I feel like Charlie Brown

AAAAUUUUGHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I can generally keep my cool under pressure, but this place might break me. Let me qualify: some of the people I work with, such as my direct supervisor, the people above him, etc. are very competent and do great work. Some others are just lacking skills we learned in high school.

The data records here are a complete mess. I asked for the complete dugwell and RSF data one week ago. This should be about a package of excel files that is essential to the evaluation of the project--one assumes they are kept safely. Suchanda and Joya hedged, hemmed, hawed, smiled, and asked me to wait a few days. I waited patiently--I'm not one to demand that things be done on my time. I reminded. I asked Mostofa to talk to them. He did. I waited. The night before my meeting with the statistician, I went to the lab and told them I need the data because the statistician will help me analyze it. She promised, yes, of course, by morning. It wasn't there in the morning. Mostofa talked to them. Oh, yes I'll send it now. Forty five minutes before the meeting, I'm rushing in from the American Center, the car is waiting, no data.

Suchanda walked into the office and was shouted at by three or four of her superiors.

Data still incomplete, I go to Dr. Hossein. It turns out there is a power outage at Dhaka University. (No seriously, imagine if there is an outage at Harvard, all the things that would go awry...) So we couldn't look the data so much as analyze it. Later, the power comes back on and we go over the data--it is a complete mess, with annotations of "test" for "water taste" and no key. The questions of the original questionnaire have basic flaws a college sophomore finds egregious. I'm honestly embarrassed to be working with this. And to think we will try to make arguments from this to the World Bank! I can massage, but only so much.

Today, I walked into the lab and asked for the rest of the data, from 2007, 2006, 2005. Sorry, she says, can you wait five days? I drop the diplomacy and tell her no, it is unacceptable that I wait two weeks for basic data files.

As I watched her search on her computer, I understood why it was such an unpleasant chore. She has files with every which name, different regions and dates and measurements mixed together, no standard, no organization. The hard copies were worse off--stacked in binders, some loose sheets falling out, never analyzed.

For some years, we had 5/12 months of measurement, some 4/12. We take two or three or four measurements during the dry season and again during the monsoon season, the number she said. Some years we had four consecutive measurements during the dry season and none during monsoon. The wells are labeled with different numbers. I might be able to salvage two years' worth for the World Bank report but who knows. To add insult to injury, they giggled about me in Bangla--I understood part--and Suchanda tried to pinch my cheek. I calmly and coldly told them to cut it out, the way I did to Ellie, the four-year-old I used to babysit. They sobered.

And where do we go from here? I asked the lab ladies how they kept the Harvard School of Public Health data--they said they didn't, that they mailed hard copies of all the questionnaires to Harvard. Aha!

Maybe that's what we need to do. I think it will be a losing battle for me to try to sort through all this data and implement a new system of organization for them. Quite frankly, I don't like or trust these two people enough to put in so much effort. Maybe Mostofa can keep track of the data, or we will require them to email them in a certain format every month to Dick.

DCH's strong point is implementation and relations with the community.

What we need to realize, though, is that implementation won't continue to happen if you can't account for your results and prove them to your funders.