News of the next of many great things that has happened: The price of the vacation package that we were buying in order to get out of the thunderstorm in Manila dropped $1500.00 while we were waiting for the wheels of the adoption bureaucracy to turn. This trip was to fulfill our obligation to be in country with J before we have our official check-out. Sweet! Also the thunderstorms all cleared up (somehow) in the last 24 hours.

So it's been several weeks since I've gotten back from my trip to Africa and I'm starting to try and put together my thoughts about it all. The first step in that process has been to compile some of my video and photos into a quick video of what I'm thinking personally. How that plays out professionally will look different, but probably be related.

Click on the image on the left to see it on Revver.

What is the deal with the guidebooks? If orphans and AIDS are such a huge problem in Sub-Saharan Africa, then why is my lonely planet guide book completely devoid of any mention of orphans, AIDS, health care, etc.

In the process of getting ready to go to Africa I realize that I'm having to review some stereotypes that I have had but haven't really been aware of.

• Myth 1: Africa is homogenous. In fact, I am realizing that Africa appears to be far more diverse than America, the continent. Just looking at the variety of races represented in Africa is a starting point to see that.
• Myth 2: If someone is a black African then they understand other black African's cultures. In fact, I am realizing, from working with a black Nigerian colleague that he doesn't know any more about Zambia than I do.
• Myth 3: There is an African "problem" to be solved. In fact, as I begin to grasp the diversity of the continent I am also beginning to realize that where there *are* problems, they can be very different in nature. Even the "orphan problem" is drastically different in Zambia than in Sierra Leone.

I am looking forward to working through more of these issues as the trip unfolds. I am also looking for what Africa has to teach Southern California, particularly in regards to technology.

Feeling a little naive today....

Surprisingly, not too many crazy shots are required for travel to South Africa and Zambia. In fact, all I had to do was make sure that I was up to date on my regular immunizations and get a Typhoid vaccination whose effectiveness wears out after two years anyway. This is an interesting data point because it *may* suggest that in terms of medicine and public health these parts of Africa are only different in terms of the scale of the problems, not the scope of the problems. I'm not going anywhere in a jungle, so maybe that would require extra precautions, Africa or not. Basically the places where I am going are - medically speaking - like the U.S.

Except for malaria. Malaria is caused by a parasite that lives in humans and female mosquitoes. It doesn't do anything to the mosquitoes and the mosquitoes just move the parasites from person to person. Over time people who aren't killed by malaria build up a resistance to it, which goes away after they stop being exposed to the parasite. So I have to take Mefloquine (aka Lariam) once a week for six weeks to kill any little buggers that get in my system. My fear of malaria has greatly dropped after getting more information about it and after talking to my Nigerian grad student who thinks of it more like the flu than as a dangerous threat. One of the great side effects of Lariam is "vivid dreams" and "visual disturbances." So after I eat my scone and drink my coffee, I'm downing my Lariam. Bring on the hallucinations!

The CDC has a great section on malaria here and I'm going to try this do-it-yourself mosquito trap while I'm in Africa. What fun!

I serendipitously watched a "TED" tech talk by Hans Rosling about the "developing world." The concept is hard to pin down because the reality is that there is a wide spectrum of poverty in the world. Even within a single African nation. Watch the talk here.

Hans presented some interesting axes on which to think about overcoming poverty. In order to create an economic market you need:

• Schooling for the participants
• Health for the participants
• Information
• Credit (to buy a bike in the picture on the left)
• Infrastructure

He also presented a variety of ways to think about the concept of "development." You can be developed in any of these and not necessarily the others:

• Human Rights
• Environment
• Government
• Economic growth
• Education
• Health
• Culture

The first cultural difference that I've run into has been in booking airline tickets. When I booked some plane flights for internal travel in Africa I used a site call kulula.com. They have an option on their website to pay for your plane tickets immediately or in installments over 3, 6, and 9 months.

This seems to suggest a different approach to managing money, because, of course, the credit card itself is supposed to offer the installment plan for anything you buy. Maybe Kulula offers it as a no-interest or low-interest loan? That would make the terms better than a credit card.

Anyway, something different is happening with money. Does this tie into attitudes about micro-finance? Tip of an iceberg or just random service offered by kulula.com?