becalmed

I'm posting like a madwoman in the attic today, but I feel like a witch in the turret to mangle my malaprops and so here is one last picture of how I feel, which I took a month ago, an elephant that's becalmed with someone on top of him, just able to hold his trunk out of the water and breathe. LOVE IT!

blu

Well today I was in a meeting with a bunch of graduating Sri Lankan architect postgrads, who're designing some buildings for us on the cheap, but legit. And as usual I was the only woman there and there was this really cute guy trying to be earnest as he made his business pitch and then he said so don't worry, from the first nut to the last paint I have it covered and I blushed! (I would have laughed normally but I didn't!). And everyone else laughed at me blushing! I think I have become way more conservative here.... which is interesting but shall work to my detriment outside.... And then the poor boy blushed too. So everyone else laughed only me. I couldn't help the blush, I couldn't meet anyone's eyes at the thought.

25

Well it was my birthday and I got myself (!) a sapphire and diamond pendant, the first and only piece of jewellery I have ever bought myself. The second is a picture of a painting that I bought in Vietnam and which now hangs in my office.

school sites

Jagdish bhagwati

Dear Bono,

Having worked in development for nearly 50 years, and on foreign aid for almost as long, I confess to a slight sense of déjà vu regarding your collaboration with Bob Geldof to increase aid flows to reduce poverty, especially in Africa. After all, one may ask, which big policy figure in the developmental field in the postwar years has not worked towards the elimination of poverty and demanded that aid flows be increased to that end? Yet, I do not agree with those who write cynically that the poor have done more for the rock stars than the rock stars have done for the poor. Your dedication certainly lends an extra edge to the efforts made by many over the years in this great cause.

But I am afraid that your energies have been misdirected when they are used to advance an aid agenda that is based on two obsolete and counter- productive premises: first, that aid for Africa must be spent in Africa rather than outside it and, second, that we must work to increase aid flows to a target of 0.7 per cent of gross national product.

The key problem in much of Africa is what has long been called the “absorptive capacity” problem: will aid be used productively or will it be wasted? This issue was understood by the pioneering development economists Paul Rosenstein-Rodan and Gunnar Myrdal. The former famously estimated aid requirements in the 1960s by reference to this notion. He calculated how much investment was required to help accelerate the growth rate of an aid recipient, based on an assessment of that country’s ability to manage such growth. Foreign aid would then be given to finance the investment, provided that the recipient made a matching effort to increase domestic savings as well.

But many economists became sceptical. They argued, with substantial empirical evidence, that when aid was provided, the recipients were likely to reduce, rather than increase, their own savings efforts. This was an early recognition of the “aid curse” that afflicts some aid recipients. Uncritical proponents of aid deny this effect even as they talk of the “oil curse”; as if largesse from the windfall of oil earnings is somehow more corrupting than largesse that comes from aid donors.

The large amounts of aid given to Africa and the small results that have generally accrued from them require us to look at the absorptive capacity question with a critical eye. We should disregard the hysterical charge that everyone who questions the effectiveness of a sudden and substantial increase in aid flows is a heartless reactionary. The increase in the number of democratic governments in Africa, and some bold initiatives by the African Union in places such as Darfur, have increased the absorptive capacity of a growing number of African nations. But that justifies a graduated increase on spending in Africa rather than a substantial and sudden one.

In addition, absorptive capacity is far less of a problem if increased aid for Africa is spent outside the country. Spending can be increased in the rich countries to develop vaccines and cures for diseases that severely afflict Africa, such as Aids and malaria. Research on cures for diseases such as yellow fever and sleeping sickness should be well financed. Since much of Africa suffers from huge skills shortages for virtually every developmental problem, education and training of African students in western universities could be vastly increased. They will mostly stay abroad. But then the west should develop and pay handsomely for programmes where they can contribute in other ways, such as short-term visits to train others, for instance. Until these shortages ease years from now (as they did in the 1990s in India; the “brain drain” was a big issue there in the 1950s) as more nationals are trained and find return attractive, surely we could send out more of our own. I have advocated programmes such as a Grey Peace Corps that would find our aged and retired doctors, engineers and other professionals jobs in Botswana, Zambia and other African nations.

But, if you have erred in allying yourself with the development experts who wrongly focus exclusively on aid spending in Africa itself, a greater folly is to have tied your initiative to the aid target of 0.7 per cent of GNP. This target goes back to 1969 and has not been met except by a tiny fraction of donors, essentially the Scandinavian countries. The problem is that the target relates to government spending. Fiscal spending is subject to what economists call “hard budget constraints”. There are always many demands on the government. The US, for instance, has just had a colossal increase in spending on the Iraq war and on Hurricane Katrina relief and reconstruction. Even Paul Martin, the progressive former prime minister of Canada, was most reluctant to sign on to this target last year at the United Nations.

Richard Manning, the head of the Development Assistance Committee at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, recently expressed concern that the main European Union donors would fail to fulfil even proposed aid increases, way short of 0.7 per cent of GNP, pledged for 2010. With all the good intentions in the world, developmental aid will take the back seat against politically more pressing needs.

How, then, are we to translate the enthusiastic altruism that you have generated, dear Bono, into larger, sustained flows of aid? Surely the answer is to go after personal, rather than governmental, flows. Personal spending on aid typically runs into softer budget constraints. With all the charitable spending I do, I could always forego a dinner at Maxim’s and eat at McDonald’s instead, pledging another $100 to the Geldof-Bono aid fund. So, if you take seriously the estimated audience for Live8 concerts at 2bn, halve it for those who were there for a lark or are impoverished themselves, and halve it again for those who attended the concerts twice, you would have half a billion who could sign up for an average pledge of $50 a head as a supplement to their normal giving, yielding a net sum of $25bn outright. The money would be worth almost twice that amount in actual aid, since they would be grants whereas most aid consists of loans that must be repaid.

This would mean abandoning some of your current allies. But you can do nothing less if your efforts are to yield results. In a recent interview, you said that you expected your music would endure forever but poverty would have ended in a hundred years. I wish you good luck on your music. But not even a hundred years would suffice to end poverty if you fail to correct your course.

The writer is university professor of economics and law at Columbia University and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He was special adviser to the UN on globalisation and is a member of secretary-general Kofi Annan’s advisory group on Africa

because

Because this is what we do.


Anyway. I have decided to post more and more photos as I have only a few months left and lord knows there's enough to go around.

The sky is turning pink.

Two months ago, I was waiting in the porch of my office (we work in an ancient Sri Lankan house built in the 30s) and it was dusk and I saw something, an animal, large, violent cross the telephone wire from a nearby tree where it had been draped over a branch, to the roof. Shocked, I asked our watcher-man what the hell it was= after all, we live in Colombo, not in the goddamned Vanni jungle and he replied it was a pole cat. (This is the universe I live in people. Where polecats inhabit my office roof).

A month ago, one of my staff bought a rabbit that was destined to become glue. ( In Sri Lanka, temples and individuals have to buy an animal's freedom from slaughter, e.g. cows, rabbits and the like and it is a popular ritual of expiation). Anyway this tiny little black and white rabbit soon became a member of our family, and was found under desks, water coolers, (escaping narrowly being run over one day when a car reversed) and generally had us eating out of his hands.

Two days ago his body was found, decapitated.

To those of you that have forgotten RGS bio classes, decapitated is when something's head is no longer adjoined to its body. I got the story from our watchman. At night, little Brer Rabbit is put away in his box to escape the pole cats. Our watcherman forgot one night and came outside when he heard a noise, and he saw TWO polecats skirmishing over our rabbit! and when he came off, one bit Brer's head off and leapt over the wall and vamoosed.

HUH?

HUH? I say? Our rabbit is decapitated? Something bit its HEAD off?

Yeah peeps. I live in Sri Lanka. Even the rabbit has to fight for its life.

trip-end

So it has been the end of an absolutely exhausting week. I’m currently on life-support as I wave goodbye to a contingent of high net-worth, high-maintenance donors. The week was spent organizing project visits, while trying to ensure that no minivan breakdowns occurred, hotels functioned flawlessly, spa appointments were at hand as were beer runs (oh we passed a Carlsberg store, can we stop and get some beer as we drive past tsunami graveyards?) and the like. But every school we visited was inspiring, every child warm, friendly and evidently in some sort of a nurturing environment as well. Our CEO and some CEOs of accenture, ing etc. also wept during a couple of visits, openly. One organization was also keen on implementing a model to map value created by nonprofits and public sectors and I get to pilot it here in Sri Lanka which sounds like a fantastic research opportunity somewhat related to my graduate school ambitions and intellectual interests. It was an interesting trip as well to meet some of these individuals, some World Economic Forum people, etc. etc.

In the middle of it, I also turned 25. And there was a toast made by my fearless leader to the achievements of last year and it was touching, moving, inspiring and I think I teared and in many ways, that was the best birthday present ever.

tamil film

I was watching Thevar Magan yesterday and I was surprised by what an excellent film it was. I always thought that no Indian film could attain the intensity or poignancy of Maniratnam’s films, and even though this film was not shot well, it was still extraordinarily fine. I was weeping towards the end of it, when she comes back, to find him married to a village girl, to save the dignity and bloodshed of the village. And he has sacrificed more than her, and she does not know it, she cannot understand what draws him, a previously urbane, scholarly man, to give up everything to save his village, and it was not the man she loved, who has now gone. And then the scene after that, where he has committed to his wife, finally and he takes her hand, and she stops singing because she’s terrified and he lets her hand go and then she says no, and she shyly puts her hand forward, to be held. And of course the final scene where he inadvertently kills his nemesis, his brother, in a version of Cain and Abel and is now banished, to repent, to leave to die. Awesome stuff. Why don’t they make films like that anymore? Or why doesn’t the actor make films like that anymore. The current state of Tamil film is a sorry one.

aviss

have you seen,Iin the Mood for Love?
what it must be like, to be loved that much, at least once, and to have known it too .I don't know anyone who has been loved like that and that is sad for i know many who profess to know love, and none that i can point to (no doubt in my muddle-headed ignorance) who I can say,there goes a man, who has truly loved and been loved no matter how short it lasted.

anyhoo.

a major donor visit for which the weekend was spent preparing presentations and powerpoints and dealing with obscure formatting issues and how to print in high-resolution glossy prints without emptying the bank. but then all arrived, despite immense flight delays and the breakdown of the major luxe transport vehicle and were fed and watered and then transported the next morning to a school in the depths of rural Avissawella. All 300 children stood in neat lines towards the entrance of the school as we drove up in our gleaming chariots and there was a band and a dance parade into the library.

Then a class filed in and a speech was made in English by a 12 year old thanking the donor for the books and the library and a song was sung full of exercise and then the donors were paired off with groups of children to chill for a bit and then suddenly it was as though a switch had been turned off (or on) and all 65 children turned into hyperactive happy children and mobbed the donors, screaming and yelling , just happy to be near foreigners who had given them. Pictures were taken, books were read out to each other, everyone was happy and coconuts broken.

On the way to the school, we were leading the way with the entourage following and our Buddhist colleague decided to get out of the car and drop some coins into a temple as a ritual and a blessing for the trip ahead. Only when we got out, everyone jumped out of the van as well and then we had to sheepishly explain that it was a Buddhist blessing. (or something). the world never ceases to amaze.

hatton

Back in the muck again. Spent days on the Eastern border, in Trincomalee which was surprisingly violence-free, although tense, with checkpoints every five minutes and we were carrying cargo too. Then we went into the tsunami-hit town of Kinniya, a predominantly Muslim village and visited a local NGO there, who had scouted some schools for us, and spent the day going up and down. Met heads of mosques, muslim boy’s schools and the lot, all whom were surprisingly polite to me (I don’t know why I find that surprising). I guess it matters to have some authority after all, although I find titles abrasive. I spent Valentine’s day in this awful hotel with a male colleague who was new to the job and completely silent as a result, and a bizarre hotel manager with broken, taped spectacles,who had been there when the hotel was washed away by the tsunami and related to us the story of how he had lost everything and how he had to go to Colombo to get certificates of birth etc. in a sarong only with no slippers. Then we left the strange haunted place (there were a few foreigners there, some strange Germans who cornered me to talk to me about the state of the roads (bad) and how I should ensure there is some investment in road infrastructure there) and sped onto Nuwara Eliya, the hill country populated by over a million Indian Tamils, brought here since the late 1800s as slave labour by the British. Political Parties still carry the Indian flag as their symbol, despite having been in Sri Lanka now for over a 100 years. The Plantation tamils are ethnically, linguistically and culturally different from Sri Lankan Tamils, and have no political representation by Sri Lankan/Northeastern Tamils, who disavow any link with them.

They are also neglected by the Sinhalese population and as a result, have little political voice, little representation and little aid. Conditions are terrible, with alcoholism, incest, rape prevalent. Forced family planning a la Indira Gandhi has been instituted and as a result schools are shutting down due to dwindling enrolment. (As someone said in a movie: Just because they’re poor, they can’t have children?). Preschools are nonexistent, taking place in rusting corrugated iron sheds with close to no materials. But the country around the area is beautiful. Women are the major tea pluckers. The men run shops, or work as construction labour, on coolie wages. Managers are always men, and they pay salaries by cash to women. As a result, sexual harassment and poor human rights education prevail. The value of education, can never be discounted. We all take it for granted, but it can change, really change someone’s life, not only in terms of economic capacity, but in terms of knowledge, of self-esteem, of confidence, of the right to lead a free life and the ability to do so.

The sites are next to mountain temples and at every curve and bend of the road, there is a little stone altar, with a statue of Ganesh or Hanuman. Despite the lack of housing, sanitation or health or education facilities, the Minister of Plantation Industries has deemed it fit to allocate taxpayer money to a huge expansion of stone temples, cutting away rock and hillside to build. Who said god and politics would never meet? Such is south asian politics, and just ahead of local elections here, are how votes are bought. We saw trucks of supporters going to rallies (last day of nominations here), paid a 100 rupees, lunch and alcohol to wave a few flags and yell a few slogans. And it will never change.

hillary

I was thinking rather of Hillary Clinton, and what her life must have been like. As a woman, she represents a very human form of the platonic ideal, and therefore all the more laudable. I was thinking rather of what I respected her for? For sacrificing her career in the early stages to go to Hicksville and gamble on the political fortunes of her husband, for being a smarter policy wonk than her husband? for having grown in the last 12 years to be one of the smoothest operators and a giant on the American political landscape? For sticking by her husband, despite the public humiliations and the personal despair caused by his philandering, for holding it together? for being an early Goldwater conservative, under the Republican party and moving left later? For representing the best of American, and of women? For standing up for a cause? For being the future. But ultimately, for being a role model for women everywhere, to show that brains, idealism and a fierce sense of justice and loyalty reaps awards far beyond riches or beauty. And her private conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt who said "no matter how plain a woman may be if truth & loyalty are stamped upon her face all will be attracted to her...."

sangeeth

The mehendi night tonight at the bride's house, which was a scene straight out of a Kollywood women. The house was full of brightly coloured, sari clad women. The bride sat, blouse-less but sari-ed on a throne-like sofa as two women attended to her hands and feet. The other women and friends had other assistants twirling, winding, creating mythic indian patterns in green henna on hands and feet and shoulders and arms. Then we all sat around, suspended, unable to move for 2 hours while it dried and people flowed in and out of the house. Almost everyone I met, I was sort of related to: "I saw you last when you were this high!/five years old"? Had to download my life history for everyone's gratification which wasn't as bad as I thought. Food flowed as well (no alcohol). Then the sangeeth happened, and the women got together with instruments and hours of carnatic music, holy, beautiful and above-all, well-sung wafted through the house. And it was nice, and tense and family-full. My parents made a surprise entrance, father dressed improbably in a twentysomething italian shirt, and mother in a bright sari and I thought to myself, my parents looked younger than me. (midlife crisis, enter party animals). Anyway the chatter flowed and the jaffna slang flowed and it was nice to hear everyone connecting the dots (aarrr you're Aruni mami's teacher's daughter's son-in-law from Kopai and you lived opposite Amma's house in the 60s. I remember. How is She?)

squid ink

So I am back at my parent's home again for a brief flying visit for the wedding of a friend, which needless to say, I am dreading solely because it is exactly the kind of Sri Lankan affair I have intuitively learnt to loathe from a young age, full of blathering relatives whom one hasn't seen since birth inquiring passive-aggressively about one's love life and career ambitions. Nobody has anything nice at all to say about each other and the post-mortem is spent dissecting what everyone wore and how terrible they all looked.

The flight was disastrous. I was next to a horrible man who kept drinking excessively and shouting and was eventually refused alcohol and then he spilt his whiskey all over me at 4am and I was not pleased.

But. Chin up. I am hibernating. I just want to hide somewhere. i feel like I've been beaten by a baseball bat by an extremely angry Danish-Muslim and left for dead in Damascus.
but I came back, slept and went straight to da paolo and bought squid-ink tagliatelle, feta and salami salad, grilled aubergines and potato salad, tomatoes, basil, yoghurt, mangoes, raw almonds, honey and Israeli persimmons and now I've had a bit of everything and what I really want is a Starbucks coffee but it is Too far away and I have no wheels.

I keep thinking that if I can get through this next minute without alcohol, maybe I can get through the minute after that and this is what my life has been reduced to, getting over every minute after the next. I am not sad, nor depressed. I just want to Not Talk for a very long time.

anuradhapura

I went to Anuradhapura over the last three days on a field visit. We are looking to build schools there. Anuradhapura is overwhelmingly Sinhalese and Buddhist, with pockets of Hindu and Muslim communities (refugee pockets from the northern war). I understood very little of the trip, (imagine 3 days spent with people who don't speak your language) but it was peaceful and relaxing. Went to a lot of schools and preschools and sites and met communities that seem extraordinarily organized. Went to a women's development society that reminded me, rather inexplicably of the Convent in Toni Morrison's Paradise. Another thing in Anuradhapura, all the women were pregnant. I did not really see non-pregnant women. Apparently there is a common kidney problem amongst people there. Met some people from banks, who were intent on improving their village. Also went to the Twin Ponds, the 2000 year old site where kings and their concubines bathed. Anuradhapura has had a 102 kings in its history. It is well placed.
Finally went to the third highest ranking monk in the mrivisettiya temple with whom we're doing work. He tied a blessing-string around my wrist. And chanted. I love field work. I think I should have more stories and I'll try but I'm normally wasted by the time I come back.

12 step

The Twelve Steps of Obsessives Anonymous
1. We admitted we were powerless over obsession — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to obsessive compulsives and to practice these principles in all our affairs.