Blog Post # 5: WiFi, WiFi everywhere, nor any one that works - AH

     Coming into this summer I had no idea what to expect from our research project. I have never done policy analysis before and my background in scientific writing did not correlate well to mining research. I was unsure what our topic exactly was and it wasn’t clear at first what direction we would be focusing on. Yet, I was excited to learn more about our topic and hoped to develop my skills in a different area of research. 

     The first challenge we faced in our research was deciding on a direction for the topic of our paper. Our first week at work our supervisor was out at a conference and thus it was hard to find our feet in a new working environment and determine what our next steps should be. Cuong and I were able to make a rough road map and continue our literature review in the meantime while we waited for further instructions on our project. Even once our supervisor returned, we saw that there was a lot of flexibility in the direction our project could go in -  something I didn’t expect after being given such a focused area of research. Yet, as we conducted interviews and talked to more people about our topic, we were able to narrow it down further and develop a coherent focus for our paper. I am glad to have a lot of freedom and flexibility with work but at the same time I miss more of the structure I am used to having with research and schoolwork back home. I had to learn to discipline myself more to get work done on time and finish what I needed to. 

    In terms of our research itself, I was pleasantly surprised when we were able to find a lot of data to analyze. Originally, our research looked like it would be fully qualitative and based on interviews and previous literature findings. Yet, after contacting people in the field and painstakingly combing through government websites and reports, we have found a lot of data that may be useful for our project. We are still in the process of analyzing it but I am happy to have found quantitative results that will hopefully support our argument. I love data analysis as well as economics so looking at health expenditures and adjusting for inflation and other variables made me feel right at home. It was my favorite part of the project thus far and I can’t wait until we are able to compile all our findings and look for trends over time. 

     My working style has had to undergo many adjustments during my time in Zambia. I usually am someone who thoroughly plans out how I approach things and then methodically knocks them out. Yet, our research and circumstances of working at CCZ have made that approach very difficult. I usually do a lot of work on my own time later at night when I feel more productive. Yet, without Wi-Fi essentially anywhere after work, this was impossible. Additionally, the Wi-Fi at work would either not work or be too slow to load the necessary documents for our research, making things frustrating and unnecessarily hard at times. Furthermore, in Zambia the pace of life moves a very different speed than I am accustomed to in NYC. Things happen a great deal slower here and people aren’t as attentive to emails or calls. I found myself getting very frustrated at the speed things get done and the hoops needed to jump through to get even the most basic information. Furthermore, I usually like a quiet, focused working environment and I found this was very difficult in a place like CCZ or SAIPAR. We were originally supposed to get our own office which we only had for one day but this quickly fell through and we had to find other places to work. In my time in Zambia I believe I have spent way too much time trying to find suitable places to work or having to travel far to get reliable internet, which severely limited productivity. 

While I can’t say that I am completely used to working here now, I feel that I have been able to make it work decently well over time and I have gotten used to things going wrong and having to troubleshoot a great deal. I have become a bit more flexible with the work I want to get done and have learned to keep something else I can work on offline always available in case something unforeseen goes wrong. I was worried at first about our project but I am glad to see it taking shape now and coming together. Despite the challenges we have faced in our work, we have been able to adapt and overcome them and I believe we will be able to put forward a quality paper at the end of our time here.