settling in

I have finally fallen into a routine here. I have a few reliable friends who I can call up whenever I get too lonely or if I want to explore the city, and I have figured out a few places I like going to for food, coffee, and atmosphere. My job is working out well although the system of negotiating for a rickshaw still annoys me and I try to take the bus whenever I can.

I’m actually surprised at how interesting ICT is. There is great potential in modernizing a group of people or a country using ICT. However, it’s also somewhat of a neutral force. Unless it’s explicitly used to empower people, technology is only going to reinforce the status quo. A good example of this is internet kiosks. When internet kiosks were initially being introduced they were privatized so that local entrepreneurs were helped somewhat by the government but ultimately owned their kiosk. This put the internet into the hands of many. Unfortunately, this excluded women. Women lacked the start up capital to become kiosk owners and the ICT knowledge to be internet users. For real societal change to take place women need to be taken along and the same strategies can’t be applied across economic groups or genders.

Interestingly enough when the kiosks were un-privatized, many of them were placed in or near religious places of worship like temples. This caused additional problems as people who go to places of worship are predominately men. Young women rarely go alone. The kiosks are sometimes placed in areas such as the monks’ quarters where women are outright prohibited from going.

It’s interesting for me to work in ICT because of these kinds of issues. Working for women’s organizations is a bit easier because everything the organization does is devoted to feminism. Here these problems are not primary but are still very important to the goals of the organization and the project.

Books I’ve read in the past two weeks: “The Human Stain” by Philip Roth, “Zorro” by Isabel Allende, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” by Dave Eggers, “Lucy” by Jamaica Kinkaid, and “Colpetty People” by Ashok Ferrey

I experienced my first Sri Lankan bomb blast on Friday when a suicide bomber targeted the Defense Secretary (I think). Some of his guards were wounded by nobody else. It happened close to my house but so far nobody seems to be alarmed. I suppose this is a common experience here. I am somewhat used to bomb blasts after September 11th and Mumbai, its going to take a lot more to freak me out.