No Dough!

I recently took a job with an agricultural development project in the country of Georgia and it seems pretty interesting, certainly in my line of work (Agriculture) but at the same time it seems to suffer from lack of interest from all sides (except the donor and my organization of course). In my years of working in Agriculture I have come to learn that my line of work is about as unsexy in the development realm as work could be. The problem is that from the beneficiary side they are quite often looking for hand outs and the idea of having to do more than write an agreement saying "I promise I will use these things you gave me for free to better my life" is just not worth the time. On the other side you have government which has little interest in anything that they can't say they helped with, and if you aren't making something then they don't care (unless there are big revenues involved, ie casinos, there are a ton of them around here). In the end, in talking with my predecessor, it looks like it will be worlds easier than Azerbaijan but at the same time not so easy in that they (gov/people) just aren't investing in anything agriculture (I do have to give the gov props for the roads and the un-corrupt police, nice change from Azer).

Made in China

I was recently in a "big box store" in Georgia with a Georgian and an Azeri. They were scrutinizing every product and when they saw "made in china" they would wrinkle their noses and put the product back.

In many developing countries there are Chinese products that are straight from china and made to Chinese standards (or more accurately, made to the standards of the optimal price [ie cheap price and cheap quality]) whereas in the USA products are made by America companies to western standards but in China (hence they are better quality). I tried to explain this but the stigma was apparently too ingrained. Oh well.

Heating Issues

Heating Issues
Originally uploaded by gaikokujinkyofusho

Well I am in the middle of a Southern Azeri winter, which is about like winter in the Southeastern US, pretty mild. This is my second winter in Azerbaijan so I had an idea of what to expect, of the weather and I thought of the heating in the house I am staying in. Many of the houses here are heated by steam radiators which would be ok if there was enough gas; the primary heater in this town, little surprise given Azerbaijan's oil but the surprise was that the gas pressure was pathetic last year and would often go out (which was a particular pain because here the water tank heating mechanism consists of an open pipe spewing gas that you just light a match and pray it doesn't set off some chain reaction throughout the town). The person that lived in the house before me apparently didn't like heating with wood stoves so I got through most of last winter with a dinky wood stove and the leftover wood reserves. When I was first told “there is a wood stove stored at your house” by my staff I envisioned a nice old cast iron stove… oh well. This one is made of sheet-metal and while it doesn't retain heat worth anything it does heat up the room. This year the gas pressure is pretty good AND I got a heater that has a auto-shutoff mechanism on it so if the town gas goes off then back on this stove shuts off and stays off (as opposed to just a pipe with no mechanism which would just spew gas as soon as the gas came back on). Anyway, after a bit of thought I don't really remember seeing cast iron stoves outside of the N. America and Europe.

Nadof is corrupt its America's fault but...

So many people countries are blaming the "corrupt USA", but how many people would invest in Russia or China etc? Only a very *brave* few, why? because those places are risky

The latest scandal with Nadof is a great example of carelessness, everyone assumed those "greedy Americans" would not be corrupt so businesses/people/countries invested ****blindly***** you can find many examples of professional investors that didn't fall for the Nadof hype and looked at the numbers and said "something is off". The same for the sub-prime market, packaged debt where no one knew what was in the package... but invested anyway... wildly... and now everyone is crying that there is corrupt business in the US (duh, care to compare the US to some other countries?).

*Of*Course* I am not even attempting to justify any of the corruption here, one of the reasons i might have considered voting for McCain is his semi-tough (shall we say tougher than the average politician which is perhaps not saying much) stance on corruption, but this reminds me of the saying "lotteries are taxes on people that are bad at math" well perhaps this whole financial debacle is a tax on irrational investors (though of course the repercussions are much further reaching than just the jobs of those irrational investors).

Back in the CIS

Well I managed to escape from Afghanistan after some (typically) painful job hunting to Azerbaijan, from an uber-islamic society to a semi-secular-Islamic society (actually, as the French husband of the person I am replacing said, “well, actually they drink vodka more than they go to the mosque” [that said they still don’t drink much]).

 

It is kind of amusing, I haven’t really worked in a CIS country since Moldova and I am finding *many* similarities with a few things I recognize from Afghanistan (the common thread in the later two being Islam).

 

I was hired as Head of Country for an organization here but unlike most of the (few) development organizations here my office and most of my staff are based outside of Baku which is kind of strange. I am kind of glad I am not in Baku as it is a booming oil town and I don’t make nearly enough to keep up with the people there (the expats and even some of the Azeris) plus after Afghanistan it will be nice to have something a bit quieter not to mention safer.

 

Anywho, more as I have time.

 

Backup Power and Chinese/Indian Products

I was recently trying to find Freeplay Energy’s “FreeCharge Weza” (foot cranked generator) and came across the Xantrex XPower Powerpack 1500. Sad as it may be, I was drooling over both of these things as Kabul is the land of intermittent (and quite often no) power. But then it occurred to me that whatever is available in the states for a kings ransom (which is then doubled by shipping costs) can quite often be found in India and China for a 1/4th of the cost (and admittedly 3/4th to 1/20th of the quality).

My organization has a few solar panels setup on the roof of one of our buildings and I found out that they were made in India and our engineer informed me that they were about 1/3rd the cost of the European equivalent. I have noticed at least one shop in Kabul (and I am sure there are more) that deals mainly with alternative energy generation such as windmills, solar panels and I am sure a few other things. It would probably be worth checking the place out to see if they have slightly cheaper power packs (would be nice if I could keep my computer and our satellite modem going a bit longer when the power craps out [and for all you electronics engineers out there, yes, I have a UPS and two US made [for 240v systems] surge protectors so even if I got an Indian battery gizmo and it decided to melt down I don’t foresee my baby [aka laptop] having any problems)

To further illustrate pricing in India and the US I was looking for the medicine “Immetrex” which is *insanely* expensive in the US (proof that the US pharmaceutical industry is legalized robbery) because I had run out and life with a migraine is pretty miserable. I found out from an expat that a reasonably priced Indian equivalent could be found in Afghanistan and my staff did in fact find some of these tablets for about $2.50/tablet. Two bucks for a pill may sound like robbery but in reviewing my options with my folks we quickly came to the conclusion that (if they work, which they seem to) the Indian pills at $2 a pop was worlds better than the $4/pill it would cost in the US and that is $4 *with* insurance, its like $200 for a pack of 9 tablets w/o insurance). I can understand companies wanting to make some of their money lost through R&D back but sometimes the prices are just insane.

NPR : Pew Survey: Discontent with Global Leaders Grows

Well, at least Bush isn't the only President that the world doesn't trust (though I suspect he rates pretty high on the "distrust meter")