Decision making among peace-loving Zambians

I have lived through a two-day decision making nightmare at the Zambian NGO Congress. This congress had been organized by the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health (aka - given the love for acronyms in Zambia - the MCDMCH) to push forward the implementation of the very restrictive NGO Act. This NGO Act had been adopted in August 2009 by the former MMD government (in power until the elections in 2011), but never been implemented.

To understand the backdrop of the NGO Congress, two rather complex constellations should be kept in mind:
1. For the implementation of the act, two NGO decision making bodies have to be put in place, i.e. (ideally) voted for by NGOs and thus made operational: The NGO board and the NGO council. According to the act, the NGO board would be responsible for the registration and deregistration of NGOs on very vague grounds such as the "public good" and "public security". The crux is that the NGO board is designed to be dominated by state officials: Of the 15 members of the board, six are envisaged to be direct representatives of line ministries, two would be appointed by the head of the MCDMCH and 7 would be representatives nominated by the NGO Congress but subject to approval by the Minister for CDMCH. The NGO Council, in turn, is a twelve-member body consisting only of NGO representatives, that has, however, no decision making powers regarding the registration process, but instead a rather vague general oversight function regarding the implementation of the act. Hence, the NGO Act, if implemented, would lead to a substantial increase of control of civil society by the state. Now, the NGO board has a quorum of eight members, that is, it is able to operate without NGO representatives. So the choice of the NGO Congress was effectively between suicide and killing oneself: Either legitimating the process of state control over civil society by voting for the representatives of the NGO board but maintaining - in the opinion of congress delegates - a good relationship to the government by virtue of a proven will to collaborate and securing access to the decision making process regarding the registration of NGOs *or* not voting for NGO board members and thus refusing to legitimize the NGO Act, but angering government and risking to be further marginalized in the governance of their own sector because the NGO Act could be implemented anyway, albeit without their participation.
2. The new PF government had repeatedly stated, while in opposition, that it would repeal or at least decisively amend the NGO Act when voted into power. After this became reality in the 2011 elections, it has spread the information that the NGO Act would have to be implemented first for at least 30 days before it could be repealed or amended, as it is already law since 2009. This is certainly not true, but an argument that still had some currency among NGO delegates when the congress started. From the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Justice, the congress delegates were further informed that the government has not yet schedulded the NGO Act for debate in parliament for 2013. Hence, an amendement or repeal of the law would be possible not earlier than 2014. This means that first of all, the reregistration of existing NGOs in Zambia would be governed by an unchanged, restrictive NGO Act that allows the government to deny reregistration to NGOs at will and on diverse grounds. The operation of unregistered organizations is, at the same time, punished by the Act with at least three months jailtime. Hence, by the time the NGO Act could be amended, most NGOs that have proven to be a pain in the ass for the government and hence not been reregistered, would be out of operation for at least a year and thus most certainly be very dead. Secondly, once the Act is implemented, many vocal NGOs shut down, the system running smoothly and reregistered NGOs are under the constant threat of deregistration, the opposition to the law would be inexistant and amendments all of a sudden a very unimportant issue on the government's agenda. Sounds like an obvious trap? Yes, but not necessarily to everyone it seems.

So much for the backdrop. But I have lied to you: With this background in mind you will most likely still not be able to understand what happened at the NGO Congress. At least neither did I or any other foreign observer - nor any of the Zambian NGO delegates that I have asked.

First, there was a very vocal opposition to the law - so far, so understandable. Delegates held emotional speeches accusing the government of not being honest with them, they condemned the law to be criminal and to violate their right of speech and association. There was a lot of cheering and applause. The main question was hence not whether NGO delegates liked the law. Instead it centered on how to deal with the Act. Some of the fervent speeches against the law ended with the surprising conclusion that anyway, the NGO board should be voted for and the Act be implemented, because, after all, it was already law and the PF government promised to amend it further down the road. Oha, I thought.
After hours of debate, however, the conclusion seemed to have been reached that the NGO Congress should not vote for neither the board nor the council. Eventually, the moderator asked the crowd: "Do you want to work inside the legal framework by voting for the NGO board and work with the government towards the amendment of the law at a later point in time?" Never mind that this was not a neutral formulation of the question, only six to ten delegates stood up. There was laughter among the delegates and quite some relief among the observers. The situation seemed clear: This is the end of the NGO Congress, at least in the way the government planned it. However, this is not what happened. The moderator proposed a short break and some traditional dancers came on stage with many and very loud drummers. After 15 minutes or so, the moderator came back, said that there had been a consultation among "all the stakeholders" and this was the conclusion: Considering the fact that the Act was law since August 2009 and thus should be followed and that in the invitation to the congress, delegates had been asked to come to vote (he stressed that fact several times as if it would explain anything), the decision was made to continue with the voting procedure. Wow, I thought. Now people will jump up from their seats in protest. But nothing happened. Nothing. Every single delegate kept quiet. Two employees of the Electoral Commission of Zambia came on stage and started to explain the rules that were to guide the following election procedure. They asked for suggestions regarding how many supporters a nominee to the board should have. And the crowd started responding, shouting "three" or "five" or "ten". Eventually, the first day of the conference ended with the nomination process.

There would be much more to be told about this first day of the congress and the following second day. But this short episode shall suffice to give an idea of the extent of surprise that interactions in Zambia evoke in me. What to do with it? It is not the first time I have encountered situations in Zambia that (at first sight) seemed to be marked by a tendency to circumvent rather than confront, a strong willingness to agree and a wait-and-see mentality. I am continously trying to sort out what I encounter and here is what I have come up with so far:

In Zambia, there is a strong conflict aversion among peers and especially with authorities - with the following outcomes:
1. Consensus is extremely important, i.e. debate goes on and larger groups are perceived by members to be split as long as there are vocal minorities, no matter how small.
2. Redress will be sought by solving conflicts "legally"/according to pre-established rules among those that have the educational background to understand legal institutions, as legal institutions provide individuals with rules according to which they "have to" confront each other (i.e. rules legitimize confrontation).
3. "Dialogue", no matter how monologous in actual practice, will always be favoured over confrontation by non-verbal means such as symbolic actions or violence etc.
4. - and following directly from 1. - decision making processes in groups are prone to be captured by vocal individuals that may keep a debate going by simple objection, and because there is a strong will to reach consensus, those individuals will be able to shift the "middle ground" in a bargaining situation decisively towards their position.
5. Verbalized individual reasoning is shifting quickly to accomodate group outcomes to release the tension between the perceived will of the group and individual (momentary) point of view.

And here some more far fetched conclusions:
All this is not to say that the same individuals are not able to be confrontative etc. - I assume that once group cohesion is established and a leader agreed upon (mainly by self-appointment), this leader is able to provide followers with a legitimate space for (even violent) confrontative action by solving moral or even simple decision dilemmas for the group. This leader is further able "to work with" the unreleased tension that larger groups quickly develop by not being able to act due to their strong consensus orientation.
At the same time, those (few) individuals that are ready to insist on their personal opinion quickly ascend into leadership positions and as there is a relative dominance of politics over other sectors of society in Zambia this is where these people flock. Hence politics shows a much stronger tendency to be confrontative (and sometimes even violent) - and followers expect strong and decided leadership positions and strong confrontative action by politicians.

Mufumbwe by-elections

Zambia is certainly not the epicenter of world politics in the first place. Parliamentary by-elections in Mufumbwe district, however, are even for Zambian standards a rather insignificant event: 27.027 registered voters choosing a representative in parliament for their constituency of roughly 55.000 people. After all, there are 158 MPs in Zambia’s National Assembly and more than 13 million Zambians. 

That's the car our team has spent 1500 km in - 750 km to and 750 km back from Mufumbwe. 

To give you a little more detail on the insignificance of it all: Northwestern Province, in which Mufumbwe district is located, is the most sparsely populated province in the country. It has only 706.000 inhabitants, but has with 125,826 km² a third of Germany’s landmass. Mufumbwe, in turn, is a rather large district of the province with a rather small part of the province’s population – and more than 750 km away from the capital. (The blue line in the small map below shows the way from Lusaka to Mufumbwe town that we used.)


View Larger Map

Well, you get the picture: It doesn’t get much more remote than that and it doesn’t get much more “I couldn’t care less” for Zambia’s bobo politicians...

Remotedness - a voter (?) heading towards a polling station.

…if it wouldn’t be for Zambia’s watershed 2011 general elections, that is. After 20 years of MMD rule, these elections brought the Patriotic Front to power. Put differently, they let to the very first change in the country’s leadership between democratically elected governments in Zambia’s history. Taking place roughly one year after these elections, the Mufumbwe by-elections may have been seen as a test for the new ruling party whether it is still able to stir up some enthusiasm in the country – enough to win the parliamentary seat that was up for grabs in the Mufumbwe by-elections, at least. In any case, the PF rented a chopper and flew in all their big shots, inter alia vice-president Guy Scott, to promise everything from new health posts to “more money in your pocket” and – tataa - development. The former ruling party MMD, in turn, is currently fighting to remain a significant player in Zambia’s politics and every by-election for parliament is either another potentially decisive punch in the face or a little help to stay upright. After all, there is the specter of the first post-independence ruling party, UNIP, which rapidly became as insignificant as it gets before dying off after the first multi-party elections in Zambia. Moreover, the MMD recently partnered up with the UPND – the other important opposition party under the MMD government that is still in opposition. The MMD supported their candidate in the June by-elections in their strong-hold Livingstone, expecting UPND to throw their weight behind MMD’s candidate in the Mufumbwe by-elections. So it was a double test for MMD – would their partnership hold in the future and would they be able to garner a much needed moment of glory. Well, I should probably write something about party politics in Zambia before going into more detail. The take-away message: Even though Mufumbwe district is far out and not important in terms of anything you could read out of the statistics, the by-elections here were important this time around.

Anyway, when FODEP asked me whether I would like to come along and monitor these elections, I said immediately yes. Not that I knew very much about the significance of these elections myself. It was rather: “Me, an international election monitor, out there in the bush – yes!” Oh, and these were glorious days – a political safari you could say. (I was the only international monitor, by the way, and the only white person I have seem in a 100 km radius.)

The FODEP monitoring team (plus me)

Writing our pre-election statement.

Forget about the other story on the unregistered cars for a moment. I was impressed by how professionally organized these elections were from the Zambian Election Commission’s side. All polling materials were already distributed one day before the elections, they got a chopper to fly them out to remote (that is, even more remote) polling stations and fly the ballot boxes back in, and the presiding officers (every polling station has one) I met were very knowledgeable, very accurate and very diplomatic. Moreover, in all polling stations at least two party officials were present, making a mark in their copies of the voter register for each voter that came along. I am convinced that you cannot organize the process much more transparent than that.

6 am - the polling station opened on time.

Party representatives checking the voter register.

Counting votes. Outside the schools the voters were already waiting and chanting.

Signing the results sheet that is to be posted outside the polling stations...

...after it has been read out aloud to the waiting constituency.

It is a different matter when it comes to the pre-election period. Bad reporting by the media (“Why checking allegations? Hell, it is a story the moment I can cite a politician!”) and militarily organized party campaigns create an atmosphere that is a bit too mafia-like for me to be completely sure which things could possibly really happen and have happened and which are just propaganda and counter-propaganda. Read our preliminary post-election statement for more details: FODEP post-election interim statement.

Unregistered cars

It is 19 hours (as they say here), but pitch dark in Mufumbwe. Our election monitoring team has arrived earlier the day and has already held several meetings with important stakeholders in the Mufumbwe by-elections. Now we are on our way to the campaign headquarters of one of the strongest contenders for the parliamentary seat that is up for grabs.

We’re stopped by a big-bellied, strong-muscled dude at a large gate to the HQ. We can see dozens of young chaps – party cadres or “foot soldiers” (as they are called by their own party) – hanging around in the compound’s courtyard behind the dude’s impressive silhouette. After some discussion and cross-checking, we are let inside. The candidate greats us from behind a huge desk. Behind him, on the wall, flip charts from a previous meeting with his cadres. One written rule for the campaign team: “Violence shall be used only in self-defense. Be vigilant and ready.” 

While we are listening to his complaints regarding the laziness of the police and the violence of the other teams, the room fills with other party officials. The candidate is telling us how the others are using unregistered cars to carry out misdeeds such as the tearing down of campaign posters and the beating up of his own men (for they are all men) to confuse the public and avoid persecution by the police. His men are adding detail to his allegations: This and that car, this and that violation of the electoral code. I ask him: “So what about the car without number plates in your courtyard here?” A second of silence. Then he says: “What car?” To which his campaign manager responds: “I think he talks about the black Pajero.” I can see that the candidate for a moment is undecided about whom to punch in the face first – his own campaign manager or me. He says: “So what does that have to do with what I was saying?” Nothing, I guess. When we came out, the Pajero was gone.

Trust

Allow me to make a little detour and some sweeping generalizations. Cooperation pays off; this is true for different levels of complexity. Regarding the most basic unit of social interaction, there is the well-known example of the two farmers that help each other harvest their goods at different times of the year. On more aggregate levels, division of labor – that is the twin processes of specialization and cooperation – dramatically increases effectiveness.

Cooperation, in turn, requires trust – trust that the parties to the work-sharing agreement each do their part. Even more so if there is no third party that helps to enforce the – implicit or explicit – contract such as a tight-knit community or police forces. Moreover, as Axelrod has shown with his famous computer simulations (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cooperation), if you are generally trusting, that is, if you are ready to cooperate rather than defect when you first encounter a new potential cooperation partner, in the long run, you will maximize the benefits from these interactions – even though you will sometimes be taken advantage of by others. So far the social science bit of this blog entry.

Now, we all know examples of these small village stories where people do not lock the doors of their houses or where children are left to play in the streets unattended, because, you know, the last time there was a murder or rape or whatever in the community they still used horse-drawn carriages instead of cars. From telling these stories, most people go on quickly to condemn the anonymity of our modern city life, where you barely know your neighbors, you always have to take care to lock your car lest it will be stolen, where you feel uncomfortable to walk home alone through dark parks and so on, because you simply can't trust others. 

Now to my point: Having lived in Berlin and Bucharest for some time and having now gained some first impressions of life in Lusaka, I must say that regarding trust in strangers, there are huge differences between these capitals. Probably not smaller than those between the tiny villages in the feel-good stories and those anonymous mega cities we are used to compare them with.

Honestly, I find it shocking to what extent there seems to be generalized mistrust around me in Lusaka. I remember I had the same impression while I was living in Bucharest in Romania. (There are huge differences between these two cities, but I would say that they are in that matter both more different from Berlin than they differ from each other. And please note: I am not saying that I didn't or don't trust anybody there or that I have felt or feel I shouldn't.) How often have I been told in Bucharest to trust no one – the least if people appear friendly. And in Lusaka, in the few days that I have been staying here, I have already seen a couple of written advices to that effect (one sticker, for example, in a minibus reading “I know you look trustworthy, but I also know I can’t trust you”) and have been told countless times to be very careful with strangers. In short, nobody seems to trust anybody else, if they don't happen to have a shared history.

Now, I can’t say “this is why”, but it is astonishing how little seemingly easy cooperation is possible among people with similar interests in Lusaka. Taxi drivers, for example, seem incapable to jointly finance a person taking calls and then coordinating the drivers, although it would be tremendously more efficient to do that than always have to drive a triangle (from where the taxi driver is based to the place he is picking you up and on to the place you want to get to and then back again where the taxi driver is stationed) with only one third of it being paid by the customer - all because they each have only a couple of customers that call them. If you ask them why there is no call center, they seem puzzled as to how this should be organized – couldn’t it then be that the call center agent is giving all the customers to one single driver (and getting some extra money from that driver in return)? The same happens if you want to make a deal with a taxi driver - "give me a good price and I will keep calling you" - doesn't happen. Who knows whether you gonna call again? (Why this is all about taxi drivers? It's basically the only people here I have to cooperate with and I am not at the same time embedded in a common network with.)

I know this is no convincing evidence for my train of thought, but this is a blog and not a PhD thesis. Stay tuned :)

Newspapers

Zambian journalists have a very peculiar way of writing. If this blog entry would be a newspaper article in a Zambian daily, it would probably look like this:

There are allegedly four main newspapers in Zambia - the Post, the Times, the Daily Nation and the Daily Mail. According to the minister of information, the best ones are the governmentally owned newspapers. They are bound to telling the truth as the government takes every care to protect the freedom of expression. The minister of information said that this is evident.

"The best newspapers are the governmentally owned newspapers. They are bound to telling the truth as the government takes every care to protect the freedom of expression. This is self-evident," he stated.

If you read a Zambian newspaper you have the feeling their journalists write for dummies: Better repeat everything all over again several times. Probably somebody didn't get it the first, second or third time you have made your point. Plus oral sources of information seem to be the only ones that are accessed by journalists. Cross-checking statements? Pah, who would doubt that a senior government official knows what he is saying? Maybe that's the oral culture mixed with a huge respect for the elderly? I don't know. But it is hugely funny at times.

Well, I love reading newspapers. And it is great that the main official language in Zambia is English. Also, these newspapers are beautiful, especially the Daily Nation: Colours of pictures overlap strangely to create impressionistic pictures that are most of the time totally unrelated to the articles around them. And the paper of the Daily Nation almost has the feel of that strong brown packaging paper for parcels. Finally, they are sold on the street by street vendors that go along waiting cars with their stash of papers in hand (and start running along the minibus, if you have given them a large bill and they are struggling to find enough change whule the lights have already turned green again).

I have posted the links to the four main newspapers in Zambia in the list of links to the right. Check what's going on in Zambia! And cross-check my statements on the writing style - I am only thirty, you know, and I am not a government official. Maybe I am lying.

The Post has long been THE oppositional newspaper, highly critical of the government. But in 2011, when the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) lost their first national election after 20 years in power and the Patriotic Front took over, the Post has clearly lost its "independent" viewpoint - that was probably never really independent and neutral to begin with, but rather influenced by Patriotic Front politicians. Daily Mail and the Times are government owned. Allegedly, when the Patriotic Front took over, senior journalists from the Post took over senior positions in the government newspapers. Strangely enough, many people seem to read them on a daily basis. That leaves you with the Daily Nation, if you want to read anything critical of the government's policies. The Daily Nation, however, is openly partisan (or maybe they think they're quite subtle in doing this), i.e. definitely very inclined to very favourably report on the mischievous ways of the United Party for National Development (UPND) and the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the opposition. Happy reading!

Muzungu Allstars

A football pitch in the middle of nowhere. Around it only red, dusty sand, the occassional tree and lots of bushes. Yet the Muzungu Allstars (muzungu = white guy) managed to draw a crowd of ca. 300 villagers that must live somewhere around here. The game of the muzungus against a local selection of soccer players has been announced on the local radio and it is the radio which is the most important source of information out here. After 90 mins under the scorching sun, it's 4 to 1 for the expats' team. But the local crowd is partying anyway.

The Muzungu Allstars and local fans

The local team attacking

The local crowd partying after the game
(For some strange reason, the kids really loved our empty plastic bottles.)

On my first night in Lusaka, I have met some of the players for the Muzungu Allstars. It's a group of consultants, development workers and volunteers from ten different nations that meet regularly in Lusaka to play soccer together. Some time ago they started to play local teams throughout Zambia. That weekend's opponents came from somewhere near Lake Kariba. So for me it was a good chance to have a first look at the Zambian countryside, spend the weekend camping at a lake and to watch a really unique soccer game. Sandy Beach, the camping site we stayed at, is owned by "Herman the German", a guy from Germany that has been living in Zambia for something like 40 years - that is, since relatively short after Zambia became independent (that was 1964 - on Wednesday this week 48 years to the day) and relatively short after the man-made Lake Kariba (one of the biggest man-made lakes in the world) came into being. But that's a different story.

View of Lake Kariba from the camping site

Minibusses

To get around Lusaka, if you do not own a car, you are basically left with two choices: Either the minibus network or taxis. Minibusses suck (after you had your share of intercultural experiences), but they are cheap. Taxis are easy to find (basically every man driving a vehicle is a taxi driver - they'll honk at you, wave at you, stop right in your way) and very convenient, but expensive. For an 8 km ride you pay around 40.000 Kwacha at a rate of 6650 Kwacha to the Euro - that's about 6 Euros for a ride from my home to my office. So, minibusses then.
Minibusses seem to serve only two "lines" that connect the residental East to the businesses and offices in the Western part of town. Here is one of these Minibusses:

When the ride starts at Woodlands Stadium, around the corner from my home, it's usually only a couple of passengers in there. There are 11 passenger seats, including the one next to the driver, the windows are open, the ride is pleasant. But every bus has a "call boy" working together with the bus driver as a team with one big aim: Cramming as many passengers as possible into the bus. It's usually 18 of us, excluding the driver and the call boy (...yes, I also asked twice, but that's how they call themselves), when we pass the president's compound a couple of kilometers down Independence Avenue (or Burma Road). And to do that, that is to get the bus full to the max, the driver honks at every single pedestrian on the way, the call boy shouts and waves. At the semi-official bus stops he is usually gone for a couple of minutes to find additional customers. It's this whole procedure (including the bus driver honking and honking and stepping on the gas again and again till the call boy finally comes back to the bus with the latest customer, followed by a seat reshuffling involving half of the bus) that makes a bus ride of 7 km last around 45min. Yes, there is also the traffic jams, but these the bus drivers circumvent artistically by using the ditches to the left and right of the streets.
I am most of the time (actually, with so far only one exception) the only white guy on the bus. And I am (at first at least) getting the white man prices, sure enough. So every morning I have this little conversation: "To the mosque, please." "Four pin [that is, thousand]." "Three." "Ok, let's go." From somewhere in the area around the mosque I am then walking to the office for about 20 min. And this is what everybody does a lot in Lusaka: Walking. Our office aid, for example, Mr. Biggs (don't know whether you write it like that - that's how I imagine his name is spelled) walks 90min every morning to the office, leaving his house at 5.30 to be here in time when the first of my colleagues arrive. So walking then is actually the third option, for seemingly any distance.

Lusaka

In the background of the blog you are seeing - at least for as long as I am staying in Zambia's capital - a map of Lusaka. The little blue line indicates my way to work. I have rented a room in a small house in Woodlands to the right of the map, close to Woodlands "Stadium". My office is in the FODEP building in Rhodes Park, Omelo Road, to the left, closer to "the center" that is actually just a street with shops, Cairo Road. The office is an hour's minibus ride away from my home (more on the minibusses later on).

Lusaka as captured from google maps

In the somewhat richer parts of town (that is, anywhere besides the "center" and the "compounds" (later more on these, too)), people live inside the walls of their properties. On their property, they have a simple house (the black middle class) or a large house, a pool and sometimes even an extra "house" for the maid (the richer black people, white people and most of the expats). At the gate, there are dogs (the black middle class) or a guard and dogs (the richer black people, white people and expats). A gardener is taking care of the often large amounts of flowers and trees on the properties (again, not for the black middle class).
Living in Lusaka is, for those that can afford it, like a redneck's dream: You drive your 4x4 (80% of the cars in the streets) from your farm-like property to the mall, where everything from supermarkets to restaurants and bars and clubs is concentrated, or to your air-conditioned work place and back.
For those without cars, it's a hassle: You have to walk long dusty roads along walls after walls, with in some areas guards being the only people to greet on your way, until you reach a minibus station and drive to some other place in the city from which you most likely have to walk again 20 min to your final destination - as the minibus network basically has two routes connecting the residential East of the city to the office area in the West. Doesn't sound like big fun? That's right. But I am getting used to it. And once I am at the office, there is interesting work to do. (Finally, no more diversion.)

Welcome

So, here we go: My first blog. It's about my impressions, insights and adventures in Zambia and Uganda. I am here to do the field work for my PhD project on the role of civil society in democratization processes in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the beginning of October 2012 until Christmas I will mainly stay in Lusaka/Zambia and be working for the Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP - see link on the right side). With them I have made a deal - I am going to volunteer for them for a couple of hours per week (now working on a report on the Zambian NGO Act) and in exchange I get a desk, a computer, internet and contacts to my interview partners. From January to March 2013, I will stay in Kampala/Uganda. (More on that stay later - when I actually am able to say a little more about it.)

It's my first time in Africa. In describing my experiences here, I will quite certainly do frequent and inappropriate comparisons with Eastern Europe. This is because I have mainly worked on civil society development in Eastern, especially South Eastern Europe, before "switching continents" for my PhD research (see link to my academia profile on the right for some of my past research).

Why "30°C in November"? Well, that's the one thing the two places I am staying at in Africa certainly have in common. It's hot in November. And it's the most obvious difference to the places I call home, that is Mainz and Berlin in Germany. About the rest of the commonalities and differences between these three countries I am yet not sure. But I am here to find out. (Yeah, alright, I also hope the title makes people at home a little envious.)

There will be some anecdotes to tell (hopefully), but this is not going to be a travel blog that focuses on the funny moments of my stay. I'm probably generally not the guy for this. When I am putting something in writing, it's more likely to turn into an essay than a joke. But even more important, I am here to work and do research and this is certainly influencing the way I am looking at things here in general. And the style is most probably a little less personal than a travel blog. All in all: less "haha" and hopefully more "aha". That being said, I still hope you enjoy reading it, even if you are not interested in my research. So long.

Wolf