My New Project

I have a new project that I've been working on for a little over a month now. My colleague Bernard and I have been working in villages outside of Arusha on a technology design program*. We are working with villagers to empower them to create their own technologies. We have now made five trips out to the villages and seen some pretty impressive results. We've been supported by some students and staff from MIT's D-Lab (including Becca, an MIT alum who has been helping us develop this program) and GCS.

Terrat Ward Office in the village of Mkonoo


On our first trip in November, we went to Mkonoo (see above picture) and met with community members as well as some guests from the next village (called Nadosoito) to explain our idea and gauge whether there was interest. A few people were clearly excited, a few were intrigued, and several people in the room were definitely not interested. So we made a return trip in January with plenty of fanfare. We had Becca, four MIT students, a Wellesley student and a camerawoman. The session focused on identifying problems and brainstorming possible solutions as well as an introduction to the design process. Since the focus was on local problems, we were able to break into teams and investigate the issues that people had identified and gain a fuller picture of the problem before tackling it. The language barriers were a bit tough, but there was plenty of excitement both from the villagers and from the students, which made it clear that we were definitely doing something right.

One interesting thing that we noticed after the first session was that nearly half of the 14 participants came from Nadosoito and they were some of the most active participants, so we decided to conduct the future sessions in Nadosoito. When Bernard and I made the return trip, the university students had already returned to Boston, but Becca was still there to help us with implementation and we brought with us four mechanics from the GCS workshop. This time we had sixteen people come, which seemed to be a good testament to word-of-mouth marketing. We looked at how ideas evolve and how to evaluate different designs. Then everyone broke out into teams to try to develop a plan for what they wanted to build.

The fourth session happened to conflict with another event in the village, so attendance dropped below ten (I also missed the event since I was feeling rather under the weather). The fifth session had to be postponed because the weather meant that most people had lots of work out in the fields (definitely par for the course). However, rescheduling worked out really well, because when we went back to Nadosoito, we had twenty people show up. This time, Becca had gone back to the US and Bernard was nursing an injury, so it was just the four mechanics and myself. The session focused on using tools, and since my vocabulary is particularly limited in that area of Kiswahili**, I let the four mechanics run the session. I was really impressed with how well they were able to present the content. I was jumping in a fair bit with suggestions ("make sure you're explaining what you're doing as you do it", "why don't you ask someone to help you show how it's done", "maybe you can help them see how to read the numbers on the tape measure"), but I was really impressed with their ability to run the session on the fly.

Still, the best part of the session was when we asked the participants to show what they had learned the previous time on making a corn sheller out of sheet metal. We stayed silent in the back (though some of the participants were pretty vocal in offering suggestions) as the brave participant showed how to make a corn sheller. The only time I piped up was to ask for more participation from the female participants, who after a bit of coaxing outshone the men in their capacity. Then, one of the new participants showed what he had learned and made a beautiful corn sheller of his own. The whole session was punctuated by one of the previous participants talking endlessly about how well the corn sheller had worked when he tried it.

We're following up this coming week to see what sorts of solutions they've come up with to the problems that they identified. I have no idea what to expect, but as they said at the end of the last session "we have understood how to think about the problem, we have understood how to use the tools to build, now all that is left is to build our solution." I'm really excited to see what comes out of this.

Group discussion of one of our activities the first day

Bernard assists one of the participants to explain his team's ideas for a cookstove

Photo*** credits: Mario Bollini

* We're still looking for funding to continue this work and would really appreciate your support in this campaign (link to support page).
** All the sessions have been conducted in Kiswahili, which has been slightly more advanced than my ability several times, but people have been very helpful. I was mortified at one point when I looked at a room full of blank stares and realized that I was speaking English without even meaning to.
*** I'm really grateful to Mario for taking these pictures and sending them to me. He really is an outstanding photographer