Well over a hundred data collectors are bouncing around the Colombian countryside, working on surveying over 20,000 households for the evaluation I’m working on. Twenty of them got stopped yesterday in a remote county not far from the birthplace of the FARC....
Today, tonight, my dear niece Lauren arrives in Bogota. She is probably just getting on the plane in Houston as I write. I’m so excited! Fully chuffed! Still have NO plans on where to take her, and my sister Kyna who arrives Friday night. But I will! Medellin...
I read a review today of The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship, by David Whyte. He questions the concept of “work-life balance”: Poets have never used the word balance, for good reason. First of all, it is too obvious and therefore...
This week has been absolutely tremendous. I’m serious. I know from big scary mountainloads of work, and this week qualifies. I am responsible for three evaluations starting all at once. For the third one, I head to the field tomorrow to collect data in El Cauca,...
After a blistering period of work through spring and summer, I began to make plans to take some time off. I was still in Kabul, finishing up a final project report there and also another one being turned in back in Washington. It was grueling, so I allowed myself...
Oh, yeah, right, like I have anything interesting to report from Kabul. How about pizza dough? If I want to be important, daring, bold, or devil-may-care, everyone else here has long since beaten me to it. There’s an article in the local expats’ magazine...
