Random

Tonight I saw an incredible performance – no, not just one incredible performance, but feat after feat of phenomenal artistry. The China Disabled People’s Performing Art Troupe is composed of talented dancers and musicians, each one visual or hearing impaired, with three additional performers with physical disabilities.  Somehow, despite the fact that they performed in the Athens Olympic Cultural Show and a number of other remarkable venues, I hadn’t heard of them.  But fortunately for me, my friend Alice got ticket through a friend of hers, and I had the opportunity to see them at the Masonic in San Francisco.

Even discounting their disabilities, the performances were phenomenal – their timing was perfect, elegant, and graceful.  The first piece is a bodhisattva piece, with the 20+ hearing-impaired dancers moving their arms as if attached to one body. In another piece Huang Yangguang, a man without arms, uses dance to show how he waters and grows his fields.  Following intermission, we were treated to a chinese orchestra, performed entirely by blind instrumentalists.  For me, that was the most remarkable – in order for them to play music, they have to hear it and replay it, without the benefit of sheet music to learn from, and despite the fact that they had no conductor (they wouldn’t be able to see a conductor) they were perfectly synchronized. Having spent some part of my youth in various orchestras and bands, it’s hard to stay synchronized even when you do have a conductor!

Anyways, they are in California (mostly LA) doing live performances and publicizing a recent documentary, “My Dream,” about their group. If they come your way, check it out!

A little while back Fast Company published an article on Grameen Phone’s phone ladies:

Unplanned Obsolescence

Grameen’s famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty– and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It’s not working anymore.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/118/unplanned-obsolescence.html

There is a counterpoint to this article on the website for one of the about-Yunus books:

http://www.youcanhearmenow.com/?p=97

Primarily, the FC article notes that the “phone lady” model is no longer working in Bangladesh; mobile phones have become too ubiquitous. The counterpoint says FC is missing the forest for the trees; the fact that mobile phones are more ubiquitous speaks to the  growth in the overall income of the area (or to the drop in price of mobile phones).

In most of the villages I went to in Uganda, the VillagePhones (a collaboration between Grameen and MTN) operated alongside mobile phone vendors from a variety of service providers (Celtel, UTL/Mango), and there was mostly ubiquitous coverage.  However, that wasn’t always the case – generally the Village phones start out in areas where a mobile phone would need a rather unwieldy booster antenna in order to have reception.  Eventually the mobile service providers are able to extend their coverage and build a nearby cell tower, allowing more traditional mobile phones to work, and lowering the barrier to entry; the capital required to be a “village phone”. I don’t think it’s clear that it is the village phone that causes the mobile service providers to expand their networks, although certainly MTN‘s presence in a particular area causes some “first-to-market” fears in Celtel and UTL.  At the same time, I suspect the development of rural telecommunications infrastructure is much more driven by goverment policy (and certainly rural subsidy taxes), and the Ugandan Communications Commision’s (UCC - the FCC of Uganda) forward-looking efforts to find ways to help rural areas benefit from communications infrastructure.

Replication of the Village Phone in other countries (e.g. Uganda) aside it goes to say that the ultimate goal of most development projects should be obscelescence.  Wouldn’t it be great if extreme poverty were eradicated and everyone would have the power to (as Jeffrey Sachs might say) raise themselves on the ladder of development?

p.s. Another interesting article – on how housing/property demands are changing the lives of farmers in India.  I think this guy is faring better than the lottery winners in the US.

SPOTLIGHT ON INDIA: The Price of Modernization
Millionaire still keeps cattle in his garage
Only 2 years ago, he was living on $5,000 a year on the farm

Heidi J. Shrager, Chronicle Foreign Service

Sunday, November 4, 2007

A friend forwarded me this post about a new Discovery Channel game, in which the positions of the sharks in the game reflect the actual position of actively tracked sharks in the ocean. Cool, huh?

So if you can’t figure out where I am, at least you can always find Melissa the shark…

I’m saving these here mostly as bookmarks, but thought they might be useful to anyone reading this blog…

The World Bank database has lots and lots of interesting and relevant stats (if not necessarily entirely accurate). The following two links are the summary pages for Uganda and Ghana. You can also do queries on the databases directly.

Uganda
Ghana
Rwanda

Another good statistical resource is the World Health Organization at who.int.

So today is the first time I’ve needed to have my own toilet paper.  After lunch (karo and beef stew) I peeked into the bathroom nearby, saw that there was no tp, and decided to go to the hotel instead.  Although initially we were in the Oxford Inn (25,000 Sh or $14/night) this morning we checked into the Westland Hotel (10,000 Sh or $6/night).  And looking in my own bathroom, I realized there was no paper there either.  Fortunately, this morning I picked up Mallory’s extra paper as I was checking out of the Oxford Inn and could use that.

So the big news around Uganda these days is that the Health Ministers seem to have lost some $1 million from an immunization project.  The former health minister, Muhuwenzi (sp?) ran off to the UK, presumably for a medical check up, and refuses to come back to be in prison.  His other corrupt colleagues are now "comfortably" in jail, without recourse to bail.

Yet life goes on, and we’ve had two meetings with the Ministry of Health so far, and will have another one in a couple of weeks. My general impression is that this government is very progressive, has done a very good job actually decentralizing delivery of health care, and is encouraging of appropriate IT projects.  They’ve made it a priority to get Internet connectivity at each of the district hospitals in the next two years, possibly even faster, and have recently held meetings with the Institute of Computer Science here in Mbarara to figure out what can be done in terms of computerizing services in the Mbarara District Hospital.  Healthnet Uganda is active is 5 districts (formerly 2 districts, but split into 5 as part of decentralization), with forms submitted via infrared and GPRS with the help of Palm Tungstens/m130s and WideRay jacks.  The whole system is still cash and carry, but at least Microcare is doing a great job of delivering health insurance, and making inroads into delivering better healthcare in the rural informal sectors. Overall, this is a relatively easy place to work!

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Hi there! Welcome to my semi-incomplete page. I am filling this web site in over time, so you’ll see these pages revamp themselves a bit often. For now, if you are interested in knowing a bit more about me, just surf through the pages on this site or check out these other resources:

photos: gallery, another gallery, TIER gallery, imagestation, flickr
stories: melisssaisfaraway mailing list
church: First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley
school: School of Information, UC Berkeley
profiles: orkut, friendster, linkedin, facebook
bookmarks: del.icio.us
im: melissa.ho (Skype), mrh9 (Yahoo), melissa.ho (Gmail), MelissaRitaHo (AIM)

I’m doing research on technologies for developing regions with the TIER group at UC Berkeley (Cal) and Intel Research in Berkeley. In past lives, I’ve done an MSc in Data Communications, Networks, and Distributed Systems (DCNDS) at University College London, and worked for a couple of up-starts (they don’t quite qualify as startups anymore) companies, Actional andEnsim. If you want the nitty-gritty details,
you can take a look at my old cv/resume. And if you want the dirt you’re going to have to track me down and call me. Eventually I’ll be getting myself into this, but in the meantime, I’m happily ensconced here.

I love reading – mostly sci-fi/fantasy, but also a few in the technical, non-fiction, and Christian genres. I also have a number of hobbies, including acrylics, watercolor, Chinese brush painting, and arabic calligraphy. I’m terrible, but I figure with a few more decades of practice,my work might become at least passable. When I’m in California and have a spare weekend, more often than not, you’ll find me hiking and camping in Yosemite.

I’m fascinated by personality theory (I’m INTJ and 5) and other cool things like
optical illusions.