October 25

Apologies for the long delay in writing - things are really starting to get busy here, which I can only take as a good thing. Research has started to take off quite a bit and our start-date for the survey is set for Monday Oct. 29. Keep your fingers crossed that people actually come in to be interviewed!!

We've done lots of work since I last posted. I've hired 8 fabulous RAs - 5 Christians and 3 Muslims (I found it harder to recruit Muslims), who are incredibly committed to the project. We've already visited 4 areas in our sample of 8 and made detailed, hand-drawn enumeration area maps, and I've gotten permission from the district heads and "hakimis" (traditional chiefs) in the 8 areas we want to work in. I've been working a lot on the questionnaire and have to just stop revising it at some point. My RAs also translated it into Hausa, so those who feel more comfortable with Hausa than with English can use the translation. For those readers who are more survey-research inclined, I made a few research decisions after encountering lots of resistance from the National Population Commission (NPC), who ultimately decided that their neighborhood maps and population figures for localities in Kaduna are "confidential." So, after a day of feeling miserable, I decided to forget about them, and we've made our own maps and have our own proxy for population density.

I have a huge map of the Kaduna metropolitan area - we photocopied and enlaged the districts we're going to sample from. Then we cut each district into between 6 and 12 pieces of roughly equal size, depending on the total area of the district. Each of these small pieces is an Enumeration Area (EA). We're using street density to proxy for population density. So, along with the RAs, I counted the number of streets in each EA, to make a population density "score." Using that score, I determined how many households should be randomly sampled from each EA. In teams of 2, the RAs have been visiting each EA to correct for mistakes on the map, and to fill in landmarks to use for the random houshold sampling. So, we can say that we've done our best to condition sampling on population density, even without any data from the good old Nigerian government.

Otherwise, the RA group is really interesting in its own right. All of them have finished secondary school, and a few of them have associates degrees from the Kaduna polytechnic. Two finshed university. They're extremely smart and dedicated - two of them actually own cars and they both volunteered their cars for the project! So, now I'm just paying them for the petrol costs, and we have wheels! This makes a huge difference, since some of the districts are very big (one of them is probably as big as Morningside Heights). They've all started joking around with each other quite a lot, and they are extremely tolerant of the group's religious diversity. One day, while in the middle of an intense discussion about a section of my questionnaire, one of the Christian RAs whispered to me that "Mallam Adamu (one of the Muslim RAs) needs to go to the mosque and pray but he hasn't asked you yet." I found this quite touching. They're willing to work extremely long hours and I've been blown away by the quality of their work. The maps they've drawn are beautiful, and they've given me so much useful advice along the way on every step of the project so far. When I visit a Muslim Hakimi, the Muslim male RAs always come along with me and speak to the chief on my behalf, to try to be respectful and make the chief feel comfortable. It has really worked well so far.

Otherwise, I've just really enjoyed the comraderie of having a group of interesting people to talk to. The running joke among the group (to my initial horror) seems to be making fun of each other for being either too fat or too slim. Apparently, they all find this hysterical. Some of the ladies are a little bit overweight but they seem to find it incredibly amusing when the guys tell them that they're not walking fast enough in the field because they're too fat! I initially tried to discourage this line of joking but, honestly, nobody seems to mind.

They also found one of the quesitons on my survey, that uses a story about accepting a chicken versus taking a gamble, (supposed to measure risk aversion) really funny. Anytime anybody does something even slightly daring (for instance, Ibrahim rode in one of our cars without wearing a seatbelt), everybody harrasses them by saying something like, "Eh, Ibrahim wouldn't take the chicken-oh!" Or, for example, if it takes me longer than the rest of the group to cross a major street because I'm scared of oncoming traffic, somebody will inevitably yell, "Eh- Alex would definitely take the chicken-oh! She doesn't like risk." It's kind of entertaining.

Aside from working on the project (which consumes most of my waking hours), there's not much else going on. I have basically zero social life, but that's OK. In other news, a huge lizard was hanging out in our kitchen sink the other day, which scared the living daylights out of me, since I didn't see it while I was chopping onions on the counter. When I walked over to fill our bucket with clean water to wash some tomatoes, I saw the lizard (it was huge) and screamed like a maniac. I then decided to go get schwarma take-out for dinner instead of cooking, and Kwase asked her steward to remove the lizard. Similarly, a huge grasshopper was sitting on the hot water kettle in the bathroom. I had really wanted to take a bath but couldn't bring myself to hit the "on" button on the kettle, as the grasshopper was right next to it (and we're talking a *huge* grasshopper here). So, I boiled water downstairs in the kitchen instead. I'm trying to get used to the lovely wildlife around our house, but it's taking some time. Kwase made a pretty good point when she asked why I was brave enough to study in Nigeria but couldn't shoo away a grasshopper.....

Bernd arrives on Wednesday, and I'm really excited to see him. We've already been apart for longer than any other time since we've been married. He's under strict instructions to bring lots of chocolate with him, as I'm in acute chocolate-withdrawal at the moment. I've even heard some rumors about a package of marzipan being sent from Germany to NY with the express purpose of bringing it to Nigeria. But I'm trying not to be too nosy about that.... We'll see if that transpires. OK, thanks to everyone who has been sending me comments. They're really fun to read - keep them coming!