Cold Spaghetti

— Two Saturday afternoon teaching sessions of “Biostats & Epid 101: The Very Basics” for the handful of students without prior coursework. Why those classes aren’t pre-reqs I have no idea!

— A part-time freelance writing gig. Writing text book assignments for a technical writing course. Pay is okay, not enough for a career change but twice the slave-labor rate of being a teaching assistant.

— Mr. Strongbad, our household spider, is perhaps Mrs. Strongbad. Baby Strongbad has made a web right in front of Mommy or Daddy. Teeny-weeny-itty-bitty crab-like spider!

— Two guest lectures this week for INHL 712: Measurement and Evaluation of Maternal and Child Health Programs in Developing Countries. I’m lecturing on newborn health and developing/measuring indicators for newborn health programs.

— In-home translation during home-nurse visits for a spanish-speaking mother of twin preemies. She and her husband are desperate for english classes… I’m contemplating giving free weekly lessons, if I can figure out when.

— Twice weekly volunteer sessions at Abeona. The Reggio-Emilia philosophy (with which I agree) calls for parental volunteerism. Personally, I think that parental involvement should be a precursor for being at Abeona, but maybe that’s something to work towards as the school continues to define itself.

My application to Wenner-Gren was submitted today… phew! PhD students who collect their own data are rare in my field, most use secondary datasets. From the beginning, I wanted to conduct my own study and receive funding to do so. Today I actually put some omph behind it by asking for $24,040 towards dissertation fieldwork.

Wenner-Gren is an anthropologic foundation, so the application is written towards an audience of anthropologists. I love anthropology; I came to Tulane because I wanted to study with a medical anthropologist who worked academically in public health (i.e. my committee chair). The application I sent in today is far from a prospectus (what I have to defend and get approved by my committee before moving on to actually doing the dissertation) but it is the very rough start. Good gracious, I almost have a dissertation.

Should inquiring minds care, here is the title:

Mi vida aqui es puro trabajo: Latinos, labor, and family in post-Katrina New Orleans

And here is the brief (less than 200 word) project description:

The primary aim of this research is to explore the experiences of newly arrived Latino migrants and immigrants in New Orleans. The secondary aim is to examine the range and magnitude of this population through a specialized methodology uniquely suited to the challenges of studying hard-to-reach groups. Within these aims, there are several sub queries that will serve as foci for the investigation: exploring what vulnerabilities are unique to this population; determining what sub-populations exist within the mélange of recently arrived Latinos; investigating the factors that influence permanent settlement; and considering how racial tension, workplace exploitation, and other challenges to life in the region are negotiated. This research utilizes respondent driven sampling, a specialized chain-referral methodology uniquely suited for three reasons: illegals within the population are clandestine; the population has transient qualities; and because the methodology allows tuning so that subgroups of interest can be sufficiently explored. By capturing a wide range of subjects, insight may be had on how individual response, adaptation, and resistance differs according to various social determinants, structural limitations, and cultural barriers. The approach offers comparisons within groups to identify individual differences and between groups to identify national, linguistic, economic, or newly emerging differences.

The good news: my chair has been a reviewer for Wenner-Gren for several years and his comments about it have me walking about 5 feet off the ground.

The bad news: I won’t find out until July!

** Extra note: my neighbor is a retired medical anthropologist and gave great last-minute feedback to my application. How wonderful is that?!

Is this the right thing to do? Remove children from their families, countries, friends, and relatives… so that rich Western icons can feel like they are making the world a better place? I’m sick over this. You want to help raise an African child? Fine. Help to create a better environment, economy, and world of opportunity for his community and family. Don’t take away the kid. “Money and position didn’t help.” As if.

INHL 615: Nutrition and Health in Complex Emergencies starts tonight. Professor Mock is in Africa; I’m on for introductions and teaching the lab for the next class Thursday night. I posted syllabus, course readings and other odds and ends to the website last night. This afternoon, I’ll reserve a conference room with blackboard and computer for once-a-week office hours/discussion sessions and finalize the course schedule to hand out tonight. I still have to finish the lab assignment that I’m introducing and giving out Thursday. We’ve got some great speakers lined up… if only I can get them all to confirm. Two strapping young men have agreed to be my lab hustlers on Thursday. The course is good material and I will enjoy the reading and discussion… but I want my own class!! Cue: she works hard for the money.

Will got bit in school today. Impressively so — incisors punctured the skin through his jeans. I was told that it was an unprovoked outcome brought on by some group physical play. I’m mostly feeling very happy that Will didn’t bite or hit back. The whole incident probably scared both kids to pieces. We’re keeping it clean and keeping an eye on it; he’ll live. I feel awful for the other parents, who are undoubtably wringing their hands with worry about what to do. I know very well that this could just as easily be my child who develops a biting habit.

On Friday, Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Prize for starting Grameen Bank in the 1970s. There has been much press about the wonders of microlending since the announcement. It’s driving me crazy. I wanted to set a few things straight.

– Microlending does not alleviate poverty.
– Microlending does not improve the socio-economic status of its borrowers.
– Microlending does not “empower” women.
– Microlending does not cater to the poorest of the poor.
– Microlending reinforces traditional gender roles.
– Microlending keeps women out of higher paying wage labor jobs.

All of these things are well established: they’ve been studied, analyzed, dissected… and solidly ignored. Take a closer look at those Nobel Prize articles… what do they say about the successes of Grameen Bank and microcredit? Do folks love microcredit because they (think) it is helpful to poor women…or because the return rate on loans is nearly 100%? …Or because it puts the responsibilities of poverty alleviation on the shoulders of the poor?

Some truths. For a Bangladeshi woman to qualify for a Grameen Bank loan, she has to own her home. (Is that a program really focused on improving the lives of the poorest of the poor?) Over half of the women who have participated in Grameen Bank loans since it’s inception use whatever money they make to pay for food. Not for business growth, enterpreunership, or improvements in quality of life, simply to help their families eat. As for “empowerment”, studies have shown that women who actually manage their own loans are the exception not the rule (most are actually run by men), and that women who receive microcredit are at heightened risk of domestic violence.

Now I’m not saying that microcredit is all bad. It is not. Take, for example, SEWA, the women’s collective in India. Microlending is just one of their programs. However, combined with Grameen-style loans, SEWA has a variety of other activities which include political activism, social awareness, and job training. As an option available to women when her basic needs are addressed, microcredit has a chance of making an improvement. Otherwise, it is just one more loan a woman seeks to help her family’s survival.

Finally, I am bothered by the microcredit movement because it ties in so nicely with the U.S. obsession of numbing oneself to the realities of poverty. If you take the press at face value, you may actually believe that microcredit can cure the world’s ills… or, more aptly put, that the poor can solve their own problems. This is a dangerous and erroneous assumption. Dealing with poverty effectively means recognizing the contributions of globalization. Tiny loans to the world’s poor does not bridge the gap of the global apartheid which separates those of us who go to bed without fear and hunger from the billions of those who do.

In addition to being our bread-winner, home-fixer, computer-repairer, personal juggler, AND Daddy, Paul has added “Mom” to the things he can do.

While Paul was with both kids (wearing one, chasing the other)in the playground, which he kindly did to allow me a little bit of work time, my committee chair called and offered to meet. This is a Really Important Opportunity since he is leaving the country for two months starting the first week of November and the funding deadline for Wenner-Gren is November 1st. So I called Paul, he came running home, I got Kate down for a nap, promised Paul to be home by around 6, and fled out the door.

And of course the meeting went long. And of course I forgot to call.

But, Paul recovered. Managing fussy Kate (who woke up with her tummy in a tizzy), crazy Will, and tacos on the stove, Paul became Mom. I got home to a yummy, healthy dinner on the table and two kids happy to see me. Hooray for Mom!

Dishes are in the sink. Lunches need to be packed. Dust sits on the furniture. Webs and bug carcasses are gathered around the mailbox. Dinners are last minute. Laundry is behind. And don’t even look at the floor.*

What is going on around here??

Mom’s back to work! And it’s crunch time!

So, everything home-wise is slowing down. Less adventures around town, less camera-time, less stuff. Playing second fiddle to Paul’s paycheck means that for me to get anything done for my professional existance, I either have to figure out daycare or carve time elsewhere. Time for myself? You must be kidding!

* Roomba’s battery died and is backordered several weeks. The horror!

We’re just barely keeping up with Kate. Considering her brother moves at Mach-4, this is saying something.

She rolls to her stomach, pushes, slides, and grunts herself around the floor. It’s all fine until she tires out, loses control of her head, and lets her noggin hit the floor. Ouch. We’ve tried to tell her that it’s okay, no one expects her to crawl for at least another 3 months. It hasn’t slown her down. Next step: bricks in her diapers.
As of this morning, I am TA-ing a graduate course on Health and Nutrition in Complex Emergencies. Don’t ask how it happened; the other doctoral students are giving me enough grief. I thought it was a good way to get me back into Tidewater on a regular basis and to connect with some faculty that I hadn’t had the opportunity to get to know. Plus, the course is a good one. But it’s also a lot of silly organizational details and lab work for little pay. What can I say… if my decisions were based on finances, I would not be in a PhD program. So, it’s a learning experience.
Along with the “paid” work, things are finally happening with the various projects within the exploding Latino communit(ies) in the greater New Orleans area. (These include a Latina Prenatal Care study, translation services in clinics, and designing a violence program.) This week and next are filled with meetings. Oh, and then that pesky dissertation! I’m meeting with my committee chair tomorrow.

Oye! What’s that feeling? Saddle sores!

Have I mentioned that my 24-month old kid can count to TEN? Will was playing in the living room while I was making dinner and I was shocked to hear him rattle off the numbers to himself, several times over. Although he has yet to repeat the astounding display on command to his anxious parents, we feel assured that he does NOT require these toys in his holiday bounty.

I don’t have a problem with kids and pacifiers. However, we are way past the drooling, teething stage where kids chew on everything (when the pacifier can actually prevent the spread of germs) and into the stage where most kids have outgrown their binkys. With the new baby coming, it is time to think about how to transition Will into the role of “big boy.”

So, we have begun to wean Will from the binky. We had started this over the past few weeks by slowly limiting binky use, i.e.: no binky outside the house. He did great with this to the point where he was willingly turning it over to Paul before walking out the front door. With this success under our belts, we began to daytime weaning this morning. We started by explaining to Will that the binky was for use only in his crib. When he was ready to “Give the binky to his Oso” (oso is spanish for bear) he could get out of the crib. Eventually, the desire to ride his bike and play outside of the crib overcame his want of the binky and he placed it in the lap of his Oso and let it be. We did this both when he woke up in the morning and at naptime. There was one rough moment this evening when he reached into his crib, pulled out the binky, and came out of his room with it. (We explained that this was not the system, plucked the binky from his hand, and dealt with the few seconds of tears that followed.)

So, we are hoping that by the end of the week, he is totally on board and putting the binky aside after he wakes up as part of his routine. We are holding high hopes that tomorrow goes as smoothly as today.