In the portacabin

Sorry for my delay in posting; I’ll probably backdate some stuff I wrote previously just to spread out the postings. I switched “offices” and moved out to a portacabin, which is what they call trailers here. (I have a running joke with one of my friends that I should really write my med school thesis on the role of the portacabin in Botswana health care: most of the NGO/university-type research units are full of portacabins, and you could draw all sorts of interesting conclusions about permanence and procedures and permits…anyway…) The point is, all the cool people are in the portacabin (not really) but it took more than two weeks to get someone to come upgrade my internet explorer to a version that lets me access crucial sites like NYT and gmail and this one. So I'm only now posting stuff I've written over the last couple of weeks.

By the way, speaking of NYT access, GO DEMS!!! I’d like to commend the Kalamazoo election officials for sending my absentee ballot all the way to Gaborone with good haste! (Whether it got back in time is another question, but I don’t have much control over that.) My office-mate was quite intrigued by the U.S. ballot, especially since I also got to vote on things like affirmative action (interesting discussion trying to explain the history of that one), limiting eminent domain (likewise), and mourning dove hunting licenses (yeah, didn’t even try)!