Burkina Faso

I was just in Burkina Faso for work. I took my pink messenger bag that I used the last time I was in the country seven years ago (before this blog)!

Two weeks of clothes, field gear and (of course) cleats (for a tournament I went to straight from the airport when I got back to Europe).

We spent a few days in Ouagadougo meeting with government and international development actors and stakeholders. There were also other folks from the institute (past and present) around town, which was neat. Then the team headed to a town a few hours away from the capital, which is known for being the place that the buses stop between Burkina's two largest cities. We used it as a base for accessing the other towns and villages that are part of the project.

Checking out a brand new, never been used, ventilated double pit latrine.

I have over 600 photos from the trip - mostly of toilets and their buildings, but also of residences, water and waste systems, interviews, and workshops. I'll spare you the bulk of them. This was a challenging, but rewarding trip (+ no one I was with got malaria this time!): everything was in French, and it was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit every day, but I think we got solid data and a great grasp of the project elements we were studying.

One of the interviews was with the proprietor of a dolo (millet beer) home-brewery/bar. I didn't see any bottles of StarSan, but the women did comment that things were much cleaner since they had a sink basin installed through the program we were evaluating. 

There was no official work on Sunday, so my colleague and I tried to take advantage of the nearby Deux Bales National Park. With hopes of  catching a glimpse of elephants or hippos, we set off after lunch to meet our guide. We did spot some illegal cattle, some flowers, a few birds, lots of termite mounds and something very large in the antelope family running away.

An elephant had been there in the recent past - the guide guessed the day before we were there.

Cool trashcan. The bin is hinged, so the waste can be easily tipped out, but can be covered from rain and some vectors. These were fairly common in the town, but had JICA logos on them. The waste was collected by donkey driven carts, but unfortunately I could not get a photo - I did take a video of what might have been a transfer station, but have not gone through the movies yet.

The coolest paint job of the houses we visited.

A newly built EcoSan toilet. You squat with your rear over the big hole, peeing into the center hexagon, which drains through a hole in one of the corners. This allows the liquids and "solids" to be separated - meaning less smell, theoretically easier hygieneization, and the potential for nutrient recovery.

Tanzania

In March I went to Dar es Salaam for a PhD training course on the sustainability of distributed infrastructure. That means we looked at various aspects of small energy, water, and sanitation systems. The course was organized by two different German universities, but there were students from Africa, the USA and other European countries, studying everything from engineering to geography to sociology to architecture. As an undergrad I did a program to bridge engineering and the humanities, but a good chunk of the non-science stuff was a little incomprehensible to me - and even worse for the pure mechanical engineers. I heard some complaints from the human geographers about the technical stuff.

Snack break! The globs tasted like hushpuppies.

Explaining my poster.

The last day of the course we did an exercise where we walked around the city and tried to document some of the infrastructure systems (or lack there of). Street coffee was pretty interesting and quite tasty. Guys walk around carrying a container of coals with a kettle balanced on top and a bucket which contains cups and water for washing.

Mobile coffee solution.

My group found instances of reuse and recycling. This ranged from book binders selling their paper shreds and men chopping up electronics with machetes.

Prices paid for different metals.

The last day involved a trip to a village that was two three five hours from Dar to visit a village where an energy services company was implementing a solar microgrid. Unlike most solar power companies who sell or lease panels to individual households, they install tripods with solar panels and batteries around the village. This allows the system to grow based on the actual (not the expected) demand. People then pay a connection fee and buy chunks of electricity (similar to how you would by pre-paid mobile phone minutes). The generation and load can be monitored in real-time over the cellphone network. The systems don't work with conventional electronics, so the company also retails compatible appliances. After showing us around, one of the founders rode back to Dar with us and was gracious enough to have a conversation about how they operate and a little about their growth strategy. I will probably not use any energy case studies in my dissertation, but it was interesting to think about if any of their approaches could be applied to water, waste, or sanitation infrastructure.

Me in fieldwork-mode (L) and a solar panel tripod with energy box (R).

The direct Dar-Zürich flight leaves quite late at night, so I was able to spend the day with some course-mates at a nearby beach, Kigamboni.

The Dar skyline from the ferry to the beach.

It was a little windy. It was a private-ish beach guarded by masai warriors.

Chipsi mayai - a potato-egg dish with hot sauce. It is eaten with toothpicks, which are not very effective knives.

Get ready for a post dump: accounts of my trips to Haiti and the USA are almost ready to be released.

Boracay, Philippines

Since I was "in the neighborhood" at a conference in Vietnam, I decided to check out a well known beach ultimate tournament in the Philippines. It was pretty sweet. I picked up with a university team from Australia, which was going by the name Sharkbait for the tournament. The name comes from Finding Nemo, so there were lots of great movie references as cheers. There were also two Filipinos and a Canadian on the team. This was my first tournament back after having a bone bruise on my kneecap in August. I had only even been to two practices, but everything felt great! 

Lookin' good! Not that my eyes were open in any of the photos.

I met up with my team two nights before the tournament began for a strategy session.
We discussed tactics for 4vs4 beach - cutting patterns are illustrated above. 

Some of the team went snorkeling the next day - I spent it reading and getting a massage on the beach.

No the worst place to have a throw.

 The tournament has some teams at a high level, the home team was using it to train for the World Championships of Beach Ultimate, which are coming up next month, but there were still plenty of quirky elements that can be expected of beach ulty:

• Pulls had to be overhand throws  
• You could drop the pull as long as you were attempting a trick catch
• An endzone-to-endzone score counts as two points



Teammate coming down will a (poorly considered) 2 point huck of mine.
Photo from Diego Zuluaga via facebook (check out the whole series starting here)

• Instead of flipping, one player from each team stands together in an endzone and simultaneously throws a disc, aiming to be the closest to the other endzone line, without going completely over (I was really good at this. The fields were pretty much exactly as long as my hammer.)

Doing a throw-off against Hong Kong. Awkward posture. Photo credit: Bella

The tournament is known for its nightlife, which did not disappoint.
Photo credit: Ali

My team, along with future tournament winners, Bangerang!, are serenading me with Sweet Caroline.

These boys killed it on the drums on the slow march/dance parade on the way to the party on the last night.
It was a part of a Ati-Athihan Festival simulation that was put on for tournament goers. 

Ati-Atihan revelers. Photo: Ali

So much sun! Photo: Bella

So I over paid for this dope hat to stem the sunburn.
Although, the real star of this photo are the mango shakes!
Photo: Bella

Fun playing, fun people great food! All in all we won two games, both against the same team. One of my teammates made the mythical squad from our bracket (like the dream team) and I won a pair of flip-flops and a carved Boracay Dragons rock thingy for having the most Ds of the women in the B bracket - I felt so tall compared to most of the Filipino women . 

Wouldn't have worn the glasses, if I had known I'd be going up on stage. Photo: Diego Zuluaga via facebook

My leaving the island breakfast. A fantastic pancake with peanut butter, mango jam, and clotted cream.
I could only eat half of it.

Obligatory infrastructure photo :)

I don't actully know what islands those are.

I flew back to Zürich via Singapore. I had grand shopping plans for my layover, but was in the wrong terminal. I was really close to buying a a cell phone that looked like a mini calculator like 2x3 square inches and just a centimeter thick.

I was able to visit Mickey's Swiss chalet in the Singapore airport (the roof looked like a poptart!)

I landed to snow in Switzerland - not the sun and sand to which I had quickly grown accustomed.

June was crazy: Switzerland, France, Germany, Estonia, the Netherlands, + Greece (via Sweden, Germany + Serbia)

I wrote bits of posts during the travel, but never uploaded anything because a detailed description of my 15 hour journey to France, which should have taken less than 9, didn't seem too read-worthy in the end. I also spent some time working on a series of post about croissants, which I have shelved due to a change in my commuting route, but it will probably surface again at some point.

This massive post will catch you up to July 4th weekend with just the highlights from each stop! Google tells me the whole ordeal was about 10,000 kilometers!


France
Transport drama will always be associated with France for me. The above delay was due to in part to it being a holiday weekend, typical French train/rail problems, and other conference goers unknowingly swiping my reserved taxi. I eventually gave up on trying to find the taxi and found a bus, which took me to my first academic conference.

The door kept opening and closing while the bus
was moving for the whole hour-long ride

The conference topic was Service Management and the venue (or at least their restaurant) could have taken some notes (or invested in a better dishwasher and an exterminator). After the conference, I took a train (first class! for only an extra 10 euros) to Paris and then another to

Köln, Germany

This veggie loaf was actually disgusitng, but the first course
of cherries was delicious

On the Paris-Köln train they fed me and there was wifi, so I think the extra 10 bucks was worth it.

In between all the work conferences I've been going to, I've managed to fit in a little bit of ultimate as well. Aside from the twice weekly trainings, agility and strengthening workouts and extra throwing, my team has gone to (and performed quite well at) three tournaments, Disc Days Cologne,Windmill Windup in Amsterdam, and Skyline Cup in Amsterdam.

We won DDC, or at least the women's ultimate portion of it- the tournament also had Double Diisc Court and GUTS competitions as well as a frisbee dog showcase during halftime of the open final (so much for getting away from being "that sport with the dogs"). This was our first tournament with the out of town players, so we were able to work out some kinks and get in some good team bonding, we all have plaid warm-up shirts now, embroidered with a lime green "Z" for Zürich! If you want to read the German Frisbee Association's account of the weekend, it can be found here (in German).

So much style!

Parnü, Estonia

Time for Estonia, my second academic conference, and first conference presentation! On the way, I changed planes in Stockholm, so I could have my breakfast of champions: a Wienerbröd and Pressbyrån Coffee.

This conference was on the Baltic Sea and was also about Service Thinking. There were some useful sessions on paper writing and publishing. My presentation was the very last one of the conference and I think it went okay, or at least people told me they liked it; however, sanitation and water issues are not what these people are about, they were more into transportation, tourism or technology. The gala diner was at an old time farm and consisted of hearty food and homemade beer followed by traditional dancing, which the attendees had to participate in - this is consistent with one of the main tenets of Service Management: Co-creating value with the customer.

One of my advisers dancing! 

Parnü is a cute seaside town. Order the burrito at the Italian restaurant, if you are looking for adventure.

Awesome doors aren't just a Tallinn thing!

Rice, cheese, chicken and pineapple.
The salad and fruit on the side were excellent!

I took a bus to Riga, then a flight to

Amsterdam, The Netherlands
for a short stop at Windmill Windup, a massive tournament that I have been to three times before. Windmill was my first encounter with European Ultimate and it has been cool to see it evolve.

Good ol' Windmill!

I was in Amsterdam for about 24 hours. I was initially going to skip this tournament, but realized that I needed to play with my team against good competition before we go to Worlds. The three games that I was there for were really great preparation and I am glad I was able to be there. Aside from playing, I got to (ever so briefly) catch up with friends from other teams and countries. I also found out that someone other than my grandmother and other bloggers reads my blog (Hi, Herm!)

I also ate some stroopwafels!

The tournament organized an online contest to see who could most accurately predict the final rankings of all the divisions before the tournament started. My march madness brackets have been slipping, since I can no longer follow college basketball as easily as I could from the US, so I saw this as a chance at redemption. I got the second best score out of over two hundred entries! This is largely due to my team being seeded considerably lower than where I thought we would finish, which was second! I was frantically checking my phone for live tweets of the final during a session at the next conference that I went to in

Thessaloniki, Greece
I was sort of conferenced-out by the time I got to Greece. I could start to tell in Amsterdam that I needed to not be around masses of strangers for awhile, but I still enjoyed the food and the presentations. There was a special session on Base of the Pyramid research, where I presented my master thesis work and got to see what other service researchers are up to in this area.

Plus! All the signs are in Greek. I didn't know that things (other than formulas) were still commonly written in the Greek alphabet.

I don't know what this is, but it seems old and important.

Public viewing for the Greece-Columbia match. The local beer could not Fix the team's performance.

A store that only sells Feta (and Feta accoutrements, I assume)

(Air) Serbia
I traveled to and from Greece on Air Serbia, since they had the latest connection leaving Amsterdam that would get to the conference on time. And by that I mean it was scheduled to land at 2:35 AM and I needed to be at a session at 10. Of course the flight left Belgrade 90 minutes late, so I got to my hotel at about 4:30 and skipped the first session, which was fine. Air Serbia is in the midst of re-banding. Instead of just going down the isle asking, "Beef or Chicken?" there were menus distributed, which informed me what my choices were. I had found a menu from a previous flight in the seat pocket and both of the entrees were beef-chicken combos, so I was a little disappointed to have to choose between "air dried beef" and chicken.

Clockwise from bottom: My air-dried beef (cheese was a little tasteless), great ice cream from the Belgrade Airport, the menu from the previous flight (Maybe the plane was so late because they were making such complicated platings).

Luzern, Switzerland
The final round of the Swiss National Championships was in Luzern. We had to beat the other team from Zürich in order to make it to the finals, but that didn't happen (we let ourselves get down something like 6-11, tied it at 12s, and lost on universe), so we ended up getting third place. It was gross and rainy and a little disappointing.

Between the two days of play, we stayed at a teammate's house with a nice cherry tree and an awesome view of Mt. Pilatus, which I visited with my mom a few years ago (also visible from the fields).

Frankfurt, Germany
The last of the preparation tournaments was the Skyline Cup. This tournament had big ambitions, but it was its first year and scheduled at the same time as a big mixed tournament in Dublin and the some German national tournament, so the level and number of teams was not what anyone was really hoping for, at least in the women's division. The games were good for practicing staying onside during the pull, and refining a few plays and defenses, but we were never really tested.

After the tournament, I stayed in Frankfurt an extra day to meet with some German players in the sanitation game. I will hopefully be able to track some of their projects for case studies, as well as working together on some publications and putting together panels. It was really interesting to see how their offices work, since I could conceivably want to work for one of the organizations someday.

So, that is all for June and the first bit of July. I will probably have something up soon about what I do when I am not on the road, my recent trip to Germany to watch the World Cup Final, and my upcoming work trip to Kenya. Bis Bald!