought a supposedly new color cartridge last week.

This means one more day spent frantically trying to find a working color ink cartridge.

Current Score:

Printer: 1

Alex: 0

Balut is delicious

alexbartik — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:30:05 +0000

My brother sent me this list of the 6 most terrifying foods in the world. #1 on the list is Balut, a Filipino specialty that is also common in other parts of southeast asia. Balut is a fertilized duck egg that is boiled. You then eat 3 separate parts of the egg: the “soup” (the juice on the top of the egg), the partially developed chick, and the yolk. Balut is sold almost everywhere in the Philippines by street vendors. Often, people at balut with a little bit of salt and some spicy vinegar sauce. You buy Balut based on the number of days since its been fertilized. So, for example, last night I ate a 16 day old balut (i.e. the egg eas fertilized 16 days ago). The rule of thumb is that the older the egg, the more developed the chick.

What this article doesn’t tell you is that Balut is delicious. I can’t quite describe the flavor, but it is subtle and rich and a great late night snack.

Obama’s Speech in Ghana

alexbartik — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:35:08 +0000

Bill Easterly and Chris Blattman both have interesting posts grading Obama’s speech in Accra, Ghana last week. Transcript here. Summary here.

What do you think?

A Green Tuk-Tuk?

alexbartik — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:19:32 +0000

A couple summers ago, I did research on tuk-tuk drivers (also called mototaxis sometimes) in Guatemala. Tuk-tuks (also called auto-rickshwas in much of southeast asia, mototaxis in parts of Latin-America, and tricycles in the Philippines). These are small (less than a normal car width) modes or transportation (sometimes opertaing for hire like a taxi sometimes operating more on set routes like a bus). They’re ubiquitous in much of the developing world, especially southeast asia. Each country has their own little variation on the tuke-tuk (in the Philippines they’re called tricycles and are actually frames mounted on motorcycles).

Anyways, my friend Greg sends me to this article about efforts to create a more environmentally friendly tuk-tuk. Check it out. Sometime soon I’ll write a post about some of the research on tuk-tuks I did in Guatemala.

Back up and running

alexbartik — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:26:14 +0000

I haven’t posted anything recently because I was not feeling very well the last week or so. Now I’m back up and running and will be back to posting a couple times a day.

A Filipino tribute to Michael Jackson

alexbartik — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:05:58 +0000

These are inmates at the Cebu Rehabilitation and Detention Center in Cebu, the Philippines who did a choreographed version of the Thriller dance.